If I were asked when it all started, I would say it was the night after she had Somkene. In the weeks leading up to that night, Chi-Chi looked forward to having her child, decorating the nursery with different shades of pink and teddy bears, with the bed smelling of baby oil and powder. But when I brought Somkene, wrapped in a plump, white shawl, to her, her face registered disappointment.
“Sister, meet Somkene, our beautiful baby girl,” I said.
Chi-Chi waved me aside and turned her face to the wall. She was supposed to take the crying baby from my arms, cuddle her closely to her breasts, and sing those nursery rhymes she had planned to sing to her baby after birth. When she finally took the baby from me, she held her with a distant look on her face, seemingly frustrated by her sore, milkless breasts, before tossing her back to me like a porcelain doll. My heart leaped. I tried to talk to her; Mama also did, but our words bounced off the hospital walls and right back to us.
“Do you think it is because of Chidozie?” Mama queried. I shook my head vehemently.
Though Chi-Chi had had a difficult pregnancy, it could not be because of her deadbeat baby daddy, Chidozie, the sweet-talking Ogwu businessman who had his way with words and promised her everything in the world only to abscond when he heard about her pregnancy. He closed down his shop in Ogwu Market, cut all connections with her, and never returned any messages or calls. Chi-Chi saw such men as weak people who wanted the easy way out, who drove themselves through legs without any form of protection, and rejected the consequences later.
I could still remember the evening Mama found out Chi-Chi was pregnant. She had cried out in pain because Chi-Chi was in her final year at the university and set to be the first graduate in the family. She held onto Chi-Chi’s arm all the way to Ogwu Market, but we met Chidozie’s neighbour, who said he had travelled overseas to buy new goods.
My sister was a strong woman with a tough personality and I couldn’t imagine how Chidozie used sweet words to lay her on her back and pump his seeds into her. But love made one do stupid things. Chi-Chi promised to have her baby and shower her with all the love she had to give. She had looked forward to this baby as much as everyone. So what changed? The baby screamed for the warmth of her mother’s body and breasts but found none. She neither asked for her nor cuddled her weeks after we were discharged from the Central Hospital, Ogwu.
It took two months before Chi-Chi finally reached for her. I was stunned as I placed the baby in her hands.
“She looks like Chidozie,” she muttered. “She cheated me.” She smiled, looking at Somkene absentmindedly. “I waited for nine months only for you to come out, looking just like him.”
Could that be the reason for her change in temperament? The fact that her baby reminded her of a man who dumped her when she needed him the most?
“Leave us. I want to bond with my child.”
I swelled and deflated with relief, raising my hands to the skies in thanksgiving before leaving the room to hunt for scent leaves that Mama would use to make her pepper soup. I had barely finished with harvesting the greens when I heard screams and shouts from the compound. I looked up at the cause of the commotion and saw Chi-Chi on the balcony, the baby in hands, smiling. It was a strange smile, the kind one wears before doing something one will regret. The baby shrieked as if she had a premonition of what her mother wanted to do. My mother was on the ground, tumbling in the dirt with her kiri kiri star wrapper.
“Chi-Chi, nwa m, biko, come down, don’t do this.”
Everyone was begging her.
I could have slapped myself for leaving her in the room alone with the baby. She wanted to kill Somkene, not bond with her. Praying for a miracle that slowed time, I tiptoed upstairs to the balcony, sneaked up behind her, yanked her back, and grabbed the baby from her hands. Chi-Chi fell hard to the ground.
“Chi Chi, ara o na agba gi?! Are you mad? What kind of mother thinks of doing this to her child?” were the questions asked when everyone gathered in the sitting room, heads bowed like we were mourning.
Chi-Chi stared into the emptiness, her eyes just as bland.
After that day, my sister was given a new name: the suffix of onye ara was added to her name and I was christened “Nnenne, nwanne Chi-Chi, onye ara”—Nnenne, the sister of Chi-Chi, the mad woman. Anytime I was coming back from the market, little children would trail me, clapping and making up songs about my sister, until I would turn and give them a hot pursuit.
Chi-Chi was kept in a solitary confinement, where she crept further back into her shell, saying a few words and staring out the window towards the clump of bushes. Sometimes, she changed the music on the boombox to match her mood. Other times, she was a Firework in the sky, like Katy Perry sang or she was melancholic, Frozen in her body, just like Madonna.
Music was something we had been introduced early to by our father and what we loved as adults. When we did Saturday chores, we turned the volume high, moonwalking with the mop or throwing our rags in the air and catching them while doing cartwheels to Britney Spears with Mama yelling in the background. I let the music play because they said music is therapeutic; maybe she would find her way back to us through it. I entered from time to time to take the dirty plates by her bedside to wash, change the sheets, and pour hot water for Mama to bathe her.
“How is my child?” She startled me with that question the few times I went to drop food in her room. Ever since the incident, she hardly talked about her child or anything else.
“She is healthy,” I replied. “We are giving her infant formula.”
“How big is she?”
“Six months big.” So much time had passed.
The distance between us was glaring. We were the only two my mother bore before my father passed away. She never remarried but happily raised us. We used to be close and we often knew what each other was thinking without any words, passing messages with mischievous glares. We walked back from school hand-in-hand, plucking hibiscus flowers and placing them in our hair. Chi-Chi was the stronger and stubborn one, getting into fights with boys or girls who tried to bully me and taking Mama’s bashings and whips with peace while I cried in the background, begging Mama not to kill her.
She looked at her breasts bloated with milk and sighed.
“Sometimes I hear her screams from here and my breasts become very full and sore. From the time she was conceived, she has caused me nothing but pain. Chidozie, the man I thought loved me, abandoned me to my fate to eat my thoughts till my blood pressure spikes. She took my life when I was about finishing school. I had to keep everything on pause for her, yet she keeps crying. I can’t stand those tears. Sometimes, I want to use a pillow and stifle her forever, but I am not capable of those dark thoughts that that woman is asking me to do.”
My eyes bulged out at the mention of “that woman’” till I was sure they were as round as akara balls.
She raised her hands slowly and dramatically to a dark corner in the room. My eyes followed her hands, hoping to see whom she spoke of. But nothing was there—just a wig stand with her brunette wig that hadn’t been worn in months. The gentle wind was blowing and the floral curtains were floating. Was the silhouette making her imagine there was someone else in the room?
“She is not here now but she comes sometimes. She wears a faded floral gown that billows in the wind and an eighties-themed wig, ruffled and stringy. She talks to me and is the only one who understands me and advises me on what to do.”
She took the spoon and scooped the pepper soup into her mouth resignedly. She looked tired, like she didn’t want to talk anymore. I hurriedly went to Mama and told her what I heard. Mama, who had been chopping onions, dropped the knife and wiped her hands on her faded wrapper.
“This is where Prophet Ukoh comes in. Before Chi-Chi will wake up one day, carry her clothes, and enter Eke Uboh.”
I knew Prophet Ukoh, the tall man with an intimidating physique dressed in white from head to toe with well-cut Afro hair and wide nostrils that flared out when he commanded the evil spirits to come out and drown in our Osimmiri river. He never walked alone; he had a procession of white-clad zealous believers tethered to him by an invisible string and latching onto each word with a feverish Amen! You could tell he was miles away by the bell he used to ward off evil spirits and the strong scent of the herbs he immersed in water to purge the environment of them. He was known for the tactics and theatrics he employed in calling out unclean spirits. When he was in a good mood, he asked politely, imploring them to take host in a new body. On other days, he would go as far as challenging the spirit to a duel or wrestling the victim, making sure that the demon was stressed before eventually leaving, so it would think twice before coming back. He had a good number of success rates and Mama was sure he would cure Chi-Chi.
He danced around Chi-Chi for some time, as if trying to inspect the demon he was expunging and group it accordingly.
“This one is strong,” he mumbled and his interpreter chorused in Igbo.
He reeled off, telling Mama that Chi-Chi was suffering a possession from the ghost of a woman who drowned her babies when she was alive and had taken her own life, too. The woman often visited women who recently gave birth and had access to those with porous spiritual fields. The woman had ruptured Chi-Chi’s mind and made herself comfortable. He mentioned some items that they would buy for him to banish the woman and rebuild and fortify Chi-Chi’s spiritual field once again. I heard words like pure alkaline water, raven’s eggs, red and white candles, and aromatic incense.
“The alkaline water will neutralise the damage caused by the evil spirit, the raven’s eggs is to make sacrifices to appease her, the red and white candles is to build a protective wall around her while we carry out the rituals, and the incense is used to invoke and welcome good spirits to replace the bad one.”
Mama, with tears in her eyes, set out to gather the items requested by the prophet. On the morning of the first ritual, we walked to Chi-Chi’s room and met an empty bed with the bed sheets wrapped neatly and piled in a corner. I rushed to the window, screaming her name, but no one replied and my words reverberated in the chilly breeze. My sister was gone with the wind as Ben King’s Stand By Me boomed in the sitting room. The only thing left was a small puddle in the centre of the room; I didn’t know where it came from. Not only were we close to the dry season where rain sparsely fell, I was sure the roof wasn’t leaking so I couldn’t explain where the water came from.
“I told you the woman has been pulling her into her world. Now she is gone. We have to make offerings for her safe return instead,” Prophet Ukoh spoke heavily, shaking his head as my mother rolled on the floor and Somkene joined in the confusion, crying her tiny lungs out.
I fell to my knees and wept. Somkene calls my mother “Mama,” and she was the only living reminder of the beauty that sprouted amidst the sadness and chaos of our home. That sunflower that wasn’t stifled by thorny weeds. I raised her with the sisterly love I had for Chi-Chi. I transferred all the love and attention to her, helping her take her first steps and hugging her tightly as she walked to the nursery school’s entrance on her first day of school.
I still said prayers and booked masses for Chi-Chi’s safe return and her soul. Maybe she would change her mind one day and appear at our gate. We could only hope.
We never saw Chi-Chi again. It was only two years later, when I got employed in the local police force, that I started hearing things like “Nwanyi mmiri” and linked it to what might have happened to my sister. It was one of the reasons I joined—to get closure on what happened to my sister. I buried my head in the missing people and cold cases files seeking for trails that led to various disappearances in Ogwu town. On average, about thirty to forty pregnant women vanished in Ogwu town without a trace in mysterious circumstances.
I didn’t care about the leering gazes of superior officers who wanted me to lie on my back and spread my legs for promotion. I ignored them and hard to rise through the ranks and earn their respect. I realized that there was truth to what my sister said about the strange woman who haunted her as I progressed with my investigation. I set up a board in my room in my bid to research the missing women and the circumstances in which they vanished. Some of them had made complaints about sighting a strange woman who was crying and stalking them with dirty hair while she held what seemed like a bundle in her hands. My red tape spun across many women, the hospital in the centre of town where the women went for antenatal and Sowe Lake. There had to be a connection between the places. There were so many cold cases and disappearances without a trace.
I wanted to find out more about the creature Prophet Ukoh had spoken of. I went to the Ogwu State library to satisfy my curiosity and I was directed to the part of the library that held mystical and spiritual books. One grabbed my attention in particular: Owu Mmiri or Water People, was its title, written by Rev. Father J.J Abonne, who I later found out was a renowned spiritualist who not only exorcised demons and spirits but was a renowned spiritualist and an authority in paranormal investigations.
I got home and tore into the book, which got interesting with each flip. A lot of drawings adorned the book until I got to the page of a sad woman with dirty hair and an unworldly appearance that looked like she was coming out of a water body. It had to be her, Nwanyi Mmiri. From snippets of the story, she was a jilted lover or side chick who thought the love of her life would leave his wife and marry her even after she had two secret children for him. One day, when the billionaire assured her that he was not going through with the divorce as it would cost him his inheritance, she became enraged and drove her car with her children into the Sowe Lake, where it sank with her and her two crying boys. Ever since then, she has been seen around the lake, crying for her children and looking for them. She specifically hunted pregnant women, crying at their doorsteps, and anyone who saw her was sure of certain death.
The book also described the symptoms: hearing unseen voices urging you to take your life or kill your child, seeing the woman constantly, and having red blotches on your skin. Once the red blotches started showing like you were afflicted with a disease, the end was near. The most interesting aspect was that it wasn’t written in the book about how to protect a pregnant woman from the wrath of the crying woman. It was almost as if you had to resign yourself to death and wait for the day she drowned you in her puddle.
I remained on the lookout for any reported cases or sightings of the waterwoman. One hot afternoon, as I was going through some files, I discovered that there had been a recent stalking report by a pregnant woman who described her stalker as a mad, ugly woman with dirty wet hair. I asked the officer on duty with me why the matter hadn’t been addressed with utmost importance.
He hissed. “Abeg we get more pressing issues to handle. E be like say that woman dey craze’
Of course, this was Nigeria, where the police were the last port of call for people in danger. Even when they were contacted, it was one thing or another: the vans didn’t have fuel or you had to drop small mobilisation money. I quickly got into my rickety car, the reward of my almost five years in service and drove to the woman’s address I had taken from the file. I didn’t sign up for the perks of the Force as I believed it would bring me closer to the investigation of my sister’s disappearance with files and resources that would help me figure out what happened to her.
I knocked on the door of the milk-coloured bungalow located eerily away from the town, surrounded by a patchwork of umbrella trees and low rows of well-cut flowers. When a woman opened, by the pudge in her belly, I could see she was about five months gone. She had on a worn wrapper and flat slippers. From the dark circles around her eyes, I could tell she hadn’t had a good night’s rest in a long time.
“Who are you?” she enquired, holding her bump and dashing her eyes around as if there was anyone in the corner ready to spring on her.
“I am Sergeant Nnenne from Ogwu Central Police Station. I am here in respect to your complaint filed two weeks ago about a stalker,” I replied.
Her eyes grew wide in shock. She dragged me inside and shut the door. I was aloof, wondering why she acted so quickly.
“Come in.” She shoved me to the sitting room, asking, “What would you drink? I made fresh onugbu soup.”
I asked her not to bother.
“Do you know her too? She has made my life miserable, standing in the corner with a strange smile and whispering dark things to me.”’
“Chinwe, your case is similar to my sisters. She saw the woman before she vanished without a trace seven years ago.”
I saw the dark cloud of fear creep slowly into her eyes.
“‘No one believes me when I tell them she is there. I have told everyone who cares to listen. I feel my life is in danger. I have also filed a report but they just laughed at me. My husband is outside the country and my mother went on omugwo at my sister’s house in the North. Please, help me, I don’t want to die.”
I held her hands. “I promise to get to the bottom of this.” I reached for my pocket and retrieved my card. “Call me if she comes again.”
I checked her skin and eyes and observed the red blotches were not yet visible so she was in the second stage of the manifestation of the crying woman. There was still a chance to save her and find closure on what happened to my sister. I took down her statement, gave her my number, and asked her to call me anytime she heard the woman call out to her.
The weeks that followed were uneventful; this was a sleepy Southeastern Nigerian town where nothing much happened except the mystery of the crying woman, which I was determined to solve. The day she called me, I was watching a thriller on Netflix after I had helped Somkene with her homework and tucked her in bed.
“Hello,” I said into the receiver.
“She is here.” I heard the cold voice call out to me. “I am so scared; my husband is out of town and I am the only one at home.”
“Chinwe, stay there. I am on my way.”
I got into my car and raced to her junction. I packed and got out my gun and moved quietly so as not to alert the crying woman.
My police boots scrunched the dried leaves on the ground as I stared at the brown-painted bungalow with a dangling yellow bulb in the balcony. I knocked on the door and she opened. I put my index finger to my lips, imploring her to be silent as she nodded so fast with relief in her eyes that someone was there to help her.
We sat in the kitchen as we waited for the sound of the crying woman. The woman held my hand tightly, happy that there was one person that didn’t call her mad and I squeezed it back assuredly that I was in her corner.
We sat in silence for almost fifteen minutes before we heard a shrill cry like nails scratching on a blackboard. Goosebumps formed on my skin and I shut my eyes, reciting the Lord’s Prayer. I heard the dripping of water; it sounded like it was coming from a faulty faucet, Tam Tam Tam. She was walking towards us, searching for Chinwe, who had squeezed my arm so tightly that I felt my blood was coagulating. I armed her with a kitchen knife.
The footsteps were almost near when I sprang up and unloaded clips on the woman. I shot without thinking, bullet after bullet, until I realised the bullets were passing through her apparition, bounced off the walls, and ricocheted across the room. She was invisible to me but I followed the wet footsteps around the house. I watched her footsteps as she edged closer to the frightened Chinwe, who was elsewhere and was swinging the knife hopelessly around. I shot at her and Chinwe used the knife to strike. That was when I saw her, the ghost of the crying woman. She looked like a character from the pages of a Stephen King novel with torn clothes that were dripping wet. Her face was pale and her eyes dark and empty. Her fingernails were long, rotten, and black, and so were her toe nails.
It seemed like the knife had more effect on her as she shrieked loudly one last time before marching out of the house and banging the door shut, almost pulling it from its hinges. I looked at the distressed Chinwe, who cupped her mouth in her hands.
“Oh, my God, I have never been so scared in my life.” She couldn’t stop crying.
I quickly gathered my thoughts. My bullets had done nothing but make the ghost angry but the knife sent her running. Steel, she was appalled by steel!.
“Do you have any steel objects in this house?” I asked.
I rushed into her bedroom and checked her dresser and cupboard for anything I could find. I found a safety pin in her drawer and quickly pinned it on her.
“Wear this always and she will not come near you.”
Chinwe was crying but relieved that she had found an ally in the war against the crying woman. She pinned it to her silky nightwear and mouthed ‘thank you’. I slept over to calm her down before leaving in the morning to get Somkene ready for school.
Chinwe didn’t have any more complaints and regularly came to see me in the police station to share some fruits with me and catch up on the local gossip.
“She is coming very soon, my child.” She rubbed her belly.
‘You will have a smooth delivery; there will be no complications,”’ I assured her.
She stood up to go.
“Where is your safety pin?” I asked.
She smiled weakly. “I forgot it.”
“You must not leave it when going out!’ I warned, aware of the danger she would face if the ghost found her without it.
“I won’t. She hasn’t disturbed me for a while.”
“It is because of the safety pins,” I reminded her and she promised not to forget them.
I watched her wobble out of the station with her swollen feet, concerned at her well-being and how forgetful she could be, especially in this precarious time when she was close to her delivery. I had this sinking feeling that she would keep forgetting the pin.
It happened the night before Somkene’s graduation. My phone rang and when I picked up, she was screaming.
“My water broke and she is here. She is here to take my baby!”
The meat I was eating fell from my mouth and I gulped a cup of water before running out of the kitchen, fiddling with my car keys, and driving away into the darkness.
I heard her screams from the house and my heart sank, imagining the worst. I rushed into the kitchen to see her sprawled on the kitchen floor, holding a knife and writhing in pain. Her head was dangled to the right, her face white as though life had been sucked out from it, and I noticed dark patches on her neck. The woman had come and she was here to take Chinwe.
I retrieved my gun and aimed in the direction the voice was coming from. I shot, missed, and heard that deathly chuckle. She was mocking me and my ordinary bullets. The energy in the house was sinister and choking. It was too late to run and check for safety pins in the house. All I could do was help Chinwe stand on her feet and move her to safety.
I tried carrying her but she was too heavy, so I dragged her on the floor, as she kept screaming. Nwanyi Mmiri was amused by the spectacle in front of her. She trailed us, floating and screeching with laughter. I was able to get Chinwe to a room where I kept her in a corner and pointed my gun towards the door, waiting for Nwanyi Mmiri to show up.
For a few minutes, it was quiet before she burst out from the walls and rushed at us with her mouth so wide open that I saw the dark sticky goo. I shot and shot but it was fruitless and I was almost out of bullets. All I could do was pray inward that we survived the night. It was a chaotic scene: a woman in labour with a vengeful ghost on rampage.
Nwanyi Mmiri chuckled after realising we were at her mercy as she advanced towards us. She turned to Chinwe in particular, bearing down on her while opening her bottomless mouth to suck her vitality.
I saw a salt shaker in a cupboard closeby. I dashed for it and poured a circle of salt around us as I recalled from the book that it would keep us safe for some time from Nwanyi Mmiri. I was fully poised, my gun out, waiting to hear the droplets of water.
Nwanyi Mmiri roared and struggled and I knew the circle wouldn’t hold for long so I dealt her the final blow. I brought out a steel bullet I had doused in salt and holy alkaline water, then aimed at her before saying, “Boom, got you!” Then I fired.
I can never forget that scream. It rocked the foundations of the house. I rushed to place my body over Chinwe in a bid to protect her. The bullet caught the woman in the chest, right in the place where her heart should have been and burst. A pool of water appeared underneath her, where she slowly melted and became a black puddle.
We watched for some time before realising she was indeed gone. Chinwe screamed in pain so I rushed her into my car and straight to the hospital, where she was safely delivered of her baby boy.
I remembered my sister and Somkene and I was glad that I was able to get vengeance for her. A tear escaped my eye.
As I stood on the balcony and looked over the city, I felt proud I had saved a life today, and I would continue to do so as I had sworn on my police oath, so help me, God.
This is a wonderful story❤️
Wow, I really enjoyed reading your story❤️🔥