The night of silence and a boy

The human time at the gates of salvation estate that morning was 3:14 am. The night was empty of sound, and I had only the moon and its pale light for company. The gateman — far along in age, had fastened a lantern overhead where he sat half awake; to help him see better, surely, but the yellow fire might have conjured thoughts of a home for him even on this cold morning. I strode past him and through the tall blue gates of iron. He did not notice me; they do not see me when I come.

The streets were unmade beds of mud; On each side was a castle all brick and mortar and Sandcrete; one for each family, with gates even more prominent than the blue one I met first. In that silence, with the promise of rain in the murmuring clouds, I made my way at last to No. 2 Justina Avenue. The gates of men are no help against me; I moved up the stairs, past the thick doors, into the living room and finally, I was in his bedroom. I came to see him resting — asleep in a state he could wake from. His mother awoke at the crackle of lighting and called his name in a rather forceful voice from across the unimpressive first floor, “Victor! Isn’t your uniform outside? It’s about to rain o!” it was not odd for me to find them awake in one of our hours of travel; humans liked to stay awake at all periods.

The boy Victor was small, and his visage was forgettable. He slept very little as I watched, and by 4:20 am, human time, he was pulling his miniature frame all about his dull-yellow room searching for things. From one corner, he found stockings. He found a good portion of his uniform in another corner, and then after finding his ailing shoes underneath his brother’s bed, “my uniform is in my room”, he shouted back at last. He sat briefly on the edge of his short bed, his woolly black hair in a crooked shape sleep had given. He stared right where I stood, but of course, he did not see me; even my assignments do not get to see me till after. I didn’t care much for the age of the people I was sent to, but he looked no more than ten and had the air of a child excited to be going to school.

He wasn’t a lively boy in school; he sat two rows from the back with one eye on the board and a glance he saved for a girl in front. Maybe he thought of her fondly; perhaps he wanted to speak as she did; in a shaky way, children did sometimes but with a measure of authority. I stood in the back and watched him all through his classes; he would soon meet me.

The night sky gave way to noonday with no sun at all. The skies rained down on Lagos that day for what must have been hours in human time. The boy, Victor, elected to follow his friend home and not the bus. They must have been close; in the back of that green Mercedes car, they played and laughed back on the journey back to their corner of Lagos. At about 4:02 pm in their time, I felt that it was my hour. His friend’s father had taken a shorter way to get to the blue gates of salvation estate. The hopes of escaping traffic through the wet streets of okera, all his goal. The car made a right turn, a left, another right and another left, and the car was faced with a road closed off; ahead was more water than his friend’s father looked like he had driven through. The boy Victor had no opinion on this, and neither did his friend — I’ll go for it", the man said. And slowly, the car rolled through the water, crawling as vehicles do, in mud and water, to the other side. Right at the centre of this spot of water, where the water line was level with the base of the car windows, the car rolled into a concealed ditch and was trapped.

There are many ways that we come; we come, unique to different people we are. I could see in the corner of my eye as I hovered above the water, another of me; we would enter to meet the boys the same way; I for Victor, he for the other boy. With the car’s exhaust submerged, it had no way to cough up fumes, and so we went, one with the tendril-like fingers of smoke into the vehicle through the back speakers. He could see me now; this was one of my kinder ways to take them; I could almost see a smile on the boy Victor’s round face. His friend’s father was out searching for help, soaked up to his belly in this sickly water; he could not see us.

I reached for him as the fumes climbed into his nostrils; his blood stopped moving; his breaths became faint, and he started to sleep like he did this morning. My bony hands came from the darkness of my cloak, and I took him there — into the blackness.

I remember this boy because we do not forget the ones that see our face and leave the blackness.

5.01 pm: the boy and I walked with the other dead; his friend close-by, no doubt. For a reason I cannot yet know, we heard sounds. It was for remembering because, in the blackness of my realm, there is no sound. The boy looked to me and then to the imagined direction of the sound.

“Victor! Victor!” They called. A look of memory and understanding was awake on his face. I could no longer keep my grip on his hand; those in the blackness cannot notice the sounds or hear their name. The only character here is ‘end’. Like he did at 4:20 am, and the moment I plucked him for the living world, the boy Joshua smiled and walked away from me. Back to the gates of the living and that evening through the blue gates of salvation estate.