Astral Echoes; Ancestral Beckonings — A Short Story (Finish The Story Week #22)

Below is my first attempt at the Finish the story contest hosted by @bananafish. Well I couldn't exactly keep it at 500 words, and I more like co-started a story than finished one. Hahaha. Thanks @raj808 for writing this week's prompt. I hope you guys enjoy my act of the story like you do Raj's. No promises, but I may actually try to finish it.

Astral Echoes

_{By Rowan "@raj808" Joyce}

Rain bounces off the frying pan streets, dowsing the city’s mid-morning swelter. Bangkok on a Monday screams its frenetic cadence into my sleep-stained head as I leave my apartment for the breakfast of kings. A hastily wolfed helping of Khao Neow Moo Ping and I’m on my way. This meeting is important for my continued livelihood. A prominent business man is convinced he’s beset by demons. 'Fung shui gone wrong', the words of his PA echo in my memory as I hail a tuk tuk and jump in.

“Sa wat dee”. I greet the driver as I scramble into the cramped cabin.

It is advisable to enter your tuk tuk promptly as the never ending stream of scooters can sweep you out and away at a moment’s notice. I’ve seen a tuk tuk's door taken off by one of these suicidal bikers before now.

“Sathon Nuea road please.” Pulling off into traffic, I find myself staring into the frantic smog choked kaleidoscope that is Bangkok. Five lanes of traffic jostle for position as scooters whiz between them, reckless of traffic lights, wobbling with giggling teenage passengers stacked three apiece. The salt-singed smell of frying shrimp and coconut oil mingles with diesel fumes as I sit back into the sticky red foe leather and consider what I know about this particular clients Astral footprint!

---

A room bathed in a dull indigo with a bed by the wall pulsing with ethereal light. A book sits half open on the bedside cabinet, pages twitching in the gentle flow of my aura. Light envelops this scene, green through to red as my aura shifts with the pulse of the indigo ether. I drift over the open book, a single word jumps out of the page like a lightning bolt ‘FATHER’. It seems to echo in my mind like a scream. I glance to my left and my adversary is still moving through the treacle I’ve set in front of him. I still can’t tell whether he’s human! The impossibly wide smile, desperate and hollow speaks to me of one possessed. A soul lost in the astral, then found by one of Them.

BANG, I spin as the wardrobe door slams open and closed over and over. The noise echoes through me as an icy wind spills from the flapping doors. The indigo glow subsides to a dull shimmer as the room darkens and I turn back to my advisory.

He is there right before me. Mouth impossibly wide the teeth icicles and his breath covers me in the stagnant smell of the swamp as my bones numb and my knees give way. I choke as my breath sticks in my throat and the scene fades to night.

---

“What are the symptoms Mr Xioin?" His pallid face twitches as I stare into sunken eyes, unblinking, pupils wide. "How do these daemons manifest?”

“The night is where they reside. Between dream and waking. Sometimes I wake from a dream only to be enveloped by a strange light. After, I walk in the wakening world, around my apartment and... everything is enlivened." He breathes in short gasps as he talks. "It’s as if everything has a soul, the lamp, my leather chair even the books call out there stories, words that wash through me like fire." His head dips and rests in the palm of his hands. "There is no rest”

“Go on...” I lower my voice as I watch his body shivering in the pain of memory.

“Then there are the dreams that seem to be reflections of my life. I'm working at the company, except it’s like I’m looking over my own shoulder as someone else performs my daily routine. I’m convinced I’m awake until I actually wake and it feels as if I’ve never slept at all." He stares into my eyes, pupils contracting back to a normal size for the first time since I’ve been here. "Can you help me?”

---

My heart strains against my chest as I struggle to close my third eye, a dull ache in the center of my forehead. He smiles like a clown, an open wound across his face, mocking me. White mists swirl around us as a landscape forms in the astral firmament, his mind superimposing a tapestry in the space between dimensions. I look around searching for any clue to his nature. Any clue that will help me to defeat him.

_{Terracotta Head of Man, Nok Culture 550-50 BC. Kaduna, Nigeria. Brooklyn Museum}

Ancestral Beckonings

_{By Ubokobong "@misterakpan" Akpan}

Two months passed since my cursed encounter with Mr. Xioin. I was home, in Nigeria where the spirits would be hopefully familiar. My scholarly expedition in Thailand was over. I was yet to reveal to my mum I studied something far more disheartening than music. I wasn't eager to tell her it was a demonology diploma.

You see my mum’s father ran away from his “heathen” family when he converted to Christianity as a young kid who came in contact with the first missionaries in Ibeno. His father, my great grandfather was going to cast a spell of his most potent mbiam on him, for disgracing the lineage of traditional healers before him. Pa Timothy, as grandpa was later called, migrated and enrolled in King’s College in Lagos with the help of Father Marcus. He set in motion a nobler path for my family, my mum would say. Mum is a nurse. My twin sister is a paediatrician. And here I am, hiding my text books of ancient spells curated from dark libraries around the world.

---

I stared at the anthropomorphic clay figure that had ancient writings of nsibidi on it. The conjoined arc stood for love, marriage, unity, Ekeng told me. He was the owner and curator of the Terracotta shop that kept its doors open as a connection to the past than for business reasons. He was also a traditional worshipper who stood his ground in pushing back “the white man’s religion” from sucking him in, with his two wives and four boys.

We exchanged experiences. His exploits as a self-taught anthropologist driven with a passion for what is lost and adjudged best forgotten by society. The week before he and his team had run into a hard wall trying to revoke a cease and desist order from a local court to halt excavation of an ancient grave site. It was the Redeemers’ church who went to the authorities. Of course the church had members with longer legs and deeper wallets so it was an effort in futility for Ekeng. I watched him as he hugged the second desist order with rage in his eyes. I couldn't dare to comfort him.

“We trapped the spirit in that bottle,” he jolted out of his melancholy and got back to why I was there. “The kid became free and normal life was restored. But the problem is in our hands now, to let loose this roving spirit and let her meet her kindreds.”

He went on like a lunatic on why a spirit ought to be free. Some belong to the baobab tree, others belong to backyard gods that civilisation later tagged as idols, he would say.

“To get this spirit home we have to trace the ancient arc of the monolith that spans over 10 miles and is probably buried tens of feet below the ground. It is no easy task.”

He passed me a photocopy of a map he had made additional notes on.

“Imprint it on your brain. We would hopefully be too busy to pull out a map for navigation when we get on the field.”

On the footer of the A2 paper was a phone number written with calligraphy-like precision. This was the first day of many meetings, and it felt like I won't miss Bangkok so much as I feared.

---

As I bent my 6’2” frame to pass through the door of Ekeng’s shrine, I beckoned the rider whom I chartered for the day. His keke's engine came to life with the same excitement as its rider. In Bangkok they call it the tuk tuk. His face still beaming from the joy of being paid with two $5 bills, he told me it was a fulfillment of his pastor's prophecy the Sunday before, that “good things will locate him within the week.” I let out a smirk and relished the excitement of what lay ahead of me in Nigeria.