Down the beaten, dusty road, I huffed and puffed, searching for relief and comfort and some peace away from this shadow pursuing me.
My iron gate, a giant silhouette of mystery in a sea of all-consuming darkness, loomed tall ahead of me, each step seeming a pull from this iron demon rather than my own will. Behind this iron demon, the house stood in brooding silence, silhouetted against the grey-blue hue of moonlight, disaffected and distant, cold and in tears.
As I approached the gate, I looked up at my house, at the arched roof that was hands reaching out to the indifferent night sky. It wasn't a scary sight, that house. Instead, it was a broken look. Its long windows, behind which peeked nothing but darkness, were eyes empty of tears long dried. The roof hung down the rafters like the shoulders of one weighed down by unending sorrow.
I stepped onto the cold, hard path, and as I took my first steps toward the house, I could feel that cold, unwelcoming push toward an inevitable end. I wasn't walking toward my house. My home, with its cold, ghastly hands, was pulling me toward it, reaching out for a hug to ward off the forlorn coldness it was feeling, and I, a mere puppet, had no will but to give in to this and take this hug.
The door groaned and creaked, tired and weary, as it slid off its jamb. A cold draught slapped across my face on its way hastily outside the house as though the sorrow and sadness inside it were too much to bear. That left me alone, standing at the door of the house, which seemed to stretch endlessly above and ahead of me like a castle, those walls of weeping sorrow staring coldly back at me.
Then, the scent of rosebuds and jasmine reached me. But it didn't accost as it did previously. Instead, it started off in a tentative swirl, distant but perceptible.
I entered into the belly of this beast, of this gloomy beast who sought to devour me, not out of malicious evil nor unholy sinfulness, but out of desperation, a desperation to make things right, to correct the past.
I made it to the landing of the stairs and stared at the brooding shadows of blackness at the top. The stairs led to nowhere but a dark abyss. Unlike the first time earlier in the day, though, I couldn't feel the unseen eyes watching me. In fact, I felt as though everyone had turned their backs on me, standing facing away from me as if I was so hideous to look at.
Even the nightlife seemed to have deserted me. The wind stayed hidden somewhere in the tall grass. The frogs stayed muted somewhere in the ponds, and the mosquitoes remained silent and hidden, not even daring to suckle on this meal I had prepared for them with my short-sleeve shirt and exposed face. It was a night in which I could hear the hairs on my skin crackle as they stood up. I could hear my heartbeat echo through the darkness like a malago drum. I could hear my heavy, desperate breathing howl like the Kaskazi winds that had now fallen silent outside.
On landing at the top of the stairs and engulfed in this encumbering darkness, the bedroom door down the corridor offered a glimmer of hope. A small stream of weak, yellow light escaped through the door and framed itself in a neat rectangle on the opposite wall. The scent of the rosebud and jasmine was now stronger, and with it, the strong memories of her.
Someone gave a nasty, phlegm-filled cough and let out a short groan of pain and extreme discomfort. My wife, Sylvia. Sly, my magnificent muse and close confidant. How I had missed her.
I was now standing at the bedroom door, and there she was, lain in bed in her red, silky nightgown. This gown she had previously filled with her curvy frame now hung down her body as though it was held up to dry on the lines. The skin on her body was stretched thin, all bones in her body exposed. Her skin was like a dried-out tree stripped clean of its leaves and roasting in the Kajiado desert. Her lips, chafed, dry and white, bled with each cough.
Upon seeing me, her expressive eyes, sunken deep under the shadow of her brows and further pulled deeper by the deep crow's-feet around her eyes, suddenly widened. Not in joy, but in anger. It was a steely gaze of angry disappointment.
"I told you not to tell that man of my illness." She said in a breathy voice that sounded like sandpaper rubbing against a tree bark.
"Sly, look at you!" I said, rushing into the room and kneeling on the bed by her side. "You are wasting away fast. I felt it was necessary to tell your family. They deserve to know."
"I can't believe this!" She gave a disdainful chuckle. She was very weak and struggling to talk, but the anger, it seemed, overpowered everything else, and she was using every bit of the little strength she had left to admonish me.
"You, Pamela, Steven, Alice. You are my family." She went on, "I was ready to die with nobody but all of you by my side. I did not need you to play savior and tell that man how I was doing."
"That man is your father, Sly -"
"Says who?" She fired back, almost raising her head from the bed, "Says who, eh? Since when, eh? Since he disowned me, eh? Since he asked me to leave his house as a teenager? I thought you loved me."
Her voice broke, and she began sobbing. I rushed to her side.
"I love you, baby," I said, this weight of sorrow dragging me down in supplication as I kissed her bony arm.
"Then why wouldn't you respect my dying wishes? Now the man I loathe is coming over to see me. He is bringing his wife too. Do you wish to kill me so soon, my love? What did I ever do to you for you to hurt me so by inviting my sworn enemies to my death bed? Do you not wish me peace in my journey home?"
I wailed and cried at her words. A bag of sorrow was pooling on my neck, bringing a flood of tears into my eyes and sending them down my cheeks in a stream of grief and contrition. I am sorry, Sly. Forgive me, please. That is what I wanted to say. But words couldn't come out of my throat. I was drowning and gasping for air.
"I was only trying to do the right thing," I stammered amidst sobs and whimpers, but Sly was not having it. She had turned away from me, staring blankly out of the window, at the tree, cast in the evening sun, gently swaying to the gentle breeze.
"Your good intentions, Henry, they sometimes cross boundaries." She said, tears streaming down her eyes, though the rest of her face remained static. "And I always told you. You want to be helpful, but you must also respect my wishes. Now I won't die in peace, knowing that he will forever be aware of my death and how I die, even if you now tell him not to come. Umeharibu safari yangu ya ahera."
"Forgive me, my love. Sly, aki nisamehe!" I cried, pulling her closer to me and burying my head into her chest, feeling her bony ribs press against my face. I could hear her heartbeat - distant, faint, weak, but also violent and impatient. I hoped to feel her hands wrapped behind my back in embrace, but they remained stuck by her sides.
"Go!" Was all she said.
I looked up at her, but she wasn't looking at me. She had turned away from me and was staring outside the window again. My sobs and whimpers hadn't moved her. I watched her through the blur of tears welling in my eyes, streaming pain and anguish down my cheeks.
A knock at the door startled me. Her nurse, Atieno, was at the door, here to care for her through the night as I was on night duty at work.
"Good evening, Mr. Mungasa," She greeted. The smile on her face quickly dissolved into a frown on seeing the tears in my eyes.
"Enda," Sly said, still not looking at me. I could feel the hatred and anger seep through her thin skin and reach out violently toward me.
I got off the bed, adjusted my tie, and picked up my car keys. I started planning on doing something big for her when I came home from work the next morning, a significant act of contrition to make up to her for going against her dying wishes.
I would never get that chance.
Seven minutes to midnight, I received a call that nobody ever wishes to receive. I didn't immediately jump to my feet and drive over. I couldn't even bring myself to get to my feet. Instead, I remained seated, numbed and lost in thought. A blissful life of marriage, now ending in tragedy, no, not because she was dying of cancer, but because I had broken her trust in the worst way possible. Now, I could never ever make it up to her.
I keeled over and sighed, that pool of grief beginning to choke me and sucking the life out of me once again, sending the warm tears through my eyes and flooding my chest with grief, squeezing my heart and crushing it into a puddle of blood, pus and countless regrets.
There in our marital bed, in the darkness, in the quietude of that melancholic sadness, I sat, drenched in tears and drowning in sorrow, gasping frantically at everything and anything I could get my hands on until sleep washed over me.
I don't know how long I had been crying or even how long I had slept, but the next time I opened my eyes, it was seven minutes to midnight. I looked at my bedroom door, wide open, a wall of deep blackness just outside it. That feeling of being watched was over me again. Something was watching me. I had yet to see it, but I could feel it.
My shoulders tightened in dread, and a sinking feeling of despair and anguish was pulling me down from the inside. The strong explosion of rosebud and jasmine once again violently accosted my nose.
Then I saw it. In the shadows, half buried in the blackness of the night, stood the tall thing, bleeding into the room a cold chill of dread and a heavy air of misery and pain, watching me, this time I could see the bright glow of its eyes pierce through every inch of the thick darkness and into me.
I could not escape it. I had to learn to live with this shadow.
THE END
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