For Giving
Olufunmilayo Makinde
There is an order in life. It is a simple order. You live, and then you die. Dead people should stay underneath the soil, or in an urn. That is the way it should be, the way it has always been.
What is she doing here?
“What am I doing here? No, what are you doing here again, Lola?” she asks without opening her mouth, her words echoing my thoughts like a recorder made of putrid flesh and rattling bones. My brain briefly wrestles with her using the word “again” and what it means, before giving up to face the more pressing issue. I watch her watch me, more entranced than I should be, as a wave of repulsion begins to slowly build up within me.
I think a stupid thought right before my brain can fully process it: that she seems plumper in death than she was when she was alive. She had always been reed thin, so desperate to gain weight that she worked it into so many conversations, no matter how often I told her she had the perfect frame. She has a smile on her face, she seems healthier and happier even, if I were to overlook the stench and the exposed decaying flesh and just look at her lively eyes.
I cannot overlook that, as I have never been that open-minded.
So instead I look at the familiar hallway of my old secondary school, prettier and shinier than I remember, warmer and more inviting too, but also with the dinginess I expect of a long abandoned place. There are cobwebs, there is dust, but her presence makes them seem like minor issues.
I look at this impossibly dilapidated, deliciously nostalgic place that calls me to walk in and lose myself in the past, and I quickly dig into my memories for the exit.
“Wait,” Mary says. “Stay for one minute. Let’s talk.”
I am horrified by the concept of the talking dead, so the idea of listening to what she has to say is a ridiculous one, if not foolhardy. Her voice isn’t her voice. Not the way I remember it. But I could chalk that up to being a side effect of death. Her new voice isn’t outrightly disgusting or terrifying as I imagined it would be. Instead, it is repulsive in a roundabout way. It is somehow too pleasant, too sweet, too syrupy, cloying, like a cheap drink that has pictures of fruits in its packaging but cannot legally call itself juice.
A dead girl is looking at me earnestly, there is an unknown fire in her eyes that makes them burn brightly, like rubies lit by candlelight. She is asking me to stay. So I run away.
“Where are you going?” Her confused voice rings out, chiming pleasantly in my ears. However, when I run, it feels like I am trapped inside a glass bottle, and her voice is descending upon me from above. It echoes and bounces right off the walls back at me. It assaults all of my senses until I am left senseless and shivering.
I feel that if I am able to scream, my chat with the dead girl will be over, so I open my mouth. Nothing comes out. My body goes through the motions of yelling for help, my belly hurts like I have been screaming, my throat strains, and my lips part and stretch so wide that it feels like my jaw has permanently shifted out of place, but nothing happens.
I stand there screaming without screaming at Mary until my throat grows hoarse. She watches. Full of infinite patience. Like a mother looking at a restless baby. Her confidence seems to hold her flesh and bones together. It seems to tell me that whatever will happen here, to me, to us, is inevitable.
She watches me with the kind of patience that she did not have in life. My relationship with this dead girl was a great one. Mary was my best friend ever since we were in kindergarten, and we were bonded by hatred. We hated our parents who were close friends and wanted us to be too. We hated the many things we had to do to be considered good children. We hated our boarding school. We hated the hostels, we hated our fellow students, we hated everything but each other. I did not have the time to soak in the irony of only being able to see her in a place we both hated so much.
“I did not kill you,” I say to this girl, and miraculously my voice is back, yet all I get in response is silence. She watches me with raised brows, as if confused about why I would bring that up. To be fair to her, I am as well. “I’m sorry I’m alive and you’re dead,” I say, and silence between us stretches like a tangible thing, like a rope pulled taut and about to snap.
We both know how she died, and who killed her, the same way we both know the guilt that fueled my little outburst. I think about the details of her death often. Hindsight makes me think of how much I missed. How I should have noticed the disappearance of other girls sooner. I should have noticed the blood sooner. I should have noticed Mrs Jaiyesimi sooner.
“You’re still a coward.” Her syrupy voice teases me, but I do not detect malice in her tone. The world grows blurry as tears fill my eyes. She used to call me a coward all the time, and she was right to, she was always the braver one.
“Let’s go to our hostel,” she finally says, right before she takes a step toward me. My heart starts pounding, I do not know if my friend’s ghost wants to kill me. If she does, I know that I deserve it.
The first step she takes makes a strange sound. I should be terrified, but all I can think of is how ridiculous it is. Her body moves slowly, and with each step comes a small hiss, like air being let out of a balloon. She walks toward me accompanied by the quiet hiss of air escaping her rotten flesh and bones, but she carries her head up high. The pride and self-confidence I remember that accompanied her in life now intimidates me in death.
All around us, the hallway clears up, like a fairytale, the walls mending themselves and the cobwebs and dirt being put away. With every step she takes, the hallway glows brighter, and the light shows me her face, her skin, her body mending itself, less decayed every second. By the time she is within arm’s reach, her face and body look like they did the moment before our lives descended into a bloody screaming mess. But the fly in the ointment: her hands remain the same.
Her hands have jagged open wounds from the knife. The wounds stretch from her forearms to her fingers. I remember when the wounds were fresh. I cannot bear to look at them, so I focus elsewhere. Her hair is piled up in braids and tied back in a low ponytail with a rubber band. She wears a loose purple gingham dress and black laced shoes; school-issued casual wear only to be worn outside class.
“Lola, we’ll miss prep if we don’t go now,” she says, ridiculous words from a ridiculous dead girl. But as I look down, I see that my jeans and top seem to be shifting, changing into something loose, purple and painfully familiar.
“How?” I ask, finally willing to communicate with the dead.
A twinkle rises in her eyes. With that, she suddenly looks very much like my old best friend, from the intricately done braids I spent our last Saturday together weaving for her, to the tiny round scar on her left cheek. She got it from doing a reckless thing, climbing over the fence of the school to buy contraband sweets. The sweets weren’t even that good, too artificial, too sweet, but we savoured them all the same. It is a scar on a face that I cannot be wary of. That I do not deserve to be wary of. When she smiles, I can’t help but think that she has never looked so alive, not even in my dreams. It is a thought that draws me closer to her. Both in mind and in the physical sense.
I do not realize how close we are until she grabs me. Her hands make a wet squelching sound as they grasp mine , like decaying appendages grafted together, and the horror of that sound pulls me out of my dangerous thoughts. But it is too late, her eyes are upon me, like a spotlight, like a searchlight, beaming into my soul.
“Will you do it again?” she asks.
“Do what?” My mouth speaks before my mind can stop it. I am falling back into old patterns with her again – speaking without thinking was a thing I only did with Mary.
“Run away. Don’t. I can catch you, but that’s a waste of time and we don’t have much before she finds us. We need to talk. So, don’t run.” She is so close that when she blinks, I can count her eyelashes. They are lush and long, better than they ever looked when she was alive.
I shake my head mechanically, unable to resist a request from her. I have the habit of running at the wrong time. Just like that, I feel sixteen again.
I look down the beautiful hallway and I frown, for something isn’t right. Somehow we aren’t in the main building anymore, we are in our old hostel. The bright fluorescent lights hanging overhead are all complete, but a terrible knowledge rests in my head.
I remember that three of those lights went out the day before everyone had to leave the school. I remember that Mary and I went to our hostel matron to apply for repairs the next day, and I remember that was when and where things got bloody.
It was when I lost my best friend forever.
We found Mrs Jaiyesimi, the hostel matron in her quarters, scratching something onto the walls. Her hairstyle, a high bun pulled so tight that her hairline had begun to recede the year before, was strangely messy. Her usual outfit, a loose black dress paired with a red blazer with high shoulder pads, was stained at the bottom with something dark.
We should have noticed that something was off, but we didn’t until I knocked. Her head swiveled towards us so fast, I thought she had broken her neck. When she spotted us, a bright smile lit up her face. There was something in her eyes that I didn’t like, and without even thinking, I began backing away.
“One more.” She spoke softly, but her wide eyes betrayed her.
We did not know what she was doing, but when she ran toward us with a bloody knife, I ran away, first with Mary, but soon, alone. I did not even notice when or how she fell behind. Shamefully, disgracefully, I closed my ears to the sound of everything but my pounding heart and I did not open them again until I was hiding in the bushes outside the hostel. Even then, I did not move until it was morning and I could run to the guard’s post. My legs were stiff, but not as stiff as Mary and Mrs Jaiyesimi were when we found them.
She had dragged my friend’s body to her strange altar and spilled her blood there.
I should have been there. It should have been me. I suppose my dead friend blames me for that. I would understand it if she did.
“Focus. There’s no time to think about Mrs Jaiyesimi. You don’t want to be late for prep,” Mary says, drawing me closer by our still conjoined hands. I try not to look at them, for my own sanity. But if I am having this experience, I know that I am not that sane, so I look anyway.
Then I scream. Or I try to. Again, my voice is gone as I shake in horror at the sight of our hands mashed together like a crude clay sculpture. I see my flesh fused with hers, I feel the rot and death rushing through her veins into mine. And worse, I feel a sharp discordant thing pushing its way into my body and mind through my hands. It is a terrible, paranoid thing, that swims through me and gnaws at the last piece of sanity I have left.
A movement captures my attention, as Mary shakes her left foot to snap me out of my thoughts. I look back up at her. Her eyes look warm and welcoming, like the old days, but they are dark brown, almost black, strange for someone I remember having eyes the colour of honey.
“Lola, don’t come here again. Alive or dead. The rituals she did… you must not die here. No matter how much you want to see me. There is no peace or closure here.”
“What do you want? I will help you.” I don’t know why, but these words leave my lips before my brain can even comprehend the implications. But once the words are spoken, I feel… lighter. Yes! I want to help my friend, I want to free her from whatever is keeping her here in this twisted form.
“No, you won’t. You didn’t help me then, and you won’t now. But that’s okay.” Mary speaks in a familiar tone. There is no disappointment, no anger, just her knowledge of me. Her words carry a power that pulls me closer and closer until I am staring into her wet eyes. They are like whirlpools, drawing me in and hiding something from me at the same time.
My vision grows cloudier the longer I look into her eyes. I see the reflection of a shadowy figure in them, it is hazy, but something about it is strangely familiar. Pulled back hair, a blazer with high shoulder pads, a knife in hand. The figure is behind me, approaching us, and suddenly a strange voice pops into my head. It tells me that if I can see the figure clearly, I will have the answer to why my dead friend’s spirit is still haunting this place.
I lean in closer, but Mary’s gaze darts behind me for a moment before her eyes widen with an unknown emotion. Before I can figure out what the emotion is, she speaks. “Blink,” she instructs with a small quiver in her voice, and without even thinking, I comply.
When my eyes open, I find myself outside the hostel, hiding in the bushes. Like I did twelve years ago. I feel a fog growing, surrounding my thoughts, blurring the details of my talk with Mary. All that is left behind is an aversion to the old crumbling hostel building and a feeling that pushes its way into my mind from my cold damp hands.
As I rub my clammy palms together, I get the feeling that I should run away, that I should never and must never return. It is a feeling that I fight with every ounce of my being. It is a fight I lose miserably. Before the last detail in my mind surrenders to the growing haze, something clicks and I realize that the look on Mary’s face before I found myself outside, was fear. But not for herself, for me.
My realization doesn’t help me reach new heights of bravery. I am who I have always been. I hope Mary knows that, so I have one less thing to atone for.
I hide behind the bushes and wait until daybreak.
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