If there is one thing adulthood has taught me, it’s that responsibilities don’t pause simply because your life has become impossible.
My rent wasn’t going to pause because dead people had started following me. My electricity bill wasn’t going to become spiritually sponsored. My boss definitely wasn’t going to accept, “Sorry sir, I couldn’t finish the project because I spent yesterday talking to ancestors.” Although, judging by my recent presentation, he probably already suspected something was seriously wrong with me.
I called in sick, again. For the second day and I hated doing it. The company had been unusually patient with me since… well… dying.
Human Resources had checked on me, my manager had reduced my workload and everybody had been kind, but kindness has an expiry date.
Companies don’t pay salaries because they feel sorry for you, they pay you because you solve problems. Lately, the only problems I had been solving belonged to dead people, not exactly a marketable skill on LinkedIn.
The abandoned warehouse sat quietly on the outskirts of the city like something everybody had forgotten…Rust covered most of the zinc roofing, tall weeds surrounded the crumpling walls, and broken windows stared back at me like empty eyes.
If horror movies have taught me anything, it is this: Never willingly enter abandoned buildings, especially after someone tells you dead people are involved.
Yet there I was. Clearly my survival instincts had also died three months ago. I stood at the entrance for almost two minutes, maybe longer, looking around, listening., and…Nothing. Not even birds, just silence.
I almost turned back. Actually…I did turn…One step, then another, then I remembered his face. The face of a man who had waited fifteen years for somebody to finally hear him.
Then another image came back to me. An old television broadcast, Mama Nkem had somehow directed me to it the previous night…A younger woman crying into microphones, children holding photographs, neighbours begging for information.
“Please… if anyone has seen Chief Olumide Adewale…”
One man had stood beside the family throughout the interview, holding the widow’s shoulder, comforting everyone. Maybe he is the old man’s friend. Could he be the killer? If Pa Olumide was telling the truth…Then that man had spent fifteen years pretending to search for someone he had buried himself.
The thought made my stomach tighten. I sighed, “What more can happen to me?” I muttered. “I’ve already died once.”
Strangely enough…That sentence gave me courage and I walked into the warehouse. The place smelled like old wood and rainwater, dust floated lazily through the sunlight breaking in from the damaged roof. Broken crates were scattered everywhere and half-collapsed shelves leaned dangerously against cracked walls.
Every step echoed, every sound made me look over my shoulder and then I heard it.
Scratch…Scratch…Scratch.
I froze. There it was again, someone was digging. I swallowed, maybe this was a mistake. Maybe the old man had forgotten to mention there were living psychopaths hanging around abandoned warehouses.
The scratching continued. But curiosity eventually defeated fear. I followed the sound carefully until I reached one far corner of the warehouse…I blinked.
A young woman was kneeling on the ground, completely focused and using a long stick to dig into hardened earth. It was honestly one of the least effective excavation techniques I had ever seen.
She looked determined though. I watched her struggle for almost thirty seconds before accidentally kicking an empty bottle. The bottle rolled…Clink…Clink…Clink. She spun around instantly, our eyes met and instead of screaming…She frowned and then turned back to her digging.
“I got here first!” she announced.
I looked behind me, surely she wasn’t talking to…
“I’m taking this story to my station.” She stabbed the ground with the stick again. “You can go and find another exclusive.”
I stared.
What?
She sighed dramatically before throwing the stick onto the ground. “Oh honestly…” She pointed at the hole. “Instead of standing there looking confused, come and help me.”
I opened my mouth and closed it again. Somewhere in the last forty-eight hours, my life had crossed a line where complete strangers giving me strange instructions in abandoned warehouses no longer ranked among the weirdest things happening to me.
So…I helped. The ground was harder than it looked. Together we scraped away layers of compacted soil. Well…I scraped while she supervised.
“No, not there.” She pointed. “A little to the left.”
I moved.
“Not too much.”
I adjusted.
“You’ll damage whatever is underneath.”
I stopped.
“Continue.”
I looked at her. “Do you actually plan on digging, or is your role strictly managerial?”
She finally looked at me properly. “I was digging until you interrupted me.”
“I interrupted you?”
“You made me lose my rhythm.”
“What rhythm?”
“You know…The excavation rhythm.”
I laughed despite myself and she smiled very briefly in return.
“My name is Zainab.”
“Kelechi.”
“You don’t look like a journalist.”
“I’m not.”
She frowned. “Then why are you here?”
Excellent question. Unfortunately, *because a dead man sent me* didn’t seem like an appropriate answer.
“I got… a tip.”
She nodded immediately. “So did I.”
Interesting.
“My informant said something important was buried here.” She leaned closer to the ground. “If this is real…” Her eyes sparkled. “…this changes everything.”
“For who?”
“For me.”
She grinned. “I’ve been waiting months for one proper investigative story. This could be it.”
For the first time since meeting her, I noticed the old leather satchel lying beside her. She reached into it and carefully removed a weathered document folder wrapped in old plastic.
“I found this first.” She spoke almost to herself now. “It shouldn’t even be here…”
The folder looked ancient, water-damaged and its edges had almost fused together. She handled it like an archaeologist discovering buried history.
“If this contains what I think it does…”
She barely finished the sentence, something white caught my attention beneath the loose soil beside us. At first I thought it was a stone, then I noticed the curve, too smooth and too perfect.
A strange feeling settled over me. Without saying anything, I knelt beside it and began clearing more dirt away with my hands, slowly and carefully…more white appeared, rounded and solid. My breathing slowed. No…No…Please don’t…Then two empty holes emerged, looking directly at me.
I stumbled backwards so violently I nearly fell. My voice escaped before I could stop it. “ZAINAB!”
She jumped. “What?!”
I couldn’t speak, I simply pointed. Annoyed, she walked over.
“What is wrong with…” Her words stopped, she looked down, her eyes widened and her lips parted. For one endless second, neither of us moved.
Half buried beneath decades of earth…was a human skull, still attached to the rest of a skeleton disappearing into the ground below.
Zainab inhaled sharply and then released the loudest scream I had ever heard. She turned and ran. Pure instinct took over, I ran after her. Neither of us looked back, not once. Because somehow…deep inside…I already knew.
We hadn’t just found human remains, we had found someone who had been waiting fifteen years to be discovered.