SHADOW SIX

Father Chibuike proposed and the Bishop agreed that Ivie should stay in the church, the same way they advised her mother to leave the house. This house, the one from which she was birthed and grew up in was now deserted to humans but not to spirits. She took some of her things, Father Chibuike had not said for how long she would be gone, but she guessed not for too long since the church was already working on the exorcism. She followed the Sister that led her into the inner part of the church compound, the part which herself and Gaga had wandered to but not explored. They came to another building where it was rumoured that the priests stayed, but everybody saw the priests, after each service, leave the church compound, so the authenticity of the rumours were never proven. The Sister led her from door to door, corners after corners, the labyrinth of the walls dazzling her. When they came to one of the door, the Sister opened it to finally reveal a room. There were six beds; three on the bottom bunk and three on the top, bags and Ghana-must-gos stood by the side of each bunker. There was one table, atop were books and pamphlets and Bibles and chaplets. The bathroom was a door to the left and there was only one window.

"Oh, they are out. I was hoping they would be in so I can tell the Sister in charge here about you," the Sister said. "This is the place the juvenile delinquents that parents bring stays so they can be shaped. You're not one of them, and I'll talk to the Sister about it, but there's no available space for you to stay so you'll manage here."

Ivie nodded and after the Sister left, she sank to the ground below her feet. Her life had changed, it did not just change, it created a banality out of the maudlin things she enjoyed. Now, not only was her friend in the hospital, and not only was her mother squatting with a relative, she also had to live with children whose parents had left to be disciplined by the church. She sighed and looked around, checking if the shadow followed her. It didn't. She sighed again and leaned against the wall, waiting for the people, whoever they were, to come back so she would know where to keep her bag.

When they came back, a little past five in the evening, she was tired and hungry. Some girls stood before her, surprised or happy, she couldn't tell. She recognized one, the one whose mother had brought to Father Chibuike to complain about sexual immorality. Itohan smiled, happy to have someone who had witnessed her being embarrassed in the same boat as her. "Let me go and call Sister Gabriel." She hurried out and came back with a tall woman, covered in a priestess's soutane, who looked full of life, with an aura that would break one's spirit.

Sister Gabriel looked at her, her face contorted in disgust, as though she could not believe she was encountering one more juvenile sin. "And what is your crime?"

"Good evening, Sister. I'm not here as a—" Ivie looked for the right word to say, 'delinquent' seeming too insulting. "—as an offender. I—didn't the Sister tell you?" Ivie couldn't believe her luck, had the Sister waited and got tired of waiting or had she just forgotten?

"What are you talking about, young lady?"

"The Sister that brought me here said she would talk to you about me." Ivie cursed her luck, the Sister had really left without saying, now she would seem like a liar.

"Sister who?" Sister Gabriel asked in the placating tone used for a child, as if humouring the girl's lies would make her stop lying.

Ivie wanted to prove her wrong, she opened her mouth. Then closed it, she didn't know the Sister's name. "I'm not lying."

The look on Sister Gabriel's face morphed into a cold, firm one. "Young lady, tell me what your offense is so I can know where to start with you."

"The Sister dropp—"

"You think this is a place where Sisters just come and drop people? What a lair! How can you lie with such a straight face in the presence of God, on the head of a Reverend Sister, to a Reverend Sister?"

Ivie knew she could say she could say she had disrupted the Easter Sunday and earn her recognition, but she didn't want to be seen as demon possessed, so she kept quiet. At the entrance of the room, some boys had gathered, watching them, watching her.

"For lying to me, you're not going to have dinner this night." Sister Gabriel said.

"Ah na, for what?"

"'Ah na, for what?' abi? This is why parents drop children like you here. You—"

"—but—"

"—you interrupt me when I talk and then you tell lies."

"Sister, you can ask Father—"

"—Chibuike? Is that like an anthem for you girls? I should ask Father Chibuike, then he would do what? As long as you're here, I'm responsible for you, Father Chibuike holds no power here. You might have as well told me to ask the Bishop."

"Well, you can ask him too," Ivie murmured, annoyed.

Sister Gabriel, started to say something but decided to ignore her, she turned around and the boys at the entrance scrambled away when she saw them. That night, as Sister Gabriel had said, she smelt the sweet smell of food wafting around the room, but she did not eat. Her mouth watered, her stomach grumbled, and she wanted to ask the girls for food but pride held her back.

"You should have just told her," the girl at the bottom bunk of her bunker said. "She likes addressing us by our sin, she likes rubbing it on our face. My name is Aisosa, I stole my grandfather's money."

"Leave her alone, she doesn't want us to know what she did. You think you can hide it forever?" Itohan sneered. "By the time you stay here three days without food, you'll talk."

Three days? Her stomach grumbled, even as a child, when she had committed the worse offense of saying she hated her mother, she had not gone three days without food. But she had gone three weeks of her mother telling friends and relatives the story, repeated in different versions, but always need with her sneering, "that pikin?" She smiled at the memory. A distant memory of when her family was complete, and alive, and hale. She closed her eyes and shook her head off the nostalgia that wanted to slice through her, she just needed to get through the night, hoping the shadows wouldn't come for her, and she would think of how to face Sister Gabriel tomorrow.

She opened her eyes, the next day, to see the room almost bright and the girls yawning, some already chattering away the grogginess from her eyes. But something felt off, she was awake, at the same time she did not feel awake, like she was in a dream about the present. She tried to move and realized she could not, her fingers could not raise, her mouth could not open, even her eyes could not roll, she was paralyzed. In her mind, she was shouting, telling the other girls to wake her, but she knew they could not hear. Then the shadows came, in that grotesque and airy form it appeared, but this time it began to morph to what looked like the outline of a hand. And a shoulder. And a head. And the other arm. And the whole being. It gave it face; an eye, a nose and a mouth, and it looked like Sister Gabriel. In her hand was a knife, but that was not what had Ivie's attention. In Sister Gabriel's first finger was a ring, a ring made of bronze with a wide top, the letter C carved on it. But it was her mother's ring, looked like the ring her mother wore once in every while on her first finger. What was the shadow that took Sister Gabriel's form doing with her mother's ring? It began to near her, bring the knife closer, and Ivie wanted nothing more than for that knife to not touch her. The girls were calling her, telling her to wake up, Sister Gabriel would be upset, and she wanted to tell them that Sister Gabriel was upset enough that she wanted to kill her. More, she wished they would shout louder. The Sister Gabriel's figure placed her legs astride on her, an Ivie swore, she felt the sides of the bed dip as if a real human and not a spirit had decided to lay with her. What was happening? The girls were complaining now, Itohan saying something that sounded like "She thinks she's VIP," and the knife was nearing her.

Aisosa tapped her, and that was all she needed to roll off the bed from the top bunk and fall on her stomach to the ground, the figure, gone. Her paralysis, stopped. She panted, held her chest, her heart beating inside, and panted. The door to the room flew open, Sister Gabriel stood there, and sure enough she was angry.

"Do you think the day would wait for all of you?" She spared Ivie a look and Ivie raised her head to meet her gaze, then dragged hers through her body, checking her finger to see if she wore any ring. She didn't. And she looked okay, angry, but not as angry as the one in her dream, she panted in relief.

"Five minutes," Sister Gabriel said, "five minutes and you're outside."

Unfortunately, Ivie took seven.