Haunted Diary
-Haruki Murakami
I stood there bewildered, mouth opened, sweats rolling, heart racing, eyes widened yet nature was quiet with an eerie silence .. as I looked upon the dead body of Aluwa hanging from a tree. His eyes were wide opened as his body was rotating thanks to the evening wind. His head bending towards the right shoulder, the neck strained by the rope that tied from a branch of a tree, which bordered the east side of the farm.
Source
I couldn’t understand why I had ventured into that farm that evening. But here I was, casting my glance upon the dead body of a suicidal victim, Aluwa -who was rumored to have killed his father, as he and his father never saw eye to eye since he turned twenty.
Beneath this log of dead human, a small book carelessly laid, beneath his dangling legs that swayed a few meters from the ground. Impulsively, I picked it. It was a dairy.
Source
But one would ask why I decided to enter an empty, haunted and seemingly quiet plantation when twilight was vast approaching...
Like words beneath stumps
Dead
Hanging
These things.. Lean
Are like sandstorms in deserts
Are the things that kill us
Before death does
Slowly
Creeping
Like ambush before laughter
I had decided to come because...
Mother had stressed the fact that I must come home that Christmas for holiday. I knew arguing with her isn’t going to help, so I had come home fuming about it all the way home. The village was boring, too bored to make me hate the idea of coming. Especially when I knew my cousins weren’t coming back to the village that time of the year. They are Catholics -my uncle has said they had to attend the combined ordinations and celebrate the festive rituals at the capital. I remember attending one of such occasions to malinger going to the village, where various incenses were burnt and wafers dipped in water sprinkled on people. The wafers nauseated me. Maybe that was the reason I had backed out when I thought of going to the ordinations; nauseating wafers.
That evening was cold, the chilling effect the harmattan brought on its winds made lips crack with scales, leaving grey matters on those that paid less attention to their lips. I had earlier sneak my fingers into my sister’s purse, as I wanted the ‘glossy’ matter she normally applied on her lips to ward off the harmattan visitor. My saliva was a bad idea; my lips were always drier after I’d generously rub my lips with my ptyalin liquid with the aid of my tongue.
I made up my mind to take a stroll that evening. Walking pass the village square, I had caught sight of the plantain farm standing gorgeously as a damsel among the thorny shrubs that was as a fender around it. It was the plantation of the Inuwa family. ...Inuwa. The name which translated to mean bloodline strife, was the most controversial family in the village. I didn’t know when I walked into it until my feet felt the crackling sound that rejuvenated when my foot touched a fallen dry plantain leaf. Looking down I saw deep footprints, that sure belonged to an adult. But there was nobody in the orchard or nobody wasn’t supposed to there. The surviving sons of the Inuwa family were all in the city -or so we were told. Before I could look up to see a black crow calling from the top of a plantain tree, I saw the hanging body of Aluwa, the first son of the Inuwas.
Dead of live
Not dead in flesh
Dead of hope
Hope of forgiveness
Forgiveness of sins
Sins from the past
Past that haunts
Flipping through the empty pages of the diary, I finally found some pages with black ink on them. The scattered, slanted and haphazardly written words that dominated a greater part of the pages were hard to read. Yet I strained my eyes to the zenith to decipher it words. Reading from the pages of the half-torn book was like having a throwback, the words therein were like painted pictures.
It reads:
Dear Diary,
Source
It's seven thirty.
The clock in my room is once more running without legs. Singing, no ticking. Like tickling the zephyrs in silence. I’ve been running all my life away from this. Away from the flaccid image of his ghost, haunting me night and day, while others are experiencing sweet nights rest, I experienced a necessary unending chase, something that seemed like a white elephant race.
When will this haunt cease?
When will he stop turning my life into a nightmare?
Are like the aroma of excreta to flies
These things hanging like chandeliers
From the dying branches of our soul
Are testimonies of bad breaths of our past
A past we thought we’ve buried
But never knew it was a seed
The crickets were singing darkly in one accord outside the window. Time seemed faster than it should be or was it just my imagination?
I’ve been running from him for a long time. Now I sit. No, lay with folded flesh, spread all over my scrambled bed -waiting for the worst, as I recalled a five year old memory......
It all begun when a I got a letter from my kinsmen through the post office about the death of my father. A short, dark and fearless man in his late seventies, whose face was decorated with a signatory wavy moustache like Hitler’s, which always turn grey during the harmattan season due to the white dust. This prominent moustache, hung just above a pair of thin brown-black lips, that one could hardly see, especially when he spoke. I never had an intimate relationship with him, at least not the usual type fathers had with their sons. What we had was something one could call queer. We were just like casual relatives sharing the same bloodline. Being candid, I felt indifferent about his death, even the death of Añíké, the Village Drunk gave me deeper thoughts than his'. One would wonder what’s wrong with me, I never felt a connection with him -I guess he didn’t either.
I could remember Añíké on one occasion, staggering with one of his legs up in his trouser, the trouser ears sweeping the floor, hoping from the rhythm of his gibberish, ethanol-smelling breath, told me how my father being the first son, hated his father and how his grand father hated his father and how my bloodline had this strange ‘First Son' oddity that nobody talks about. I hated and questioned nature for plunging me into this lineage, even more for being the first son but it all felt like I was hating myself. After all, hating my father meant hating myself when I have a son too. Yet there was nothing I could do no matter how hard I tried to love him.
I hurriedly made plans to travel to my hometown to pay him the last respect. Yes, actually the last respect although I couldn't remember paying him any since I turned twenty, that was after I ran away from home when my mother died.
The funeral rite and processing went as usual without much ado. I tried to shed some canard tears when his remains was lowered into mother earth but my eyes seems to play pranks on me, the more I tried, the more smiles would lush around my face. So I left the graveyard so as not to provoke the dead or incur the wrath of the gods.
In my dark room, the chirps from the cricket jolted me back to reality. I heard the door of my flesh creaking too, giving way to fears and fright just as the wooden door gave way quietly. Slowly. A sudden flash of light. A wooden bang.
Then darkness, again. Sweats pods were gaining grounds on my skin as I lay on the bed, unsure of my next move or – his. In the darkness, I could hear rumbles, its wasn’t thunder. It was his voice. Vibrating with a crackling echo that set my skin on flames. That deep sonorous voice was too familiar and audible to my ears, pushing me back to the cause of his death…..
"Don't tell me you are taking control of this plantain plantation, where were you when father and I bent our back under the scorching sun to plant these plantains?
You were buried in the lust of the civilized world, you never accorded him the respect as a father"
barked Aguma, my younger brother and the only surviving seed from my father’s groin apart from myself.
I had earlier gone to survey and take parameters of my father’s fertile plantain farm, as I had intentions of selling it off. But unexpectedly, that didn’t go down well with Aguma.
Traditionally, I had every right to do whatsoever I wanted with my father’s possessions but my younger brother seemed to challenge every authority I tried assuming over anything. I was angered at his insubordination, furious like a wounded lion but I kept my calm, because I knew too well when to strike.
"Aguma, the crocodile doesn’t take permission from the lizard before he swims in the waters…. Aguma, who are you to challenge me?
The vulture doesn’t need to ask the eagle who is the king of the skies, the different wingspan is enough answer to him" I said, stroking my index finger in the air as a warning
“I have stomached your childish wails for long and you are gradually getting under my skin. I don’t need to remind you who is the head now that papa is dead.”
“Yes. I know you are the head but the house rat knows which of the children truly stole the meat from the pot at night. I know how incompatible you were with papa. And I also know that he didn’t officially hand anything over to you. You need to know your bounds. Or have you forgotten? How he cursed and denied you? How he cursed the struggles of your hands and the sleep of your eyes? Or can't you remember that he declared you a Vagabond?”
My eyes widened at his last words. Vagabond?
That word stirred up the fiercest anger from the abyss of my heart. Impulsively, I reached for a log of wood, swung it through the air, hitting Aguma's head. He fell headlong to the ground, his face buried in the base of a plantain stump. I ran across to him, shook him while calling his name. Feeling his pulse, I knew he was dead or probably dying. I knew things didn’t have to be that way. I had planned to get rid of Aguma but not by killing him – or at least not with my own hands.
I knew I had to bury him before anyone showed up. Hurriedly, I dug a shallow grave with the shady rusted spade Aguma came with to the farm. Rolling him over, I could see his eyes. They were still open, wide open, those sharp brown eyes that sat well in big hollow sockets. His face looked cold with a feeling of death as he laid there, I could see his lips moving. He was muttering something I couldn’t figure out as blood was bubbling over his lips. Was he pleading or cursing? I didn’t care to know. I buried him half dead. I buried my brother half dead. I killed Aguma!!
Afterwards, I told everybody Aguma had left the village to the city as he couldn’t bear the loss of our father.
His crackling voice shook my mind to reality, again. The room suddenly got darker, my skin hairs stood up as if I was meeting someone from the land of the dead.
Darkness
Gloom
Despair..
were my core companions. Just that they were also my fright. My fiends. Suddenly, I picked up his scent again.
He seemed to lurk around the four corners of the room -at the same time.
I could sense his aura swiftly gliding and taunting the sweet air that blew from the window. I looked through the window. The moon was leaking beautiful freedom. I longed to run out. I eyed the window.. Calculating to take my chance at the slightest opportunity. Just like he read my thoughts of freedom…
the window slammed from a quick gush of air.
Slammed? Was he shutting off every hope of redemption or escape I ever borne?
- Anonymous
The clock rings 7:40 pm
-I’m supposed to sleep.
But my eyes felt cursed of sleep. It was stealing away the value of my joy like a parasite. Just like stealing the arch in architecture or the maid in maiden.
-Rex Dickson
The clock ticks again. I'm supposed to close my eyes, silently as if am dying another death. Everything was happening so fast in splits of seconds. Yet the night was so dull. The walls were creaking too. Weird. I stopped breathing or so I thought. My breaths were blowing my cover. I wanted to run out of my skin and scream at the pitch darkness.
Bleaching the pitch darkness like dawn, my eye screened round the room. Looking for a shadow to hold accountable for my fear, a shadow to hold on to, even Aguma’s spirit. Anything, yet I could only grip the abstractness in the air.
Guilt was playing its dirty game all over my façade, trailing off anguish as I sat alone in the room. Like John Banville, it was beating in me like a second heart.
Pounding.
Heavy. Heavy duty pistons.
He was haunting me to much. Aguma’s spirit never gave me a resting space.
Source
I then decided to come to the village and take me life here, where I took his. Maybe when I get over there, we’ll settle our scores.
If you are reading this, let your eyes be the only ones that will glean through the pages of this diary. Never let a third eye see the light of this page.
Also remember, never let your hands be swift to shed blood or your feet swift to evil doings, because the future lies like a cloud, black cloud, formidable from a distance.
Aluma.
Vanity always have a way of bringing them together
Vanity?
No.. Vengeance
The hate in the mind
And the heart beat that throbs all day
Are brothers in ways
Because one always stop because of another
One way or the other
Goose bumps were growing on my skin, I hurriedly threw the diary on the leaves covered ground. Lifting up my eyes, I saw a parliament of black crows fixing gazes at me.
Weird.
Source
Scared.
Then they let out an eerie screech that ran across the borders of the plantation. I didn’t wait for another screech before my back heels were touching my head in a hot race, that saw me panting in my room in a space of minutes.
In my room, while I was trying to grasp short gasps of breaths, on my table, mysteriously lay the haunted black diary I ran away from at the farm.
How did it get here?
Why was it there?
I’m still asking that question till today.
But right then, I resolved never to go near the plantation again or talk about it to anyone.
Where one could stroll through
Without seeing the hanging body of guilt
Dead of life
I would have farmed an farm
On the moon for the ones who seek
A replay of their past
Where one could open and read
Without the piercing eyes of owls
Zeroing on their past
I would have inked out new pages
For those seeking an eraser
For their past
Like the calling black evening crows
In twilight farms
Or the beautiful black hanging rope
Smiling at his prey
I would have for sure, given it to Aluma
Who sought a new voice in his future
To delete his past ways
Dry his present tears
And empty his future fears
This is an original fiction work written by
@rexdickson.
All pictures used therein are truly referenced.
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