Visionaries -- A True Tale of Religion and Mystery #8

petermarie (57)in #writing • 7 years ago

This is the story of an event that happened in a catholic school in Nigeria, events which I witnessed and was a part of, and which have never been resolved till date. Names have been changed, but the tale is true, and told as I remember it.

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Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7

12:30pm

I left Igwe and went about my remaining duties quickly. Most of the students were playing on the fields and courts, but I wasn’t in the mood for sports so I headed to the class to get my novel. I didn’t have much else to do that day except read and rest. I’d decided to do both –sports could wait till evening.

The senior classroom block is a three-storey building, with the bottom floor holding the physics and biology labs, and the top floor housing the school library. The three classrooms themselves, one for each senior class, were in the middle floor, one after the other. My own class, S.S.2, was in the centre of the three. S.S.3’s class was currently abandoned, of course, since they weren’t in school, and was in the control of my classmates, mainly because our juniors couldn’t walk past our class without a good reason. Not without fear of punishment from any of us who happened to see them.

Due to the topography of the school, there were three ways to access the classrooms floor. A staircase, built into the block, ran up one end of the building from the bottom to each floor. However, this was only mostly used to get to the library from the classrooms. Someone approaching from the students’ orchard, which was level with the floor, could get to the classrooms over a concrete walkway connecting the block to the orchard. This walkway was connected to a staircase that led from the lowland in front of the block, past it, and up to the expanse in front of the chapel. The third way to the classrooms was a paved slope down from that same expanse that passed behind the walkway, rising above it from the waist-high wall that separated them, and joining with it at the very end, where they connected with the classroom floor. The other side of the walkway had a railing which protected from falling the short distance to the slope at the bottom of its staircase.

I had just started up this staircase when Miko appeared at the top, coming down from the direction of the chapel. I was surprised –unlike me, Miko was one of those who was always in the mood for sports. Unless he had senior prefect duties, I couldn’t imagine what had taken him to the top of the hill when he could be down in the field kicking at a ball. He had a strange look on his face, and when he saw me, he broke into a wide smile.

“Ogivs!” He called.

“Miko,” I replied. “What’s up? We met in the centre of the staircase, where it joined with the walkway. I was even more surprised at the smile on his face –it wasn’t Miko’s usual impish, mischievous grin. It was one that radiated real joy, marred only by the strange look that remained in his eyes. It seemed... contemplative. Which was quite strange in itself. Miko wasn’t the kind of person you found walking around deep in thought on a free day.

The thing was, Miko was our senior prefect, but he was also one of the worst rule-breakers in our class. Like any good rule-breaker, though, he was rarely caught, and was notorious among us for attempting highly risky ‘tasks’, earning him the nickname ‘Confidence’. His forearms were big, but the rest of him wasn’t. In fact, we were almost exactly the same height. The last time I had seen him look like this was way back in our J.S.2, three years ago, when we had been bunkmates and best of friends. The actual account would be too long to include here and would need a book of its own, but something had happened and he had had a somewhat ‘spiritual’ experience.

Suddenly, I knew.

“Miko, what happened?” I asked.

Miko merely shook his head. “Ogivs,” he said again, but added nothing else.

I raised an eyebrow at him. He blew out a single breath of laughter, caving in. He took my forearm and led me to the railing on the walkway, then let me go and leaned against it. I leaned too, waiting.

He hesitated for a moment, like he was thinking of exactly how to put what he wanted to say. Then he blew out another breath. “I think it’s good I met you,” he said. “I would have come to see you anyway, sooner or later.” He paused again, then turned to me and looked directly into my eyes. “Peter, He spoke to me,” he said. “Jesus Christ spoke to me.”