Chapter 1: Whispers in the Wind

A young girl went missing after running away from home. By the time the police found her, her body had already been turned into sausages. People said the smell from Baba Tunde’s shop changed that week—nobody could eat meat for days.

In our town, word travels like harmattan wind, carrying every whisper from street corner to the mosque yard. For days, the market women wouldn’t rest, their mouths running like Okada engines, mixing pity with peppery gossip. If you listened long enough, you would hear someone say, 'Eh, God! Wetin we never see for this Naija?'

One market woman even slapped her thigh and exclaimed, 'Na this kain wahala dey make person fear send pikin go errand.' The murderer was bold, but her parents were hiding plenty secrets.

You could feel the tension under their well-ironed Ankara, see it in the way the mother's eyes darted during interviews. Even the neighbours, at first so eager to offer prayers, soon began to keep silent, as if something old and ugly was crawling out from behind closed doors.

That was when I realised: the most frightening thing in this world is love.

If love can push a person to lie, to hide, to fight like a wounded animal, then maybe love is more dangerous than any spirit or cutlass. It's the kind of truth that slaps you when you least expect it, the way thunder announces rain.