Once or twice, when boarding house boys gathered to talk about the evil spirits in gmelina trees that surrounded our hostel, I was found among them, arguing loudest and saying that evil spirit stories were fabricated by weak and scared boys.
Kene, the hostel prayer warrior would often yell me afterwards that I argued because I hadn't witnessed anything of that sort, that stories like that are true, and I would laugh my throaty unpleasant laughter until I fell on the floor.
During the night devotions, boys would gather around the quadrangle singing loud song, and casting evil spirits, Kene would point accusing fingers at the gmelina trees in front of our gate and say every demon inhabiting this tree, I cast you out in the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit, and I would sniffle a laughter,which is sometimes loud enough for a senior to hear and smack my neck. Kene prayed this " casting evil spirit " prayer every night and he prayed with so much authority ; the kind of authority prayer warriors have that reminded me of my sister Ibinabo who my mother often invites for weekend prayers ,who would cast demons in our entire house with incense ,and candles and holy water ,which she sprinkled on our bodies until we became wet with salt water.
I didn't think of spirits as things that needed to be bound, I thought of them as long dead souls who probably had too much duties in the underworld ,they didn't have time for humans. I thought, that even if they had time,they were probably too weak to attack humans . I though all these until that midnight when senior Datson's loud shrieking cry woke us up. He was crying with tears dropping from both eyes, nose and mouth as he was screaming "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus". He said he had seen a spirit in the form of a shadow sitting down on my bed, then standing up and walking out of the room. I became both afraid and confused,how could senior Datson ,that ruthless senior who doesn't even know wat it means to go to church, cry , how could he scream " Jesus" even though yesterday he had argued restlessly that God does jot exist. I kept wondering until Datson shouted again saying that the spirit had come in again.
Then I looked and saw a walking shadow,the color of the inside of a spoilt avocado, it had things that looked like feathers all over its body, and its face had white dots as eyes. It's head had 3 horns which took up a darkness hue, and for feet , it had several sticks pointing downwards and walked and walked towards my bunk,and I found myself shaking first, before I screamed " Jesus" and cried and cried and cried.
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