I have a comfortable seat by the window in the bus, and leaning back, I feel the throb of the powerful diesel engine drawing us out of the city at a steady pace. There is a light rain falling, and an air of melancholy has descended upon me as I recall the last meeting I had with my friend T—, buried two days ago at a very private ceremony in Accra.
The notepad sits readily on my knee; I am trying to write an account of the strange events of the past week. I’m sure I’ll be done by the time we get to Nkawkaw.
I work with a construction firm in Kwami Danso, and have been stationed there for several years. I enjoy the rural setting, and therefore rarely travel to Accra. However, eight days ago I received a fax from Accra bearing the cryptic message: Been admitted at R— hospital: drop everything and come. Need to see you before I die. Urgent. T—.
Of course I dropped everything and set off for Accra. With such a message I just had to comply. You see, T— was a very good friend of mine, and I hadn’t seen him in the few years since I moved out of the city.
Our friendship went back a long way, and we shared many exciting memories. He had little respect for what he called “organised religions”, even though he was strongly drawn towards the occult. Perhaps because I was not an adherent of any religion, we got along fairly well. This attribute of his, and the fact of his pensive, caustic and introverted character, earned him precious few friends.
The bus trip into Accra was not bad, but I was quite anxious all the time about my friend and therefore did not enjoy it. We arrived at night, sweeping into the city from the Nsawam road, with the glittering lights ahead stretching far and wide. It was beautiful in a low-key sort of way. Not spectacular, but worth mentioning.
~*~
I visited T— the next morning, which was a Sunday. He was in a private ward at the R—Hospital, which was quite an exclusive institution. But then he was terribly rich and I was not surprised. The ward was well appointed, yet it was a cheerless little room. The fluorescent lighting filled the room with a clinical ambience made worse by the pervasive smell of disinfectants and medicines.
My friend lay in a supine position, covered with sheets. There was a stand with intravenous sachets hanging from it. He looked thin and haggard, but his eyes burned with a fierce fevered fire. He smiled weakly as the nurse ushered me into the room.
‘Always knew I could count on you my friend,’ he said. His voice was a papery rasping. He looked very ill, and I was much concerned.
‘What happened to you?’ I exclaimed, as the nurse left us.
‘I can only guess,’ he said. ‘I feel the life draining out of my veins with every single hour that passes.’
I did not like the ominous sound of those words. He had been there for four days, admitted with what had seemed a high fever.
‘Nobody can save me. At least here they are smart enough to realise that… everyone is an awful bore. But listen… there is not much time. Sometimes I see the shade advancing from the door…’
‘You’re ill,’ I said sternly. I did not want him to start on spiritualism.
‘I see the shade advancing from the door, and I hear the chant again. But only in the background, faintly in the background.’
‘Do you not think you should drop this esoteric pandering and concentrate on getting better?’ My manner was jocose, but it did not rub off on him.
He said, ‘I have to tell you what we did. You will dismiss it as nonsense, perhaps… What peace of mind you will have then! Superstitious nonsense perhaps… that might be the right attitude.’
He lay quite still, looking alternately at me and then straight at the ceiling. I noticed a Bible at the bedside table. I smiled.
‘Repented, have you?’ I poked at him, trying to break the moribund atmosphere in the room. He did not rise to the taunt.
‘I asked for the pastor to come to me,’ he spoke slowly, thoughtfully. ‘I couldn’t tell him much, but he said a lot. He also prayed. I don’t know if it helped.’
I did not know what to say. I was very surprised that he had requested to see a pastor, of all people. T— spoke again. His voice seemed to have gained strength.
‘Tell me, do you believe in the devil? I mean, Satan? What would make you believe in Satan? If you saw him perhaps?’
It was these kinds of questions that made people shy away from T—.
‘I don’t make it part of my life to think about such things,’ I told him.
‘Suppose there was a man that personified Satan.’
I felt uncomfortable.
‘Let’s not talk about this, do you hear? You need to take a break from all this stuff.’
He seemed not to hear. He blinked slowly, and said,
‘There were three of us. We found this ritual in that book… and we wanted to… The consequences were ghastly. You remember the house that burned down in Accra last week? Two people died. My compatriots. Suicide, but the police think it’s an accident. I am the only one left.’
From what T— went on to say I gathered that he and his friends had tried to perform some occultic ritual. Ever since I had known him he had always been going on about some powerful incantation he had read somewhere. I never encouraged him.
‘It would have made one of us capable of being the devil’s advocate for a time. Do you know what power that would give that person?’
I grimaced, and asked sharply: ‘Is that what you’ve always wanted from this dabbling? Power?’
His reply was subdued. ‘No… But listen. That night the three of us gathered in the room. The procedure was to keep chanting the incantation, and as the powers of the Zodiac aligned themselves at the stroke of midnight the doorway would be opened…
‘We had to choose the day carefully, the position of the stars mattered, the position of the room mattered. The precision of the drawings had to be very high. We spent several months preparing for the moment. We knew that that night we were embarking on a very risky contact with the Gatekeepers of the Cosmos.’
He paused briefly before going on.
‘The devil is not a very nice person. Evil, destructive… Never offer even your little finger to the devil. He’ll take your soul as well. I cannot remember exactly what I saw that night, but I know it was Satan.’
A chill ran through me as I sat transfixed, my gaze glued to the weakened frame in the bed whose mouth was speaking fearful things.
T— went on. ‘After several hours of the ritual, we began the chanting, and kept at it until close to midnight. We stood in a circle, holding hands.’
The memory evidently overwhelmed T—, and he lay silent for a while. I did not know whether to believe him or not, yet it was difficult to imagine that he was making it all up.
I became aware of a sound in the room, though barely audible, a “thump, thump, thump” sound, like someone’s heart beating very fast. Nobody’s heart could beat that fast, nor that loudly, I thought. Yet I heard it quite distinctly, thump-thump-thump. I concluded that it might have to do with my own ears, just as sometimes a person hears a high-pitched whine in his ears.
My friend was speaking again. ‘At one moment we were standing in the candle-lit room, but the next moment we were in a bleak desert with burning mountains all about. Volcanoes. Red-black plumes of flame roared into the black sky, which were roiling with huge grey clouds. It was dark. The only light came from the fierce flames, and the place was tinged a blood-red hue. Yet it was cold. A freezing wind lashed at us, howling as it sped past the craggy rocks. Then it was not just the three of us chanting… the incantations seemed to come from the wind, the rocks, the mountains.’
Suddenly T— gasped. His eyes were bloodshot. He struggled to draw breath, choking and wheezing.
‘What’s happening?’ I cried.
He raised a hand at me. The veins stood out prominently.
‘Hear me out,’ he panted. ‘There was… ah… the… ah…’
A thin line of blood appeared at T—’ s lips. He struggled to speak, taking in a deep wheezing breath. He coughed and the white sheets were spattered with blood. I sprang up, looking to summon some help. Just as I punched the alarm I heard running footsteps in the corridor. A nurse rushed into the room, clutching a fire extinguisher at the ready. She stopped on entering the room, looking confused.
‘Where’s the fire?’ She asked.
I was puzzled.
‘He’s dying,’ I said, pointing at my friend.
‘I saw smoke coming from this room,’ the nurse said, a look of amazement on her face. Two other nurses ran into the room, and one rushed right up to the patient. It appeared that T— was already dead. Blood was oozing out of his ears and nose.
A few days later the autopsy had been conducted and I went to see the doctor because I wanted him to help me understand the cause of death. I was ushered into his office, and he informed me straightaway that he had very little free time. I told him why I had come to see him. He sat in silence for a little bit.
‘You have seen the report,’ he said.
‘Yes. His wife showed it to me. But I didn’t quite understand it.’
‘Naturally.’ The doctor said. He looked at me intently, his glasses sitting crooked on his face.
‘What were you discussing with the deceased that morning?’ he asked.
I hesitated. I did not quite know how to put it. A little time passed, during which I hoped he would change the subject, but he stared at me insistently. I felt embarrassed as I said lamely, ‘We were talking about Satan.’
I was going to add some more, but the doctor began speaking.
‘Your friend seemed to have died from extremely remarkable causes. I have never seen anything like it.’ He smiled sadly. ‘Do you know how long I have been practising?’
I said no.
‘Never mind, never mind,’ he said. ‘Your friend’s heart practically beat itself to a pulp. We found tears in the heart tissue — quite amazing, heh?’ His brow crinkled a bit. ‘The heart seemed to suddenly become hyperactive, it beat faster and harder, pumping large amounts of blood through the veins. His blood vessels ruptured everywhere — in the brain, it was a bloody mess. Massive haemorrhage.’
I remembered the racing thump-thump-thump that I had heard in the ward that day.
The doctor continued: ‘It’s amazing. We just cannot fathom what could have happened. But I have to go now — have I answered you adequately?’
I smiled thinly. The irony escaped neither of us.
So now I’m on the bus going back to my station in the hinterlands. It is raining, and as I have a window seat I have opened it a crack so that the cool air gushes in. It is very refreshing. In the distance the trees are tossing wildly in the wind.
T—’s wife seemed to be taking the whole thing quite well when I took leave of her earlier this morning. We conversed briefly, mostly sitting in silence. There was one unnerving moment, however, when she started violently, half-rising out of her seat, one hand raised to her breast. A look of terror filled her eyes, her breath came in violent gasps, and she whispered forcefully, ‘Hold me, please.’
I grasped her hand: it was hot and sweaty. Presently she calmed down, saying apologetically, in explanation,’There has been some sort of… unrest in the house since my husband died. Chairs being dragged about, the lights going off by themselves, cracks appearing in mirrors. I get very frightened.’
She also told me a story, a story that was very shocking, and which revealed to me a side of my friend that I never knew before.
But I’ll tell you that one another time. The bus is just now pulling into the rest stop at Nkawkaw, and I need to stretch my legs. Never mind the rain. It is light enough for walking.
Martin Egblewogbe writes poetry and short stories. He lives in Accra, Ghana.