passing through Parc national de la Comoé,
Ivory Coast
22.05.2024- 22:30 UTC +00.00
“So, why are we running to Banfora?” Julien asked, his curiosity finally winning over his distaste for me.
Drissa was not here, he had been gone for a while wandering around in the restaurant. After more people had come aboard in Koniéré, all the seats and tables were now packed, and there was enough noise and chatter to make up for the absence of the railroad’s noise. No more engines, and no more was the train dragging itself through metal.
The Akwantufo was now crossing through the wilderness of the Comoé, no longer tethered to a railroad, but floating above and among the wilderness, Cursed as it was to do so by the symbols carved into its wooden flesh. It was the only part of the trip where the engines gave way to curses, as it was the only fast way to cross the Parc.
I gazed out the window. In the horizon, you could already see the Cynometra trees that surrounded the canopy of the Comoé river that we would soon meet.
I nodded at Julien. One of the pink petals dropped from the lily tucked on its vest. He gathered it, alongside the two petals we had collected from mine and Drissa’s earlier. As the enchantment was wearing off, we had to gather the petals and one day bring them back to Efua. Regardless, her protection held as long as we wore a lily with at least one petal.
“Demi?” Julien insisted as he collected the petal carefully from the table.
I leaned towards him, still looking outside so that people can’t tell I am speaking directly to him.
“There is a crossing to the Unseen.”
“You are not serious. Wait, are you?” Julien reacted loudly only to then continue whispering. “Asié w?ran, the Unseen, that is a fairy tale.”
“What you hear in stories about it, that is a fairy tale. We don’t know what lies beyond a crossing. Nothing ever came back. They are holes to drop out of this world.” I explained. “And there is such a hole in Banfora. I have seen it with my very own eyes.”
Julien closed his eyes for a few seconds and then opened them again.
“Let’s say this thing exists as you say.”
“We drop them in there. As I said, nothing ever comes back out.”
“Is that a good idea?” Julien asked.
“What is a good idea?”
Drissa had just returned to our table, catching us through the discussion. He left a glass of water on the table in front of him.
“Being away for so long,” Julien said strictly, not letting me speak. I saw no purpose in hiding our plan from the kid, but I was also fine with not having this conversation now. The pouches were with me, and I knew what I could do with them.
“Oh, come on, I just needed to eat something.” Drissa sat next to me and left some francs on the table. “And had to also look at the view! Flying through the park looks amazing, if only I had a phone to take a picture…”
I took the francs from the table and put them in my wallet, ignoring his snarky remark.
“I hope you don’t regret it. I never eat on this thing,” I said.
“Now I know why, I had to run to the toilet to wash this taste off my mouth,” Drissa said. Julien laughed.
Somewhere in our wagon, a child screamed and then immediately started crying.
“That’s all we needed at eleven in the evening,” Julien joked and Drissa groaned. I was about to ignore the comment, when I felt someone tugging a chord, a string, pulling me.
It was a subtle pull of my bloodsense, something in my Curses warning me to address that child’s cry. I tuned everything out: the chatter of the passengers, Julien’s and Drissa’s remarks, the faint buzzing of the Cursed symbols pulling the train through the overgrown terrain.
I peeled the layers of pulses around me as well. I only cared to feel the blood of that child that cried. And there it was, shaken back and forth gently, be it from a parent or a relative trying to console it, it did not matter. The blood was instilled with fear.
Another child cried, closer this time, and as it did, I turned my attention to it as well. The same fear, the same childlike horror of looking at the monster under the bed was overcoming the second child.
Drissa pinched me, pulling me out of my bloodsensing.
“What got into you? You are not going to cry, too?”
Julien laughed. I checked both of their vests: the impala lilies were in place.
“We have to stay where we are, and stay calm,” I said calmly.
“Uhm, sure?”
“Demi?” Julien asked worriedly. He had sensed in my voice that something was wrong.
“Stay calm. Keep your wits at your flowers, and pretend you perceive nothing.”
“There is nothing to perceive,” Drissa said.
The train shook slightly as it sped up through the wilderness. Another child started crying. Nobody batted an eye – and rightfully so, children often cried in trips, especially in unison.
But this was different. These children were seeing something. And that something was seeing back. As we all stood still in our seats, Drissa looking the most confused of the three of us, I saw it. It was at the edge of my peripheral vision, on the table. Drissa’s glass was half empty, and on the dull semi-transparent glass, there were two eyes, but only for a fleeting moment.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
I pushed Drissa, and still holding my notebook, I pushed the glass of the table with it.
I smiled at Julien. I struggled to do it, as I almost never smile, and I had no reason to smile at him. I giggled as if I had heard a hilarious joke.
“Oh! Look what your joke made me do!” Julien’s eyes looked horrified by my acting, but it did not matter. The glass tumbled off the table. Drissa darted a weird look before crouching to gather it from the floor.
I pulled his arm violently. “No silly, let it for the cleaning crew. It is full of germs down there.”
“What the…” Drissa said, but a horrified woman’s scream interrupted. She was on the other side of the wagon, and as she stood, nobody paid attention. People around her tried to calm her down, as she pointed at the window confused.
“No matter what is going to happen,” I said pointing at the lilies, “remember. Cursed cannot see us. We just need to reach the next stop if needed, and find another means of transport.”
Another woman jumped and screamed, louder this time. The whole wagon sat in silence, as now the coincidence of one too many passengers reacting in horror drew everyone’s attention.
The woman yelled over the silence, as she pointed at her table.
“I saw it, on my phone. On the black screen. Eyes!”
People murmured, as an old man approached the woman. I couldn’t hear what he said, but he seemed to be consoling her.
The woman insisted on pointing at her phone and she stepped further away from her table.
“The poor lunatic,” an old woman said sitting next to us.
“Grandma!” A young man scolded her.
Julien had turned to look back at the woman that was still yelling at the old man. Drissa and I watched as well.
“I am telling you the phone had EYES ON IT!” The woman said and started to swear in her dialect.
The old man next to her started yelling her back.
“You need to calm down! There is nothing look-
As the man grabbed the phone to show her, a terrifying sound came from the man’s head. It can only be described as the sound of a paper bag being crumpled and twisted, same as the man’s neck did a full hundred-eighty turn.
Everyone around him stepped back and screamed, as blue and red paint dripped from his eyes and covered his forehead and cheeks.
The man still stood, even though the unnatural position of the head and the sound clearly established he was no longer alive. His head slowly turned, his painted eyes surveilling the surroundings.
People scurried away from the man, the woman who initially screamed, and some more even left towards the next wagon. Others stood at a healthy distance, taking out their phones and taking videos.
A voice slowly emanated from the man’s unmoving lips pronouncing a word in English:
People closed in on the unfortunately possessed old man. Julien’s hands moved towards the knife in his belt.
“Julien, we need to stay undercover. It cannot recognize us, but if we fight it, it will still think we are a threat.”
“What do you suggest?” Julien said.
A voice rambled from inside the old man who lunged forward with extraordinary strength. Everyone nearby leaped away, but as the man landed nearby a young man, the same sound as before echoed through the wagon. The young man’s neck twisted and his head turned, as red and blue paint trickled from his eyes.
The old man’s body fell on the floor, used and expended. For a long moment, nobody moved – and then the next one, the realization hit, and pandemonium started.
“Shit!” Drissa exclaimed while screaming, passengers ran by our table, “we have to run!”
I could not fathom what I was witnessing. I had seen many curses in my adventures, but never anything so violent and brutal, and never something that emulated possessions in succession. I could use spiders to spark the dead, but I could not instantly spark one after the other. This was different.
This was the Haunt.
“It can’t see us. Cursed can’t see us. Stay calm,” I said to both of them, “follow the crowd!”
Somewhere in the other side of the wagon, the young Haunted man was moving, and the masses reacted in terror.
We started moving as well, but the crowd was already bottlenecked at the exit, the one most nearby. It was a moving train after all, and going from wagon to wagon meant people had to go through the narrow connection between the wagons.
The same sound again. Another neck snapped, as people started crying and pushing.
A voice blanketed the chaos.
“I thought you said they can’t see us,” Julien said, shoved and pushed next to us as we all grouped near the exit.
“They can’t. They are bluffing,” I said, as people went through the door and changed wagons.
The horrific sound of another haunting stirred everyone to move faster, but fortunately the sound was heading in the other direction.
I looked ahead. Ten people were ahead of us – and all they had to do was jump through the small gap between the wagons, a bit longer than half a meter long. Across the gap, people waited with their hands extended, trying to convince a young woman to jump.
“Go faster! We can seal it off once we all pass!” Julien yelled.
Julien’s voice prompted someone to push the woman and she jumped safely across. The line moved again, as the initial terror was being replaced by appetite for action.
When our time came, Drissa jumped first and I stood behind him, at the edge of the wagon.
“Oh,” I exclaimed in fear, once I realized why it was so hard for everyone.
As the train pulled through the wilderness hovering above the bushes of the park powered by its Curses, it created a nauseating sensation. I looked around me as the tropical landscape shifted unnaturally fast, contradicting my sense of acceleration. Whatever hex bound the train; it was unstable when I stood at the edge of the wagon. The sense of up and down was torn, and all that was left was the ledge in front of me.
I tried to close my eyes, but all I could picture was a high-speed train flying high above the jungle, and if I were to misstep I would fall. Even though I knew I would not die, I had to fight against all my body's instincts. I would splatter into a thousand pieces, which spiders would weave and weave and…
“You can do it!” Drissa yelled at me, and I jumped over the ledge. For a split second the whole world spun and instead of me jumping it felt like I was pulled from my head upwards.
In the next moment I was standing on the next wagon, and Julien was jumping behind me.
“Wow,” he said as the train tilted in a turn slightly and the atmosphere changed. The taste of the air was now sweeter and muddier. “We reached the river.”
The train was not hovering above the jungle anymore. I looked below from the ledge I had just jumped, and I saw dark water. The train tilted slightly again as Julien helped more people cross the ledge, which now did not seem as frightening before, as mesmerizing. The view of the river below us soothed my fear.
“Perhaps if I fell down… the river would keep me in,” I said to myself in Dida. The idea that perhaps a body of water could keep me dead forever calmed my nerves.
“What did you say?” Drissa asked, nodding to me to go inside the next wagon.
“I said…” but before I could say anything, the Haunt’s voice interrupted me, not originating from the wagon we had just left, but from everywhere around us. The jungle and the river themselves spoke.