the invocation – 2

“Temi”
“Tee?”
“Temitope”
Different versions of my name echoed through the house. I could hear footsteps running towards my room but I still held my head in my hands. I was willing the ghost or spirit or whatever it was to go away.
My door was flung open and mum entered with Seyi, her friends and Micah-Carson’s friend at mum’s heels.
Mum pried my hands away from their grip on my head. She looked at my teary face and shaking form and pulled me into a hug immediately.
“I’m so sorry baby. I was worried when you wouldn’t cry all afternoon, it’s bad to bottle it all in.” She cooed gently to me.
I pulled out of her embrace and shook my head frantically. She thought I screamed because I was crying?
“No, you don’t understand. I just saw Marge in my room. She was sitting right there and she… She…” I pointed at the bed while trembling.
Everyone was quiet, they looked at where I was pointing at, an empty and unmade bed. I could see the disbelief and pity in their eyes. They thought I was hallucinating from grief.
“I’m serious.” I shouted and mum flinched.

“I saw someone there, I turned on the light and she faced me. It was Marge. She smiled but it felt sad and I screamed.” I persisted.
“Tee, listen, Marge couldn’t have been in your room. She’s dead.” Seyi moved closer, talking to me like I was a child.
I threw her hand off me and walked to the bed. “You think I don’t know she’s supposed to be dead? Why else would I scream because I saw her?”
“Temitope be reasonable, there’s no such things as dead people walking.” Mum appealed to me.
“I know what I saw.” I screamed again.
“Enough!” Mum snapped. “If you’re scared of staying alone then you’ll stay with your sister in her room. Carry the extra bed in the guestroom.”
I felt deflated. No one believed me. They all thought I was scared or crazy. Maybe I was, maybe Carson was right and I was letting my imagination get the best of me.
“Yes mum.” I nodded my head.

*******

“Marge! It’s so good to see you.” I smiled and made to hug her but she stepped aside.
“No, we can’t make contact and I don’t have much time.” Marge said without the usual smile I was used to seeing on her face.
“What are you talking about M?” I was confused.

“You don’t remember? We can’t have that. Tee, you need to try and recall what happened yesterday.” She said to me in an urgent tone.
“Remember what?”
“Yesterday.”
“What about it?”
“Temitope!” She snapped.
My head started hurting immediately. I closed my eyes and I felt like someone was pushing a whole film into my brain, only this time it was my own memory.
When it finally stopped, I raised my head and looked at Marge, I was crying. Again. I was doing that a lot.
“You.. You Marge…… You’re dead. You died.” I stuttered.
“Awesome! You caught up. Look, I’ve been……..” She suddenly choked.
She was coughing seriously and I didn’t know what to do. Wait! Are ghosts supposed to cough? Aren’t they dead? Wait, why am I even seeing a ghost in the first place? Is she even a ghost?
“Marge, what can I do to help? Water? Should I get water? Do ghosts drink water? Are you a ghost?” I ratted out all my questions at her at once.
She looked up at me, tears in her eyes, her voice hoarse. The sadness chilled me to my bones.
“You have to help… I don’t… I don’t want to… But I don’t have a…”
“Marge, what? I don’t understand a single thing you’re saying.”
“Help!” She shouted before she suddenly disappeared.
I screamed and I woke up. I was sweating, my scream had roused Seyi and her friends.

“See, Tee, if this is how you will be disturbing our sleep, don’t come and crash here again. Sho ti gbo? Sleep in your beloved Carson’s room next time.” Seyi grumbled angrily before burrowing back under her covers.
Funmi also went back to sleep but Chidimma continued staring at me. It was strange, like she knew what I just dreamt of. I shook my head at her and laid back on the bed unable to go back to sleep. It was 1am.

********

For the rest of that week, Marge kept showing up in my dreams but this time she wouldn’t talk or say anything, she would just stare at me till I became frustrated. I used to think silence was golden, but trying getting stared at creepily by a supposedly dead person and see if your psychology and physiology will remain the same way.
She wanted my help, so she said the first time. How was I supposed to help her? Wasn’t she supposed to be in heaven or maybe hell? Why was I the one she was asking for help?
I started growing leaner and tired, I was unable to sleep and it was starting to tell on me. Anytime I tried ignoring her and decided to just sleep, my body starts to get chilled and I’m unable to sleep. It was very disturbing to say the least.
Finally, the midterm break was over, I was supposed to return to the boarding house but I fell sick on Saturday. I couldn’t leave my bed, I couldn’t eat and no drug seemed to work for me.

Mum and everyone became seriously worried. Dad was doubting himself, how could he, a whole chief surgeon be unable to treat his child. The drip, drugs, injections all seemed to be going somewhere that wasn’t my body. Perhaps an entity was sucking it out with straw.

Finally, after another week of worry, mum decided to call her Pastor to come and pray for me. I was led out of my room and brought to the sitting room.
Everyone had their Bibles with them and they all looked like they were ready for some kind of warfare. I guessed my illness was a warfare for them. Everything looked like a scene out of a Yoruba Nollywood movie, that moment when a demon is about to be exorcised from an ogbanje.
They started with praises and worship before the Pastor started throwing prayer points. Everyone started some kind of dance with the way they were moving their bodies while praying. It was like a contest of who could raise their voice the most. People were sweating and brandishing their bibles like some kind of sword with a quest for blood. Some minutes into the prayer, he stopped everyone.
“Temitope.” He called.
“Yes Sir” I answered.
“Who have you been seeing in your dreams?” He asked with his eyes still closed.
“It’s Marge, I’ve been seeing Marge.” I whispered but everyone heard me nonetheless.
“Temitope, why didn’t you say something?” Mum cried.
“Like you believed me the first time I did?” I sneered.
“This is not the time for reminiscing.” The Pastor intervened. “What does she want?”
“I don’t really know, she was unable to say much other than needing me to help her. Also, it seemed like she didn’t want to do something but she doesn’t have a choice.” I narrated.
“The other times, she didn’t speak?” He pressed.
“No, she just stares at me till my body starts growing tired or till I start to feel pain.”

“Temitope, you won’t get better until you help her like she asked for, because you are bound to her.”
“What?” Mum gasped.
“Yes! She has been bounded by the covenant of secrets. You know something that would help her but you’re not saying.” The pastor finally opened his eyes and stared directly into my eyes.
“But I don’t know anything. Honestly.” I cried.
“Tee, what do you know?” Carson asked.
I looked at him, he wasn’t looking too well. He looked pale and he was somehow sluggish in his reactions. He wasn’t fine either.
“I swear, I don’t know anything.” I maintained.
“Well, it’s possible you don’t remember. In that case, you have one other alternative to be well.” The Pastor said.
“What is it pastor?” Mum asked.
“The invocation has to be stopped.” He answered her.
“What?” Seyi asked.
Invocation? Oh come on. It would seem somebody put Marge on my trail. Who disturbed her rest?
“What exactly do you mean Daddy?” Mum asked again.
“The one who invoked Marge’s Spirit has to call her off.”
Oh no! It would seem the drama had just begun.

******

The hours that followed the prayer session were very solemn, everyone started treading very carefully around me. It was as if they were walking on eggshells, scared of frightening me or maybe they were scared of catching the ‘ghost flu’ from me. I wouldn’t blame them, I was pretty sure I was a horrible sight to behold.
That night after dinner, everyone except Carson remained at the table. Carson didn’t come out of his room for dinner. His friend, Micah, said he was feeling a bit tired. Which was an understatement, if you asked me. Carson looked like someone who was about to keel over at any moment.
I didn’t eat much because my appetite was very much still non-existent. But I was okay with being with my family even though the atmosphere was very tense, one could cut through it with a knife.
“If you ask me, Marge’s mum should be the first person we should think of. She was very convinced the other wives did it.” Seyi spoke up after mum asked who could have invoked the ghost.
“Yeah, a grieving mother can be irrational, I’ve met lots of them at the hospital whenever we lost a child. It’s usually a very terrible ordeal.” Dad responded.
“So, you think she invoked her dead daughter’s spirit because of vengeance?” Mum asked incredulously.
Micah poured me a cup of juice from the jug left on the dining table immediately I coughed, I smiled and took the cup from him.

“If you want the murderer to pay for his or her deeds, what better way to do it than to call on the one person who knows who really killed her?” Micah mentioned.
“Not to mention that she was very young, cutting her life short at such a young age could warrant that.” Chidimma told us.
“So, how do you propose I do this then? Go to a grieving woman and ask her if she invoked her daughter’s spirit? Somehow I don’t see her offering me tea and asking me to stop by once more.” Mum covered her face with her hands while dad rubbed her back comfortingly.
“No one said it’s going to be easy dear, but we have to start from somewhere.” Dad told her.
“Yeah, well, starting with Tee trying her best to remember what it is that she knows about Marge that can help her. God knows why a ghost would need help.” Seyi grumbled.
“I have told you, I don’t know anything. She said she didn’t want to do something but it seemed like she didn’t have a choice though. She wanted me to help her but I don’t know what she was talking about.” I looked at Seyi as I answered the unspoken question on everybody’s mind.
“One step at a time darling. Just take it easy, think back to your old conversations while she was still alive, try and see if you’ll remember any secrets or strange stuffs she might have told you.” Dad rubbed my back too.
Mum rubbed her forehead, which was something she did whenever she was stressed out.
“One would think Carson should be the one bound to her by any secret covenant since he’s the one she told about being in their family cult.”
“Wait what? Marge was in a cult?” Micah asked.

I stood up and walked away from the dining room, slowly, because my body still lacked the strength I needed to do my usual fast gait. I walked towards Carson’s room, that chill I felt the day we lost Marge started creeping up my body.
I knew what was happening even before I got there, but I couldn’t find it in myself to scream or run or cry like I did the last time. I opened the door to his room without knocking, not that knocking would do me any good. The room was dimly lit, the only light in the room coming from the muted television.
Carson was lying on the rug, his face up and his arms splayed carelessly at his sides. I moved towards him and knelt beside him. His eyes were opened as he stared at me, his breaths coming out in short successions. I wiped off a trail of sweat on his forehead as I cradled his head on my laps.
“I’m so sorry Carson.” I whispered.
“You know that’s not true my precious, we are not sorry. All we did was help them. She asked for it, didn’t she?” I also said to myself but in a voice that very much wasn’t mine.
“Please Magog, he’s my brother.” I pleaded with what was within me.
“Then blame the girl. She told you she wished she could be with your brother without the constraints of the cult powers and because I am Magog the Benevolent, I granted her wish. A merciful death alongside her lover boy.” The voice replied me snidely.
“She was speaking to me, not you.”
“Well, I am in you and you in me. So, it comes with the package.”
“Marge has been invoked you idiot, now I’m going to die because of you.” I wept.

“She has been unable to kill you because you are not the murderer, she has been staring at me inside you, trying to kill me instead, and hence why you have been getting sicker. Foolish girl does not know I cannot be killed, I can only …”
“Tee, I know. I know, it’s not your fault. I… I love you baby sis… I love…” Carson suddenly opened his eyes and started speaking but he didn’t finish when he suddenly went limp and I saw the last breath leave his body. In my arms.

*******

As I remembered this event that cold night, I looked around my dormitory in the remand prison for juvenile offenders. My co ‘prisoners’ were all asleep in their various bunks. I simply smiled as I saw the ticking clock was now 1:30 am.
I turned to look at the chair at the entrance of the room, someone was currently occupying it. He smiled at me and I returned it. It was the time for Spirits.
“Hello Carson.”