It was the week of Mum and
Dad’s wedding anniversary. It was special because it was the 15th and Daddy had
been making plans for a long time. It fell on a Thursday, so they were going to
go away on a romantic weekend getaway. Mum had asked her sister, Auntie Kenny
to Baby-sit that weekend and me and my sisters were excited about that. We all
loved Auntie Kenny because she’s never too fussy about brushing our teeth
before bed and she lets us stay up a little bit later than we should. Auntie Kéhìndé
is just four years older than Solápé, my oldest sister who is fourteen. Pèlúmi
is eleven and I’m the man of the house at nine.
We all waved good-bye to my
parents on the evening of Friday at about seven. Mommy had come home a bit
early from work and had taken out time to get all dressed up. They were going
for dinner at Four Points and then going to spend the rest of weekend at some
resort on an island, Inagbe I think it’s called. Mommie had been raving on and
on about it and I’d looked at all the glossy pictures in the Brochure.
As soon as daddy’s Peugeot 607
drove out of the gates, we all let out a whoop. It sure was going to be a night
to remember, and not just for Mommie and Daddy! You know when you’re told not
to touch something, it’s then that it starts to call out to you in Dija’s
voice, Boy you’re all that I want, even if on a normal day, you wouldn’t
be remotely interested in it? That Clash of The Titans DVD sure knew how to
sing! Mommy had bought the DVD at Shoprite and had been excited about it. She
said it was the original 1981 make of the movie and that she’d been dying to
see it again after so many years. When we’d asked to watch it with her, she had
refused and said it was one of the “touch not”s. She said we were too young to
watch it, even Solápé who was a teen-ager already. So that DVD had sat on the
shelf for all of two weeks while our curiosity just grew and grew. And of
course it was the very first thing we asked Auntie Kenny to let us do that
Friday night. So as soon as we had gobbled down our dinner of beans and fried
plantain, and washed up the dishes, we all piled into the three-seater sofa
with Auntie Kenny in the middle to operate the remote controls. Solápé made
some dramatic drumming sounds as Auntie Kenny pressed the play button and the
movie started.
The first sign of trouble came
when Calibos appeared in his half human-half beast form, but since all the
women in the room didn’t seem fazed, I had to chop small tushka and continued
to watch. It didn’t help that I was at the edge of the sofa closest to the door
into the dark corridor. By the time Perseus went to visit the three witches,
the space on the couch had mysteriously increased and the four of us were
huddled together in a tight ball in the middle. I was practically sitting in Pèlúmi’s
laps but she didn’t seem to notice or mind one bit.
When you’re watching a horror
movie late at night, especially one that you’re not meant to be watching,
there’s only one thing that can happen at the very height of the horror.
Picture this: Medusa makes her grand entry in all her horrific glory, eyes
blazing and snaky hair waving in a million directions. Your heart is thudding
in your bony little chest and you’re strangely quiet, not because you’re cool,
calm and collected or even forming man of the house, but because your scream is
frozen in your throat. Then on cue NEPA takes light.
There was a split moment of
calm before Pèlúmi let out a scream, which of course led to utter chaos.
“Something touched my leg!” she sobbed when we’d calmed down a
bit.
Instinctively, six feet snapped
up and onto the sofa.
“What was it!” Solápé demanded.
“I don’t know!” Pèlúmi snapped. “If I did, would I have
screamed?”
“Well, if you did know and it was Medusa’s tail, you would
have done more than scream.” I pointed out and was rewarded with an elbow in my
side.
“Owwwwww!”
“Everybody quiet!” Auntie Kenny snapped. “We have to go figure
out why the inverter didn’t come on.” She said.
That got us all quiet. The
inverter was located under the stairs, all the way outside the house, plus
there was that dark corridor with all the unknowns lurking in the shadows
between the sitting room and the front door.
“So, who is coming with me?” Auntie Kenny asked and we all
stayed silent. “Two of us will go to the inverter and two people will stay
here.” She declared when no one said anything.
I started to do the maths in my
head. I’d heard the neighbors’ Gen come on, which meant if I decided to go to
the inverter, I only had to worry about the monsters hiding in the dark stretch
of the corridor. The security lights outside would have come on. Meanwhile, there were so many possibilities
with staying in the house. Suddenly, the house started to feel very large
indeed.
“Okay, I’ll go.” I said and I heard Solápé and Pèlúmi heave a
joint sigh of relief.
Auntie Kenny turned on her
phone’s flashlight and we headed for the door.
“Wait!” Solápé called out at the last moment.
“What?” Auntie Kenny snapped. If I hadn’t known better, I
would have thought her voice had a tremor to it.
“We won’t have any light in here when you go.” Solápé said.
“Well, there’s just one phone.” Auntie Kenny said. “You might
as well go and get the torchlight from the kitchen.”
“But it’s dark in the kitchen.” Pèlúmi wailed.
“You can either go and get the torchlight or sit here and
wait.” Auntie Kenny said.
On the long run, all four of us
huddled around the light from Auntie Kenny’s Nokia 101 and made our way into
the corridor with all its dark cavernous doorways leering at us like monsters’
mouths. I tried not to imagine the Kraken jumping out at me from those dark
doorways but men, it was hard!
We were almost at the front
door when we heard the scraping sounds from the other side of the door. I don’t
even know who screamed first. It was probably the lot of us taking up the
chorus at the same time. We’d all somehow found our way to Mommie and Daddy’s
room before we remembered that they weren’t home and couldn’t save us from the
legion of Titans at the front door. Sometime during the commotion, Auntie
Kenny’s phone must have fallen or died because the room was plunged in
darkness.
“Lock the door!” Solápé panted.
“You lock it!” I retorted.
“But you came in last!” Solápé snapped.
“No I didn’t!”
“Auntie Kenny, tell him to lock the door before they
get in here.” Solápé demanded.
“Auntie Kenny?” I called out when she didn’t reply.
“They got Auntie Kennie!” Pèlúmi wailed and started to cry.
The three of us found our way
in the dark to the king size bed and huddled together in the center of it. I
looked out into the dark in the general direction of the door, expecting it to
burst open at any moment.
“What have they done to her?” Pèlúmi sobbed against my back,
her tears mixing with the sweat that was soaking through my tee shirt like a
river.
“How am I supposed to know!” Solápé snapped, her voice
wobbling.
I knew she was fighting hard
not to cry and that she didn’t mean to be short with Pèlúmi. The terror was
doing crazy things to all of us.
“Whhhhat is tttthat?” Pèlúmi asked shakilly, pausing her
sobbing.
“What?!” Solápé snapped.
“Ttthat ssssound?”
We all listened and sure
enough, there was some eerie noise coming from the direction of the door that
we were reminded was still very unlocked. It sounded like a low hissing
interspersed with some nerve racking clacking. It sounded familiar, in fact, I
didn’t even have to think too deeply about it before recognizing the sound for
what it was. It was the very last thing we’d heard just before NEPA took light
and this horrible nightmare started: it was the sound of Medusa’s hiss and her
rattling tail. And it was getting louder and closer. Pèlúmi and Solápé seemed
to join the dots at the same time as me and for probably the umpteenth time
that night, all hell broke loose and we did the mad dash in the dark for Mommie
and Daddy’s en-suite bathroom. I slammed my shin into the corner of the bedpost
and someone scratched out half of my face but I didn’t even notice a thing. All
that mattered in that moment was making it through the five feet or so to the
bathroom and safety. We fought our way to the bathroom and locked the door this
time. We crowded into the bathtub and pulled the shower curtains for extra
protection. Both girls started to wail and the only reason I didn’t join in was
because I was probably shutting down from all the terror.
Next thing I knew was that
Medusa started to push against the bathroom door. She rattled the doorknob a
few times and then thumped on the door. My sisters shrieked and went crazy and
used me as a human shield. The last thought that flickered across my mind as
the lock gave way on the door and it burst open, flooding the bathroom with
light (most definitely from Medusa’s blazing eyes) was I wished Mommie were
here…
“Akínkúnlé…” Medusa shrieked in Mommie’s sweet, sweet voice. I
braced myself, wondering what it felt like to turn to stone.
Then someone paused the horror movie
and pressed fast-forward to about thirty odd minutes later in the horror movie
that our evening had become. Picture all four of us standing with our hands
clasped behind our backs and staring intently at our toes while Mommie and
Daddy gave us a serious tongue scalding. Yeah, Mommie and Daddy. There had been
a storm (the reason for the black out) and their boat couldn’t leave for the
island that night, so after dinner, they had returned home. Well, you can piece
the rest of the story together. Titans at the door? Yours truly. Medusa
starting to sing? Well, Daddy put on the generator on their way in and the
movie started to play again (see how the thing just koba’ed us! Ain’t no way we can deny watching the forbidden movie
now). Medusa at the bathroom door? Mommie trying to figure out why we were
hiding out in the bathroom. Auntie Kenny being eaten by the Titans? Well, when
we all freaked out at the front door, she’d heard Mommie’s voice behind the
door and had opened the door instead of making a run for it like the rest of us.
Now you can bet your last penny
that if anyone says “don’t touch that thing”, I’m running a million miles away
from it!
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