Chapter 3: Election eve

Friday night. 9:15 p.m. at the Ikorita. The club is jumping, of course. Agents and foot soldiers of opposing party candidates are making final hours pit stops before polls-day, mingling and loudly touting their affiliations alongside free drinks and other tokens.

Seated closer to the main stage than his last time, Chiadi observes the hubbub. All around he and other patrons sway and undulates girls in skimpy raffia costumes, none of whom is Lasiremi. Her absence is hardly noticed however—prepaid booze and pepper soup is flowing, and the prospects of a certain STU boss’ landslide victory are loudly debated in different corners of the neon-lit space.

After a little while he saunters over to the long bar along one side of the hall. Behind it a rotund man in a Hawaiian shirt stands glowering behind two girls in identical black t-shirts doling out cold bottles and cans with practised dexterity. Paying for an overpriced Campari after failing to show any valid proof of party membership, he asks after Lasi and gets vague responses. Drink in hand, he wanders the crowded club expanse, checking out patrons, noting the palpable excitement of victory on the faces of ARP supporters.

When his phone rings, he feels its thrumming when the chime fails to break the hubbub. He glances once at it before making a rapid beeline for the exit and reaches a secluded distance from the club’s noise before he answers.

“Still hanging about?” asks Faishatu.

“You know why,” he replies.

She sighs. “I’ve told you she said she won’t see you again. Look, Akinyele is not the only candidate trying to win by any means possible. Others are doing the same…”

“Not like this,” he grits his teeth. “Not considering what I’ve seen, what I suspect.”

“And what exactly is that?”

Movement among the stragglers and hangers-on outside the club entrance catches his eye. Along with several others a tall, rakish figure—one he will never forget—slips from the pool of light under a nearby lamp post. “Call you back,” he says, heading off further questions.

Only a building or two away, a trio of men wait while another opens the padlock joining a thick chain sealing the entrance door of what looks like a clothing store. The Dibia stands in nearby shadows, watching as they all then go in before coming to stand outside the store front awning. Atop it, ‘Lijadu Wears’ is printed in rough cursive.

After listening for what seemed like a long time but must have been not more than five minutes, he carefully pushes the door open and slips inside.

It is shadowy but is also clearly the front section of a Lagos style ‘fashion’ establishment, with rows of folded wares on display: shoes and clothes for both sexes; hats, caps and wig extensions. A sturdy wood partition separates it from the rest of the place, where his quarry have certainly entered through its closed door.

He fishes into his pocket to touch the small string of small objects he keeps there—his aja, totem of divination and connection. Something tells him he will needs its fortification.

More than he knows. He’s barely touched the inner door when it swings open and a sledgehammer smashes into his face, blinding him and sending him sprawling across a grimy parquet floor.

When he can drag his eyes around, it is Akinyele’s heavy-jawed face that swims into focus. “There are cockroaches,” the party leader begins, “less troublesome than you.” The tight smile on his face is miles apart from the red-rimmed, frenetic eyes. “That you are even here is puzzling. What are you looking for?”

From behind Akinyele plumes cigar smoke that reeks like pepper spray, followed by a voice like sawing wood. “Who cares? You should have just finished him.”

“No,” continues Akinyele, “He knows something, or he wouldn’t be sniffing around like a bingo.”

“You’re right,” Head drooping in agony, Chiadi’s cough casts dark flecks across the dusty floor. “I know you’ve been killing people.”

Snakeskin shoe clad feet enter his line of sight. “All dat’s redundant now,” their owner states with a sniff of disdain.

The Dibia has trouble getting to his feet, so two other pairs of rough hands assist until he totters face to face with the slumlord politician and his companion.

Looking as human as the others in a crisp Senator suit, Sagbata flicks a bony finger across his throat. “Alright, take him to the bathroom and…”

Before the others can move, Akinyele raises a hand. “Wait a minute.”

“Chief,” hisses the other. “We have urgent business. There’s no time for this…”

Chiadi coughs deep once again before warbling with lips that feel like hot sponges. “@ssh0le. You think this is a joke? That you just happened to run into some bus corner babalawo with strong ifa?”

“What are you…?” Akinyele’s eyes flicker.

“Do you even know who the bloody Ghede are? Where do you think all those souls you’ve been sacrificing end up? Mere appeasement for Orunmila or any other mad god you’re seeking favour from?”

“Shut up,” says Sagbata, voice like gravel.

“Ode, you don’t even know how you’re being used,” splutters the Dibia. “Ask your friend here about the bodies your men have been dumping at the crossroads on his recommendation for all these months. Ask what he does with them…”

Brow creased, Akinyele turns to the man standing behind him—the renown mystic from Oshogbo who showed up at his lowest point in the race and immediately entered a contract with him that has guaranteed him effortless victory and complete protection from all other malign powers out to destroy his campaign, not to mention his life. His price was high, of course, but payable: Lagos needed a few less vagrants, prostitutes and stubborn Area Boys, anyway…

Before he can speak, his body suddenly arches hard and fast enough to force a single high-pitched squawk from his lips, to make his eyes protrude, his mouth gape with total shock. Hands flapping erratically, uselessly, in an instant he bends over backward in a progressively impossible manner until a series of wet, horrid snaps and cracks fill the room. With an unintelligible croak, he wordlessly drops to the ground.

The others stare at their stone dead principal in shocked silence.

Sagbata’s expression is one of disgust and resignation as he lets a small item—a sort of handcrafted, doll-like thing, an effigy of tattered cloth and twigs—slip from the crush of his long-fingered hand to the floor between them. “Well,” he shrugs and whispers, “That’s that.”

Ignoring the pain lancing through his own head, Chiadi launches himself at the still open door behind them all. Once beyond, he slams it shut and slides a heavy iron bolt into place, never more grateful for the hardiness of the inner doors such places boasted against burglars apt to strike at any time.

Overcome by pain and vertigo, Chiadi sinks to his knees as further sounds reach his ears—wet, blunt, and vicious; accompanied by the frenzied snarls of the two other men who have gone from finally realising that a real-life monster walked beside them disguised, to physically attacking one another, literally tearing themselves apart.

“I wanted to kill you quick before, Dibia,” a sandpaper voice drawls from the outer room, “Now I’ll make it as slow and as painful as possible. Tink dis flimsy wall gon’ stop me?”

Amidst the noise of gouging and gnashing coming from the other side of the door, a projected image of the Loa condenses in the air before him, eyes yellow and full of fury.

Chiadi moves as fast as possible. In a second he is at the rear door, which he yanks open to reveal a stock storage space. It is filled cheek by jowl with dozens of upright figures he first assumes are mannequins until he can see better, and realises its people, actual people—men, women and children—standing there in a stiff and swaying cluster, each with the blank stare of the already dead.

A loud crash of twisted metal and splintering wood comes from behind.

Speechless from the grim discovery, he snaps round to face Baron Samedi’s grinning malevolence, the Loa’s true form swelling his mundane clothing to bursting.

It swipes at him, and the effect is like an electric spark, the blunt force generated driving the Dibia across the length of the dim room, leaving him dazed but unmarked. Samedi pauses to stare at his own taloned hand before looking his victim up and down, baffled. “Another trick? You only delay the inevitable. I’ll harvest you as easily as I did all those others.”

Maybe, Chiadi thinks as he hastily looks around, but I’ve got a little item strung on my aja that says maybe not. There is yet another service door at the far end of the roomful of inanimate people, likely to lead to the older compound the boutique structure is attached to. It stands no more than ten feet or so away but looms like an eternity. He dashes for it nonetheless, legs still rubbery, heart racing with desperation and dread as he plows through bodies smelling so rank and with skin so nauseatingly cold and pliable, they seem made of something else besides flesh and blood.

The final exit there gives way under his frantic yank, and he finds himself tripping and sprawling across mossy ground under the open night sky—a cul-de-sac spilling out into another narrow structure, one with sagging zinc roofing and mildewed walls. He rises and rushes to it, and with both hands reaches out to pull at the flimsy plywood panel that serves as barrier across its narrow entrance before charging inside.

And freezing. In a glow cast by multiple candles placed about a concrete floor, Lasiremi is lying atop a crude platform decorated with palm fronds and flowers, eyes closed and arms stiff along her nud£ body. Standing over her in a boxy robe, ceremonial headdress and with a face streaked by dark smears—blood?—is Faishatu, the look in her opaque eyes wild when she lifts them at his entry.

The Dibia slams the panel shut behind him, quickly strings his aja around the rickety handle before turning back to the bizarre tableau. “Iya–wa–lorisha,” he pants. “Fancy meeting you here.”

The other woman’s eyes widen in a mask of blank surprise as she steps back from the table and the prone body of the mambo laid out on it like sacrificial offering, which it most likely was.