THE BOYS

I am not a fan of paranormal. I do not believe that there are some events that we can call paranormal. To me, it is either science fiction, horror, or nothing out of the ordinary. 

I have been watching horror movies since I was a young boy so it is rare that something will scare me easily.

Three weeks ago, I met Shola and Shayo right outside the campus gate of my university. Okay, you all do not know who these boys are but I have known them since they were born. Let us do a small back spin of the story:

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Shola and Shayo are my Mum’s best friend twin sons and only children. I am five years older but you’d think we are age mates. 

Their mum is like my second mother, she and my biological mum have been friends since their youth. They even married within months of each other.

While my mother started conceiving soon after her marriage, her best friend did not. Every time her friend got pregnant, she’d miscarry it before the end of the third month.

They prayed. Fasted. Did all kind of tests, even moved to Ghana for some years but it still happened over there. So, she came back and left all hope to God.

One thing was very odd – their grandmother. The old woman used to fall sick every month her daughter-in-law would lose that pregnancy. 

It was very odd. Even the months that she lost the pregnancies in Ghana, their grandmother here in Lagos would fall sick. People advised that they move the grandma to the village but she refused to go.

Five years after I was born, my mum’s best friend finally conceived and did not lose it after the third month. 

I can’t remember much but what I was told was that on my fifth birthday, I had walked up to my mum’s friend where she sat, touched her stomach, and prayed for her that she would give birth soon.

Surprisingly, she gave birth to Shola and Shayo many months later. On the day of the boy’s naming ceremony, their grandmother died horribly in her sleep. 

Now back to the story.

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I met them in front of my school’s campus gate. They were looking a bit tattered and there were bloodstains on their clothes. They also looked a bit out of place, in fact they did not quickly recognize me.

I took them to my hostel. Have them showered and fed. Since we were just few years apart, my clothes fitted them quite perfectly.

I asked them what they were doing in Ife but they said they were traveling to Ekiti, and would love to stay with me for a few days. 

I asked them for their luggage but they said the only bag they carried was stolen when their bus was attacked. That they were lucky I found them that afternoon.

They said the trauma of getting robbed that morning just before they reached Ife, and all the trekking they did before getting towards campus affected them. 

Of course, these boys are like family to me. I have slept in their place almost as much as I did in my father’s house. So, I welcomed them to stay for as long as they wanted.

I would leave them in my room, go to campus, come back in the evening. We’d chat, watch movies, even take a stroll together. But the only odd thing was that I do have scary dream every night for days.

In my dreams, I used to see my mother wearing all black, with their mother wearing black too. sometimes, I see their mother holding two rose flowers, wailing. Sometimes, she would sit in front of a heap right outside their house crying.

Everything looked strange to me.

In the last dream I had, I saw both Shola and Shayo walking down a lonely bush path. The place looked familiar. I ran after them calling their name but they never looked back, I kept running until I caught up with them. 

I tapped them on their shoulder but when they both turned around, they looked like a scene from horror movies. Their eyeballs were missing, just a deep hole in the eye socket. Blood was coming out of their mouth, dripping on their clothes.

I froze in my dream. No, this cannot not real, so I started moving backwards away from them but they kept coming close to me. The more I back away, the more they stretched their hands towards me.

They were beckoning on me not to run away from them. Shayo even coughed up blood in that dream. When Shola lifted his shirt, I saw a very huge cut across his stomach, he was using one of his hands to pack his intestines, preventing them from almost falling out.

I screamed in my dream. Suddenly, I felt a hand touched my shoulder from behind. It was their grandmother’s; she was holding a pestle; her eyes were bloodshot. 

As I looked back she hit me with the pestle on my head, with blood splattering out of my mouth and nose.

I woke up immediately from that dream with sweats bathing me despite that the fan in my room was switched on. I felt something coming out of my nose and when I touched it and tasted it, it turned out to be blood. My blood.

I sat up immediately on my bed. The whole room was dark because I do switch off the bulb before sleeping. The only thing you could hear is the wheezing sound of the fan. In that darkness, I called their names but they never answered.

I tiptoed towards the bulb so I can put it on without waking them up. When I put on the bulb, these boys were wide awake too. In fact, they had been staring at me all these while I was sleeping.

They sat on my roommate’s bed with their legs folded the way Muslims do when praying. However, they held each other’s hands with their eyes wide open, staring at me.

I thought they were sleep acting, plus when I called their names again, they did not reply. Of course, I know people do weird things while asleep. So, I just switched off the light, went back to my bed but couldn’t sleep.

I felt the presence of many eyes staring at me. I would uncover myself, look around but couldn’t see anything. The moment I go under the wrapper again; I would feel it. 

Like many eyes were looking at me. It was so uneasy. Sometimes, it felt like the fan stopped making noise, and sometimes I’d hear the fan working again.

I developed headache, my eyeballs were throbbing with pain, and my body was hot. Don’t forget that blood was still trickling down my nose but this time very slowly.

I tried to get up to take drugs but it felt like my legs were tied. I wanted to call on the boys again, maybe this time they would hear me and help me with drugs but nothing came out of my mouth.

It felt like someone tongue tied me. My throat was closing up and my breathe was shaking. My head started feeling weird, I started seeing things like flashes of light and darkness. 

I can’t remember whether I passed out or I slept off. Everything went blurry

I woke up very late the next day, it was a Sunday. The time was past 12PM when I checked. The boys were up too. they wore my clothes prepared to go out. 

They told me they had stayed long enough with me that they’d like to be going to Ekiti as planned. I gave them five thousand naira from my own money. 

They had been staying with me for seven days now so I felt it was okay if they wanted to leave. I even followed them to the garage where they boarded the bus going to Ekiti from Ile-Ife.

I bade them goodbye. On my way home my phone rang, it was my mother. When I picked it, she first ranted about how they had been trying to reach me for many days now that I should be coming home immediately.

“Wo, seybi ko si exam kan kan to o se ni Ife, wo moto ko ma bo ni ile bayii bayii. Shayo ati Shola ku laaro yi, won ti wa ni coma lati ose to koja, won je ma sin won ni ola. Ati pe number e ju igba ogun lo, ko si idahun”

(“Since there is no exam you are doing in Ife now, board the next bus going to Lagos and be coming home right away. Shayo and Shola died this morning, they had both been in coma since last week, and they are planning to bury them tomorrow. We have been trying to reach you for ages now.”)

I ran back to the garage, but I was told the bus had left. I froze on that spot. This cannot be real!

© Ololade Edun.

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Ololade Edun is a contemporary Nigerian Creative, Microbiologist, and a medical student. His pieces are experimental and they dissect societal themes.

Ololade is an editor for AWS, TVO TRIBE, and a podcaster for The GhostPen Project. When he is not writing, Ololade is reading or drowning in Indian/Pakistani playback songs. Say hi on Twitter @OloladeWrites or Facebook @Ololade Edun