The Night of Grimalkin by Obiotika Wilfred Toochukwu
Nurse Vicki tells the story of Ogochukwu, a woman in rural Nigeria convinced she is being targeted by a mysterious vendetta marked by menacing felines.
Miss Vicki leaned her elbows on the duty table, the smell of disinfectant mingling with the soft cry of newborns behind the curtains. "I've told this story only once," she began, her voice thin, "and the last nurse who heard it resigned the following week." The generator outside coughed and steadied. The night duty nurse leaned closer. "It began," Miss Vicki said, "with a village woman named Ogochukwu - patient record number 174/21, if you care to verify. She arrived here pale, feverish, claiming that every time she saw a black cat, she lost a child."
The woman had come from Amankwo, a village folded between red-earth hills where myths still patrolled the footpaths. Her husband, Malachi Uchenna, was in Lagos hunting for jobs. Farm work could no longer feed them; the yam mounds yielded more weeds than tubers. Ogochukwu lived alone with her little boy, Nicki, in a house of cracking walls and stubborn ghosts. On a humid Sunday morning, while sweeping the compound, she found a heap of human faeces neatly deposited at her entrance. Not childish mischief - no, something ritualistic. Wrapped in banana leaf, glistening like it waited for an audience. The air was cold with intent.
"I am finished," she blurted. In Amankwo, no one swept strange excrement. People had died for less. Such things could bear enyi ure - the swelling curse - or draw death like flies. Ogochukwu backed away and called the only person she trusted for counsel, Onunkwo, the village medicine-man.
"Good morning, Onunkwo," her voice quivered through the phone.
"What is it this time, daughter of Uchenna?"
"They've dropped another bomb," she said. "At my doorway. Come before it detonates."
He chuckled softly. "I'm just leaving Eke market. Wait for me. Don't touch anything."
She gathered her three children inside, muttering incomplete prayers. She hadn't prayed properly in months; faith had thinned under poverty. Sometimes she went to Mount Zion Deliverance Ministry, other times to the shrines of herbalists who knew her by name. To her, both the rosary and the talisman were tools - whichever worked first. Her thoughts drifted to Malachi in Lagos. He'd been ill since a flying insect struck his eye weeks earlier, a swollen blindness that doctors couldn't name. Maybe, she thought, the same hands that sent that insect had returned with new ammunition.
When Onunkwo arrived, his shadow stretched across the compound like spilled ink. He was tall, sinewy, his wrists ringed with copper. The smell of ogiri and palm wine followed him. He surveyed the faeces, then produced his Ikenga, a small wooden effigy, and circled the heap three times.
"Your husband's sickness is from the eye," he said flatly.
"That's true," she whispered.
"Now they want your leg. Enyi ure. But the gods can reverse it."
He tossed three seeds into the heap, murmured in tongues older than the Church. "Do you want vengeance or peace?"
"I want justice," she said. "O biara e gbu m, gbuo onwe ya - whoever came to kill me should die instead."
"So be it."
He spat palm wine, then motioned for her to remove the curse. "It is neutralized."
As he turned to leave, his eyes glinted. "You are brave," he said. "A woman who fights alone should not sleep alone. Be my lover, and no harm will reach you."
The proposal struck her like a cold gust. She smiled faintly to hide disgust. "How much for the fortification instead?"
"Oh, you will not pay a dime," he grinned. "Just give me a chance to love you."
She shook his hand, promising a visit. "On the third market day," she said. "Come when the house is empty."
Onunkwo left humming an old incantation tune. Ogochukwu hissed under her breath as soon as his sandals disappeared down the path. Yet that night, sleep avoided her. Each creak of the roof sounded like footsteps, each meow from the bush like a summons. And then, near midnight, a black cat leapt across her veranda. At St Anthony's, weeks later, Miss Vicki received the emergency call. "Patient: Ogochukwu Uchenna - excessive bleeding, foetal loss, possible shock."
When she arrived, Ogochukwu clutched a lifeless bundle. "It was the cat," she kept saying. "It came again." Miss Vicki had seen miscarriages, infections, even poisoning. But this woman's case unsettled her. The ultrasound revealed strange tissue disintegration - as though the placenta itself had dissolved in seconds.
"She kept asking us to sprinkle holy water around the bed," Miss Vicki said, lowering her voice. "When I tried, the monitor short-circuited. Sparks. We had to change the socket. That's when I realized this was not an ordinary miscarriage." The nurse paused, staring at her hands. "That night I dreamt of a white cat scratching the ward door. Its claws made sparks - like electricity." She shuddered. "And that's only how it began."
When the next case file arrived at St. Anthony's Maternity two weeks later, Miss Vicki almost refused to open it.
Patient: Ogochukwu Uchenna - recurrent pregnancy loss, psychosomatic symptoms, delusional episodes involving feline imagery. The doctor had scribbled a note in the margin: "Evaluate for toxoplasmosis. Patient claims night attacks from cat apparitions."
Miss Vicki frowned. It was the same name that had haunted her dreams since that night of sparks and holy water. She found Ogochukwu sitting on the veranda, thin as raffia, a scarf covering her hair. Her eyes darted at every sound, pupils dilated like someone expecting ghosts.
"Madam Ogochukwu," Miss Vicki greeted, pulling up a stool beside her. The woman smiled weakly. "Nurse, do you believe that some cats are not of this world?"
Vicki hesitated. "Here, we believe in infection, not witchcraft. But tell me what happened."
Ogochukwu leaned forward, whispering like someone afraid the walls might listen. "After that day the medicine-man left my house, I started seeing them - cats. Black and white. They watch me from the fence. One night I felt one brush my ankle, and blood ran down my legs. The next morning, my pregnancy was gone. It was only two months old."
Miss Vicki took notes mechanically, but the chill in her stomach deepened.
"Did you call your husband?"
"He has not recovered. The insect in his eye turned to darkness. He barely sees light now. Lagos doctors said it was corneal necrosis. I know it's not. It's the same people from the village."
Vicki sighed. "Let's run some tests. Maybe there's a biological reason."
They collected blood, ran panels for parasites, toxins, even radiation exposure - all normal. Yet the lab technician whispered afterward: "Madam, when I opened her sample under the microscope, the plasma shimmered blue. Like - electric."
That night Miss Vicki couldn't sleep. She replayed the patient's words, the cat, the bleeding, the static discharge that fried the monitor. Science and folklore were clashing in her head like flint and steel. Three days later, Ogochukwu didn't come for her check-up. When Miss Vicki called, the line rang dead. By evening she felt an inexplicable pull - part professional worry, part morbid curiosity - to go to Amankwo village.
The road wound through thickets and red mud. When she reached the compound, the air felt charged, thick with ozone. A row of drying fish hung from the eaves. Children ran barefoot, their laughter too sharp in the dusk. She knocked. Ogochukwu's son, Nicki, answered, eyes wide. "Mama is with Uncle Onunkwo."
Miss Vicki's chest tightened. "Where?"
"At his hut, near the river path."
She followed the trail, the sound of frogs swelling. When she reached the medicine-man's yard, she froze. A ring of white chalk marked the ground, and in the center lay a small calabash steaming with herbs. Ogochukwu knelt beside it, her hands trembling. Onunkwo stood over her, chanting, his bare chest painted with ash.
"Why are you here, nurse?" he asked without turning.
"To check on my patient."
His eyes glinted. "Then check with your spirit, not your stethoscope. This is not for your kind."
Ogochukwu looked up. "He is helping me, Nurse. He says the cats are messengers, not enemies."
"Messengers of what?"
"The unborn," Onunkwo replied. "They gather where death repeats itself. Your science calls it coincidence. We call it return."
Miss Vicki's pulse hammered. "This is dangerous. You're manipulating a sick woman."
He laughed softly. "And you - what do you call those wires and machines that fail to save babies every night? My method at least listens to the land."
Vicki pulled Ogochukwu aside. "Come back to the hospital. We can treat this properly."
The woman shook her head. "He promised protection. He gave me something to chew." She opened her palm, revealing a dried, blackened herb that shimmered faintly under the lantern.
"Don't eat that," Vicki warned. But it was too late. Ogochukwu placed it on her tongue and swallowed. By the time Vicki returned to the hospital, her mind was spinning. She drafted a report for the district health officer, labeling the event "ritual interference with medical care." Yet she couldn't shake the image of that faintly glowing herb. That night, power went out at the maternity ward. As she stepped outside to check the generator, she heard something behind the incinerator - soft padding feet, then a low hiss. A pair of yellow eyes blinked at her from the dark. She raised her torchlight: a white cat, sleek and still, tail twitching like a fuse wire.
"Shoo!" she whispered, but it didn't move. Instead, it tilted its head as though listening. Then it turned and disappeared toward the gate. Moments later, the emergency bell rang. A patient in Room Four - a young woman eight months pregnant - had gone into distress. When Miss Vicki reached her, the foetal heartbeat monitor displayed erratic spikes before flatlining. The woman screamed, "A cat just passed my window!"
Vicki froze. The timing was too precise. The doctor arrived, muttering about power fluctuations, but when they lifted the sheets, the woman's abdomen had collapsed slightly, like a balloon losing air.
"It's impossible," the doctor said. "We just had a viable heartbeat."
Miss Vicki stood rigid, her mind replaying the glowing herb, the shimmering blood plasma, the defiant cats. The next morning she requested time off and took a specimen vial from the lab - a small drop of Ogochukwu's preserved blood. Under her home microscope, it pulsed faintly, tiny threads moving as if alive.
"Not bacteria," she whispered. "Not anything I know."
Her phone buzzed - an unknown number.
When she answered, a voice said, "Third market day. She called you to witness." Then the line went dead.
The third market day dawned under a copper sky. From her apartment window, Miss Vicki watched a slow mist crawl over the valley like breath from an unseen throat. She hadn't slept. The anonymous call echoed in her mind - "She called you to witness."
By 7am, the news reached the hospital: a woman found unconscious by the riverbank at Amankwo. The dispatcher's voice cracked. "They think it's that patient of yours - Ogochukwu."
Miss Vicki drove there herself. The road shimmered with heat. When she arrived, villagers stood in a half-circle near the water. No one spoke. The air reeked of burnt herbs and rainless thunder. Ogochukwu lay on a mat, breathing shallowly. Beside her, the medicine-man Onunkwo knelt, hands stained crimson with clay. A dead cat floated near the reeds, its fur white and glistening with something like oil.
"What happened?" Vicki demanded.
Onunkwo's eyes were hollow. "The covenant answered."
She crouched beside Ogochukwu, checking her pulse. It flickered - strong, then weak, as though another rhythm pulsed beneath it.
"Get her to the clinic," she ordered.
"No," Onunkwo said. "The river must finish the exchange. You people never let things complete."
"Exchange? You're killing her!"
He smiled faintly. "You think life and death are opposite banks? They are the same current."
Vicki ignored him and dragged Ogochukwu toward her car. The woman's eyes fluttered open halfway.
"Nurse... don't take me away yet. I heard them last night - the babies. They were calling my name from the water."
Vicki's skin prickled. "You're hallucinating, my dear. You're dehydrated."
Ogochukwu's lips curved into a painful smile. "No. They said I must return what I took."
The words chilled the nurse more than the breeze off the water. She strapped Ogochukwu into the back seat and drove. Yet with each mile, the air inside the car grew heavier, humming like distant power lines. The dashboard lights flickered, though the engine was fine. Halfway to St. Anthony's, Ogochukwu began to convulse. Her voice split into two tones - one human, one whispering in an impossible pitch. The windows fogged from within.
"Hold on!" Vicki shouted, veering onto the shoulder. She leaned over the seat, trying to keep the woman's airway clear. But Ogochukwu's eyes had gone utterly black.
"Nurse," that doubled voice said, "you should have let them feed."
The car lights exploded. Darkness swallowed the road.
When Miss Vicki woke, she was lying on the riverbank. Dawn bled through the fog. Her uniform was soaked, and the car was nowhere to be seen. Only tire marks, which vanished into the mud. She stumbled toward the water. Something gleamed at the edge: a necklace - Ogochukwu's hospital tag - floating beside another white cat, perfectly still. Its pupils mirrored her face, then rippled like water. From somewhere behind her, Onunkwo spoke. "She crossed over. The current claimed her."
Vicki spun. "Where is she?"
"In the deep. With what she owed."
"You let her drown?"
"I did not let," he said calmly. "I listened."
The nurse looked back at the river. The surface shimmered, not with sunlight but with faint blue pulses, like the glow she'd seen under her microscope. Beneath, shapes moved - small, human, unformed. Her throat tightened. "You're saying she became one of them?"
He shrugged. "Or they became her. Which matters more?"
Vicki's scientific mind screamed delusion, yet her senses betrayed her: the air tasted metallic, and she could hear tiny heartbeats everywhere - in the reeds, in the soil, in the hush of the mist. She picked up the hospital tag. It was warm. The letters of Ogochukwu's name shimmered, rearranging for a moment into STILL WATERS before fading.
That evening she returned to the maternity ward. Power had been restored, but something else had changed. Cats prowled the corridors, silent as thoughts. One paused at the incubator window and stared in. Inside, one of the newborns let out a small, high cry - not of hunger, but of recognition. Miss Vicki dismissed it as coincidence until she reviewed the night's charts. Four premature infants had survived despite oxygen loss - and each one, the mothers claimed, had dreamt of a river woman whispering their names. The nurse sat at her desk long after midnight, writing her report. She titled it:
Case File #117 - Ogochukwu Uchenna: Unexplained Phenomena.
Her notes were precise at first - heart rates, timelines, serum analysis - but her handwriting faltered near the end.
"Patient pronounced missing. Residual bio-energy detected near river source. Possible mutagenic field or unclassified resonance. Recommend restricted access to Amankwo Waters." Then, below that, almost involuntarily, she wrote:
"If the unborn return, they will come as light through water."
She sealed the report and locked it away. Yet as she turned off her lamp, she noticed a small wet paw print on the edge of her desk.
Weeks later, villagers began whispering of a new presence at the river. At dusk, a woman's figure was seen walking upon the shallows, holding something small against her chest. Her face was veiled by mist; her eyes glowed faintly blue. Fishermen avoided the area.
They called her Nne Mmiri Nkịtị - Mother of Still Waters. Some said she healed barren women who dared bring white cats as offering. Others said she lured them and their unborn into the depths, where they never aged, only pulsed softly like embryos preserved in glass.
Miss Vicki never returned to Amankwo. Yet sometimes, during night shifts, she heard the nursery monitors whisper static that almost formed words. Once, while adjusting a cradle, she felt a drop of water land on her wrist though the ceiling was dry. The heartbeat monitor flickered, showing not one pulse, but two. She smiled faintly, whispered a prayer, and turned away. Outside, thunder rolled over the hills, followed by the faint echo of a woman's lullaby blending with the sound of cats crying in the dark.
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| Image generated with OpenAI |
The woman had come from Amankwo, a village folded between red-earth hills where myths still patrolled the footpaths. Her husband, Malachi Uchenna, was in Lagos hunting for jobs. Farm work could no longer feed them; the yam mounds yielded more weeds than tubers. Ogochukwu lived alone with her little boy, Nicki, in a house of cracking walls and stubborn ghosts. On a humid Sunday morning, while sweeping the compound, she found a heap of human faeces neatly deposited at her entrance. Not childish mischief - no, something ritualistic. Wrapped in banana leaf, glistening like it waited for an audience. The air was cold with intent.
"I am finished," she blurted. In Amankwo, no one swept strange excrement. People had died for less. Such things could bear enyi ure - the swelling curse - or draw death like flies. Ogochukwu backed away and called the only person she trusted for counsel, Onunkwo, the village medicine-man.
"Good morning, Onunkwo," her voice quivered through the phone.
"What is it this time, daughter of Uchenna?"
"They've dropped another bomb," she said. "At my doorway. Come before it detonates."
He chuckled softly. "I'm just leaving Eke market. Wait for me. Don't touch anything."
She gathered her three children inside, muttering incomplete prayers. She hadn't prayed properly in months; faith had thinned under poverty. Sometimes she went to Mount Zion Deliverance Ministry, other times to the shrines of herbalists who knew her by name. To her, both the rosary and the talisman were tools - whichever worked first. Her thoughts drifted to Malachi in Lagos. He'd been ill since a flying insect struck his eye weeks earlier, a swollen blindness that doctors couldn't name. Maybe, she thought, the same hands that sent that insect had returned with new ammunition.
When Onunkwo arrived, his shadow stretched across the compound like spilled ink. He was tall, sinewy, his wrists ringed with copper. The smell of ogiri and palm wine followed him. He surveyed the faeces, then produced his Ikenga, a small wooden effigy, and circled the heap three times.
"Your husband's sickness is from the eye," he said flatly.
"That's true," she whispered.
"Now they want your leg. Enyi ure. But the gods can reverse it."
He tossed three seeds into the heap, murmured in tongues older than the Church. "Do you want vengeance or peace?"
"I want justice," she said. "O biara e gbu m, gbuo onwe ya - whoever came to kill me should die instead."
"So be it."
He spat palm wine, then motioned for her to remove the curse. "It is neutralized."
As he turned to leave, his eyes glinted. "You are brave," he said. "A woman who fights alone should not sleep alone. Be my lover, and no harm will reach you."
The proposal struck her like a cold gust. She smiled faintly to hide disgust. "How much for the fortification instead?"
"Oh, you will not pay a dime," he grinned. "Just give me a chance to love you."
She shook his hand, promising a visit. "On the third market day," she said. "Come when the house is empty."
Onunkwo left humming an old incantation tune. Ogochukwu hissed under her breath as soon as his sandals disappeared down the path. Yet that night, sleep avoided her. Each creak of the roof sounded like footsteps, each meow from the bush like a summons. And then, near midnight, a black cat leapt across her veranda. At St Anthony's, weeks later, Miss Vicki received the emergency call. "Patient: Ogochukwu Uchenna - excessive bleeding, foetal loss, possible shock."
When she arrived, Ogochukwu clutched a lifeless bundle. "It was the cat," she kept saying. "It came again." Miss Vicki had seen miscarriages, infections, even poisoning. But this woman's case unsettled her. The ultrasound revealed strange tissue disintegration - as though the placenta itself had dissolved in seconds.
"She kept asking us to sprinkle holy water around the bed," Miss Vicki said, lowering her voice. "When I tried, the monitor short-circuited. Sparks. We had to change the socket. That's when I realized this was not an ordinary miscarriage." The nurse paused, staring at her hands. "That night I dreamt of a white cat scratching the ward door. Its claws made sparks - like electricity." She shuddered. "And that's only how it began."
When the next case file arrived at St. Anthony's Maternity two weeks later, Miss Vicki almost refused to open it.
Patient: Ogochukwu Uchenna - recurrent pregnancy loss, psychosomatic symptoms, delusional episodes involving feline imagery. The doctor had scribbled a note in the margin: "Evaluate for toxoplasmosis. Patient claims night attacks from cat apparitions."
Miss Vicki frowned. It was the same name that had haunted her dreams since that night of sparks and holy water. She found Ogochukwu sitting on the veranda, thin as raffia, a scarf covering her hair. Her eyes darted at every sound, pupils dilated like someone expecting ghosts.
"Madam Ogochukwu," Miss Vicki greeted, pulling up a stool beside her. The woman smiled weakly. "Nurse, do you believe that some cats are not of this world?"
Vicki hesitated. "Here, we believe in infection, not witchcraft. But tell me what happened."
Ogochukwu leaned forward, whispering like someone afraid the walls might listen. "After that day the medicine-man left my house, I started seeing them - cats. Black and white. They watch me from the fence. One night I felt one brush my ankle, and blood ran down my legs. The next morning, my pregnancy was gone. It was only two months old."
Miss Vicki took notes mechanically, but the chill in her stomach deepened.
"Did you call your husband?"
"He has not recovered. The insect in his eye turned to darkness. He barely sees light now. Lagos doctors said it was corneal necrosis. I know it's not. It's the same people from the village."
Vicki sighed. "Let's run some tests. Maybe there's a biological reason."
They collected blood, ran panels for parasites, toxins, even radiation exposure - all normal. Yet the lab technician whispered afterward: "Madam, when I opened her sample under the microscope, the plasma shimmered blue. Like - electric."
That night Miss Vicki couldn't sleep. She replayed the patient's words, the cat, the bleeding, the static discharge that fried the monitor. Science and folklore were clashing in her head like flint and steel. Three days later, Ogochukwu didn't come for her check-up. When Miss Vicki called, the line rang dead. By evening she felt an inexplicable pull - part professional worry, part morbid curiosity - to go to Amankwo village.
The road wound through thickets and red mud. When she reached the compound, the air felt charged, thick with ozone. A row of drying fish hung from the eaves. Children ran barefoot, their laughter too sharp in the dusk. She knocked. Ogochukwu's son, Nicki, answered, eyes wide. "Mama is with Uncle Onunkwo."
Miss Vicki's chest tightened. "Where?"
"At his hut, near the river path."
She followed the trail, the sound of frogs swelling. When she reached the medicine-man's yard, she froze. A ring of white chalk marked the ground, and in the center lay a small calabash steaming with herbs. Ogochukwu knelt beside it, her hands trembling. Onunkwo stood over her, chanting, his bare chest painted with ash.
"Why are you here, nurse?" he asked without turning.
"To check on my patient."
His eyes glinted. "Then check with your spirit, not your stethoscope. This is not for your kind."
Ogochukwu looked up. "He is helping me, Nurse. He says the cats are messengers, not enemies."
"Messengers of what?"
"The unborn," Onunkwo replied. "They gather where death repeats itself. Your science calls it coincidence. We call it return."
Miss Vicki's pulse hammered. "This is dangerous. You're manipulating a sick woman."
He laughed softly. "And you - what do you call those wires and machines that fail to save babies every night? My method at least listens to the land."
Vicki pulled Ogochukwu aside. "Come back to the hospital. We can treat this properly."
The woman shook her head. "He promised protection. He gave me something to chew." She opened her palm, revealing a dried, blackened herb that shimmered faintly under the lantern.
"Don't eat that," Vicki warned. But it was too late. Ogochukwu placed it on her tongue and swallowed. By the time Vicki returned to the hospital, her mind was spinning. She drafted a report for the district health officer, labeling the event "ritual interference with medical care." Yet she couldn't shake the image of that faintly glowing herb. That night, power went out at the maternity ward. As she stepped outside to check the generator, she heard something behind the incinerator - soft padding feet, then a low hiss. A pair of yellow eyes blinked at her from the dark. She raised her torchlight: a white cat, sleek and still, tail twitching like a fuse wire.
"Shoo!" she whispered, but it didn't move. Instead, it tilted its head as though listening. Then it turned and disappeared toward the gate. Moments later, the emergency bell rang. A patient in Room Four - a young woman eight months pregnant - had gone into distress. When Miss Vicki reached her, the foetal heartbeat monitor displayed erratic spikes before flatlining. The woman screamed, "A cat just passed my window!"
Vicki froze. The timing was too precise. The doctor arrived, muttering about power fluctuations, but when they lifted the sheets, the woman's abdomen had collapsed slightly, like a balloon losing air.
"It's impossible," the doctor said. "We just had a viable heartbeat."
Miss Vicki stood rigid, her mind replaying the glowing herb, the shimmering blood plasma, the defiant cats. The next morning she requested time off and took a specimen vial from the lab - a small drop of Ogochukwu's preserved blood. Under her home microscope, it pulsed faintly, tiny threads moving as if alive.
"Not bacteria," she whispered. "Not anything I know."
Her phone buzzed - an unknown number.
When she answered, a voice said, "Third market day. She called you to witness." Then the line went dead.
The third market day dawned under a copper sky. From her apartment window, Miss Vicki watched a slow mist crawl over the valley like breath from an unseen throat. She hadn't slept. The anonymous call echoed in her mind - "She called you to witness."
By 7am, the news reached the hospital: a woman found unconscious by the riverbank at Amankwo. The dispatcher's voice cracked. "They think it's that patient of yours - Ogochukwu."
Miss Vicki drove there herself. The road shimmered with heat. When she arrived, villagers stood in a half-circle near the water. No one spoke. The air reeked of burnt herbs and rainless thunder. Ogochukwu lay on a mat, breathing shallowly. Beside her, the medicine-man Onunkwo knelt, hands stained crimson with clay. A dead cat floated near the reeds, its fur white and glistening with something like oil.
"What happened?" Vicki demanded.
Onunkwo's eyes were hollow. "The covenant answered."
She crouched beside Ogochukwu, checking her pulse. It flickered - strong, then weak, as though another rhythm pulsed beneath it.
"Get her to the clinic," she ordered.
"No," Onunkwo said. "The river must finish the exchange. You people never let things complete."
"Exchange? You're killing her!"
He smiled faintly. "You think life and death are opposite banks? They are the same current."
Vicki ignored him and dragged Ogochukwu toward her car. The woman's eyes fluttered open halfway.
"Nurse... don't take me away yet. I heard them last night - the babies. They were calling my name from the water."
Vicki's skin prickled. "You're hallucinating, my dear. You're dehydrated."
Ogochukwu's lips curved into a painful smile. "No. They said I must return what I took."
The words chilled the nurse more than the breeze off the water. She strapped Ogochukwu into the back seat and drove. Yet with each mile, the air inside the car grew heavier, humming like distant power lines. The dashboard lights flickered, though the engine was fine. Halfway to St. Anthony's, Ogochukwu began to convulse. Her voice split into two tones - one human, one whispering in an impossible pitch. The windows fogged from within.
"Hold on!" Vicki shouted, veering onto the shoulder. She leaned over the seat, trying to keep the woman's airway clear. But Ogochukwu's eyes had gone utterly black.
"Nurse," that doubled voice said, "you should have let them feed."
The car lights exploded. Darkness swallowed the road.
When Miss Vicki woke, she was lying on the riverbank. Dawn bled through the fog. Her uniform was soaked, and the car was nowhere to be seen. Only tire marks, which vanished into the mud. She stumbled toward the water. Something gleamed at the edge: a necklace - Ogochukwu's hospital tag - floating beside another white cat, perfectly still. Its pupils mirrored her face, then rippled like water. From somewhere behind her, Onunkwo spoke. "She crossed over. The current claimed her."
Vicki spun. "Where is she?"
"In the deep. With what she owed."
"You let her drown?"
"I did not let," he said calmly. "I listened."
The nurse looked back at the river. The surface shimmered, not with sunlight but with faint blue pulses, like the glow she'd seen under her microscope. Beneath, shapes moved - small, human, unformed. Her throat tightened. "You're saying she became one of them?"
He shrugged. "Or they became her. Which matters more?"
Vicki's scientific mind screamed delusion, yet her senses betrayed her: the air tasted metallic, and she could hear tiny heartbeats everywhere - in the reeds, in the soil, in the hush of the mist. She picked up the hospital tag. It was warm. The letters of Ogochukwu's name shimmered, rearranging for a moment into STILL WATERS before fading.
That evening she returned to the maternity ward. Power had been restored, but something else had changed. Cats prowled the corridors, silent as thoughts. One paused at the incubator window and stared in. Inside, one of the newborns let out a small, high cry - not of hunger, but of recognition. Miss Vicki dismissed it as coincidence until she reviewed the night's charts. Four premature infants had survived despite oxygen loss - and each one, the mothers claimed, had dreamt of a river woman whispering their names. The nurse sat at her desk long after midnight, writing her report. She titled it:
Case File #117 - Ogochukwu Uchenna: Unexplained Phenomena.
Her notes were precise at first - heart rates, timelines, serum analysis - but her handwriting faltered near the end.
"Patient pronounced missing. Residual bio-energy detected near river source. Possible mutagenic field or unclassified resonance. Recommend restricted access to Amankwo Waters." Then, below that, almost involuntarily, she wrote:
"If the unborn return, they will come as light through water."
She sealed the report and locked it away. Yet as she turned off her lamp, she noticed a small wet paw print on the edge of her desk.
Weeks later, villagers began whispering of a new presence at the river. At dusk, a woman's figure was seen walking upon the shallows, holding something small against her chest. Her face was veiled by mist; her eyes glowed faintly blue. Fishermen avoided the area.
They called her Nne Mmiri Nkịtị - Mother of Still Waters. Some said she healed barren women who dared bring white cats as offering. Others said she lured them and their unborn into the depths, where they never aged, only pulsed softly like embryos preserved in glass.
Miss Vicki never returned to Amankwo. Yet sometimes, during night shifts, she heard the nursery monitors whisper static that almost formed words. Once, while adjusting a cradle, she felt a drop of water land on her wrist though the ceiling was dry. The heartbeat monitor flickered, showing not one pulse, but two. She smiled faintly, whispered a prayer, and turned away. Outside, thunder rolled over the hills, followed by the faint echo of a woman's lullaby blending with the sound of cats crying in the dark.
Poetic. World literature. Beautiful.
ReplyDeleteStirring, engrossing tale of the tricks that the mind can play on someone, given the right environment and group-think and, perhaps, mass hysteria--or, perhaps, strange things do persist, not only in our nightmares but in reality. A virtual treatise on the power of suggestion. Absorbing. Nice job.
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