Jackal, Jackal, page 23
Timi bolted. The frame dissolved into an incoherent blur, camera swinging up and down so I could scarcely make sense of where he ran. But I didn’t need to; I remembered this part all too well. I hadn’t wanted my mum to see the video. I hadn’t wanted her to see what I had been up to. I had wanted so badly to destroy that camera and beat the shit out of Timi for following me in the first place. Childish preoccupations. I wished now I hadn’t chased him. I wished...there were so many things I wished for, but wishes don’t change the past.
On screen, Timi came to a halt in the recreation centre with its carousel of impaled horses. He flipped the camera on himself for a brief second, long enough for me to see the sadness in his eyes.
“Why...” he panted, “why does he hate me so much?”
Tears stung my eyes. “I don’t hate you,” I whispered at the screen. “Oh, Timi, I don’t—I was an idiot teenager but I don’t hate you.”
As Timi turned the camera away from himself, the recreation area came into view. To the right, partly hidden in the shadows, was a door. Propped open by what looked like a drawer, or a stack of tiles still in its pack. A thick, almost palpable darkness spilled out of the room beyond. Even all these years later, the sight of that hollow void of a doorway sent gooseflesh crawling up my spine. A large, yellow smiley face hung over the lintel with the words THE SMILE PLACE printed in bold beneath it.
“Don’t go in there,” I muttered, even though I knew it was useless. Me speaking to a video recording twenty years later would not change it. “Please don’t go in there.”
But Timi could not hear me. He went in and the darkness claimed him.
Lines of static stuttered across the TV, then everything went black. Black and silent. In the living room the sofa groaned as I leaned forward, eyes glued to the TV, watching, waiting. The soft whirr of the VHS player cut through the weighted silence.
After a moment, I sank back into the sofa, wiping my eyes. I tried to think of anyone who would know of Timi’s whereabouts, anyone who would have seen anything. Perhaps Mrs. Bright from down the street, if the police hadn’t already questioned her. I should drive down to the station, speak to Deputy Emeka—
A bloodcurdling scream rent the air.
I fell backwards, stifling a cry of my own, plugging my ears as more of Timi’s screams tore through the TV speakers. A moment later, colour burst across the screen as the camera spun and spun, eventually coming to rest a few feet from The Smile Place. The frame was upside down. I turned my head sideways.
Timi burst out of the darkness, ran straight into my arms and almost took me down.
“What is it?” on-screen me yelled, still shirtless, my belt hanging lose. “Why are you screaming? Stop screaming!”
“There w-w-was a man!” he gabbled.
“What man? Where?”
“In th-th-there.” He managed before dissolving into incoherent babbling.
I watched on-screen me strain to keep him in my grasp. But he struggled like a child possessed, a child who had come face to face with the devil himself, and he wouldn’t stop screaming, wouldn’t stop trying to claw free of my grasp.
I smacked him. Hard.
The video ended, and we froze onscreen. On my face was an expression of mild annoyance; Naomi, who had just been coming into frame looked confused—confused and slightly harassed. But Timi...
He looked like a corpse.
I sat there for a long time, staring at the TV. I had never watched this tape. I didn’t even know it still existed. I had made a point of destroying the tape to hide the evidence of my sexual escapade. It seemed Timi managed to restore it. But when...and why?
The aftermath of the event still burned bright in my mind. Timi withdrew into himself. He wouldn’t speak of what happened, at least not to me or mum. At the time I had chalked it up to an irrational fear of the dark, and I was mostly glad he stopped following me everywhere.
I stared out the window, surprised to find it dark outside. The dusty wall clock showed some minutes to nine. I hadn’t planned to stay this long. I started to rise. The drive back to Lagos would take three hours, but if I left now I could avoid traffic and make it in time for—
The player hummed and whirred and our frozen image broke on screen. I stared, confused, as it resolved into another scene.
JUNE 24, 2000. 12:03 PM.
Timi sat in an armchair in Dr. Bello’s office. Behind him, a hideous yellow curtain with repeating bird motif stretched across the window. Next to it a wall clock ticked loudly.
“Alright, Timi.” Dr. Bello’s gentle voice came off-camera. “There is no one else here. Just you and me, okay?”
Timi didn’t respond, just kept staring at his hands.
“Would you like to walk me through what happened?”
“I was...was r-r-running in the mall...“
“Why were you running? Were you being chased?”
Timi looked up at the doctor, then at the camera. “I wasn’t...I don’t know. I don’t remember.”
I frowned. I remember Dr. Bello as a kindly woman with butterfly glasses who always had a smile for everyone. She had been Timi’s speech therapist, helping with his stutter. He often recorded their sessions to aid his practice at home. What I don’t remember is her being a psychologist. A pang of guilt twisted my insides. How alone had Timi been that he felt he could only talk to Dr. Bello about The Smile Place?
“Alright,” said Dr. Bello. “You were running. What happened next?”
“There w-w-was a room with a smiley face on t-t-top and...” he wrung his hands together, then began to worry at the edge of his shirt, picking at a loose thread. He looked so small and I wanted nothing more in that moment than to hold him. “And then I went in.”
In the background the clock ticked, and ticked, and ticked.
“Go on,” Dr. Bello said. Ever patient, ever gentle.
Barely a whisper, so quiet I almost didn’t catch it. “Then I saw the Long Man.”
Timi’s eyes slid to the camera, and I could have sworn he was looking straight at me. Guilt clawed at me, and I wanted to look away. Because it was my fault, all my fault. If only I had been a better older brother to him, none of this would have happened. So I looked back at Timi, held his gaze. But there was nothing in those eyes. Not fear, not even blame. Just an...absence. As though whatever animated him, whatever made him Timi, was long gone, leaving this shell of a child.
“He asked me to smile,” Timi continued. “He s-s-said I had come to the smile p-p-lace and he wanted a big fat happy smile from me. He said...if-if-if I d-d-did not smile, he wouldn’t let me leave.”
“And...did you smile?”
“I was too scared to smile.”
“Why were you scared?”
Silence, but for the tick, tick, tick of the clock.
“Because of his face,” Timi whispered. “It was...it was. I tried not to look but...he made me. He made me look at his face and...and he said bad things. Things that made me scream. And it was so dark...and...and...I was so scared...” he looked at her. “You don’t believe me,” he said flatly, without blame. “Nobody does.”
“No, not at all,” said Dr. Bello, and I could tell she was humouring him. “I do believe that what you experienced is real; the emotions, the fear. They’re all real.” A telltale thud as she closed her book. “I have a question, Timi. The Long Man told you terrible things that made it impossible for you to smile. If you couldn’t smile, how are you...here now, with me in this office? How did you leave?”
Timi’s answer was so low that I initially missed it. Only upon replaying the last few seconds did I realise that his lips had moved in reply. I scooted closer to the TV, turned the volume up to max, as I watched his lips shape the words:
“I didn’t leave.”
Providence Mall, what remained of it, stood stark against the night sky. The government had abandoned its construction halfway as they were wont to do with such projects, Governor Amosun spiriting away public funds to offshore Swiss accounts. The mall stood under the rot and dilapidation of twenty years, already being reclaimed by nature’s green hand. Gravel crunched underfoot as I made my way towards the entrance, flashlight beam cutting through the dark. It was nearly 1 am by my time, and I would have waited till morning before coming here, but I couldn’t sleep. I needed to know.
That last tape had left me thoroughly shaken. The grainy image of Timi’s face still loomed in my mind as he whispered, I didn’t. Was he being metaphorical in saying he never left the Smile Place or—and I feared to even think it, found the notion ridiculous—was he being literal?
But ridiculous or not, here I was in the dead of the night, trudging through the ruins of Providence Mall, looking for my brother.
I had gone on to boarding school shortly after the mall incident, and never gave Timi the time of day whenever I returned home for the holidays. When I did notice him, it was to remark that he was such a weirdo, moping around, his eyes forever on the ground. If only I had known, if only I could have done something...
A chill settled in my bones as I stepped into the mall. I shuddered. This place...it felt wrong. It was in the way the silence pressed at me from all sides, weighted, expectant. It was in the air; stale and rank with the stink of a freshly opened grave. It was in the absence of rats and cockroaches, for even those mindless creatures knew to avoid this place. I could hardly see; my vision limited to whichever strip my narrow flashlight beam fell on, so that I felt unmoored, unable to shake off the gnawing sense of vast space, as though I blundered blindly towards the lip of an abyss. What walls had not succumbed to the years were stained with moisture and mould bloom. Beer cans and condom wraps, cigarette packs and filthy panties—two decade’s worth of teenage hauntings—littered the area.
The carousel still stood in the recreation area. The base had collapsed, wrapped in the grip of roots snaking out of the sunken floor like a ship half-submerged by the reaching tentacles of a sea beast. I swept my flashlight through the wreckage, the beam lighting up the horses, glancing off their shiny eyes and shiny coats before finally settling on the Smile Place.
The door still hung ajar as it had twenty years ago. The yellow face still smiled down invitingly.
“Timi?” I called at the darkness.
The walls threw back my voice in a mocking succession of echoes that brought the dark to life, and raised the hairs on the back of my neck. I licked my lips, gripping the flashlight in one sweaty palm as the echoes died out. Some small part of me wanted to run, to turn around and hightail out of this mausoleum of things that never were. But I had come all this way, and I had to know.
I stepped into the Smile Place.
An old rug filled the damp floor, and on the walls were hard wood boards for tacking papers and notices, all of which were empty. Scribbled on a black board in chalk were proclamations such as WELCOME, KIDS, and, WHAT ELSE CAN YOU DO BUT SMILE? And, NO CRYING, NO KICKING, NO FIGHTING. THIS IS A HAPPY PLACE! And, YOU WILL RIDE THE CAROUSEL.
I realized The Smile Place was some sort of daycare. No doubt intended for hassled parents who desperately needed reprieve from their kids while they indulged in the frivolities the mall had to offer.
Laughter. Quiet, relieved laughter bubbled up my throat. There was nothing in The Smile Place. Of course, there was nothing here. What had I hoped to find, Timi? I laughed even harder. This was just an empty room, one like several others, like the mall at large, which never served its true purpose. Relief washed over me. I knew in that moment that this wasn’t my fault. Whatever Timi had gotten himself into, wherever he was now, I was not responsible for his disappearance. I shook my head, turning to leave—
And found the horses blocking my path.
“What?” I said softly. The horses clustered at the entrance—looking strangely bigger, twelve pairs of eyes fixed on me—as though someone had moved them there.
Or they had moved of their own accord.
Fear, acrid and oily, slid down my throat.
“Who’s there?” I called, my voice cracking. “Timi. Is that you? Are you—?”
“John.”
I whipped about as a bulb sizzled into life, its jaundiced yellow light illuminating our...living room? It looked like our living room, with its peeling wallpaper and rusted ceiling fan and moth-eaten drapes. But it was a veneer, a poorly rendered imitation, because our living room did not have that horrible table at the centre, with the figure shrouded in shadow sitting at the head, an ungodly marine stench wafting from—
With a groan of wood on wood, the figure pushed to its feet. Up, up, up it stretched, endlessly unfolding, twitching like an inflatable dancing man until it stood ten, twelve, fifteen feet tall, a grotesque aberration of the human form. Long arms and long torso, swathed in a coal-grey coat with a white collar like a preacher, or a mortician.
And where the face should be was darkness.
I took a great, whooping breath, and belted out a scream.
The Long Man moved: gliding towards me with lanky limbs.
“John,” I shuddered at the way my name rolled off his tongue. Possessive. As though he’d known me for a long time. On the Long Man’s lips, my name became an incantation, each pronunciation laying claim to me, rooting me to the spot so I couldn’t flee. “John...John...John.”
A whimper escaped my throat. Trapped, I turned my head away, turned from that awful spectre and croaked: “You took my brother. Where is my brother?”
The Long Man paused, head cocked as though considering me. “Don’t you remember?” he rasped, his breath foul and marine. “I will remind you. Ever since he was born, and you found your mother’s love and attention turning away from you and to Timi, you wanted him gone. You were selfish. Selfish for attention, selfish for love. You weren’t going to share that with Timi. That needy, whiny little rat who could never stop following you around. You didn’t want his love, didn’t want his adoration, not when his presence was just an unwanted reminder of your replacement.”
“That is...that is not true. You’re lying.” I wanted to plug my ears, but the Long Man’s voice came at me from all sides.
“You wanted him gone, John. You wanted him dead! But you couldn’t live with yourself.”
I began to bawl, hot tears streaming down my cheeks, snot dribbling into my beard. It was all true. Every last bit of it. I had wished him away, I had been jealous of the attention he received. But I had been a child, a stupid, stupid child. And I didn’t mean any of it.
“Please...I’m sorry.”
The Long Man placed a hand on my shoulder. It was cold. So cold.
Slowly, he turned me around.
“Who are you?” I looked into his face. And saw that it was mine.
And then I was on the carousel, riding a massive black horse, the Long Man’s possessive arms wrapped around me.
There were many things I wanted to say, many things I wanted to do. Mostly, I yearned to see Timi one last time, if only to apologize, to let him know that I didn’t hate him, I never truly hated him.
I don’t hate you, brother. I love you. I love you with all my heart.
I am so sorry, Timi.
Round and round and round we went. Into the night, into the dark, where there was nothing.
A CCTV camera surveils Providence Mall, a security measure by the neighbourhood watch. After all, abandoned, uncompleted buildings make for the perfect den for hooligans. But this was a quiet neighbourhood, thank you very much, with good church-going folks. And they didn’t want hooligans.
Gbenga has just returned from his fifth piss of the night (he really needs to stay off the coffee, but how else will he keep awake?) when the camera stutters into life, its motion sensors detecting movement. He squints at the grainy video of the mall, the front area overgrown with weeds. He’s about to dismiss it as triggered by an animal—probably a bat or a finch, they get lots of those. Then he sees the figure cutting through the grass.
A young boy, wearing clothes he wore when he was a kid, the sort of outfit his daughter calls old school. But that is not what terrifies him.
It is the strangest thing, perhaps because he needs to sleep, but Gbenga could have sworn the boy’s shadow is long and moving in a way it’s not meant to.
Only later, much later, he remembers what it reminds him of:
An inflatable dancing man.
THE CLOCKMAKER AND HIS DAUGHTER
Gaza looked down at the city of Nyss, surveying his creation. He thought it was perfect.
Well, almost.
In the city centre stood several griots spinning a tale to a captive audience, their camels and brightly-coloured caravans sheltering in the shade of palm trees. The griots should be dusty—after all they had travelled some distance, spent several months weathering the harsh terrain of the desert. As it was they looked too pristine, glistening as they were with fresh coats of paint. So Gaza plucked his brush, dipped it in a bowl of dust and worked some dirt into their wooden grains until each griot looked appropriately aged and travel-worn. After a moment’s thought, Gaza moved a young boy from the steps of the library and placed him in the audience. There. Now it was perfect.
“Daughter,” Gaza called. “Come!”
The door swung open. Gaza pushed back his dismay at the sight of her. He would never get used to seeing his daughter this way, the stone-like scales eating her skin until the healthy brown flesh was nearly overtaken. The sickness had taken half her body, and her entire left leg was all carapace so that it was useless and snagged on the floor whenever she walked, making a sound like rolling boulder. If it ever reached her heart...he shook the thought from his head. Ufa leaned against her walking stick, the weariness stark in how she carried herself, in the way her shift clung to her frail form. But as she took in the city, sprawled on the floor of what used to be their bedroom, the light came back into her eyes.
