p@rt 2
“ GHOST RUN!”
By Opeyemi Ojerinde
“Adeyanju! Step on the g@s! Step…. on…the…accelerator” I screamed but Adeyanju held the steering like It was his very own life…
” I don’t think we should!” He replied shaking like a leave in the cold…
” Adeyanju, this is not the time to be Afraid, step on the g@s!” I said as I wanted us far away from the witch girl
” I think we should help her, This is what God expects of us, Bible states that if your brother or sister comes to you for help and you tell him to come back the next day, it will be counted as a sin!” AdeYanju said unbelievably as My jaw dropped but I knew I had to salvage the situation again before we both bec@m£ the witch’s next target…
“ AdeYanju, you are quoting the wrong scripture! What about Suffer not a witch to live?” I said as the witch girl kept knocking at the car window…
“AdeYanju, She is a witch!” I screamed one more time, but I couldn’t tell what devil c@m£ over him. He pressed the re-lease bu-tton of the car lock. The witch girl saw it and opened the front door, pushing me and sitting in the front seat with me… Her smell was choking… I could smell evil exuding from her, the cloud of darkness around her was thick!
“ Why don’t you take the backkkk …seat!” I managed to say
“ I have no time for that… AdeYanju be a man and move this car!” The witch girl commanded.
AdeYanju answered immediately…. I could re-ad Adeyanju’s thought… I am sure he was wondering how she knew his name. AdeYanju and I exchanged shocked looks.
“Actually, we don’t know where we are going, we are ….” I said
“ Missionaries…” The witch girl cut in
We knew the best thing for us was to be silent. We had picked up a wrong pas-s£nger, All I was thinking was how, where and when she would alight….
“Take the next turn….” she commanded
“ Take the Left turn!”
“ Take the right bend!”
She kept giving the directions and we followed obe-diently.
After about 15 minutes of driving in circles, the witch girl said…
“ St©p the Car!” She said and AdeYanju halted immediately
“ That is your new house, but for AdeYanju’s sake, I will give you this advice.. Mororo is not for you! You won’t survive one week…and you Adenike, I believe the reason you don’t yet have a child is because you are heartless. You should be grateful I am not in a terrible mood, I would have punished you for what you just did.” She said and like a scene from a horror movie I have never been a fan of, she turned into a black bird with purple feathers before flying away!
Our lives paused for few minutes that felt like time st©pped for centuries.
“ AdeYanju, reverse this car and get us out of here!” I managed to say while feeling out of breath, but unfortunately the least of the thing I expected to happen suddenly hit AdeYanju and I.
The car unexpectedly broke down….
“ What just happened?” AdeYanju said as he kept trying to get the car engine to respond…
Then followed was a sudden whirlwind, a wind that felt like the gods of Mororo were angry….
p@rt 3
“ GHOST RUN”
By Opeyemi Ojerinde
“Wow!” Was what dropped from my mouth. What we met in the house was a far cry from what I was expecting. The place looked like a mini palace… This was not the picture of the kind of house I would have imagined missionaries would live in Mororo….
The house on the outside didn’t look anything like a good place…
When the whirlwind had almost turned our vehicle upside down, AdeYanju had screamed…
“ Adenike, we nee-d to get out of this vehicle!”
“ To where?” I said because I was not planning to set my foot on the ground of Mororo. Mororo didn’t look and feel like a good place…
“ To the mission house! Adenike, Listen we nee-d to be alive to be able to get out of here, if we die in this vehicle, it is our dead bodies that will be carried out of here. I believe it is better safe than dead….” AdeYanju said and his words made s-en-se ….
With unsteady feet, I alighted , but the wind that embr@ced me was very tough and violent. I ran towards the mission house the witch girl had pointed to us hoping to escape the wind. The picture of the interior of the house I was expecting to see was a dirty, dusty and archaic interior but what we saw made me say wow!
“ Who did this? Or is someone living here?” AdeYanju said. The living room looked beautiful. It had beautiful wall paintings, beautiful curtains. The interior design was really Looking amazing, with de-ep bu-ttoned Plush upholstery, the floor was a sparkling wooden surface…
“ We were duly informed, you will be coming!” A Voice said from inside the kitchen.
Two ladies walked out of the Kitchen, they were identical twins, there was something definitely strange about them but I couldn’t place it.
AdeYanju stepped back in fear and surprise…
“ We are the Adegbile Sisters, we are members of the Mororo Church. We had received a message from your father that you both will be coming, so we decided to make this place look a bit like the city house you are used to!”
One of the sisters said
“ Oh! “ I said but I wasn’t convinced about the truth of what she had said
“ Oh Thank you my sisters … This is really beautiful and very thoughtful of you! We appreciate it!”
“ We will be leaving, by tomorrow the other members will be happy to come for early Morning prayers!”
“ Oh! Where is the church?” I asked
“ Here!, we hold our services here…”
“ What?” I asked in shock. I never liked mixing church affairs with home affairs. I didn’t like the idea of members coming into the house of their pastor, it had a way of ma-king members unconsciously lose respect for their Pastors.
“ Yes…”
“ Ok, thank you sisters.!” AdeYanju said obviously dismissing them. He knew I didn’t like the idea of hosting the church in our house.
The sisters left or better still pretended to have left because as soon as we devored the food they had prepared for us, the two sisters appeared in the room from the wall.
“ Really, so you babies were the ones that was s£nt to Mororo…We just gave you a simple test and you failed!” Said one of the twin…
“ No discernment of Spirit in you! Well lucky you, the food wasn’t poisoned. You both would have been dead…so we have a deal for you… Do not trouble us like the last pastor and we won’t trouble you. Do your church thing without attacking witches and wizards. Give the people false hope and whenever we have punished someone, don’t try to pray for them. Are we clear?” The mean twin said
AdeYanju and I nodded our heads like primary school babies. I could see the baby look on AdeYanju…I was begining to think of how to get us out of that town when the friendly looking twin said…
“ You are thinking about running away… I don’t think so… We like you and We want you to stay! Feel Welcome!” Said the friendly twin witch
“ For God has not given me the Spirit of Fear, but of Love, power and of sound mind” AdeYanju was saying un-der his breath as he could not look up into the eyes of the witches…It was obvious my husband was a physical and spiritual babe, despite knowing so much of the scripture…. The witches saw throu-gh him and they both exchanged looks saying…
“ Omode o mo ogun, o npe ni efo ”
( When a child does not recognise a deadly herb, he calls it a vegetable”)…said the mean twin witch
“ Baby Pastor! Welcome to Mororo, Happy pastoring!” The friendly twin said laughing before they disappeared and no one told the other before we both bur-st into tears.
p@rt 4
“GHOST RUN!”
By Opeyemi Ojerinde
AdeYanju and I could not sleep throu-gh out the night. We sat on the floor cu-mddled Like scared Babies. What added to our fear was the disappearance of all the beauty of the house the moment the witches left. Obviously it was all a facade, it wasn’t real. The house returned to what I expected; smelly, dirty, dusty…
“ Once it is daybreak, we leave” I kept saying to AdeYanju…
AdeYanju wouldn’t say a word. He just sat cu-mddled up very quiet.
A c0ckcrowed and I knew it must be around 5am…
“ We should leave… !” I said
“ How?”
“ We will pray and the vehicle will work!”
“ Ok” AdeYanju said
I pu-ll-ed him up as I felt guilty. I allowed my pride drag him to Mororo.
We carefully walked out of the house and got into the car! I held Adeyanju’s hand…
“ God, We are sorry for trying to show off in church. We know we have not been s£nt here. plea-se forgive us!” I prayed
“ Amen!” AdeYanju replied. With a careful hand and a skeptical look, he inser-ted the key into the ignition..,
“ Have faith!” I said in encouragement
He turned the key and at just one turn, the vehicle responded…
“ Thank you Lord, Thank you Lord….” I said almost screaming..,
“ Keep it low, you can shout all you want when we get out of here…” AdeYanju said
AdeYanju stepped on the g@s, and the vehicle moved forward. At the sound of the vehicle , doors and windows of houses started opening. It was obvious we had woken the people of Mororo up.
“Don’t st©p, this is the first time I will ever encourage you to drive over 100, infact increase your speed to 150 right now!” I said as I noticed AdeYanju was getting confused the moment the doors and windows were opening…
“ AdeYanju! AdeYanju!” I screamed at him…
AdeYanju was a pathetic case. A br@iny without a heart. He was just intellectually sound, but emotionally he was a baby; One of the errors of his parents. His parents had made AdeYanju exert his energy and reasoning on re-ading only. He had no human relationsh!p. Their relationsh!pwas the only thing AdeYanju acquired on his own, which was not totally by his power alone.. I was the one who f0rç£d him into asking me out. He was always around me, smiling at me, buying me gifts and whenever he saw other men around he would be so devastated… The day I helped him out of his misery was when I f0rç£d the words out of his mouth…
“ AdeYanju, why are you always angry when you see other brothers around me!” I had said after church
“ Me! Angry?”
“ Yes! You like me? You want me to be your girlfriend and you don’t know how to say it!”
AdeYanju had kept quiet, for a brief second before saying…
“ Actually, as a wife not a girlfriend… I don’t want you temporarily, I want you permanently… You know the word girlfriend is a term…” AdeYanju was alre-ady saying too much as he was about to give me the dictionary meaning of “ Girlfriend!” . I decided to cut short the long story..,
“ Yes! I will love to be your wife” I said and AdeYanju laughed still not looking into my eyes…
This was the same AdeYanju that was about shutting down on me, he was slowing down the car in fear.
“ AdeYanju! St©p the car!” I said and he did immediately.
“ Move! “ I alighted from the vehicle and turned to the driver’s seat. AdeYanju moved to the pas-s£nger’s seat quietly. I got into the car and moved at t©p speed…No Devil was going to st©p me from leaving Mororo!
After driving for few minutes, I could see something that looked like a roadblock ahead. I told myself, no roadblock was going to st©p me. I was going to drive past the roadblock, not minding any damage it will cause on the car.
“ I will fix the car in the city” I encouraged myself, but as I drew closer to the supposed roadblock, I realized what stood on the road was not a wooden or iron roadblock, but it was a roadblock made by humans…
“ Adenike!” AdeYanju screamed in fear as I also halted at the sight.
There were about 8 men , 10 women, 15 teenagers and a lot of children standing on the road with arms akimbo…
“ Who are they?” I asked AdeYanju who replied with a blank look.
To be continued