by Leye Adenle
The engine revved, the tyres screeched, but we did not move. What was going on?
The soldiers opened fire. Brother Moses pulled a long red umbrella that was way too long for his sleeve, out from his sleeve. He opened up the umbrella and, twirling it, deflected bullets from the soldiers’ guns. Adesua remained calm in the car. The four soldiers were perfectly lined up in front of the umbrella-twirling Brother Moses, using up their ammunition. They all ran out of bullets - at the same time and, as one, they began reloading mechanically. Brother Moses peeped over the top of his now unmoving umbrella and I saw Adesua opening her door. What was she doing? She was going to get killed. Where was the major? Our tyres kept screeching. The car sort of zigzagged about for a few feet around its axis, as if we were tethered to the ground. Shots went off by Jason’s door. He ducked. The shots left crush marks on his window but didn’t make it into the cabin.
The engine died. Adrian was shouting into his sleeve – into a microphone, no doubt. There was terror in his eyes. The major stopped to reload his pistol. Jason already had his out. I hoped he wouldn’t do something foolish like open his door. Just as that thought was passing through my head, I heard the handle on my door being tried. I think I leaned into Adrian and held him. The major leaned towards the car and cupped his hand against my window to see in through the tinted glass. His face was disconcertingly blank. His men kept shooting. I couldn’t see Adesua anywhere. A gunshot went off and plastered the major’s exploded face against the window. His head slid down leaving a trail of blood. Adesua was standing there, smoke curling up from the barrel of the pistol she held in one hand. She turned sideways, to the rear of the SUV, aimed and shot. Bang, bang, bang, bang. I looked out of the rear window. The soldiers were slumped on the ground. Brother Moses closed his umbrella and inserted it back into his sleeve.
Adesua knocked on my window. She signalled for me to come out.
‘Don’t get out,’ Adrian said, holding my arm. His hand was shaking.
‘It’s ok, I said. They’re my friends.’
I unlocked the door. It was heavy. I pushed it open with my leg.
Adesua held her hand out for me. I stretched my hand to her and a gunshot went off close to my ear.
Adesua looked surprised. Still holding her hand out, she looked down at her chest. Her blouse was turning red from the middle of her breasts. She slowly fell backwards, her face still puzzled, her hand still stretched out to me.
Chapter 13 Faith the Size of a Ball
Jason had shot Adesua. She lay sprawled on the ground, her arms spread out on the road, the lifeless body of the possessed major at her feet. Jason had killed her. He had killed the woman I loved.
The entire world went weird. It was as if I was underwater. Sounds were distorted, voices were muffled. I was sinking where I stood. I was standing and suffocating.
I panicked. I swam towards the surface. I broke through and gulped in air tainted with gunsmoke and I screamed from the very depth of my heart, ‘Adesua!’
Brother Moses walked up to Adesua’s body. He shook his head and looked up into the car. His smile had turned upside down. I feared that Jason would shoot him too. I stepped out and Adrian followed me. I stepped over the dead major and stood by Brother Moses and looked down at Adesua. Adrian stood on the other side.
‘You have to use the ball now,’ Brother Moses said.
I immediately understood. Since they gave me the sphere I’d being alternating between fantasising that the unusually heavy tiny ball could really do what he said it could, and that it was just a ball of osmium that could do no more than surprise one with its weight. But now I believed that it was indeed a time machine. I believed that magic was real. I believed that Brother Moses was a magician and that my father had been one too. I believed it all because I needed to believe that the magic in the ball could take me back in time to when I was in my flat and Adesua was still alive. I had to believe. I had to have faith in magic. I believed in magic. I put my faith in magic. I had to.
‘I don’t have it.’
‘You lost it?’
‘I know where it is. We have to get to my office.’
‘What time is it?’
I checked the time. ‘Three o’clock.’ I double checked. ‘That can’t be.’
‘Time is working against us. We have to hurry. The ball only works for twelve hours.’
‘What?’
‘It was precisely four o’clock this morning when I gave it to you. In one hour’s time it will expire. We have to get to your office as soon as humanly possible.’
‘We can get there in ten minutes.’
‘You don’t understand. They have co-opted time.
Time is now working against you.’
I paused momentarily as I tried to understand what he’d just said before realising I didn’t have time for that. I had to get back to the office. I had an hour. Adesua had an hour. But time was racing at an abnormal speed.
‘I am going back to my office,’ I said to Adrian.
He didn’t object. He just nodded. Jason took his cue from Adrian and stayed at a respectable distance from my Adesua, whom he had killed.
All the shooting had emptied the road. Brother Moses and I put Adesua’s body onto the back seat of her car. I climbed into the driver’s seat, and Brother Moses slid into the passenger seat beside me. I made an illegal U-turn and pointed Adesua’s car in the direction of my office. I checked the time. It was 3:15. How was that even possible? In the mirror I saw that the Americans were following us. I heard sirens. I couldn’t tell where from. I pressed down on the accelerator.
‘Did you see me mesmerising him?’ Brother Moses said. His smile was back. I didn’t understand what he meant.
‘When I was juggling. I mesmerised him. The white man. A pity the soldiers were touched. No one had to die. No one.’ He shook his head, his smile briefly going away.
I checked the time. 3:25. I’d only been driving a few seconds!
I didn’t slow down at the roundabout. As I reached the street where my office building was I saw police vans racing towards us. I came to a screeching stop in front of the entrance and jumped out. I ran through the front door of the building, startling the doorman who had stepped out to tell me I couldn’t park there. I ran to the lifts. I pressed the call button and waited in front of the lift that would arrive first. I punched six and for the first time noticed how slow the lifts were.
I pulled at the door of the IT floor, but it wouldn’t open. In my panic I had forgotten to use my card. In slow motion, I took it from my pocket and held it to the scanner. When I finally got inside most of my mates had left. The ones who remained stared at me. They’d seen me being taken away earlier. They probably weren’t expecting me to be back.
Rachel wasn’t at her desk. I rushed to the meeting room. The glass had been cleared from the ground and the broken stool removed. My sphere was not there.
‘Where is Rachel?’ I said to no one in particular.
Some of my colleagues had got up to watch me. Some had moved out from behind their desks, but they were all keeping a safe distance, as if I’d become toxic. They just stared silently.
‘Where is she?’ I said much louder.
Amina, a cute girl who I had once asked out, answered with her sweet little voice, ‘She left about an hour ago.’
I checked the time. 3:45. There was no way I could get to Rachel’s house in fifteen normal minutes. But I had to try. I ran from the IT floor, not bothering with the lifts – I somehow knew they would take too long to arrive. I took the stairs, two steps at a time, jumping off the last three at each landing. I ran into the lobby and towards the exit and came to a sudden stop. Police cars surrounded Adesua’s car, boxing it in against the front of the building. Policemen with guns aimed stood in front of their vans.
Brother Moses’ head was visible above the roof on the far side of Adesua’s car, coloured balls rising and falling in perfect rhythm over him. I checked the time. 3:53. I had to continue
. I walked out through the front door. All eyes were on Brother Moses. I looked to the ground and went round the building to the car park. I had my car keys in my hands but my car was gone. I looked around and saw Rachel’s red Camry, and she was in it.
I opened her door. Her key was in the ignition. Her seatbelt was fastened across her body but her hands were on her lap, one cupping the other. She looked at me. I couldn’t tell whether she’d been crying or if it was some- thing else. I didn’t have time to ask.
‘The ball, do you have it?’ I said. I checked the time.
3:58.
She started to talk but her voice failed. She cleared her throat.
When she spoke, her voice was low and her speech so measured and so full of fear. She said. ‘When they took you away, I realised it had to do with the ball. When no one was looking I took it. I knew it was important to you so I left the office in case they came back for it.’
‘Where is it?’
‘In my hand.’
‘Can I have it? Please?’
A single teardrop fell down from her eye, then another from the other eye. Then more, but her face remained calm and she didn’t move her hands.
‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I can’t move my hands.’ She opened the fingers of her left hand which was rested into her right hand. The ball was buried in the middle of her palm, halfway through her hand.
I pushed my fingers around the sphere but it had become too heavy to lift. A tear from Rachel’s eyes fell on to the back of my hand. ‘What is happening?’ she said.
‘It’s all going to be fine,’ I said.
I’d just realised I knew how to use the sphere.
Chapter 14 Once Again One More Time
I did not know what to expect but I braced myself. Dizziness hit me like a gust of wind but I wasn’t caught off guard as I’d been expecting worse, and I knew I just had to stay calm till it was over.
‘I am leaving you my hat,’ Brother Moses said.
We were in my living room. Adesua was also there, looking at me as if she despised me. But she was alive. I wanted to go and hug her but my head was still spinning and I had to stay in place or else I’d fall.
‘No need. I’m coming with you,’ I said.
‘Oh. Well, that’s wonderful. What a good choice you have made.’ He picked up his hat and placed it on his head. ‘I was afraid we would have to do this over and over again.’
I looked around. It still felt like waking up from a dream. My memory was only just catching up. I guess the brain is not designed to remember in reverse.
My tummy grumbled. I placed my hand over it. I could still taste the strange ball. The instant I placed my mouth over it on Rachel’s palm I felt the sphere dissolving on my tongue, multiplying in volume a hundred times, spreading over every inch of my mouth and rapidly moving down the walls of my throat. At first I saw everything rapidly moving in reverse as if I was sitting backwards while being driven along the path I’d taken to get to Rachel’s car. I moved faster and faster through time until the world was whizzing by and all the colours merged together into white, only to separate again as the rewinding slowed down and then stopped at my living room.
Adesua opened the door and kept it open. ‘Let’s go, then,’ she said.
Brother Moses waited for me to go through first. As I passed him he said, ‘One more thing, when you went to your room to jump, you said... I know. I shouldn’t have said I was coming when I was leaving.’
Brother Moses stared at me from the doorframe. ‘How did you know what I was going to say?’ he said.
Up until that moment I thought we all knew what had happened since the last time we were all standing in my living room and he was giving me the ball to record time. It quickly dawned on me that only I had come back in time.
‘He used the ball,’ Adesua said.
‘When did you use it?’ Brother Moses said.
‘Just now,’ I replied. ‘I mean, it was just before four o’clock. PM.’
‘What made you use it?’
I looked at Adesua. Her face did not hide her contempt, and that was even without knowing that I’d gotten her killed.
‘I was running out of time,’ I said.
‘Yes, yes. But what compelled you to use it?’ Brother Moses said.
‘Does it matter? We are here now and I am coming with you.’
Adesua stepped close to me. ‘Listen. This is not a game. The only way you could have known you were running out of time is if one of us told you. The only way we’d have told you is if we were with you. The only reason we’d have been with you is if you were in danger. The only reason you’d have had to use the ball is if we couldn’t save you. And the only reason we wouldn’t have been able to save you is if we were dead. Who died? Both of us?’
I kept my mouth shut.
‘Master Osaretin,’ Brother Moses said, ‘this is important. We have to know who died.’
‘Why?’
‘When a person dies, they slip into a place from where even time cannot escape. You can go back in time to warn them, but something is forever lost to that place.’
‘What?’
‘There is no way I can explain it that you would understand. Please, just tell me, who was it?’
I looked at Adesua.
‘What!’ she shouted. She threw her hands up and turned her back to me.
‘How did it happen?’ Brother Moses said. He was the most sombre I’d ever seen him.
Adesua marched up to me. She raised her fist to my face. She unfolded her index finger and pointed it at my forehead. She didn’t let loose what she kept behind her gritted teeth. She breathed out slowly and dropped her hand like she’d given up on something, then she turned and began walking away down the corridor.
‘What’s going to happen to her?’ I said.
‘It depends on what you tell me. How did she die?’
‘She was shot.’
‘Who shot her? You?’
‘No!’ I was mortified. How could he even think that?
‘Was it a person or something else?’
‘It was a person. I think. An American. Secret service. He wore a black suit. There were three of them. They came to my office to get me.’
‘Why?’
‘They tracked down my car. And yours. Our cars were the only ones that worked during the solar flare.’
‘I told her that was reckless.’
‘So what does it mean for her? I mean, knowing the person who shot her, what does that mean for her?’
‘Where was she shot?’
‘In the...’ My memory served up the image of Adesua lying dead on the ground. I couldn’t say it. To voice it would be to make it real all over again. I pushed my finger into the middle of my chest.
‘Mmm.’
‘What’s going to happen to her?’
‘We shall have to wait and see. We have to go now. Remember, they know you are here and they are waiting for you downstairs. Adesua will distract them while I take you away.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘I told you already. To see a great magician. He will help you remember who you really are.’
Chapter 15 Soulful Penance
What Brother Moses told me was that basically I’d damaged Adesua in some irrevocable way.
Because I had not agreed, the first time they asked, to go with her and Brother Moses to meet the great magician, when my car had been tracked down to the office by the Americans I had been there, which resulted in my capture and, ultimately, in Adesua being shot. I killed her. The immense, indescribable relief I felt when at 3:59 I felt the sphere working and experienced time rewinding gave way to the same sunken feeling I had when I watched her body lying lifeless on Awolowo Road.
She was alive again, but she was not complete, or the same, or Adesua anymore. I knew what Brother Moses didn’t tell me. It was her soul that was missing. The part of a person which makes them human. The same part which cannot escape death.
Pai
n, horror, regret, shame, love, and sorrow flowed through my soul. At least I still had a soul. If there was a way I could give mine to her, I would. I, who before that day had not believed in souls, would give her mine. And it wouldn’t be an act of penance; it would be for love. If only it were possible.
‘You cannot give her your soul,’ Brother Moses said.
‘Did you just read my mind?’ I asked.
We were at the entrance to my block, at the foot of the staircase, waiting for Adesua to lead them away.
‘Yes, I did, Master Osaretin. You have to learn how to think quietly. It’s one of the first things you’ll be taught in your training.’
‘Think quietly? How long have you been reading my mind?’
‘Oh, just this one time. I didn’t mean to, but you were thinking so loudly. It’s a matter of etiquette that magicians don’t try to read each other’s minds.’
He peeped out of the open front door. ‘We can go now.’
I followed him out of the building just in time to see Adesua’s car being followed out of the compound by Rachel’s car – only it wasn’t really Rachel in the car. It was them.
‘Keys?’ Brother Moses said. He held out his hand.
I was about to remind him that the American agents had my car when I remembered that had happened in the future.
I gave him the keys. I could not imagine he’d ever driven a car before.
‘Did you drive it down from the club?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘No. Adesua did that. Very reckless.’
‘What? How? She drove her car here then returned to get mine?’
‘No. She drove both cars. At the same time.’
‘How?’
‘Ask her.’
He opened the driver’s door and handed the key to Adesua sitting behind the wheel. I’d just seen her driving away in her car, and I was sure she wasn’t there in mine a few seconds earlier when Brother Moses asked for my keys. Things just kept getting weirder and weirder.