CURSE OF THE LIVING DEAD PRINCESS

Pastor Samuel Emike stood wide-eyed as a multitude of wailing children filed past him in all manner of shackles. They were on a narrow, winding footpath that led into a dark forest of mighty trees, tall reedy grasses and monstrous creeping plants with sharp thorns. The forest appeared dense and forbidding, and several great columns of foul-smelling smoke drifted above the treetops. It was what most Africans would consider an evil forest. Samuel neither knew where he was nor why he was standing on the edge of the path leading into this forest. The captives were quite young - none was older than four or five years by Samuel's reckoning. All of them looked hungry, weak and weary, as if they had been on the march for days. The chains and ropes holding them bound were interlinked in a way that none could escape. An old hag, bent over with age, walked ahead of the procession, pulling the children along with a long leash. She looked fearfully ugly and she glanced back every now and then to be sure her captives were in line. Many of the weeping children stretched out tiny, withered hands in supplication to Samuel as the old woman dragged them away, desperate hope of freedom etched on their faces. The preacher longed to grab those tiny hands and set the poor children free, but an overpowering force held him back and he couldn't move a muscle. He just stood there, motionless and saddened by the spectacle. Suddenly the old woman stopped and turned to stare at him. She appeared both surprised and menacing; she apparently hadn't expected to meet anyone in that forbidding terrain. Realising that he was face to face with an evil spirit, the man of God willed himself to speak and began to rebuke her, speaking in tongues. He was surprised to see the old woman laughing at him instead of falling under the power of the Holy Spirit. "Not even you can free my captives, holy man!" she hissed, speaking in a strange language that Samuel surprisingly understood. Her eyes were as smouldering embers, and a wicked snarl of invincibility hung around her lips. "These children are mine to do as I please. They are mine! Mine forever!" "I rebuke you in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth!" Samuel fired back. "In the name of the Holy One of Israel, I command you to let go of these children! I don't care who you are or where you come from. I command you in the name of the Most High God, loose your hold on these children!" The woman let out a hoarse, thunderous cry and spread out her arms as one calling on some unseen power to come to her aid. A whirlwind sprang from her gaping mouth and raced towards the preacher. Samuel momentarily appeared in danger of being swept away, but the violent eddy made a sudden u-turn and slammed into the mass of children. The young captives, screaming in agonising terror and pain, were flung in various directions. The whirlwind stopped as suddenly as it had started, and the old hag deftly and effortlessly pulled her young captives to their feet and into line with her long leash. "They killed me and my unborn child!" the woman cried. "They knew I was with child but they didn't let me bring it into the world. Oh, what joy it would have given me to behold my child, my own child, even for one moment. They killed my joy!" Then she metamorphosed right before Samuel's eyes, first into a fearsome giant boa constrictor, and then quickly into a beautiful young woman. In this second apparition, she was fair complexioned and had black, luscious hair. Her captivating eyes were the unusual colour of emerald, and they bore into his own and held him spellbound. Samuel had never seen a woman more beautiful. The sensuous beauty was dressed in an expensive brocade dress reminiscent of the fashion in Southern Nigeria in the 1960s. She stood there, smiling pleasantly as the man standing before her gasped in surprise. "Who are you?" Samuel demanded when he found his voice. "I command you to speak!" "Oh, didn't your master, the Maker, tell you who I am?" the young woman mocked him in a tender and seductive voice. "I am Uju, the prettiest princess to ever come out of Amakri Kingdom. I am the fairest of all the beauties of Amakri." Samuel immediately discerned in his spirit that he was dealing with a powerful spirit from the marine kingdom. "You are a demonic spirit from the pit of hell! What authority do you have over these innocent children?" "An eye for an eye, they say," The old woman bellowed, her voice rising to a bitter, deafening pitch, "but Uju must have a thousand eyes for one!" "Speak plainly to me, you foul spirit!" "I owe you nothing, holy man. Let me be!" "I don't care what ground you stand upon to hold these innocent children captive, but the word of God says that Christ died on the cross to set the captives free. I command you to loose your hold on these little ones!" Samuel again rebuked the spirit in tongues. "Quiet!" She was once again the old hag. "Even The Maker knows I have authority over these ones. Let me be! Let me be, I say!" Casting a wicked look at the preacher, she hobbled off, dragging her captives along with her. Samuel just stared after the procession, baffled that he was powerless to help the wailing children. The cries of the helpless children rose to a heart-rending crescendo as they were dragged by the old hag into the spooky forest. Then he woke up. He had been dreaming. He was drenched in cold sweat and, to his chagrin, trembling.