The Ancestral Vault

The interstate bus from Lagos to Ibadan smelled of diesel exhaust, stale sweat, and damp cassava flour. Outside the splattered windows, the concrete chaos of the city gradually surrendered to dense, oppressive rainforest.

Chidi sat near the back, his knees jammed against the metal frame of the seat ahead. On his lap, hidden inside a canvas bag, sat the ledger. He could feel its coldness seeping through the fabric, resting against his thighs like a block of ice.

On his right forearm, beneath his jacket, the scar burned. The serpent biting its tail—a raised, angry red brand—throbbing in time with his heartbeat.

⁠29 DAYS⁠

Every mile brought him closer to the source. Ibadan was not just his grandmother’s hometown; it was where the covenant had been carved into the earth in 1974.

The bus lurdeched to a halt at the Ojoo terminal under a sky heavy with grey storm clouds. Chidi stepped out into the red dust of Oyo State. Unlike the frantic, electric energy of Lagos, Ibadan felt heavy, wrapped in an ancient, slow rhythm. The rust-colored zinc roofs stretched across the hills like an endless, oxidized sea.

He hired a local taxi—an old, dented blue-and-yellow Nissan Sunny—to take him out toward the outskirts, past the old railway line where his grandmother’s compound lay buried behind overgrown bush.

"Master, you sure say you wan go dis area?" the driver asked, looking at Chidi through the cracked rearview mirror as they turned off the paved road onto a narrow dirt track lined with thick cocoa trees. "Nobody dey live for dat old railway side again since dat mama pass away."

"I know," Chidi said, his voice flat.

"People talk say strange ting dey happen for dere for night," the driver murmured, shaking his head. "Dem say person go hear weeping inside the ground."

Chidi didn't reply. He pulled his jacket tighter around his arms, staring into the dark green wall of trees closing in on the road.