KURA: The Cactus - by Olaitan Sanni

Ten years can make a child a stranger and a stranger a memory. But time means little to the dead, especially when they have unfinished business. <h1>Chapter 3: The Blood-Spurred Blossom</h1> <blockquote>Ten years later. </blockquote> Down in Riyom, Mama Beatrice’s heart remained tangled in the evening Nina vanished. She had grown older. The lines on her face had deepened like dry riverbeds, and the strength in her body had slowly disappeared, but her resolve had never broken. While the rest of the world moved on, Mama Beatrice refused to let her granddaughter become a forgotten name. She spent her meager savings printing missing person posters. Every market morning, with a bucket of homemade starch and the bundle of posters, she walked along the highway, pasting Nina’s fifteen-year-old face onto telegraph poles, bus stops, concrete walls, and anything else that would hold a piece of paper. Nina was twenty-five now. But to Mama Beatrice, she would always be fifteen. The local police station had long since stamped the case CLOSED, filing it away as nothing more than a runaway child case. But one man had refused to put down his pen. Detective Farouq. Farouq remembered the night Nina disappeared. He remembered standing on the highway beside a weeping Mama Beatrice, who clutched the empty woven basket she had found abandoned by the roadside. Firewood lay scattered across the dirt. Farouq had been the first to notice the tire marks. Dark, aggressive streaks burned into the black asphalt. Proof of a sudden brake and a violent surge off the road. He had followed the grooves through the tall grass toward the base of Kura Peak. But the hard, rocky terrain eventually swallowed the tracks. He had even climbed up toward the mountain back then, searching every rock He had found nothing. He never knew that beneath his feet, Nina was already buried. The supernatural pact had taken root. The strange, tiny cactus had sprouted over the disturbed earth, concealing the grave until the soil looked completely untouched. For ten years, Farouq continued investigating the case against his commander’s orders. He became Mama Beatrice’s only ally in the physical world. And neither of them knew that something else had been waiting all along. High above the highway, on the desolate summit of Kura Peak, the cursed cactus had grown in absolute secrecy. It had not grown overnight. It had taken ten years. Almost imperceptibly. Each rainy season brought another inch. Each dry season hardened its flesh. Until, after a decade, it stood nearly five feet tall. Its trunk was thick as a man’s torso, its dark-green skin unnaturally smooth, and its long spines that glistened like wet iron even in the middle of a drought. It looked less like a plant and more like something that had learned how to imitate one. Despite its size, it remained strangely isolated. Nothing grew around it. No grass. No weeds. No flowers. Only bare stone and dry earth. Then, on a scorching Saturday afternoon, the first blood was spilled.______________________________________ Victor was twenty-four. A university student from Musay. Arrogant, loud, and obsessed with taking daring photographs for his social media pages, Victor had driven down to Riyom with two friends to explore the rocky formations of Kura Peak. Near the base of the mountain, one of his friends wiped sweat from his forehead and looked up at the steep slope. “Bro, don’t go up that side,” he warned. “It’s too high. You could fall.” Victor laughed. “You guys are always afraid of everything. Watch me get the best view of the whole hill.” He slung his cross bag across his shoulder and began climbing. His boots kicked loose gravel down the slope as he scrambled higher. By the time he reached the highest ledge, he walked to the exact spot where Tunde had buried Nina ten years prior Then he saw it. A giant cactus stood alone on the barren rock. Victor stopped. There was something wrong about it. Nothing should have been growing there. The wind suddenly died. The sounds of his friends below faded into the distance. Even the insects seemed to disappear. The air became unnaturally cold. Victor stared at the plant. “What kind of plant is this?” He stepped closer. The cactus seemed to shimmer beneath the sunlight. Its dark-green skin carried a strange, almost wet luster. Victor felt something pull at him. Not physically. Something deeper. An urge. A need. He wanted to touch it. He couldn’t explain why. His hand slowly rose. He reached toward a cluster of long, black spines. Don’t. The warning came from somewhere inside his mind. Victor hesitated. Then his fingers moved anyway. His thumb touched the tip of the longest spine. Prik. Victor jerked his hand back. A tiny puncture had appeared in his skin. A single dark-red drop of blood gathered on his thumb. It trembled. Then fell. Straight onto the dry soil beneath the cactus. The moment the blood touched the earth, the ground shuddered. Only once. Victor looked down. Nothing. He blinked. The earth was still. Deep beneath the soil, however, something had awakened. Within the cactus’s buried taproot, Nina’s dormant spirit opened its eyes. The pact had been activated. Victor suddenly felt dizzy. A wave of cold passed through his body despite the blazing afternoon sun. He wiped his bleeding thumb against his jeans. “That hurt more than it should have.” He forced a laugh. He snapped two quick photos with his phone, one of himself and the other of the cactus. A few seconds later, he climbed back down the mountain to join his friends. He thought nothing of the tiny wound. He didn’t know that the clock had already begun counting down.______________________________________ That afternoon, at exactly three o’clock, Detective Farouq pulled his dusty police car into Mama Beatrice’s compound. He stepped out carrying a fresh stack of missing-person posters. He had printed them with his own money. “Mama.” Farouq walked toward her. She stood on the porch, her back resting against the wall. He placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “The station closed the case years ago,” he said gently. “But I haven’t.” Mama Beatrice looked at him. Farouq continued. “Those scattered twigs. The basket we found. The tire marks on the highway.” He paused. “Somebody took her that night, Mama. I’m sure of it.” His voice softened. “And as long as I am in this force, I’m going to keep looking for whoever took her.” Mama Beatrice looked up into the detective's eyes, her own glistening with unshed tears. “Thank you, Farouq.” She looked toward the distant highway. “Only God knows where she is. He will protect her for me.” Her voice trembled. “Sometimes…” She swallowed. “I can feel her calling me when the wind blows.” A tear slipped down her cheek. Farouq reached into his back pocket, pulled out a white handkerchief, and placed it in her palm. “Don’t give up,” he said. He handed her the newly printed posters. Then he returned to his car and drove away. Mama Beatrice watched until the vehicle disappeared down the road. She looked at the poster in her hands. At the face of the daughter she had spent ten years searching for. She didn’t know that, far above her, Nina was no longer waiting. ______________________________________ That night, Victor woke screaming. His family rushed into his room. He was burning with fever. His eyes were wide open, but he didn’t seem to recognize anyone. “Victor!” His mother grabbed his shoulders. He violently pushed her away. “Don’t touch me!” His voice cracked with terror. His brother froze. Victor was staring at the corner of the room. “She’s there.” “Who?” his brother asked. Victor’s breathing became faster. “The girl.” “What girl?” Victor pointed toward the empty corner. “He buried her.” Everyone turned. There was nobody there. Victor began shaking. “He buried her under the plant.” His mother tried to calm him. “Victor, there’s nobody there.” But Victor wasn’t listening. He suddenly covered his ears. “Make her stop!” “Who?” “The girl!” He screamed. “She’s crying!” His family heard nothing. Victor began clawing at the bedsheets. Then he stared at his hands. Blood covered his fingers. He screamed again. But when his mother grabbed his hands, there was no blood. Nothing. Victor began laughing. A strange, terrified laugh. Then he whispered: “She’s growing.” His brother stared at him. “What’s growing?” Victor slowly turned his head. “The plant.” He smiled. But there was nothing human in his expression. “It’s hungry.” His condition deteriorated rapidly. His family rushed him to the hospital, but the doctors couldn’t determine what was causing the violent fever and hallucinations. Victor was admitted to the intensive care unit. Throughout the night, he drifted between consciousness and nightmare. Sometimes he screamed about a girl standing beside his hospital bed. Sometimes he begged invisible hands to leave him alone. At one point, he suddenly sat upright and stared through the glass doors of the ICU. “There!” His brother rushed to his side. “What?” Victor pointed toward the corridor. “She’s standing there.” His brother looked. The hallway was empty. Victor’s voice dropped to a whisper. “She’s waiting for me.” Later, he began describing the mountain. He talked about the smell of wet soil. The sound of something scratching beneath the ground. A girl humming somewhere beneath the rocks. And always, the plant. Growing. Growing. Growing. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw it getting larger. Its roots spreading beneath the mountain. Its spines multiplying. Its branches stretching toward him. And at the center of it all stood a teenage girl with dirt covering her face. She never spoke. She only stared. Then, just before dawn, Victor whispered something that frightened even the nurse watching him. “She’s counting.” “Counting what?” the nurse asked. Victor’s eyes remained closed. “People.” Victor’s brother had been holding onto his phone throughout the ordeal. While waiting outside the ICU, he opened Victor’s gallery, hoping to find something that could explain what had happened. He found the pictures Victor had taken on Kura Peak. There was Victor. There were photos of his two friends. And there was also a photo of the strange cactus. His brother stared at the photographs. Something clicked inside him. Victor’s two friends were known for running questionable online schemes. They had been accused before of scamming white men and practicing black magic. His mind immediately went somewhere darker. A ritual. He remembered how Victor had spoken about the mountain. The hallucinations. The plant. The sudden illness. His brother’s expression hardened. “They took him there.” He stared at the photographs. “They took my brother there for a ritual.” He didn’t know how wrong he was. The truth was far worse.______________________________________ The following afternoon, the clock approached three. Inside the ICU, Victor suddenly stopped moving. His heart monitor continued beeping. Then Victor opened his eyes. For the first time since he had been admitted, he looked completely calm. He stared at the ceiling. A faint smile appeared on his lips. “She found me.” Then his heart gave one violent spasm. The monitor screamed. Doctors rushed toward him. “He’s crashing!” They tried everything. But at exactly 3:00 p.m., Victor’s heart stopped. The monitor became a single, unbroken line. Silence filled the room. The first soul had been harvested.______________________________________ High above Riyom, on Kura Peak. Almost imperceptibly, a thick, red spine began emerging from the cactus. It grew slowly. An inch. Then another. Its surface hardened as it lengthened, forming into the shape of a barbed arrowhead. The point faced downward. Toward the highway. Toward the world below. The first arrow had been forged.

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