Chapter 4 – The Pact
581 Words
Leah sat alone in the candle-lit room, her hands trembling over the recorder as she hit play again.
"Ask the lake. It remembers."
Those words from Mrs. Barasa echoed through her bones. She glanced at her wall—a mess of notes, photos, and pins. In the center, she’d drawn a circle around a word that now haunted her: Pact.
She’d grown up in Dune Ridge thinking it was sleepy, safe. But the quiet had teeth.
And now she was inside its jaws.
Juma returned after midnight, soaked from the rain, his hoodie clinging to his lean frame.
“They’ve widened the search,” he said. “We have maybe a day before they pin your location.”
“We need to move,” Leah said. “But not until I know what happened to Zuri. All of it.”
Juma sighed. “The pact wasn’t made out of greed. It was fear.”
“Fear of what?”
“The lake. Or what’s beneath it.”
Leah frowned. “You said something about a boy.”
He sat down across from her, eyes dark. “Twelve years ago, a boy named Kiptoo went missing during the town’s annual ‘Purity Festival’—a traditional ceremony at the lake. Everyone thought he drowned. His body was never found.”
Leah’s heart skipped. “And?”
“The elders said it was a tragic accident. But it wasn’t. It was the beginning of the pact.”
The next morning, they visited Kiptoo’s childhood home. His father, now gaunt and nearly blind, opened the door.
“You’re too late,” he rasped. “Too many of them are already gone.”
Leah stepped forward. “What happened to your son?”
Mr. Kiptoo’s eyes glistened. “They took him. The council. They said the town would crumble if they didn’t make an offering. Said it had to be pure. Innocent.”
Leah stared. “You mean… they sacrificed him?”
He nodded slowly. “They said the lake wanted peace. Wanted tribute.”
Juma placed a hand on the old man’s shoulder. “Zuri uncovered this. She was close to finding out how many others had vanished. They silenced her before she could speak.”
Leah’s voice was shaky. “We need proof.”
That night, they broke into the Town Archives. The building was barely guarded—a few old CCTV cameras and a sleepy security guard they distracted with a box of warm mandazis.
Inside, in a locked cabinet marked CONFIDENTIAL, they found the real records.
Names of the missing: Kiptoo. Achieng. Baraka’s cousin. Zuri.
And a document—stamped with the Dune Ridge Elders’ Seal—detailing a “ceremonial tradition of cleansing to ensure communal harmony.”
Leah photographed everything.
But the deeper she dug, the more horrifying the truths became. Every three years, a child or young adult had gone missing. Disguised as drownings. Disappearances. Mental breakdowns.
Zuri had found the pattern. And now Leah held the evidence.
“Let’s leak this,” she whispered. “Now.”
“No,” Juma said, voice tight. “They’ll deny it. We need to show the town. Force them to look.”
Leah nodded. “Then we’ll show them. On the lake. During the festival.”
The Purity Festival was just days away.
Posters lined every street. Flags waved from poles. Drums echoed in the hills.
But this time, Leah wasn’t going to watch.
She was going to expose it.
- Writer
