The Owl Night of Dread
By Elempe Dele
That cold dreary night, without any premonition, I went to be very early. It rained that evening before dusk, it was dark and cold. The wind blew heavily chilling the mud walls of the house. Every guest brought old leaves down from the large walnut tree near the house, close to where people who died of some curious instances were buried.
Earlier in the morning, the weather was still, the clouds were dark and the fate of the sun was bleak. I said to myself, the rain must fall today because it was the planting season, as the darkened cloud grew dense up the Egbogba Hills where the placentas of our forefathers were buried in caves.
It was at about 11pm that I was aroused from my sleep by the eerie sound of an owl hooting from the top of the walnut tree I have mentioned previously. My window faced the tree so the sound was penetrating into the room just like the cold. First, I thought I could take it and go back to sleep, but on a cold dreary night, the sound of an owl could be dreadful. “Hoo, hoo, hoo…” it sounded at intervals. My mind trembled, I gripped the edge of the mud bed I slept. My eyes were wide shut. Inside the sockets, they darted here and there with terror. What petrified me most was the eerie silence that hung in the air following each of its hooting. Meanwhile, the nearby echo of the sound goes deep into my chambers of recollection. I was immense in deep fear I must confess.
There was no light in the room, not even a flickering light. All I could see whenever I tried to open my eyes were shadows from outside the window acting as if they wanted to touch me.
Within those moments of apprehension, I started talking to myself internally. “What does this owl want with me? Why won’t it just go away so I can go back to sleep? What omen was it symbolizing? Why this cold night of all nights? Why was I alone in this dark dreadful room?” I had several unanswered questions I asked that were never meant to be answered in those succeeding hours after midnight. I was gripped by panic.
As a man I was becoming after my age grade initiation, I tried to defeat the pervading fear from the hooting owl. I tried to discard it as one of those unusual happenstances one encounters sometimes. “It’s just an owl,” I said to myself in a whispering tone barely audible. My thoughts were frozen again by the sound of the owl that seemed to be getting closer to my window. More apprehension wrapped round me like thick kitchen smoke, I was being suffocated. Or was I drowning in fear?
Now, I could not close my eyes any longer, shadows of unknown creatures, perhaps of trees, danced naked in grotesque forms. Oh no, how my heart raced like Rodion Raskolnikov in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. What if there was something else apart from the concerning owl that seemed not to abate in its consistent hooting? I felt like my heart was the ancestral drums that were beaten during my childhood initiation. Gboom, gboom, gboom…
My vision was blurred due to lack of light. I was getting tired and at the same time more terrified. I had feelings of slight hallucination that came and went at intervals.
At this point, I had the option of screaming to arouse some assurance, but I was the only soul in the entire large house. I plugged my ears with the tips of my cold fingers, but this I could not do for long to stifle the sound.
At some point, I summoned courage. I stood from the bed, took my pillow, the white kpokpoki coverlet, a small can of water that was near the bed and found my way out of the dark room with the sound still on.
I arrived at the west side of the house using my hands stretched forward as my guide. I still could hear the sound but it was no longer piercing as it was in the other room.
Between the intervals of the fainting sound and my wakefulness, I must confess I got tired at about 4am and dozed off into a deep slumber.
I woke up late, at about 8am, feeling restless. There were subtle wailings from women a few houses away from the house I slept in. I put on some dark clothes even while my head was still aching and went to inquire what the mourning was all about. It was there I discovered one of my distant cousins was dead. As I was told, he started having abdominal pains at about midnight and eventually passed during the small hours before dawn.
