₦airaland Forum

ozome15:
Hahah this kind story, always make me lugh

Ehn ehn

BadEnglish:
Scary as fvck. But will they listen ��

Well.....we hope they do

Guy.

We need to talk about this thing called “juju.”

We need to talk about the many f**ked up things, the deeply evil practices that people are currently engaging in to get money and power in this world.

Sebi, Yahoo (online fraud) has quickly evolved from what it simply was in the early 2000s,right?

Now, we have Yahoo Plus.

Getting maga (victims) to fall for elaborate traps, has become increasingly difficult.

So, some Yahoo Boys, or G Boys, have turned to dark juju in order to be more successful, more fortunate with their schemes.

�� ��� ��� � ������ ��������� ����������, �'� ������� ���� ��� ���� ������� �� ���� �����. ������ ��� ����� �� ��� ��������� ���������� ����.

It goes beyond just eating shit or stealing panties or throwing dollar notes into ancient waters.

Ask yourself how top-tier fraudsters like Hushpuppi and Invictus Obi were able to rake in millions of dollars.

Oh, you think it's because they were so smart?

I started a little project late last year: between me and a couple of nerds, we research nationwide stories of supernatural occurrences and phenomena.

We sift the real stories from the fake.

This particular story involves Precious Inyang and her brother, Prince.

Apparently, Precious became involved last year with an upcoming G-Boy.

She met him during the #EndSARS protests in Uyo.

That was in October.

He became her boyfriend, this G-Boy whose known name is just an alphabet: �.

Precious merged with M and his circle of acquaintances.

His fellow G-Boys and hard guys, their sassy, hot girlfriends and hotter side-chicks.

Girls who could spend your entire savings in a single shopping spree alone.

Those kind of girls.

Weekends, they would meet at classy spots within Uyo and talk about which G-Boy paid 150k for all-night knacks, which state politician enjoyed fucking teenage boys, which babe was spoiling for war with another babe over a G-Boyfriend.

Those kind of girls, with their dyed haircuts and iPhone 12s.

None of them warned Precious that M was notoriously ambitious.

This is why I think that they were all silent accomplices.

They all knew Precious was headed for major trouble, and they nudged her down there while pretending to be her friends, her tight babes.

It happened one late November night.

M asked Precious to sleep over at his place in Ewet Housing.

She agreed.

When she came by, Precious was not surprised to see other G-Boys in the apartment. She knew that they usually hung out this way, staying close to smoke weed and work on their multiple laptops and iPhones.

After she had had a drink, Precious started feeling funny.

Dizzy, woozy, weak, disoriented.

She had been drugged.

She faintly remembered being moved, as if her body was placed on a stretcher and carried around Uyo.

Now.

Remember Precious Inyangʼs elder brother? Prince.

16th December, 2020, Prince received a phone call from a strange number.

It was evening.

At first, Prince declined the call.

But then the number kept on calling and calling until Prince had to pick it out of frustration.

The person calling was Precious.

Prince was shocked.

He wanted to ask questions, like where had she been and why was her number not going through, you know.

But Precious was babbling, crying.

Here is a transcript of the phone call.

���������� �� � ��������� �� � �����
���� ������� ������ ������ (����*****��) ���
�������� ������ (����*****���) �� �������� ��, ����, ����
�:�� �� �:�� ��

PRECIOUS: (���������)

PRINCE: Hello, hello? Precious, can you hear me? (�� ������)

PRECIOUS: Yes, yes. Prince, Prince?

PRINCE: Yes, talk na. I'm hearing you.

PRECIOUS: Prince please come and help me. Please. (������)

PRINCE: Calm down, calm down. Where are you right now?

PRECIOUS: I don't know, I don't know. I've been here for (���������), but they don't want me to go. Prince, mbok. My stomach has been (���������) me.

PRINCE: What are you saying? Enh? Who is holding you? Are you in Calabar? Who is—

PRECIOUS: (������) M.

PRINCE: Enh?

PRECIOUS: (��������� ����������� ) M! M!

PRINCE: Please nau. Say what I can understand.

PRECIOUS: M.

PRINCE: Okay, okay. See, me I'm in Port Harcourt now o. I can't leave until next week, Precious.

PRECIOUS: Please, please. I don't want to die here.

PRINCE: (���������) not possible. Just tell me where you are nau. Anh-anh.

PRECIOUS: (������) I don't know I don't know, I swear to God I don't know…

The call disconnected at this point, and when a worried Prince managed to call back later, someone else picked up.

It was the owner of the phone. A security guard at a local hotel. I have decided to leave the hotel unnamed, for obvious reasons.

The security guard said that Precious had begged to use his phone, claiming that her iPhone 11 had been seized, and would be monitored even if she got it back.

After getting the hotel's address down on paper, Prince promised to meet the security guard in a few days.

He thanked the guard, who he remembers as having a boyish voice, and asked him to look after Precious.

Prince would never hear from either the security guard or his sister ever again.

He travelled from Port Harcourt to Uyo, and then from Uyo to a village community in Uruan called Ituk Mbang.

A #200 trip on bike from the outskirts of the village is all you'd need to cross over the borders of Cameroun.

Prince had no trouble locating the hotel.

There, he was told that no such persons like Precious and the security guard had ever been in the hotel.

Imagine how confused and weak Prince must have felt, standing before a nonchalant receptionist, trying to make a believable case out of sketchy details.

“My sister is slim, fair. Very fine girl. She told me that she was here now, how can you tell me that you've never seen her before? See her picture here. See. Look well, abeg. Abeg.”

Let's skip over hours of helplessness, and meet Prince right at the moment one of the locals approaches him.

Ituk Mbang is a rugged place, guy.

Most of the young children grow up to be reckless cultists and thugs and underage mothers. They indulge in drugs and guns, and most would hardly read a single book in their lifetimes.

Prince remembers an unpainted whorehouse full of naked women, parading around after sunset, calling on him to come in for a good time, nothing costly.

He moved around with his sister's pictures, one of which he allowed me to attach here, blurred.

Somehow, a local red-eyed guy approached Prince and claimed to have information about Preciousʼ whereabouts.

Prince was highly skeptical at first, until Red Eyes produced a familiar clothing of hers.

Her navy-blue hoodie sweater.

The hoodie was browned and rumpled. It had definitely been worn by someone it did not belong to, because Precious would never let her hoodie get so dirty.

Prince was angry and alarmed. He feared that Red Eyes had done something to Precious.

Red Eyes just shook his head and smiled thinly. He asked Prince, “This babe na your girlfriend abi?”

“No,” Prince said. “Na my sister. My mama born am.”

He should have known then, from the guarded expression on Red Eyesʼ face, the grim lip twitch and drawn-out exhale.

He should have known what to expect, Prince. He should have known that his eyes would see nothing good.

Red Eyes said that it would cost about #500,000 for him and his“boys” to take Prince to wherever Precious was.

All Prince had at that moment was not up to 250k.

He begged and begged and begged.

He assured Red Eyes of 200k, because he expected Precious would have much more money in her account.

They would have to go in the night, Red Eyes said. People would less likely watch, and they would need the advantage of darkness for where they were headed.

Night came.

Prince met up with Red Eyes and two other guys. Young men, smelling of weed and gin. They wore tattered jeans, and one of them had thick dreads.

They rode on motorcycles through the community's rough parts, deeper into the darkness, nearing the rainforest.

At a point, on the backseat of the bike being driven by Red Eyes, Prince realised how sadly unsurprising it would be, if the three guys were to turn on him. It would be too easy for them to kill him and take all he had.

When they reached where the bikes could go no further, they parked the motorcycles and started going on foot.

You ever been into a rainforest?

Nah.

Guy, you ever been in a rainforest at nighttime, at 10 PM?

In the misty cold?

Brushing leaves and cobwebs out of your face, hearing nocturnal beings call out and respond, seeing the beam of your flashlight get swallowed up in the thick blackness.

The palm trees are so tall that they even eat up the full moon.

You cannot feel at ease.

You just want to leave leave leave, but in and in and in you go, because you have committed your life into God's invisible hands, because your sister has to be found.

Anything wey wan happen, make e happen.

When they came to the tree, the others stopped.

Prince alone moved forward.

Until he too, stopped.

Their mouths were open, as if they were only seeing God.

Someone said, “Blood of Jesus.”

It was the biggest tree in the forest so far, with numerous branches, tiny leaves and a thick column of a trunk.

It was terrifying.

Not because of its size, but because of the shapes hanging from the branches or stuck to the trunk.

Human bodies.

Prince shouted, and the others shushed him, especially Red Eye. ��� ��� ���? ��� ��� ��� ��� ����?

How could they expect him to be silent, Prince wondered.

How?

When his sister's naked body was stuck to a giant tree, pinned to its bark like a wad of chewed gum on a wall. Her head was shaved of hair, and tiny green veins snaked over her skin.

She was dead, Prince knew. Long dead.

���, ��� ���� ��, they hissed at him. ��� ��� ����� ����?

Prince had to scramble up the tree with tears in his eyes. The bark of the old tree was wet and sticky.

As he climbed, torchlight between his teeth, Prince heard what he thought was the sound of movement in the bushes.

He didn't have time to wonder if the others could hear it too; he had to climb up and around pinned human bodies, bodies hanging off the branches and swaying slowly, slowly.

Fat bodies. Thin bodies. Male. Female. Old, young. There was even a small child not older than five years.

Prince had gotten close to where his sister was pinned, when three things happened in quick succession.

The bushes around the tree's northern side rustled, and the others below turned with their guns. Slowly, almost majestically, a black horned goat came out into the bright glares of their torchlights.

Prince told me that it was the biggest billy goat he had ever seen in his life. It was the size of a full-grown lion, or even bigger.

Prince accidentally scraped off a piece of the tree's bark, and blood trickled out in vibrant rivulets. Dark, red blood.

Almost immediately, the horned black goat started bleating. It was a terrible sound, thick and urgent. Like an alarm.

This is when the bodies on the tree started trembling, shivering and spasming.

This is when the torchlight fell out of Princeʼs mouth and crashed on the tree's gnarled roots.

This is when Red Eyes and his boys started screaming, trying to shoot the braying goat.

This is when the tree itself came alive. The branches shook and shook, the leaves whispered tiny secrets, and the body of the tree began to breathe, began to pulse and shift.

One of the bodies fell off the tree and landed with a dull �����.

Prince was trying to pull his sister's off the tree, when the fallen body leapt on Red Eyes.

It was the body of a young man, and it was wild. It pulled Red Eyes down and they both wrestled on the leaf-strewn ground.

Red Eyes was shouting “Wod anye! Wod anye!” ���� ��! ���� ��!

The goat was still crying.

The tree was roiling.

The forest was heating up.

Prince pulled Preciousʼ body off the tree and it went off with a low sucking sound before falling on the ground.

He heard two gunshots as he landed on the ground.

By the time Prince stood up, gasping and hurt, Red Eyes was dead, lying alongside the naked body that had attacked him. Blood pooled beneath their still forms, dark red and forest green.

The other boys had run off.

It was just Prince.

And the goat, which had strangely gone quiet.

Only sounds he could hear were swishy motions, low grunts and branch creaks. Some of the bodies were still shaking and shaking, still trying to leave.

Prince says that all through the time he used to pick up his sister's body and the fallen torchlight, the black goat was silent.

It only looked at Prince with dull amber eyes.

But Prince was afraid of its curved horns. The horns of a billy goat can actually puncture flesh and break bones in a fight.

Prince was also afraid of the bodies swaying above his head. If any of them dropped and attacked him, he would do no better than Red Eyes. He didn't even know how to fire a gun.

He would die, and he would die for nothing.

The goat watched him leave, and as Prince struggled under the weight of his sister's body, he heard the other bodies on the tree.

He heard them strain to be free, he heard their teeth clattering, he heard their great agony.

Prince ran, or tried to run through the forest.

You cannot run well in the dark with a dead body on your shoulders.

Death is too heavy for one person to carry.

Prince fell over many times. He cried because he was scared shitless, because it felt like sacrilege to drop his sister's body over and over again.

But he made it to the road somehow. He didn't stop moving until he could see the pale moonlight.

Early January, I had to convince Prince to share his story with me. He was living a hermitʼs life in the village he and Precious had grown up in before moving to Uyo.

He was quiet, and he drank a lot. Mainly ogogoro.

He told me not to let anyone else know of the story until he was either dead or successful in killing the guy who used his sister's body.

M.

Precious is buried in a small grave. Right next to the grave of their mother. Along with the older graves of long-forgotten generations.

“She was just 20, bros,” Prince told me. He showed me her picture, slightly damaged from the incidents of that night in the forest. The picture itself had been taken for Preciousʼ 19th birthday, somewhere around Ibom Plaza. “Just 20 years old. I promised her that I would help her enter UNIUYO, but you know how this Covid-19 lockdown spoiled everything, bros.”

I asked him if he was going to do anything about the tree, this entity that ate life and gave good fortune in exchange to bad men.

Prince laughed. Said he didn't care about the tree. ����� ���� �����, ����. � �� �� ���� ���. ���� ��� ��� ���� �� ���� ����, ������� ��� ��� ���� ����� ��? ���� ���-��� ������ ��� ���� ������ ��� �� �� ������� ���� ���� �����, ���� ���� �����. � �����.

About M, Prince said he would find him and end his life.

“If he like, make him go Australia go hide. I go find am. Na me go kpai that bastard.”

I remember how I looked at Prince back then, I remember because I had had nothing to say to him at the time.

The same way I had nothing to say after he told me that an autopsy found traces of goat semen in Preciousʼ vagina.

Even now, I have nothing to say that will sound right.

Prince died on Monday.

One of the neighbours burst into his single room to find Prince hanging off the ceiling fan hook. His face was swollen and saliva dribbled down his limp tongue.

He died badly; he died of extreme sadness, extreme hopelessness.

Aren't Yahoo Boys cool?

No, let's be serious.

G-Boys are dope personalities: dreads, iPhones, street lingo, smarts and wild, colourful lifestyles.

“������� ��� ���, ���� ��� ����� �������.”

“������ �!”

“���� ��� ���� �� �����, �� ���� ��� ���� ��������.”

“�����!”

We have normalised online fraud in this godforsaken country, glorified the damn thing sef.

When you welcome a mad man into your home, be ready for when he starts shitting in your kitchen.

I don't really know Precious and Prince Inyang, but I recognise that they are consequences of a great malaise. Just like all the other bodies feeding that tree.

I don't know M, but I have known enough people like him to understand that evil grows worse in forms that breathe and dream.

I don't fully understand why a tree in the forests of a little known village is powerful enough to handle dark juju, but I recognise the danger it signifies.

If we don't wake up and speak now, if we don't say something, this evil will spread out and cover us all like the branches of a giant tree.

That's not a tall threat or a slim promise.

It's a prophecy, guy.

�� ���.

© Sima Essien

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