Blood in The Dormitory
The whip cracking sound of the long, fat cane hitting flesh made everyone jump a little in their seats. Mr Tope the math teacher wielded the cane like a weapon he was intent on emptying into Vivians back.
“Turn around!” He bellowed at the wailing girl and the sound of their liaison penetrated through the bubble of tension we had all been sitting in. Vivian’s crime had been to answer a question incorrectly.
For ten minutes she stood there filling the board with figures and figures until the cane had landed on her back suddenly. Everyone knew Mr Tope was lethal in his caning, his reputation among students was not a nice one at all.
When we were in SS1, a slight JSS3 girl, Bisola, had fallen into his trap one day. I remember it was a Thursday because everyone was in their P.E uniforms. Mr Tope was the one assigned to patrol through our classes during prep. No one knew why Bisola had left her class or what she had left her class to do, but she suddenly ran into our class shouting Mr Tope is coming! Mr Tope is coming!
We all arranged ourselves correctly in our seats. Those who had no plans to read brought out their books and placed them on the table. Bisola ran around the class, begging people to scoot over so she could sit but no one wanted to get in trouble. Mr Tope came in to see her standing bereft in the middle of the class.
He called her out into the corner until they were both standing in front of a set of steps.
“What were you doing out of your class?” He asked.
Bisola’s lips quivered “I came to take something”
“What? And from whom?!” Mr Tope’s voice had grown dangerously loud.
“Eh.. Eh.. Sir please.. I..!” Mr Tope’s hand caught her in the middle of her left cheek, the force of his arm throwing her down the steps. She fell and landed in a heap beneath him. Mr Tope walked down the steps and past her, saying.
“When you’re done, kneel down there till the end of prep”
***
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Mr Tope was not the only one who was that brutal to us. Mr Phil and Mr Arnold were also very lethal in their punishments. We always wondered if they were unhappy with their lot as secondary teachers in an all girls school. We tried to think of other more plausible reasons for the hate.
We were gathered one day in our dorm having a heated discussion just before bedtime
“Did you see how Mr Phil flogged Amah today?” Swanta asked.
“Ehen! Ah! It was too bad o!” Came shouts from different corners of the room.
“I don’t know why we get molested everyday and yet the school authority says nothing about it” A calm voice said from the right. It belonged to Titi our class guru. She talked with the air of someone who knew what she could do academically and wasn’t scared to flaunt it.
Everyone stared at her, at the blue glasses perched on her nose and at the literature book on her lap. I knew it annoyed others like me that Titi could still manage to read in the middle of all the noise and that she could hear perfectly what we were gossiping about.
There was a time when we didn’t trust Titi enough to have such discussions in her presence. She was too much of a teachers’ pet and we all suspected she would be a snitch too and could put us in big trouble. She proved us wrong one day when the geography teacher, Miss Peré, walked unexpectedly into our class one afternoon to see everyone falling over themselves as they laughed.
Somehow, she knew we were being mischievous. She was right, we had been making fun of Madame Fleur’s hippity hop.
“Titi, what were they talking about?” She asked when we had quieted down. Titi got up from her seat slowly like one just waking up from a deep academic sleep.
“I’m sorry ma, I wasn’t listening to them,” she said, brandishing a book she had been reading.
Miss Peré bit her lip angrily but there was nothing she could do. She couldn’t actually refute Titi’s claim, the girl was always in her book bubble. Since that day, we dragged Titi into our circle of trust.
“Those men are demons o” New-Creation, the pastor’s daughter piped in. Everyone rolled their eyes, New-Creation’s way of life was enough to convince anyone to not follow Christianity. She followed all the school rules, who does that? She never wore coloured socks, never used clear nail polish and never drank garri after lights out.
Her perception of a holy life was total obedience to all and every commandment of God and Man. I saw her as a weak minded person who chose to bow down to every mandate instead of standing up for herself.
Slowly the hostel quieted down as everyone’s breathing slowed. I lay awake in my bed listening to the sound of crickets outside my window. The brightness of the night sky, the moon, and all the stars twinkled into my room. Gradually the cold air filtered through the windows and I clutched my blanket closer to me. A cat meowed on my window sill and I shivered, scooting further into my hard bed.
After a while, I dared to look outside and my eyes locked with the green eyes of this very white cat. I sort of screamed inside of me, everyone knew what cats meant in a girls dormitory. It was common knowledge that many of these girls were witches with powers that enabled them take on cat and bird forms at night.
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“Blood of Jesus” I repeated over and over again silently, too scared to speak. “Meow” it replied and moved away. Transfixed as I was, the world was not done with me. Something rustled near the opposite bunk. It was difficult to know if someone was entering or getting out of bed. I waited in tense silence for minutes before I finally fell asleep.
Familiar loud noise jolted me out of sleep. The matron was banging her stick hard against the bunk bed. To the matronly woman, that was the best way to wake us up when she had no bucket of water ready. All the SS2 girls hated her, the younger ones were terrified of her.
As soon as I was awake I began to look around, wanting to spot any empty bed or anyone who looked too wide awake. I wanted to know who sneaked out or into bed yesterday evening and why.
That morning, the cold well water hit our bodies like knives as we tried to at least wash the important parts of us. I saw New-Creation bathing slowly. She had lathered her face and was in the process of watching it off. The biggest girl in our dorm Mary sneaked over and poured New creation’s water into her own bucket, leaving an empty bucket for her.
I shook my head. If not that the girl was a weasel, people do not bully their own classmates. Was it not crazy? By adhering to all the teachers rules, she was flouting the students code and putting herself in danger. I heard her cry out as her hand hit the empty bottom of her bucket, and I poured water on my back.
We all filtered slowly into the assembly ground in our blue and white starched uniforms. The gold lettering in our berets shining against the sun. FEGEDO girls had to look neat and tidy every school day to avoid being punished by the sanitary prefect. Our principal was standing on the dais wearing a cream colored gown that stopped at the knee and clashed nicely with her dark chocolate skin.
Unlike most of our teachers who had no heart, this woman was a motherly kind that all the girls looked up to. She was charismatic and her prowess at solving problems and settling disputes made us nickname her Mrs Solomon.
“Good morning all” she greeted.
“Good morning Ma” we all replied.
“It is with great regret that I announce the death of Miss Okon” she said. A loud murmur went up in the crowd. Okon? Miss? Some students started to shout so teachers came closer and brandished their canes at us.
I knew Miss Ruth Okon, one day I had gone into their class to ask for a study novel to read. That had been my first time to enter their class so I was shaking and eager to get the book and bolt out the door. Her niceness made it easier for me to ask her for books again and again until I was so confident when going to her class, that someone could have mistaken me for an SS3 student if I sat down on their chairs.
Now she was dead. I couldn’t believe it, I looked over at SS3 and watched them clutch each other in grief. Even the principal, standing way off in the distance looked confused. No one knew what to think about a young girl dying in her bed on school premises. Later, news filtered around that it had been a spiritual attack and she had been gasping for breath before she gave up the ghost.
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***
“School records say she isn’t asthmatic, that debunks the illness theory” Titi said from the corner of the room.
“What if someone strangled her?” I asked. Everyone stared at me. At first it was unimaginable and then fear started to trickle in from the corners of their eyes. Who wants to have a serial killer prowling around the school and looking for who to devour?
“We should pray” New-Creation mumbled from her bed. She had been very quiet throughout the day and hadn’t spoken a word on the trending topic. “Let us pray” she repeated and half the room left their beds to go to her. My mouth fell open in surprise, knowledge of how close death could come was really enough to draw folks closer to their maker. I climbed my bed and covered myself up.
***
I was a very light sleeper, so when New-Creation began to moan at night I woke up. At first, I thought she was speaking in tongues but gradually the sounds became more watery and gurgled as though she had blood in her throat.
“Wake up!” “Wake up!” I shouted on top of my voice. Mary got up and scratching her eyes glared at me.
“What is it?” She shouted.
I pointed at New-Creations bunk which was covered with the mosquito net and a piece of cloth. Inside of me I knew I was overreacting but I couldn’t do anything about it. Mary gave me one last scornful look then she went to New-Creations bed and flung the cover open.
We all looked inside and saw the girl’s mouth wide open as she drooled and snored, she was fast asleep. My roommates gently went back to their beds, none of them bothering to look up at me. The fear seemed to sit on all of their shoulders.
After that, a series of events happened that convinced me that not everything was alright in our school. Firstly, more girls were now moaning at night. When awoken, they had no recollection of what they had been moaning out moments ago.
I took my sound recorder and placed it close to all the girls in turn at night. After recording I played those audios to myself so I could make out the words. One popular motif of all the recordings was “blood” those girls kept muttering and gurgling “blood in the dormitory”.
Our dormitory room with four bunks and eight girls had only two girls (me and whoever was sneaking out of bed periodically) who weren’t agonizing at night. One fateful night, I was lying awake as usual when I heard the familiar creak.
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When the shadow had passed through the door and into the corridor I sidled down my bunk and followed after the person. The person had switched on the corridor lights as though unafraid of being detected. I stepped into the toilets on tiptoe and came face to face with Titi.
She was sitting on the toilet seat with a sleepy look. I reared back, attempting to sneak back out but she had already seen me.
“Ada!” She called harshly, holding her chest “you startled me!”
“I’m sorry, I…I..” I made a fumbling attempt at an apology.
She got up from the toilet, cleaned up and flushed. When she walked out of the toilet, I followed her, feeling somewhat guilty for suspecting someone like Titi of fowl play.
“Sit down” she told me when we reached the room. “Tell me why you were following me around”. I sat down and told her of all my suspicions for the past few weeks since Bose died.
When I played the recordings to her she laughed and said I was so mistaken. The girls were actually moaning ” Blood of Jesus” in their nightmares.
I listened again and realized she was right. The fear must have been making them have nightmares.
“What do you think?” She asked me.
I sat there thinking for a while before I said.
“I think sometimes a tragedy is just a tragedy in itself and must not lead to a series of other tragedies” I said.
“You’re right, Ada!” She said.
We sat on her bed with all the fallen evidence hanging between us, surrounded by the sleeping girls who were quiet for the first time in weeks. Her hand snaked over mine and we smiled brightly at each other, hers a little too wide.
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