Mysteries From The Deep Oh, you just cannot explain these mysteries. It all began with Jack. The story of Jack, the black dog is as strange as that of Theophilus Hain, a bachelor who was the owner. They lived in a small community in Freedomtown. Freedomtown as people called it was a city in Buenos. Buenos was a country that sprang up somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. It was an Island with tall coconut trees lined along its coasts. The country was populated with people from different races and cultures.
For about two years, Hain lived with Jack, his dog. But within the last few months, he noticed that his secrets had been leaking to people in the neighborhood. And he was worried. Even the things he shared only with his friend, John Rasco had leaked to outsiders who were not part of the discussions. They trusted each other and knew that neither of them leaked those secrets. Both of them were alarmed that their secrets had filtered out to people in the area.
Then one evening, Hain visited John who lived in the opposite bungalow in the estate where they lived. The houses in the estate belonged to Josiah Kabana, a very rich man who liked to be called “Chief Everyday Is Like Christmas.” About fifty years old, Kabana was one of the richest men in the city and he enjoyed life to the fullest.
The evening Hain visited John was one of those evenings the public electricity corporation had taken light in the city. A small candle was lit somewhere on the table. It was placed on a small tin of milk. John had been careful about where he placed his candles since he saw the havoc fire wreaked on some innocent souls including a motor driver a year earlier.
The neighbors had thought that the driver deserved no pity because he stored gasoline in a leaking jerry can in a corner of his store. And when there was no light, the leaking gasoline snaked through the floor to meet the candle where it was burning. The result was a deafening explosion that threw the whole street into confusion and tragedy. Before the driver and other tenants in the building could rush out, the explosion and raging fire had caught them. They were burnt beyond recognition. That day, John’s eyes stared at the candle as it glowed on the table while he spoke with Hain.
“I don’t know who has been leaking these secrets in this house?” John asked worriedly.
“I am worried too because no one was there whenever we spoke,” Hain said.
“Imagine the other story I told you about those characters in the greenhouse on the street. I did not discuss with any other person. And they heard everything in the house. One of them came here to confront me,” said John.
“Incredible. Then one should be more careful. Or does the wall around have ears?” asked Hain.
“Who could be leaking the secrets?” Asked John.
There was a strange sound somewhere in the half lit room. Behold it was Jack. The two men looked in the direction. Jack flapped her ears. The tail merely lifted up as she laid on the floor staring at the two men reflecting deeply in conversation
“Hm.... I see. She is here again!” Said Hain.
“What do you mean?” Asked John.
“Let’s hold it. This is strange. We have to talk about any sensitive issue outside this place,” Hain suggested.
The men took a walk outside the house. They had not moved far when they noticed that Jack was following them. They have heard about the leakage of their discussions and they knew they had to take precautions. They seemed to have had a clue now. But how could they justify their fears in this space and modern age. That a dog was leaking their secrets was irreconcilable with scientific analysis and logic. But it appeared that the men were convinced beyond reasonable doubts that Jack was not just an ordinary dog.
They believed some human souls inhabited this bizarre animal. However, an agreement was reached later that something should be done to Jack. The next day, the dog was lured into the back seat of a saloon car. Hain had decided to part ways with Jack. He had been so close to this strange dog for two years and he did not have the strong will to personally throw her away. So, John took the decision and decided to do it for his friend. Jack was salivating at the back seat of the car as John drove on.
The journey to the unknown began. John drove through the traffic-bottlenecks in the city. The dog, it appeared was oblivious of the unfolding events. Deep in his mind, Hain wanted John to find an appropriate place to dump this dog. It was expected that the dog would be lost there forever and would eventually die, perhaps knocked down by one of the drunken and reckless drivers on the highway. Maybe one of those rugged buses looking like mobile hippopotamus would run over the dog.
The journey took them over one and a half hours. They crossed many of those network of bridges in the city and it appeared Jack would not recognize anywhere again. Right on top of the bridge, John crossed into another suburb and linked a sprawling shanty area. The human traffic here was much and everyone was almost crawling into one another. John thought the right place had been found. And he stopped. He opened the backdoor. The dog jumped out of the car and reached for a bone thrown out by him.
Before Jack could lift the bone with its teeth, John slammed the door and sped off without the strange dog. He raced back to their office about ten miles away with contentment.
“My friend, I have thrown that strange dog away,” Said John.
“Where did you throw the dog?” Asked Hain.
“I threw the dog into the market in the midst of the huge crowd,” He answered.
“That dog was something else. Very bizarre animal! What kind of dog would be listening to people’s conversation when they are talking? This is very frightening,” said Hain.
“What kind of dog would be listening to our conversation?” Asked John.
No one could convince them that it was not Jack who through some unknown forces leaked their secrets. But they were relieved that day after they had thrown the dog away in a crowded market. They were indeed happy.
In the evening, the two friends met at home and had a kind of celebration. They ordered pepper soup from a small kiosk and they began to suck from the goat’s head used in the preparation of the pepper soup. Two bottles of beer each were later used to flush down the soup into the stomachs. They later went to bed. The night was dark. Some strange birds were in the area. But Hain and John were not aware of the fact that the birds have converted their nests into a coven where meetings were held at night by a club of nocturnal people who bore the garments of birds. The noise they made was as strange as the feathers that covered them but no one really knew what was going on. The nocturnal club was known as the “The Night Saints.” They shielded their identities and their activities and only people with spiritual eyes could see them that their activities were not saintly. Many people who walked pass the tree did not know that it was a coven.
In the morning, Hain woke up very early and cleaned his mouth. He opened the door of his bungalow apartment to put certain things right in his car before going into the bathroom. First, he noticed that the birds had excreted on the windscreen of the car. He thought of getting some water to wash the car. But something suddenly shook his legs below and ran into the parlor as if she was waiting desperately for the door to be opened.
“What could this be?” Hain Asked.
He looked straight into the room.
Behold, it was Jack -- looking straight into his eyes and also wagging its tail with delight. Jack had returned home. Dumping her in a market ten miles away from home did not stop the strange dog from locating home.
In his heart, Hain was now convinced that the dog was having the soul of a human being. But he could not say a single word as he went into the room to brief John who slept in his house overnight. They spoke and were convinced that the dog was from the realm of the spirit.
He later dressed up to go to work. As he drove along the highway, a bird flew against the windscreen of his car. The bird was one of the species that excreted on his car overnight during the nocturnal meeting by “The Night Saints.” He was very scared. He slammed his foot on the brake pedal of the car. But he lost control and ran into a gutter. Passersby who saw what happened were amazed. They rushed to the scene to rescue him from the car.
Hain was pulled out but there was no harm on his body. The car was also slightly damaged but the engine was still running. Hain knew something was wrong but he did not know what was happening to him. Before going to the mechanic to check his car, he went to his office to inform Daniel Amanda, his boss.
Hain and John both worked in Amanda’s company known as Cough 2000 International Inc. Amanda, a very shrewd businessman who adopted his mother’s name as his last name did not like paying his staff at the end of the month even though he knew that they deserved it had one friend in the town. His friend was Josiah Kabana, the landlord of the houses where Hain and John lived. Amanda was also very rich but everyone knew his source of income unlike Kabana.
Everyone knew Amanda was involved in the import and export of produce from rural areas. Kabana, unlike Amanda was a very proud and boastful man. He changed his dresses everyday into beautiful new dresses and he did not wear any of his new dresses a second time. He used to throw them away most of the time to beggars and musicians that thronged his house. He used to boast that he would not wear the same dress a second time. Some people rumored that he wore three hundred and sixty five dresses in one year and that was true anyway. He really changed into new dresses everyday. That was one of the things that clearly showed the extent of his stupendous wealth. It was his big and sprawling estate that housed some of the staff that worked for Amanda in his company.
The estate over the years had become a center of attraction for a lot of wizardry that no one knew the exact reason. Although tenants lived in this estate, Kabana never really bothered them about their monthly rents. Kabana’s only confidant in the town was Amanda but he still did not tell him everything about himself and most especially his type of business.
He was also as strange as his estate. A polygamist, he lived there alone without his three wives and children and anytime they visited him, they were asked to leave for the other houses he built for them where they lived. Musicians were never tired of coming into his house early in the morning. He was the one who told them in the first case to wake him up with their drums and poetic songs in the morning. When they did that, he would come out to shake his legs to the music and later paste money on the foreheads of the drummers before they left for their homes.
The musicians would scream: “Father! Great Father in a million!”
He loved and enjoyed such praises. Most times, he looked out for parties and opportunities to spend and lavish money. Whenever the opportunity arose to lavish money, he used to tell people; “WITH ME, EVERYDAY IS LIKE CHRISTMAS.” This later became the slogan that people affixed to his name. When letters were written to him, they were addressed thus:
Chief Joshua Kabana alias Everyday Is Like Christmas
00239 Joshua Estate
P.O. Box 1
Freedomtown City.
He liked it and he would not even open any letter that did not inscribe: “Chief Kabana also known as Everyday is like Christmas.” He did not assist anyone whose child wanted scholarship to go school. But he always gave out money to people who pleaded with him to assist their family to carry out burial rites and anniversary of their parents who had died more than a year and were about to celebrate by throwing lavish parties. Such parties gave him the opportunity to display wealth amongst many of the poor people that lived in the city.
One intriguing thing about the compound where he built his estate was the existence of the big tree that people later discovered served as a coven. The tree was in front of a particular building that no one entered or opened except Kabana himself. He guarded the block jealously and kept the key very secretly from people’s prying eyes. This particular house was so secured that one might think that it was a depot where arms and ammunition were kept.
Those who knew how he guarded the building even rumored that he may be pouring libation on some spirits there based on the fact that the entire compound appeared to be haunted by some strange spirits that no one knew something about. This was the same compound that the strange dog, Jack, and her owner found themselves.
Only Kabana knew that whenever he needed money, this particular building was the place where he entered and brought out currency notes as much as he wanted. It was like a bank. But the city had equally been bothered about the disappearance of children. The police have not been able to solve the mystery behind the disappearance of these children.
As close as Amanda and Kabana were they did not give each other any financial assistance. This was largely because both of them felt that they were rich enough to be independent from each other. While Amanda was more educated, Kabana dropped out of High School. Wealth and the need to dominate their city brought the two of them together.
One evening as Hain was returning home from work, he was thinking about the pressure that he had been facing in the office, the car accident he had few days earlier and the mysterious events that had been happening in his compound when he suddenly heard some kids screaming. At first, he thought that the noise was due to the game of soccer that the kids were playing but later found out that it was something else. As his car was approaching the estate, he saw school children running away and creaming; “Ghost! Ghost!”
He wondered what was happening as the boys took to their heels with much freight.
“What is it?” He asked the boys.
“The ghost is there!” They said pointing towards the direction of the secluded building within the estate.
The school where the children attended actually shared boundary with the estate. The tree and the secluded building overlooked some of the classes where the children were playing after the school hours. Hain thought that the children’s reactions were childish talks and expectations borne out of fear and sometimes, attempts to scare each other. He walked away from the children.
“Excuse me sir, there is a ghost there!” Said one of the children.
“Ghost?” Asked Hain.
“Yes sir. He was walking. I saw it,” one of the boys answered.
“I did not see it sir. He just scared us,” said another Boy.
“But I saw a ghost,” said the first boy.
“Look at it coming again!” Screamed another boy.
This time around, the boys could no longer wait. They fled in different directions. However the incident got Hain thinking and when he got to his apartment he called John and told him what he had just heard. This event reinforced other stories that they have heard from people who said that they used to see some ghost-like things and apparitions in the area near the estate and the activities of nocturnal animals. But people who thought that such stories were figments of people’s imagination have dismissed all these.
Within the school compound, teachers were worried about stories of kids who said that they saw ghosts in the area. No one confirmed the ghost stories but they were on the lips of some respectable people in the town.
Joyce Constance, who was thirty-four years old, was a colleague of Hain and John. She lived with her husband, Peter in the same estate. She had worked with them at Cough 2000 International Inc. for three years. But her friend was Jane Patrick who also lived in the area and worked in the same organization with them. Their boss, Amanda wanted his staff to live in the same area so that it would be easier for him to communicate with them and get the work going on while they are at home on weekends. Everyone in the estate and the office knew that Joyce and Jane were fond of each other like Hain and John were close. However, they resented Joyce’s behavior because she usually eavesdropped and gossiped about people.
Joyce told people with pride that she knew everything about people and no one could stop her from gossiping.
At first, John and Hain thought that she was the only one leaking their secrets until they discovered the strangeness in Jack too. After they discovered that Jack was weird, they reasoned that the dog had been initiated by some evil powers.
One evening, John was frying some eggs in the kitchen. With him was Hain. Both of them listened to the pop music as it filtered from the radio.
“When are you leaving for the villages tomorrow?” Hain asked.
“I will leave about eight o’clock in the morning,” John answered.
“I hope to come back before five o’clock in the evening,” he added.
While they were eating and discussing some official duties, they heard a crash just outside the window. Both of them were scared. They later had some courage and they ran outside the building to check what had crashed by the window. By the time they got outside, they saw the figure of a woman disappearing from the scene. They ran after the woman but before they got to her, they found that she had transformed into a small cat.
The cat did not wait as she kept running away. John and Hain turned back and walked home. But they knew that they were in trouble living in this kind of neighborhood. The following night when Hain returned from work, he was very tired and he went to bed .The entire neighborhood was pitch-dark just as the soul of the men who waited for the unguarded hour.
Four men who were armed with guns entered the building. A man called Mr. Whirlwind led the men. People gave him the name Whirlwind because they thought he had become very elusive and he was reputed to be capable of disappearing with a spell even when caught. Mr. Whirlwind was a thief to the bones. He robbed the city at will with his gang of robbers. There was silence everywhere that night as the thieves invaded the homes of their victims. Except for the sound of the crickets and other night insects, the neighborhood was quiet.
The armed men entered one of the houses in front of Hain’s house. The house had become a sort of cynosure. Only the angels and celestial beings knew why. But on the day the bandits came, no one saw them until they forced their ways into one of the apartments trying to rob people at gun point.
“Open the door and do not say a word!” they ordered a small boy they saw at the entrance of the house showing him their guns.
The scared teenager quietly walked them into the building. The boy opened the door to this sitting room where his younger siblings waited for him. Their parents were not around. But the desperate robbers were undeterred. They searched everywhere.
“Where is your father?” Asked Whirlwind.
“He has gone out to work!”
“What about your mother?” Whirlwind demanded.
“She is not around too.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, we are sure,” they answered.
“Come along with us. We want you to take us around your apartment,” the robbers ordered.
The children took the robbers around the rooms in the apartment.
“That wedding photograph.....”
“Are those your parents?” They asked
“Yes they are my parents,” answered one of the boys.
The searching went on. The armed men turned everywhere upside down. They searched suits. They ripped out the pockets and threw out the receipts they found there angrily. They threw out more receipts. They were not looking for receipts. They said they wanted money. They wanted dollars. But there was none.
“Where is the ten thousand dollars?” Asked Whirlwind.
“Which ten thousand dollars?” Asked one of the boys.
“The one they said that your parents brought into the house,” said Whirlwind.
“I am sure that they did not bring any ten thousand into this house because if they brought that kind of money here, I will know,” said the boy.
“But we heard from our informant that that kind of money came into this house,” said Whirlwind.
“It may be another house on the estate. But it is not here and I am very sure of that if they have that kind of money here, you would have found the trace from the search you conducted,” the boy said.
Disappointed, they left afterwards and went elsewhere in the compound.
“You must be down and do not stand up for the next two hours because we are going to be around during the period,” the robbers ordered as they left the house.
The innocent children complied.
The bandits left afterwards for another family’s house in the area. They met the owner of the house at dinner with his family. They chased the family away from their meals and began to eat. John who earlier heard gunshots in the neighborhood knew something was wrong and he prayed fervently that the robbers should not come to their apartment. Whirlwind and his rampaging men ordered the family to look at them at gunpoint as they ate. When they had finished, they left the house for another apartment.
©2002 StoriesByEmail.com
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