“You didn’t see my brother,” Sunny coldly said.
Capo twitched and suddenly jumped to his feet. He looked around drunkenly, and Sunny and Chichi ducked down. When he saw that he was alone, he started walking away. Then he turned back, dumped the water from the cooler on the fire, and then stumbled back the way they’d all come.
Chichi and Sunny stayed down for a while in the dark. When it was clear that everyone was gone, they stood up. “What did you do?” Chichi asked again.
“What needed to be done.”
Chichi looked hard at Sunny. “You were beside me and then you weren’t. And I didn’t see you near Capo,” she said. “But . . . I saw him slump after you disappeared.” She frowned as she thought hard. “Did you hold? Hold time? Is that what you and Sugar Cream have been working on?”
“Some, but that was the first time I tried it.”
“He saw your face?”
She nodded.
“Shit,” Chichi said.
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not.”
They walked back to the main road. It took them a half hour in the darkness even with a torch. When they reached the main road it wasn’t five minutes before the black council car drove up to them and demanded that Sunny get into it. Sunny did so without a word of protest.
“Let my mom know that I’m okay,” she told Chichi.
“Okay,” Chichi said. She paused. “Give me your phone. If you don’t, they will take it from you.”
Sunny handed Chichi her phone. They looked at each other for a moment. Then Sunny said, “I’ll . . . I’ll be okay.” For now, she thought. She didn’t know about later. Still, as the car drove soundlessly down the dark empty road, past the satellite hostels where the university students who were not up to satanic mischief slept soundly, Sunny felt it was worth it.
13
DEBASEMENT
The ceremonial masks stared at Sunny. There were fifty-two of them. Over her months as Sugar Cream’s student, she’d had plenty of time to count. The first time she was here, she’d thought there were only twenty, but then again, she’d been distracted by the fact that she was there at risk of being caned for showing her spirit face to Jibaku.
The masks didn’t stay in the same spot, either. Every few days, some of them moved—sometimes across the wall, sometimes switching with the mask beside them. And some would change the expression on their faces. Sunny had learned early on not to touch them or mutter anything in anger near them. They would sometimes lick, smooch, try to bite or spit on her hand, and they’d tell Sugar Cream anything she said.
Now all the masks looked either angry or deeply interested. Sugar Cream was scowling at Sunny. Sunny gazed right back. It was five A.M. and she’d walked up the Obi Library stairs alone, since she knew the way to Sugar Cream’s office and she knew the consequences would probably be greater if she fled. She found Sugar Cream in her office sitting at her desk wearing a cream-colored nightgown, a cup of warm milky coffee in her hand.
“What happened?” Sugar Cream icily asked.
Sunny told Sugar Cream everything. She’d stood with her back straight and chin up. She’d fought keep her eyes dry and won, though when she described her brother’s ordeal, her voice cracked twice and she felt light-headed. When she told of holding time, only then did Sugar Cream’s eyebrows rise. But only the tiniest bit. Otherwise, her face remained like stone. This early morning, Sunny’s mentor looked ancient. This morning, Sunny knew that she’d be caned.
“Chichi was right,” Sugar Cream said when Sunny finished talking. “Do you see her here?” She paused. “Huh?” she suddenly snapped, making Sunny jump. “DO YOU SEE CHICHI HERE TO BE PUNISHED?”
“No, ma’am,” Sunny quickly said.
“No, you don’t. And it’s not only because she made sure you two remained hidden and that those foul young men thought it was the devil attacking them and not you two. Those men rock the foundation of learning in this country. We Leopard People have been working for years to eliminate these confraternities at their root. You two were given a pass for what you did. But then you crossed the line. You let your rage get the best of you.”
Sunny looked down, frowning. I don’t care, she thought. She knew if she had it all to do again, she’d do the same thing. She had to protect her brother. Sugar Cream knew this, too.
“With great power comes great responsibility, Sunny,” Sugar Cream said. “You’re young. You’re a free agent who knows very little, but who is bursting with potential and passion. You’re not the best or smartest of your age mates, but you are . . . interesting. This is why I took you on. But you need to learn control.” She took a sip of her coffee. “And you need to learn the consequences.”
After explaining to Sunny what would happen to her, Sugar Cream called two older students in the building. They were not to speak to Sunny. They weren’t even to look at her. All they were to do was walk in front of and behind her. They led Sunny down the hallway to a gray door, and one of the students opened it. It led to a stairway. Sunny followed him in, the other student following behind Sunny. The walls here were made of a gray stone that looked like it had been carved bit by bit with an ice pick.
The steps were also made of the same roughly chiseled stone. As they descended, Sunny couldn’t help the tears that fell from her eyes. She counted thirty steps and still they kept going. It was like traveling into an underground cave. The air grew cooler and cooler until Sunny was shivering. She was glad that she still wore her jeans and the black hooded sweatshirt over her T-shirt.
Down, down, down they went. To the Obi Library’s infamous basement. Sugar Cream had ordered Sunny to stay here for three days as punishment for pulling a Lamb outside of time, a severe violation of Leopard doctrine, even for someone of greater experience and age. Because Sunny was under twenty-five, her punishment was milder than if she were an adult. “If you were twenty-six,” Sugar Cream had said, “you’d be caned and then sent down there for three months.”
“Go in,” one of the students now said. “And don’t try to come up.”
They left her. They didn’t lock the door because there was no door, just an opening in the stone wall with the dimly lit stone stairway that led back up. Sunny turned around and took in her prison. The basement was large, smelled of dirt and mildew, and was filled with moldering bookshelves of moldering books. Books that had been replicated and brought down here to be disposed of in due time. The bookshelves had rotted, buckled, and fallen into decay. Obviously, some of the books had been forgotten. In the center of the basement was a dusty wooden platform with an old bronze statue of a squat toad with overly bulbous eyes. Sunny touched its large head with her hand and sat on it as she watched the students leave.
Each day, they would bring her a meal and a large pitcher of water. She was given a bucket as her toilet, which would also be taken and emptied daily. Other than that, she would be alone down there. No blanket, no bathing, no light other than the dim one high on the ceiling.
As the sound of their footsteps receded, the fear set in. She’d heard terrible things about the basement. She sunk to the floor, leaning her head against the toad’s head. “I did the right thing,” she whispered. “I don’t care what anyone says.”
There were red spiders all over the place, especially on the ceiling. As she stared up at it, she noticed a large patch of churning red in the far left corner over one of the few bookcases that still stood. Slowly, Sunny walked across the dusty floor, her sandals grinding on the white marble. It wasn’t just covered with dust, there was sand, too. From where, who knew? She stopped feet from the ceiling corner above, her mouth curling with disgust. Hundreds, maybe thousands of nasty, mewling red spiders churned in the corner. She squinted and shuddered. They were all milling around one enormous red spider the size of a dinner plate.
“Oh . . . God,” she whispered, stepping away slowly. She was
sure the thing was watching her, watching closely with its many eyes. She stumbled back to the large bronze toad, the only thing in the room that felt . . . okay. She rested her back against it and wrapped her arms around her knees. The metal was comfortingly warm and immediately fatigue fell on her. It had to be nearing sunrise.
She’d snuck out of the house, journeyed to campus with Chichi, located and terrorized one of the most powerful confraternities in the area, and now here she was. This was the longest night of her life. Her eyes grew heavy. But there was no rest for the weary. The basement had no windows. She was deep beneath the ground; the place was like a tomb. And the one light bulb, which just had to be near the spiders, was greasy and dim, shining down on the older, used up, and discarded books. There were corners and crevices between fallen shelves, and the room was full of shadows and hiding places. All this made the scraping sound that much more terrifying.
The sound seemed to bear down on the marble floor. Then it dragged. Slow and steady. Then it stopped. Then it dragged and then stopped. It came from right behind one of the bookcases to Sunny’s left. And she could see a bit of a shadow through two fallen shelves. But nothing more. Sunny had nothing with her. Nothing to throw. Nothing to clutch with fear.
“Oh,” she whispered, trying to stay still. Willing herself to be invisible. She could become invisible. But not for very long. And to do so, she had to travel, to move. Would whatever it was come at her? What was it?
Scraaaaape. Pause. Scraaaape. Pause. It stopped just before it came into view. Sunny waited for what felt like fifteen minutes, but the thing didn’t show itself. Instead, quiet as smoke, a flame burst from behind the books. A smokeless one. No smell. No burning. Just the light and shadow of a flame. Sunny, helpless and exhausted, leaned against the neck of the bronze toad, staring at that which she could not see. Soon her eyes went out of focus, and then slowly they shut.
Scraaaaape.
Sunny’s eyes shot open and she jumped up. Her legs wobbled and buckled, and she fell against the toad, banging her hip. A rotten-egg smell of sulfur stung her nose. She winced, turning toward the sound and the stench. What she spotted beside the bookcase made every hair in her body stand up. Even from feet away, she could tell that they were human bones, and not only because the one piled at the top was a clearly human skull. One near the bottom was heavy and long. A femur. And there was a hand sticking out of the center. The pile looked about the size of one human being, the bones a dirty, rusty gray red.
Sunny didn’t move. She couldn’t move. Her eyes stared and stared. Then they started to water.
Tap, tap, tap. She gasped and looked toward the staircase. Someone was coming down. She looked back at the bones. They were gone.
It was Samya, one of Sugar Cream’s closest assistants. She was one of the few third levelers under the age of thirty that Leopard Knocks had. To pass Ndibu, one had to attend a meeting of masquerades and get a masquerade’s consent to be a third leveler. To attend such a meeting, one had to slip into the wilderness, which meant the person had to die and come back. Only third levelers and up knew how this was done when one was not born with the natural ability. To reach the third level of Ndibu was like earning a PhD, and it was rare for one to be under the age of thirty-five. Samya was twenty-four.
She was a bookish woman who wore red plastic glasses and a long red dress, and had reddish-brown skin like Chichi and Chichi’s mother. She’d piled her long braids atop her head as she carried the small tray. “Oh, Sunny, are you all right?” she asked. The worried look on her face cracked Sunny’s wall of strength like a sheet of thin ice.
Her body grew warm and tingly, and her eyes stung with tears. “No,” she whispered as Samya quickly came to her. She put the tray of food on the floor beside Sunny and gathered her in her arms.
“Why did you do it?”
“I had to!” Sunny sobbed. “I had to! It was my brother! You didn’t see what they . . .” She couldn’t breathe.
“Shhh, shhh,” Samya said, holding her back. “Relax. Get ahold of yourself.”
But Sunny’s entire body was shuddering. Images of her brother’s battered face, eyes swollen, mouth swollen. His pain. Capo’s terrified face as he gasped for air. Lying in wait in the bushes. Darkness. Screams.
“Sunny,” Samya said shaking her. “You need to calm down.” She paused. “There is something down here that can’t know you are weak.”
Sunny felt her nerves zing. There was something down here. She felt faint as she pushed her body to calm down. “What is it?”
“I can’t say, and I can’t come back,” Samya said. “When someone is sent to the basement, a different student must bring down food on each day. I think Sugar Cream sent me first because she knew you’d need me. Don’t expect the others that come to be helpful. They will . . . follow the rules.”
“What rules?”
“Never mind,” she quickly said. “Some things are worth it. Now listen, Sunny, and listen closely if you want to come out of here sane and alive. These books are old. They are used. They have been replaced, then cast aside. They will be dealt with eventually, but for now they are down here. Every book has a soul, every book . . . carries and attracts. There are sterilization and soothing jujus all over this room, but this is the earth. Something will always come and live here. In this case it is a djinn. It guards and hides in the books.”
“Does it make fire that doesn’t burn?”
Samya nodded and frowned. “So you’ve already seen it.”
“Yes . . . its bones. I fell asleep and I woke up and it was right over there.” She pointed to mere feet away.
“Oh my God, so soon?” Samya said, circling her head and snapping her finger. Then she looked at Sunny and gave the most pathetic reassuring smile Sunny had ever seen. “Listen, Sunny. It will try you.”
“Try what?”
“You. It knows . . . Sunny, you aren’t learned yet. You are just a free agent, but you were . . . are someone who did something in the wilderness. It was a good thing, I think. Otherwise, why would Ekwensu fear you? The thing down here is a djinn, and it’ll read your past life as you being powerful in your present one, some sort of chosen one. So it will try you. It will want to see what you’ve got.” She frowned. “Damn, Sunny, why did you have to get yourself thrown down here?”
“What do I do?”
Samya got up. “I don’t really know.” She looked at the staircase as if someone were calling her. Then she looked at Sunny. “Don’t let it take you.” She paused. “And . . . don’t believe the silly Lamb stereotypes about djinni. They don’t grant wishes and what they show you can be an illusion, but more times than not, it is real. They can harm you. Okay . . . I have to go.” She pointed to the tray. “Eat all of it,” she said. She looked Sunny in the eye. “All of it. You need your strength.”
“Wait, wait,” Sunny said as Samya moved quickly to the staircase. “My parents! My family. Will someone . . .”
“Good luck, Sunny,” she said over her shoulder. “Stay strong. Stay alive.” Then she rushed up the stairs.
Sunny watched her go, listening as her steps grew fainter and fainter and then were gone. She sat against the bronze toad and stared at her tray of food. A bowl of dry-looking jollof rice with one chunk of tough-looking goat meat in the middle of it, an orange, and a bottle of water. She ate it all quickly, her eyes darting around like a scared rabbit. She didn’t taste a bite of it. The scraping sound had begun again.
There was water somewhere in the basement. But she couldn’t see it. Drip, drip, drip. Then stop. Then drip, drip, drip. Then stop. As if there was some machine turning it off and on. Trying to drive her mad. That would make two things with the same intention. A machine and a djinn. Sunny giggled to herself. Quietly. She had to stay quiet. The thing that was clumping and scraping about the room didn’t seem to really see her. As the hours passed, she began to believe it was because of th
e bronze toad. Maybe there was something in it that kept the djinn at bay. For since that first time, it had not shown its bones to her. Maybe I didn’t really see the bones at all, she thought. She giggled again. If I don’t move, then I’ll be safe.
The scraping was on the other side of the large room, its noise echoing about the high ceiling. From where she was, she had a clear view of the red spiders, too. The big one was still in its spot. That was good. Yes, that was good. Her head pounded. How long had it been since Samya left? Three hours? Nine? All she had was the hanging dim light near the spiders.
“Chukwu, you better thank me when I get out of here,” she whispered to herself. It was good to hear her voice, even if she couldn’t raise it. “If I get out of here.” She hugged herself closer to the bronze toad’s warm body, pressing her head to it. Her comb clicked against the metal. She took it out and examined it, glad to have something else to focus on. She held it to her nose and smelled it. It smelled briny like the sea, but there was also a hint of flowers. The smell was pleasant. It smelled of outside. She smiled and whispered “Thank you” to the lady of the sea who’d saved her and then given her a gift that she could admire during a dark time.
“Whooooo oh whoooooo is Sunny Nwazuuuue?” she heard an ancient male voice suddenly sing. Scraaaaape. “Whooooo oh whooooo is Sunny Nwazuuuue?” the voice said again. Then another scraaaaape.
It had seen her. It had known she was there all along. The bronze toad was just a bronze toad. A decoration. An ornament in a room that was more a giant trash container than anything else. Sunny knew this. She’d just needed something to grasp because they’d given her nothing. They’d thrown her down here, and they hadn’t even given her a gun, a protective stone, a hard stick, nothing. She had her juju knife, but she didn’t know any protective charms against djinni or ghosts.
She glanced up at the ceiling. The giant red spider was still there and even from where she was, she felt more positive than ever that it was watching her. But the other smaller ones had dissipated. Maybe they were all over the basement now . . . including on the floor. She looked down and wasn’t surprised to see one scurrying across the sandy marble.
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