It began, as most damned things do, with silence.
Not the kind that comforts, but the kind that crept in—sharp, brittle, and wrong. The kind of silence that made walls shiver and chandeliers tremble for no reason. In a house too large for the dead, yet too quiet for the living, something shifted on Musa Yar'Adua Street.
Inside the three-storey mansion at number 49, the air smelled of roasted pepper, incense, and something sour. A faint hum buzzed from somewhere—maybe the fridge, maybe the walls, maybe the thing sitting cross-legged on the ceiling of the master bedroom, its head tilted unnaturally, eyes wide open like they'd never learned how to blink.
Nobody noticed.
The staff had all been dismissed for the evening. The chef was in traffic. The housekeeper had left early to take her son to choir practice. The security man had wandered to the corner kiosk for suya and gossip. The only person home was her.
Chika Agu.
Heiress. Art curator. Dead.
At exactly 9:17 p.m., the chandelier above her dining table flickered. The table had been set for one. There was a bowl of ogbono soup congealing beside untouched pounded yam. Her phone lay screen-up beside the plate, still open to the last message she'd typed but never sent.
To: Leah Ikenna
"You were right. It's not just a cult. It's…"
The message ended there.
By 9:30 p.m., a neighbor reported hearing a loud shriek—piercing, animalistic, unlike anything human. It lasted two seconds. Then, the silence returned, swallowing the sound whole.
By 10:05 p.m., Chika's body was discovered. No bruises. No signs of struggle. Just her sitting upright at the dining table, her face frozen mid-scream, eyes bulging, mouth foaming slightly at the corners.
Her left hand clutched the edge of the table. Her right hand was buried inside a small porcelain bowl filled with a strange white powder. Forensics would later confirm it wasn't cocaine, sugar, or flour. It was finely ground white mustard seed—a plant no one in her family ever remembered her owning, eating, or speaking about.
And on the wall behind her, written in something that shimmered faintly like fresh blood, was a single phrase:
"The fruit is clean, but the root is cursed."
When Detective Leah Ikenna arrived twenty minutes later, the air shifted again. The smell had changed. The silence thickened. And though no one said it out loud, everyone in that room felt it—
Something had come in with her.
Or maybe… something had been waiting for her.