14/02/2026
I thought I had lost her forever. Yet yesterday morning, I saw my sister wandering through the market, alive—or something that looked like her.
My hands were still grimy from the grave soil I had shoveled the night before. My eyes were swollen from crying until dawn. Everyone had seen it: how we lowered Lami into the earth, how Mama clutched her chest and wept, how the village pastor prayed for her soul. And yet, there she was, wearing the green wrapper she had on the day she fell ill, moving among the cassava sellers as if death had never touched her.
I dropped the basket of tomatoes I was carrying. The fruits tumbled to the ground, forgotten. My heart raced, threatening to tear itself from my chest, as I pushed through the crowd.
“Lami!” I shouted.
She turned. The familiar dark eyes stared back, the small scar on her cheek—her childhood mark—still visible. But her smile… it was wrong. Too wide. Too deliberate.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she whispered. My blood ran cold.
“But we buried you! How… what’s happening?” I stammered.
Her feet barely touched the dirt—they hovered, just enough to make her seem unreal. “I tried to warn you,” she said. “I saw what Mama had done. I wanted to stop it before it came for you.”
I staggered back. “Stop it? What do you mean?”
“The night I got sick, I followed her to the hidden grove behind our house. She was speaking to something… dark. Something that answered her. She promised one daughter for wealth. I was chosen first. But she wants two. You’re next.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “Mama? That’s impossible. She goes to church every Sunday. You’re not real. You’re a… a trick.”
“Look around,” Lami interrupted. “When did the new gate appear? When did Papa’s debts disappear? When did she start wearing gold?”
I remembered. Three months ago, Mama returned from the village she refused to let us visit—the village where her grandmother practiced rituals forbidden by the church.
“They’re coming tonight,” Lami said, glancing over her shoulder at something invisible to me. “When the first c**k crows at midnight, the gate opens. You have two choices: run and save yourself, or confront Mama and break the covenant. There’s no other way.”
“Wait—” I reached for her, but my hand passed through thin air. She was fading.
“One last thing,” she whispered. “The person who ends the covenant must spill family blood on the stones of the grove. Not a chicken, not a goat… blood that binds us. Do you understand?”
She vanished entirely, leaving me in the middle of the market. People stared, but no one seemed to notice anything strange.
I walked home slowly, feeling the weight of dread pressing down on me. Mama was in the kitchen, humming a tune I had never heard. She turned toward me and smiled—too wide, too knowing.
I barely slept that night. Shadows moved in strange ways across the walls. The wind whispered through the trees, carrying a faint, mocking laugh that sounded almost like Lami. I kept hearing it, but every time I turned, there was nothing.
When midnight finally came, I stood at the edge of the grove. The stones were cold beneath my fingers, slick with dew. Somewhere deep in the shadows, I felt her—Lami’s spirit, urging me forward. Behind me, the house glowed with the warm light of the kitchen where Mama hummed, unaware—or maybe fully aware—of the choice I was about to make.
Should I run and save only myself, leaving the cycle to continue? Or should I stay and face Mama, spilling the blood that binds us, and risk everything to end it forever?
The night stretched before me, heavy and silent, waiting for my answer.
