My husband bought me a brand new Range Rover last week, but he forces me to sleep on the bare floor next to a clay pot that breathes at night.
Six months ago, we were nobody. We lived in a “face-me-I-face-you” apartment in Iyana Ipaja, dodging the landlord because of three months’ owing rent. We were eating garri for dinner more times than I can count. My husband, Kunle, was a good man then, struggling as a mechanic.
Then, he disappeared for four days. He said he went to his village for an emergency family meeting.
When Kunle came back, he didn’t take public transport. He drove home in a black Prado. He didn’t look at me with love anymore; he looked at me with a strange hunger. He had a briefcase full of dollars and a stillness in his eyes that scared me.
Within two weeks, we moved to a massive duplex in Lekki Phase 1. I had house helps, drivers, and clothes I only used to dream of.
But he brought something else back from the village.
It was a small, ugly clay pot, sealed tightly with a dirty red cloth. It smelled faintly of burnt hair and iron.
He placed it in the corner of our master bedroom.
“Bimbo,” he said, his voice dangerously low. “This pot is the reason we are here. It is our source. Never touch it. Never ask about it.”
That first night in our new mansion, I climbed into the massive imported bed. Kunle grabbed my ankle. His grip was too tight.
“No,” he said. He pointed to the cold tiled floor, right next to the pot. “You sleep there tonight.”
I thought he was joking. I laughed. But he didn’t smile. He pulled a thin wrapper from the wardrobe and threw it at me.
“Sleep there. The Baba said you must be close to it for seven nights.”
I was terrified. You don’t argue with a man who suddenly gets this kind of mysterious wealth in Lagos. You know what it means.
I lay on the hard floor. Kunle slept peacefully on the soft bed.
Around 3:00 AM, the room was dead silent. Then I heard it. story by jerry smith.
It started as a low hum coming from inside the pot. Then it changed. It sounded like small fingers scratching against the inside of the clay walls.
Skritch. Skritch. Skritch.
My heart was pounding so fast I thought it would burst out of my chest. I swear to God, I saw the red cloth on top of the pot move, just a little bit, as if something inside was breathing in and out.
I endured this torture for five nights. During the day, I was “Madam” in a Range Rover. At night, I was a prisoner sleeping next to something evil.
Yesterday, I couldn’t take it anymore. Kunle went into the bathroom to shower and left his phone unlocked on the bed.
I quickly grabbed it. I saw a message thread with a contact saved only as a full stop symbol “.”.
The last message from the contact read: Is the wife still sleeping by the vessel? The sàcrifice needs her fear to ripen. Tomorrow is the sixth night. Be ready.
My blood turned to ice. Sàcrifice?
I dropped the phone. I needed to run. I needed to take my children and run far away from this house and this wealth.
I turned toward the door to escape, but Kunle was already standing there. He had a towel around his waist and water dripping from his chest.
He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the phone on the bed.
He slowly walked past me and picked up the clay pot. He began to untie the red cloth.
“You should not have looked, Bimbo,” he whispered. “Now you have woken it up early.”
The cloth fell away. Something black and shapeless inside the pot began to rise.
