‘‘The footsteps of one man cannot make a stampede. ’’
— Igbo proverb.

‡‡‡

THE attacker always struck in the dead of the night, when everyone had gone to bed, and seen only by the sky, our ancestors and the gods of our land.

These revered supernatural beings watched this elusive attacker carry out its onslaughts, and kept quiet.

I wondered why evil men roamed the Earth freely, while good men were at their mercy. Was it that the gods and our ancestors were now weak? Why the silence? Couldn’t Amadioha strike its thunderbolt and destroy them all? Couldn’t Ala, the Earth goddess, open and swallow these evil men? If our attacker came from the inland towns, couldn’t Okirikiri, our river goddess, make its boat or object of ferry capsize and drown it? Then, in the belly of the river, it would tell the goddess why it was hellbent on annihilating its children!

The last straw that broke the camel’s back was when the attacker killed Omego and vanished with his only male child!

It had invaded our land in the dead of the night as usual, and made its way to Omego’s compound. Scaling the mud fence of the wealthy timber trader, the attacker saw Omego’s wife helping her son to urinate outside, to avoid bed wetting. Without wasting time, it pounced on the child and grabbed him.

Omego’s wife raised an alarm, and, not more than twenty seconds, Omego rushed outside with his Nchapu.

The attacker, still grabbing the child under its left armpit, fought the enraged man with one hand only. As Omego swung the local weapon, the attacker ducked and made a swirl kick, sending the man and his weapon to the ground. Like a bat out of hell, it grabbed the weapon and chopped off the man’s head.

Omego’s wife screamed. In the flurry and blurry of that moment, the attacker vanished with the child.

Omego’s wife said that she saw her husband’s killer very clearly. She said it was Ógù, my son. Her accusation collaborated Nkwo’s story. The footprints of one man can’t make a stampede. Now, the footprints belonged to more than one person, and the stampede was cogent. Spirits seen by the eyes of one man alone could have been a delusion; if they were seen by the eyes of many, its truism is hardly doubted.

The following morning after Omego’s death, all the able-bodied men of Obodo Nta stormed my counting chanting songs of protest.

★★★
More on www.illufik.com