Return before dawn
586 Words
Chike jerked awake, his heart pounding like a drum inside his skull, each beat echoing in the silence of his apartment.
The blinking red light on the recorder beside him cast an eerie glow in the dark room.
He could still smell the scent of burning incense that clung to his clothes. He wasn't dreaming. He had been at the night market.
Suddenly, the recorder crackled, making him jump. A warped voice spilled out, grainy but clear:
"Trade incomplete. Return before dawn."
Chike's breath caught. The same words. Hell, exactly the same tone. He rewound but heard nothing but static.
His phone vibrated, cutting through the tension. He glanced at the screen. Inspector Eze.
"Eze, it's three in the morning...."
"You were right," Eze interrupted him, his voice grim. "Another girl vanished tonight. Same area. Same signs. You need to stop whatever you're digging into, Chike. That place..." A pause. "...it doesn't like attention."
The line went dead.
Chike stared at the phone, the unease in his chest blooming into panic. A memory suddenly flashed by in his mind.
The night Ifeoma vanished. He could remember them arguing, but for the life of him, he couldn't figure out what they were arguing about.
On the desk, his laptop screen flickered to life on its own — a new email notification pulsed across it.
No sender. No subject.
Just one line:
Finish what you started before dawn.
Attached was a photo — the alley where he'd entered the market, timestamped 2.47 am.
And in the background, blurred by the rain, was a figure.
Female. Barefoot.
Her shadow looked exactly like his missing sister, Ifeoma.
His blood ran cold. He brought out his files. Maybe he missed something. And he gasped. His notes about his sister's case have changed. Sentences rewritten, photos missing.
"I must be losing my mind," he muttered to himself. Something is terribly wrong.
He decided to go back to the night market. That place holds the key to everything.
The city was silent when he alighted from the night cab.
He clutched the recorder and the photo and started towards the alley, his every step echoing like a heartbeat.
When he reached the alley, the air changed—colder, heavier, tasting of rust and old incense.
He raised the recorder.
"Ifeoma," he whispered. "If this is you...."
A whisper answered, soft but sharp.
"You came back."
His grip tightened. "Ifeoma?"
"Not yet dawn..."
The sound warped into a hum, low and trembling. The ground rippled beneath his feet and then, one by one, the stalls began to rise.
Wood, metal and fabric stitched themselves together from the dark.
In seconds, The Night Market was alive again.
Only this time, its lights burned red.
At the entrance stood a tall figure in tattered clothes, the face swallowed by shadows.
"You left without paying," he said, his voice like crushed gravel.
"The market remembers."
"Who are you?"
"The Messenger. The Keeper sent me to collect what your sister traded."
He dropped something at Chike's feet — a glass coin glowing faintly with the initials I.O.
"Find what was lost before dawn," the Messenger warned.
"Or the market will take what is left of you."
Chike bends down and grabs the coin before turning around and fleeing from the Messenger.
As he runs past a mirror stall to the market exit, he gasps in horror and stops cold. His reflection smiles back at him, saying:
"You already traded, Chike. You just don't remember what for."
- Writer
