The bus from Enugu dropped her at Mile 2 with
two bags, a degree in Economics she couldn’t
sell, and a wooden mask wrapped in kola nut
husks—her mother’s last breath given as
inheritance. No letter. No explanation. Just the
smell of wet earth and old blood clinging to the
carvings.
Lagos swallowed her whole. She slept on the
floor of her uncle’s threeroom flat in Surulere,
where the ceiling leaked during rain and the
pastor next door preached till 3AM about demonic
debt. Her job applications returned with
“experience required” stamped in red ink. The
world had moved on. The mask stayed.
On the third night, the mask wept. Not water.
Not sweat. A thick black oil that pooled on the
floor and formed words in Yoruba: They come for
the bloodline. She wiped it. It returned.
The next morning, a man in a grey agbada knocked
on the door. He didn’t ask for her name. He said,
“Your grandmother broke the pact when she fled
Oyo.” He placed a single cowrie on the table.
“Three more by moonrise. Or the city forgets
your name forever.”
She ran. But Lagos knew. The market women
stopped selling her pap. The tricycle driver
refused her fare. The pastor’s daughter, who
once shared her rice, crossed the street at the
sight of the mask. The rules were clear: the
mask must be returned to the shrine at IleIfe
before the next full moon—or the spirits claim
the firstborn of every household in Lagos for
seven days.
She stole a taxi to Ibadan, then walked through
the bush to the abandoned shrine behind the old
railway. The priestess there, face scarred from
a failed exorcism, did not speak. She lit three
candles. Placed the mask on the altar. And
whispered: “You are the last daughter. You
either take the contract… or the city drowns in
its own greed.”
The contract wasn’t money. It wasn’t power. It
was memory. She had to carry the weight of every
soul the society had sacrificed since 1960—
soldiers, students, traders—who died so Lagos
could rise. To refuse meant the debt would fall
on the next generation. To accept meant she
would forget her own name, her mother’s voice,
her lover’s face—the one who left for Canada and
never wrote back.
At midnight, she pressed her palm to the mask.
It burned.
The oil rose again. This time, it formed her
mother’s face. Then her father’s. Then ten
others. All gone. All owed.
She whispered, “I take it.”
The ground cracked.
In the morning, the mask was gone. In its place:
a new one—carved with her eyes.
She walked back into Lagos.
The taxi driver took her fare without question.
The pastor’s daughter smiled and offered her
bread. The market women called her “Aunty” and
sold her yam at halfprice.
No one spoke of the dead.
But every night, when the streetlights flickered,
people saw her standing at the corner of Broad
Street—silent, watching, waiting—for the next
daughter who would come home emptyhanded.
The city breathed again.
She did not.
Not anymore.
