Point of no Return

Time to Travel

Three

Time to Travel

As Tile finished pulling his clothes, he saw the bright headlamps of a vehicle descending from the top area of the street, beyond the club. A cold chill traveled down his spine; not so much from the winter cold as the dread for getting caught on his victorious night in a witchy position. What was he to do? Wearing his clothes all over again was impossible and there was no place he could dash to. He instinctively crossed the gutter and stood away from the tarred street. His heart was now performing a wild disco inferno, yanking against his ribs as if to rip his chest apart. He made every effort to control himself but it seemed impossible. He fumbled in his breast pockets and found the abedegȏdo with the other potions. He brought them out with a shaky hand and laid them on his singlet which he had spread on the ground. He noticed that he was not been fast enough as he was trembling all over. As Tile contemplated how possible to fold his expensive suit and not ruffle it, he saw the vehicle approaching him now. He became desperate. The police van glided past but stopped shortly. Heavy Jesus! They had seen him.

The Special Anti-Robbery Squad, popularly known by their acronym of SARS was a dreaded police elite unit that no one dared cross its path. They had been very effective with fighting armed robbery and general crime of course. But most of their operations had become illegal and sometimes pegged them as armed robbers themselves. In other instances, they would arrest innocent citizens and pass them off as criminals. In fact, they practically persecuted the civil population even when it was clear they were doing their job. Finding someone in an isolated area, and naked, and in the thick middle of the night would definitely warrant a shoot-and-tag criminal. What the hell would someone be doing out here naked in the middle of the night, the OC SARS, wondered. And it was clear that the guy was not a mental case, he looked alright enough. As the van stopped, the SARS operatives jumped from the Hilux van in a commando style to barricade the small area. The OC SARS came out to meet them too. “What have you found?” he asked.

To answer his question, one of the operatives beamed his flashlight across the gutter to where they had seen the naked figure. To their great astonishment, no one was there. No one.

“Search around, he should not be far away”, the OC SARS ordered. But of course, even he knew that searching around was a useless enterprise. There was no hiding place in sight, except, whoever it was must have vanished. However, something caught the OC SARS’ eyes, a very white singlet spread out on the ground; on the very spot they had seen the stark figure. He took the flashlight and crossed the gutter to take a closer look. But nothing gave him what he wanted, except a distant thought that started to form somewhere in his head. It seemed whoever this person was; they must have been performing some spiritual task of sorts and must have possibly left through such means. Not finding any other feasible explanation, he just turned and said to the nearest operative: “wrap that singlet up let’s go. It may be useful evidence”.

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When the Hilux van screeched to an abrupt stop, Tile knew that he had been seen. In fact, he was done for. To worsen all situations, it was the SARS. At this point, he refused to furnish his fears but swung to action immediately and with absolute precision. He hurriedly bundled his clothes with every other paraphernalia in it. His phone too was in the pocket. He had put his wrist watch in the pocket too and the one hundred thousand Naira he earlier carried. He yanked everything under his armpit and snatched the items on the singlet. But in his hurry, it never occurred to him that the singlet was his. He squinted on the keys bringing it closer to his eyes to take a better look. He selected the right one for traveling and said the command: “Ikputu, my master, take me to a grave”. He repeated this command three times and heard a whirlwind rumbling. He felt so scared that he closed his eyes and surrendered to fate. If the abedegȏdo failed him, then he was sure to wake up in a police cell and quite possibly appear on television bearing falsified criminal records labeled him by the SARS. But as he opened his eyes, he couldn’t believe the same eyes of his. A massive graveyard was spread-out right in his front. He was standing at the headstone of a particular grave that must have not been older than three days.

Looking at the hilly silhouettes in the horizon, he could guess that he was in far-away Northern part of the country. To confirm his hypothesis was the graveyard. It was mostly the Muslims in the North that maintained the culture of burying in graveyards. Where he came from, people were buried in their family compounds or backyards and not in massive graveyards like this. Knowing that he had successfully began the completion of his ritual task; he decided it was not a time for demographic survey so he set to the task at hand. He fished out the key for opening of portals and commanded Ikputu to open the grave. As soon as he finished the command, there was a quaky rumbling and the grave suddenly erupted like a volcano. The coffin lay bare and he saw the embalmed corpse of a very sickly looking thin old man. Fear and courage both gripped him. But he carefully selected the potion for the grave and quickly tossed it into the coffin. His eyes played tricks on him as if the corpse made to sneeze. But that was not important. He quickly commanded the grave to close and it did. To his greatest surprise, not even a crack showed evidence as if anything had just happened to the grave. So he clutched his clothes more tightly under his armpit and commanded his exit to the sea.

As he levitated through the atmosphere, he heard a loud wailing of an old man behind him. The wail grew louder as he moved forward through the sphere. Absolute terror gripped him. He had not heard an old man cry like this in all his thirty-seven years stay on earth. He knew that if it were in the physical realm, it meant that he had beaten an old man. As much as he controlled himself not to look back as he had been warned, he kept feeling as if he should take a peek. As the breeze fluffed by with speed, he now heard the wailing accompanied by footsteps as if he was been pursued. As it got to an unbearable point, the wailing and footsteps suddenly stopped. In fact, all noise and fluffing stopped and there was a calm halcyon glide forward. Now he felt like heaven.

Before long, he appeared suddenly on a large bridge. This bridge was quite familiar. The length was quite intimidating too. Then it occurred to him. This was the Third Mainland Bridge in Lagos. He had traveled on this bridge the last time he came to Lagos. Wow!!! In one night, he had traveled to both the Northern and Southern parts of Nigeria under twenty minutes!! This was awesome. These things he never believed ever existed, he was now standing at the centre of its experience. So this was what happened in the night when lay human beings slept, he wondered. He turned and faced the opposite direction, placing his right hand next to the railings of the bridge. He dropped the remaining potion into the dark water underneath. As soon as the potion dropped on the water, he saw something like lightening and then there was a loud squeal as if a giant pig was being castrated. The water underneath began to rumble loudly. He became quite confused. Ortwar did not mention this part of the drama to him at all. But whichever way, it was time to go. He was done here. So he said the command and the fluffy wind carried him again. He had thought perhaps his departure might alley the terror he felt, but he was wrong.

As the wind carted him away with lightening speed, he could feel the whole ocean following him. He felt as if he was soon to be drowned. Then there were noises. All kinds of noises. Squeaking birds. Croaking toads. Barking dogs. All kinds of animal cries. Then there was this mermaid tail flapping continuously on the water. With all these, Tile manage to stay sane and not turn back until he heard what he never expected or thought he would ever hear again since seven years ago. His mother, who had been dead seven years already, was now calling unto him pleadingly. So he turned.

In his moment of supposed victory and glory, what Tile saw was not as scary as what he had been hearing behind him. He saw nothing. Just a dark abyss of thick black void. But then he noticed something else. He was falling, tumbling in mid air and never hitting the ground. He just kept falling.