Fiction

Anselm EMe

“He Who Weds A Stranger Weds The Unknown”

In Enugu-Ezike, where the red earth drinks secrets like palm wine and the hills hum forgotten songs, people say the living and the dead share the same breath. The wind that passes through the old Ube trees carries voices of those who once walked these dusty paths. And when the moon rises full, the hyena laughs, and the wise bolt their doors. It is said that some marriages are not made between two hearts but between flesh and spirit. Some fortunes are paid for not in coins but in bloodlines. A proverb warns, “He who weds a stranger weds the unknown.” Yet, greed often blinds the eyes that should see danger. This story belongs to Obianuju, a girl born of humble soil, promised to a man of wealth and mystery. His name was Oduma, the hunter of the hills, a man said to never die and whose laughter was never heard under the sun. They said his children would never bleed. They said many things, and in Enugu-Ezike, every whisper carries a shadow of truth.

Beneath the folds of tradition and the hunger for fortune lies a curse older than memory. A secret buried in cowries, sealed in oaths, and fed by the fear of poverty. “The gourd that holds the forbidden brew must never be shaken,” the elders caution. But thirst has no patience, and some secrets demand to be found When sacred oaths are broken and forbidden doors opened, the hills awaken with old songs of blood and betrayal. A mother will be forced to choose between love and the curse that binds her children. And a village, long drunk on silence, will face the ghosts it buried beneath laughter, dance, and the price of a bride. In “SHRIEKS AND GIGGLES (The Hyena’s Bride: Tales From Enugu-Ezike),” you will walk those red dust paths where loyalty cuts like a blade, where laughter hides fangs, and where forgetting the old ways costs dearly beneath the blood-red moon. Because the hyena may wear a man’s cloak, but his laughter will always betray him.

The harmattan wind moves through Enugu-Ezike like a whispering ghost, stirring red dust into the air until the whole town seems veiled in haze. The ochre roads stretch between sprawling compounds, each yard breathing with life, the scent of roasted maize, palm oil, and the faint thump of distant drums.

It is beneath this dry, wide sky that Obianuju first hears the whisper of her fate.

“You will be richer than the river itself,” says Mama Ozioma, her mother’s elder sister, smoothing her wrapper with trembling hands. “But remember, my daughter, never lift his veil.”

Obianuju, slender as a young palm tree, sits quietly, her eyes lowered as the elders gather to fix her bride price. Her betrothed, Oduma, the famed hunter from the far hills, does not appear. He sends his brother in his place, a tall man with hollow eyes who speaks in measured tones and carries a smell of iron and dust.

The negotiations stretch into dusk. A fortune is agreed upon: thirty goats, ten clay pots of palm oil, three white cocks, and a heavy bag of cowries. When the last agreement is spoken, the women burst into ululations that echo through the hills. The bride price has been paid. The union is sealed.

But not everyone rejoices.

Obianuju’s cousin, Ejike, watches in silence, his brows furrowed. “A man who hides his face hides his soul,” he mutters. No one answers him.

That night, the sky burns orange as the sun sinks behind the hills. The old men drink palm wine and speak in proverbs.

“When the hyena laughs, the village sleeps with one eye open.”

Their laughter is short and uneasy, swallowed quickly by the whine of night insects.

Later, when Obianuju lies on her mat, she dreams of footsteps circling her hut, heavy and uneven. In the dream, a deep laugh, low and animal, rolls through the night. She wakes, heart pounding, to silence. Outside, the dogs do not bark.

The next morning, she is prepared for her journey. Her mother weeps softly as coral beads are wound around her neck. “Do not forget who you are,” she says. “A woman may leave her home, but her spirit must not lose its way.”

As the procession moves toward Oduma’s compound in the distant hills, the wind stirs the dry leaves like restless hands. The elders lead, chanting blessings; behind them, the drummers beat slow, mournful rhythms. The red road winds upward through the mist, leading her from the world she knows into one she cannot yet name.

And as the hills close around them, the laughter of a hyena drifts faintly through the harmattan air, soft, mocking, and hungry.

The wedding takes place beneath the great Ube tree at the edge of Enugu-Ezike, a tree so old that even the ancestors are said to rest beneath its roots. Its broad branches shade the gathering as women hum songs older than memory, their voices weaving through the wind like silk threads.

         Obianuju stands still, head bowed beneath the weight of coral beads that press against her slender neck. The smell of palm oil, fresh earth, and burning incense fills the air. Around her, masked dancers twirl and stamp, their rattles shaking with the rhythm of life and death.

         When her groom arrives, the murmuring stops.

         Oduma stands tall and motionless, dressed in black from head to toe, his face hidden behind a carved wooden mask, a hyena’s snarling grin etched across it.

         No one gasps. No one questions.

         In Enugu-Ezike, some things are better left unspoken.

         Ejike, standing among the crowd, meets Obianuju’s eyes. He mouths one word: Chineke… , God. Be strong.

         The marriage rites begin. The elder of Oduma’s family pours libation onto the earth, murmuring prayers that sound more like warnings. The kola nut is broken, the palm wine shared, and the crowd erupts in song. But beneath the celebration lies a strange stillness,  a feeling that something unseen is also watching.

         As night falls, Obianuju is led to her husband’s compound deep within the shadowy hills. The path twists through tall grass and ancient stones marked with white chalk. The wind hums like an old drum. She feels eyes upon her, many, silent, patient.

         Oduma’s compound is unlike any she has seen.

         The huts stand wide apart, and the air smells of blood and damp earth. Servants, pale and silent, move like ghosts, never lifting their gaze. A few glance her way, only to quickly look down, their faces hollow.

         An old woman appears, wrinkled, bent, with eyes sharp as broken glass. “I am Nwakaego,” she says, her voice rasping like dry leaves. “I keep this house.”

         She takes Obianuju’s hand and leans close.

         “You must never look into his true face,” she whispers. “Not even if thunder splits the sky.”

         That night, when Oduma enters their hut, he moves like smoke. His touch is cool, his voice deep and distant, like a river speaking through a mask.

         “You are mine now,” he says softly. “My moon in the dark.”

         Obianuju dares not answer.

         The wooden mask gleams in the flicker of the oil lamp. Outside, the hyenas laugh again, close this time, and the hills seem to echo them, whispering back.

Nights in Oduma’s compound carry a silence that hums, thick and alive, like the breath of something watching. The air always smells faintly of smoke and iron. In the daytime, Obianuju sees meat roasting over slow fires, yet never once does she see her husband eat.

         He moves through the house like a shadow,  gentle in his steps, heavy in his silence. His mask never leaves his face. Even in the dark, when the lamp burns low, the hyena’s carved grin gleams beside her.

         At first, she tries not to wonder. But curiosity grows like a creeping vine.

         Sometimes, in the still hours of dawn, she hears Oduma talking in a voice that is not quite human,  deep, guttural, almost like growls mixed with words she does not know. When she asks who he speaks to, he replies, “The hills. They listen better than men.”

         Months pass. The harmattan returns. Obianuju bears her first child, a son, Chika. Pale, quiet, his skin smooth as clay. But when he falls one day and scrapes his knee, there is no blood — only a faint dust, gray as ash.

         The village whispers spread fast.

         “Ogbanje,” some say. “Spirit child.”

         Others call him a blessing of strange origin.

         But Oduma’s family silences them with gifts, goats, cloth, and cowries, until the gossip dies down like fire smothered with wet leaves. 

         Years roll like slow drums. Obianuju gives birth again, to Ngozi, then Somadina. None of them ever bleed. None of them ever cry from pain. They move through the world as if it cannot touch them.

         At night, they laugh in their sleep,  a laugh that makes Obianuju’s blood turn cold. It is not the laughter of children. It is the dry, sharp sound of the hyena on the hunt.

         Sleep becomes her enemy. In dreams, she sees herself running across the hills, surrounded by glowing eyes. Hyenas circle her, laughing with human voices.

         She wakes drenched in sweat, clutching her beads, whispering prayers that fall like broken feathers.

         One morning, as the mist lifts over the compound, she asks Nwakaego, “Who is he, truly?”

         The old woman’s face hardens. “He is a man who made a promise too heavy for his spirit. The blood of the hyena runs cold. It is the price of the ancient pact.”

         “But what pact?” Obianuju presses.

         The old woman’s gaze flickers toward the hills. “Ask no more. Some truths are like fire, they burn not only what they touch, but all who stand nearby.”

         That night, the laughter returns, closer than before. It slides through the compound like wind through bone.

         And for the first time, Obianuju wonders if she has married into a family of men at all.

The harmattan sun burns pale above the red hills of Enugu-Ezike. By midday, the air shimmers like fire, and the children play near the stream where the water glints like glass.

         It is here that the secret reveals itself to all.

         Chika, Obianuju’s eldest, is playing with the other boys. The laughter is loud and easy until a fight breaks out over a smooth stone from the riverbed. A rock flies, cracks against Chika’s head. There is a gasp, then silence.

         No blood.

         No cry.

         Only dust, gray and dry, falling from the wound.

         The other children scatter like frightened birds.

         By the time Obianuju arrives, the news has already reached the marketplace. The women whisper behind their wrappers. The old men shake their heads.

         Mama Amaka, the herbalist, leans on her stick and mutters, “There is something wrong in that house. That man was not meant to live among men.”

         That night, the compound feels colder than ever. The children sit quietly, their eyes glowing faintly in the lamplight, as though they carry the moon inside them. Obianuju can feel something pulsing in the air, a slow, heavy rhythm that is not her heartbeat.

         She goes to Nwakaego’s hut. The old woman sits by a dying fire, chewing kola and staring into the flames.

         “Tell me,” Obianuju pleads. “What is he? What am I married to?”

         The old woman spits into the fire, the flames hissing.

         “The blood of the hyena runs cold,” she says. “It is the price of the ancient pact. Long ago, your husband’s fathers made a bargain, for power, for wealth, for the strength to hunt and not be hunted. The spirits granted it. But every gift has its hunger.”

         Obianuju’s heart pounds. “And the children?”

         “The children,” Nwakaego whispers, “are the offering. The pact still feeds.”

         Outside, thunder rumbles across the hills. A red moon rises, swollen, bleeding light. Obianuju looks up at it through the doorway and feels the weight of generations pressing down upon her.

         That night, she lies awake listening to the wind. It moves through the compound like a sigh, soft, broken, ancient. She can almost hear the laughter of the hyena woven through it.

         And deep in her heart, something hardens.

         She remembers her mother’s warning: “A woman may leave her home, but her spirit must not lose its way.”

         Obianuju knows now, the only way to protect her children is to uncover the truth that the hills have hidden for too long.

         When the moon turns red again, she decides, she will open the forbidden door.

         That night, as the moon reached its highest point, casting red shadows across the hills, Obianuju went to the inner chamber.

         Oduma was seated, as always, in silence. His hyena mask caught the light and gleamed.

         "You told me I would never lack," Obianuju said.

         He looked up. Said nothing.

         "But you never said what it would cost."

         Still silence.

         And so she moved. Slowly, deliberately. Her hand reached out, trembling.

         She touched the mask.

         Thunder split the sky.

         She lifted it.

         What she saw cannot be written.

         But the hills have never stopped echoing her scream.

         And the hyenas, they say, still laugh.

The moon rises slow and swollen, painting the world in a ghostly red. The air hangs heavy, and even the crickets fall silent. Inside Oduma’s compound, a door creaks open, one that should never have been touched.

         Obianuju’s feet move as if guided by an unseen hand. Her heart pounds like a drum in a funeral procession. Each step echoes in the hollow silence of the great house.

         At the far end of the corridor stands the door, black wood bound with cowries and dried palm fronds. The lock glints faintly, a whisper of warning. She hesitates, remembering Nwakaego’s words: “He who breaks the sacred gourd invites the ancestors to feast on his soul.”

         But something stronger than fear drives her,  the truth.

         She pushes. The hinges groan like an old man’s sigh. The smell hits her first, thick, sweet, and rotten. A smell of age and blood.

         In the flickering lamplight, she sees it, a calabash gourd, sealed with red wax and ringed with cowries. Strange marks crawl along its surface like ants. Her hands tremble as she lifts it, her breath quick and shallow.

         She hesitates again, whispering a prayer, “Chineke, hold me.” Then she pries it open.

         Inside, the air shivers.

         What lies within is neither offering nor charm, but horror itself: a tangled mass of fur, yellowed teeth, dried black blood, and beneath it, a tattered wooden mask,  half-rotted, grinning like madness carved in wood.

         For a long moment, Obianuju cannot move. The silence around her thickens until she hears it, a sound like breathing, deep and wet, coming from behind her.

         She turns.

         Oduma stands in the doorway. His shadow swallows the light.

         Slowly, he lifts the mask from his face.

         Obianuju’s knees buckle. The world narrows to his face, if it can be called that. Hyena jaws, human eyes, patches of skin where fur struggles to grow. His voice is not his own when he speaks; it is layered with others. some old, some broken, all angry.

         “You have broken the bond,” it growls.

         The air crackles. The lamp explodes. Obianuju stumbles backward, clutching the cursed gourd. Oduma’s body twists, bones cracking, limbs lengthening. The hyena spirit, once hidden beneath man’s skin, bursts forth in a scream that shakes the rafters.

         Outside, the wind howls, carrying the laughter of beasts. The servants in the yard lift their heads, and one by one, they begin to shed their skins.

         Obianuju flees into the night, her wrapper torn, her breath ragged. Behind her, the compound trembles under the weight of transformation.

         The hills of Enugu-Ezike have woken.

         And the price of broken oaths has come due.

The night bursts open with screams.

         The compound, once quiet as a shrine, erupts into chaos. Shadows twist and crawl across the walls, and the servants, once human, now writhe in shapes that should not exist. Fur tears through flesh; jaws split into muzzles. Their laughter becomes snarls.

         “The night does not hide what the moon chooses to reveal,” the elders say.

         Obianuju runs, clutching her children. The path is rough, the stones sharp beneath her bare feet. Chika trips; Ngozi whimpers; Somadina clings to her waist. Behind them, Oduma’s roar shatters the sky.

         From the forest edge, she sees the compound burning, fire licking the roof, shadows leaping through the flames like spirits rejoicing. The smell of blood and burning hair fills the wind.

         Down in the village, drums start to beat,  not for dance, but for war. The alarm has spread.

         In the square, beneath the moon’s red glare, the elders gather. Their white hair glows like ghost flame. Ogbuefi Chikwado, oldest among them, raises a staff carved with symbols no one dares question.

         “The pact has broken,” he intones. “And what our fathers buried beneath wealth now walks among us again.”

         The villagers murmur, fear rustling like dry leaves. Some clutch charms of iron and charcoal; others hold smoldering torches. A woman cries, “What hunger did our ancestors feed that still eats us today?”

         Chikwado’s voice trembles but does not falter.

         “They fed the hunger for wealth. They made a covenant with the hyena spirits, offering blood in exchange for prosperity. But every gift has its hunger, and every hunger, its price.”

         He points toward the dark hills where Oduma’s compound burns.

         “Tonight, that price has come.”

         Men of the vigilante group, hunters, farmers, fathers, rise, gripping their machetes and hunting spears. They smear white chalk across their brows, whispering old prayers: “Let iron reject evil. Let the earth remember justice.”

         As Obianuju stumbles into the square, covered in soot and tears, the villagers part for her. Her children cling to her legs, eyes wide and silent. Behind her, the hills rumble. The hyena’s laughter rides the wind.

         “It is not yet over,” Obianuju cries. “He comes. And those who served him, they come too.”

         The air tightens. From beyond the square, movement stirs, figures crawling on all fours, their eyes glowing amber in the dark.

         The people raise their torches. Fire dances in the wind.

         “Hold the line!” Ogbuefi Chikwado commands. “When spirit meets flame, let truth stand!”

         The first of the creatures lunge from the shadows, half-man, half-beast, and the night splits open with the clash of steel, the crackle of fire, and the roar of the cursed.

         Above them all, the blood moon glares like an unblinking eye.

         And somewhere beyond the hills, Oduma laughs, a deep, guttural sound that shakes the hearts of the living.

         The battle for Enugu-Ezike has begun.

Dawn crawls over Enugu-Ezike, pale and trembling. The fires have died, but smoke still coils above the burnt remains of Oduma’s compound. The air tastes of ash and sorrow.

         The villagers gather once more at the square, faces streaked with soot and fear. The drums that beat for battle now beat for mourning. Chickens wander among the fallen torches. The earth has swallowed too many names tonight.

         Obianuju stands apart, her wrapper torn, her hair dusted with gray ash. Her children, Chika, Ngozi, and Somadina, sit by her side, silent as stones. Their eyes do not blink much anymore. When they do, it is too slow, too knowing.

         The elders encircle the sacred flame. They lay before it the remnants of charms, iron, kola nuts, feathers blackened by smoke. Ogbuefi Chikwado raises his hands and speaks:

         “Our fathers made a pact with the hyenas for wealth. They ate from that bowl and drank from that calabash. But the gods do not forget the debts of men. Today, we seal what they opened.”

         A young man brings forth a gourd filled with palm wine. Another holds a live cock, feathers ruffling nervously. The elders pass the kola nut from hand to hand, each murmuring: “Let truth bind us; let lies perish.”

         The ritual begins.

         Palm wine is poured into the earth, three drops for Ani the Earth Mother, one for Amadioha, and one for the nameless ancestors who roam the hills. The cock’s throat is slit, its blood hissing as it meets the fire. The smoke curls upward, thick and sweet.

         Then comes the oath. The oldest among them, his voice cracking like dried wood, declares:

         “From this day, no spirit shall claim a daughter of Enugu-Ezike without the blessing of her people. No man shall sell his seed to darkness for gold. Let this blood and kola seal it.”

         They repeat in unison: “Let this blood and kola seal it.”

         The hills echo faintly, as though listening. Somewhere in the distance, a hyena’s laughter flickers and fades.

         When the ritual ends, Ogbuefi Chikwado turns to Obianuju. “Daughter of sorrow,” he says, “you have walked through the fire of your ancestors’ sins. What remains is yours to rebuild.”

         She nods, tears tracing clean paths down her dusty cheeks. “The sins must end with me,” she whispers.

         "The gift that fattens the hand also bites it," an elder murmured. It was an old saying, spoken when men of ambition dined with powers best left in their graves.

         When the last of the ritual flames died, and the dawn stretched golden fingers through the mist, Obianuju gathered her children. The path back to her father's compound was long, winding through the ochre roads where the dust rose in lazy spirals.

         As the villagers disperse, the sun finally breaks through the smoke, warm and uncertain.

         But not all wounds close easily. That night, as Obianuju lays her children to rest, she hears them laughing softly in their sleep. A laugh that is not entirely human.

         She covers them gently and whispers, “Sleep, my blood. The hills are listening.”

         Outside, a breeze moves through the Ube tree, carrying a faint echo, half giggle, half growl.

         The blood moon sinks, but its shadow lingers.

Years pass. The wounds of that night fade, but the whispers never do.

         Travelers who pass through Enugu-Ezike speak of strange children near the old Ube tree, pale-eyed, soft-voiced, who never seem to grow tired, never cry, and never bleed. Some say they are the remnants of the hunter’s brood; others swear they are omens of what still sleeps in the hills.

         Obianuju lives quietly now, tending a small farm on the edge of the village. Her hands are rough, her hair streaked with the colour of harmattan dust. Each morning she greets the sun with the same prayer: “Let the sins of the fathers end with me.”

         Her hut stands where the red earth meets the whispering grass. The Ube tree shades her yard, its roots like gnarled fingers clutching secrets too old to name. Children no longer play beneath it. They say the ground there hums when the moon is full.

         Every harmattan, when the sky turns white with dust and the wind tastes of iron, she feels the hills watching. The nights grow long then, sharp with unseen teeth. Sometimes, in that thin hour between dusk and dawn, she hears it, a sound like laughter far away, too deep to belong to man, too knowing to be beast.

         Once, Ngozi asks, “Mama, why do the hills laugh at night?”

         Obianuju only smiles sadly. “They do not laugh, my child. They remember.”

         She has tried to live in peace, but the world does not forget easily. Goats refuse to graze near her compound. Hunters avoid her path, muttering that the shadow of Oduma still lingers there.

         One evening, she visits the ruins of the old compound, now nothing but ash and bone buried beneath the weeds. The air is still thick with something unseen. She kneels, pressing her palm to the soil.

         “Sleep, Oduma,” she whispers. “Sleep, and let us be.”

         But the wind stirs, carrying a faint, mocking giggle. The earth beneath her hand seems to pulse, once, twice, as if something beneath still draws breath.

         Back home, as night falls, she sits outside with her children. The fire crackles. The hills shimmer in the distance, silver under the rising moon.

         Chika hums softly, a tune that Obianuju does not recognize. Ngozi joins, their voices weaving a strange rhythm, half lullaby, half chant. Then Somadina laughs, a sound that makes the crickets stop.

         It is a laugh she has heard before, years ago, on a night soaked in blood and fear.

         Obianuju closes her eyes. The fire pops. Somewhere beyond the hills, something stirs, patient, waiting.

         The laughter fades into the wind.

         She whispers again, “Let it end with me.”

         But the hills of Enugu-Ezike only sigh, ancient and amused, as if to say —

         The past is never truly buried.

The moon hangs low over Enugu-Ezike, swollen, red, and watching. The elders say such a moon means the earth remembers a debt yet unpaid. Tonight, every mother draws her children close, whispering prayers they have half forgotten.

         Obianuju feels it before the others.

         She is at her cassava field, the evening wind biting her skin, when the air shifts. It comes from Ugwu Ajani, the forbidden hills where even the bravest hunters dare not set traps. The wind carries a bitter scent, old blood, burnt fur, and something else, something alive. Then she hears it, soft laughter, high and childish, stretching into a snarl that chills the marrow.

         Her hoe slips from her hand. The red earth beneath her feet seems to breathe.

         In the village square, the elders gather again. Ogbuefi Chikwado leans on his staff, his eyes dim.

         “When the wind from Ajani’s hills laughs,” he says, “the earth is thirsty again.”

         The younger men, who never saw the first curse, clutch machetes and charms of feathers and bone. But the old ones only sigh. They have tasted this fear before, the taste of ash and bone.

         That night, Obianuju gathers her children.

         Chika, tall now, shoulders heavy as his father’s; Ngozi, who hums strange songs that make goats restless; and Somadina, whose silence cuts deeper than words.

         “The earth does not forget,” she whispers. “The hills do not forget. And the blood in your veins… it remembers.”

         Chika’s lips twitch, a glimpse of teeth too sharp. Ngozi’s fingers trace symbols on the floor, old and dangerous. Somadina stares toward the hills, his eyes glinting like the moon on wet stone.

         Outside, the dogs whimper. Roosters cry into the darkness. Then the hills answer, laughter, loud and cruel, tearing through the night like claws through cloth. The ground trembles.

         Obianuju drops to her knees. “Chi m egbuo m! My God, save me!” But she already knows. The past is a hungry beast, and tonight, it feeds.

         In the square, Ogbuefi Chikwado shouts, “Gather the kola! Light the fires! Call our fathers’ spirits!” But the other elders freeze, paralyzed by memory. Shadows move between huts. Chickens explode in feathers. A thatched roof bursts into flames though no hand struck it.

         Obianuju grabs her children. “Run!”

         They do not move.

         Chika’s voice is deep now. “Mama… it is too late. We are the debt.”

         Ngozi laughs,  soft, cruel, almost sweet. Somadina whispers, “The hills have called us home.”

         Obianuju’s scream breaks the night, but it cannot drown the chorus rising from the hills — the laughter of the living and the dead, joined in madness.

         The pact was older than her. Older than the village. The hyena spirits had only slept, waiting for their blood to ripen, waiting for the laughter of cursed children to wake them.

         At dawn, the hills fall silent again. Smoke curls over Enugu-Ezike. The earth lies still, pretending peace.

         Under the Ube tree, Obianuju stands alone. Her children are gone.

         Ogbuefi Chikwado’s staff lies broken in the dust. His voice cracks as he murmurs, “The hyena always returns to the place it fed last.”

         The Blood Moon Oath has failed. The ashes have stirred.

         A cold wind passes. From somewhere beyond the hills comes a giggle, then a deep, rumbling snarl.

         The hills of Enugu-Ezike laugh again.

         And this time, the earth will not forget.