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And so, my cousins, Chiemena and Chiemerie and I just got back from the Nmowu (Masquerade Festival) at the central football stadium in the village. We had so much fun that we couldn’t stop talking about it on our way ‘home’. You see, My Dad and their dad are brothers and to make coming ‘home’ to the village more family oriented, they decided to build a big house with seven rooms together, instead of having separate houses. As we got home, the unpainted home looked empty and Chimena couldn’t stop talking about how ‘haunted’ the house was. It looked a little haunted though especially as the house was not yet painted; only plastered. We all decided to stay in a room and continue our gist about the masquerade festival, school and any other thing that comes to mind, until the others (My parents, my uncle and aunt, and our aunt, Our Dads’ sister) came back from their outing. While we were talking, we all heard a door close, I thought it was just breeze, but Chiemena said if it was just breeze, then he’d really believe the house was haunted’, to buttress his ‘haunted’ argument. Chiemerie, his twin sister, concurred with him, saying that the door slams was too strategic to be just breeze. We decided to ignore the door slam, but then we heard another door open and close.
‘Whose there?’ we shouted in unison, but no reply, instead, we heard footsteps.
‘Whose there?’ we shouted again, this time partly intrigued and partly scared (although none of us would admit the second part) but still no reply.
While Chiemena and I were still being chickens about going to check or see who it was, Chiemerie decided to go check, she closed the door to the room behind her as she left and didn’t return five minutes later. We began to shout her name but no reply. Five minutes to ten minutes later, we began to hear ‘chopping’ noise downstairs. Chiemena and I then decided to go together to go rescue Chiemerie thinking some village maniac might be chopping or getting ready to chop her.
We climbed down the stairs and noticing the sound was coming from the kitchen. We proceeded towards the kitchen only to see Chiemerie and our aunty cooking, Chiemerie was busy chopping veggies on the chopping board. Chiemerie tells us she came down only to discover it was Aunt Nkiru but Aunt Nkiru was on earpiece so she wasn’t able to hear us call out.
‘What about when we called your name?’ I asked Chiemena.
‘I didn’t feel like answering and Aunt Nkiru decided we play a trick on you guys, so you’ll think the ghost captured me’ she laughed sarcastically as she made the ‘uhhhhhhhh’ ghostly sound.
‘Not funny’, I told her
‘Not funny’ Chiemena concurred.
But Chiemerie and Aunt Nkiru laughed on anyway.

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