A hen crowed on Christmas Day. The man whose house bordered the market killed it immediately; a crowing hen was a bad omen.  Ezinne didn't hear the hen crow. She’d spent the early hours of the morning holding her convulsing daughter. Suddenly, Adaeze found a burst of energy. She sat up, stretching her hand toward an empty corner of the stall. “Daddy, see me here! Carry me!” she cried.

The nylon peeled back slowly, sticking to what lay beneath. Ade’s chest had collapsed inward  around the bullet wound, the flesh torn and darkened, blood dried in thick layers across his  shirt. His mouth hung open, one tooth missing, his tongue swollen and discoloured. One eye  stared glassily at nothing, the other had sunk inward, filmed over.

The man strikes you across the face. The tang of blood fills your mouth. You feel blood stream down your nostrils. You don’t know when you begin spluttering out the number, your voice breaking with every breath. Bald man dials it, but no dial tone comes. He tries again. The  same. Is this a joke to you? He fumes, angry blood vessels taking over the whites of his eyes.  He strikes you again and again. You begin to cry.

Before they began to eat, they held hands and her mother led the prayer while they chorused "Amen," and she ended it with, "Today, we'll find the rest our souls deserve. Amen." And they all began to eat, hungrily. Uche finished his first and rushed to the toilet. Halfway through eating, Soma complained about her stomach. Chisimdi, having eaten a few bites, grabbed her stomach as she felt her intestines twisting. The pain was just too much to be an ulcer.

An elder emerged from a doorway, his face severe, like carved mahogany. "The Yuletide is a thin veil, my daughter. On one side, the promise of joy. On the other, the primal hunger of the earth. Be careful what music you play near the veil. The wind has ears for joy, and a mouth for light." A deep, echoing crack travelled across the square... the sound of the main lantern’s glass pane shattering, even though no one was within twenty feet of it.

When the horrors we feared came, no one needed any instructions. Fathers ran, hoping their children found an escape too. Family bonds were tested. The race was one without preparation or destination, fueled solely by adrenaline and a desire to live. Don’t be caught, don’t die echoed in my head as I ran. The first drive was surprisingly more significant than the latter; the horrors of what our attackers offered were far scarier than death, and death was plentiful.

Within a split second, the wind howled around me, and it took quite some time to process the situation — everyone moving in slow motion and their voice incomprehensible. Then, white clouds escaped from my lips, while little sparks of different colours rained down from a huge shark spiraling above. “Daughter.” A faint voice. 

At dusk, they came.  Three of them. They emerged from the haze where the footpath blurred into the brush, tall and straight as iroko saplings. Their skin was not like skin; it was a shimmering, liquid gold, catching the last light like the foil on a communion wafer. It was beautiful and utterly wrong. They wore simple loincloths of a bark-brown fibre. But it was their faces that stopped Efe’s breath. Where mouths should have been, a web of thick, black thread criss-crossed their lower faces, pulled taut, the stitches ugly and raised.

Chidera was always outspoken—just Chidera being Chidera. Then the girl cocked her head, listening to something none of us could hear yet. And then: “Ebube wants to give her virginity to somebody after service.” Ah!  The laughter died.

I knew Papa was going to die on that Christmas day. I don’t know when I knew. Maybe when he stopped speaking. Maybe when he started watching me like he was memorizing my face. Or maybe it was long before when the house stopped feeling like a house and turned into something quieter, something like a glass waiting to break.