Manifestation

CHAPTER 1

I just couldn’t get it out of my head, the images were getting bigger every minute until I got snapped out of my illusion. The room was as it was before, the burgundy chair still sitting in the far end of the room with my sister sitting on it, the Tv still playing the novella I hate so much but multiples of eyes staring at it and laughing. Apparently, we keep a large family. 

“Hey, you’ve been in that chair all day long.” One of my aunts commented from one of the foldable chairs they brought out so everyone would be able to sit, but her attention went back to the novella as fast as possible.   

I got up and went straight to my space wallpaper wrapped room, my bedroom was like a typical teenager’s bedroom in the nineteen-eighties. I couldn’t discuss what was happening to me with any of my family members because they would just send me to our priest and that was exactly what I didn’t need. Sitting on my bed my eyes suddenly caught some weird movement from the crucifix on my dresser, well I thought it did then but it turned out it was the images coming back to me, I didn’t know when I lay down on my bed. The next thing I discovered when I opened my eyes was that I wasn’t in my king-sized bed anymore then the smell of medicine and hospital came rushing at me at once making me feel nauseated. 

The fluorescent bulb bored into my eyes as I opened them, after few seconds it didn’t look like I was ascending into heaven, the ceiling was painted white and a stripe of gold. My mum came in to sit by my bed, but her attention was on the monitor I was attached to. Her face was pale, my siblings were all present but nobody knew I was already awake, I shook my head just to be sure I really was awake. “He’s awake!” was the first thing I heard, my sister’s voice still sweet and thin. “How are you feeling” Julian asked while the big smile on her beautiful face was still there. 

“My head ache, I said to my sister in a groggy voice trying to sit up, what happened?” 

She sprouted to help me sit right with a half-smile and half frown if that’s even possible plastered on her face. “I found you on your bed passed out today two years ago, we brought you to the hospital and you went into coma, the doctors don’t know what is wrong with y….”

“That’s enough, my mum said not wanting to add to my worries, I thought I lost you” she said in a happier mood 

Then it all started again, the images, followed by darkness and some spot of white light then everything went dark. The blue paint was the last thing I saw of the hospital. 

                                         ………………………………………………..

‘I’ve never been here before, I said to myself, it didn’t matter if I opened or closed my eyes, everywhere was dark, there wasn’t a pint of light coming from anywhere I knew I had to do something fast if I don’t want to end up either dead or coma for the rest of my life’ I thought to myself. I held my breath for a few seconds hoping that would make me leave where I was and guess what? It did or not, I don’t know till now. I opened my eyes and I discovered that the darkness has reduced, the air around me was very thin that I could not breathe well, I stretched my hand out but it could not leave my side, it was stopped by something soft, like a cushion, that was when I noticed the string on my thumb. Then it dawned on me, ‘I am in a coffin’ so I pulled the string until I felt something carry me up.

I don’t know how I knew I was in the same hospital immediately I woke up, maybe it was a feeling but I was very sure.  

I had no idea what was what happening, at least not till my sister came to visit me in the hospital, she stopped in her track when she saw me, she looked exactly like our mother, it was so uncanny. I caught the shock she tried to hide from her face.  

“What the hell happened to you? How come you still look the same?” she riddled me with questions trying to hide the fact that she was happy as a hoot. 

“What do you mean? I asked bewildered. 

She looked at me as if I should have understood the question “How do you look the same?” she asked again giving me the face our mother usually gives us whenever she’s waiting for us to reply. 

“I don’t know sis; I really don’t know” I said hoping that will reduce her inquiry for the time being because even I didn’t know what was happening to me. 

She nodded her head “I want to show you something, she said as she removed her phone from her bag, these are my children” she said showing me pictures of her family going back to a happy subject, another thing she got from our mother.  

“How many years have I been gone?” I asked her sitting up and taking in the room I was in. it was almost similar to the one I was in before…. Well before I died. 

The smile disappeared from her face “Fifteen years”. I looked at my body not sure what I expected to hear.  

“What about mum?” I asked hoping to get some good news there. 

“Mum died five years after your death, we were so scared of what happened to her on your sick bed, she got hospitalized and then died four years after” 

“What happened to her?”

“You know how mum was, always keeping secret, she replied, but whatever happened it was very scary.” She paused for a while and looked at me but then she continued “We took her to different hospital, they couldn’t get a diagnosis, not until we got to a clinic in Nigeria, we met a man there that introduced us to their method of curing the sick.” 

“Well?” I pushed for more information. 

“He said she touched something she wasn’t supposed to touch on your body, he said a protection glow or something, he said she wouldn’t be able to move her hand at the end, we didn’t believe him so we brought her back home to take care of her and after few month she couldn’t move her hands till she died, it was then I knew you were not just some ordinary child.” I was so confused. 

“What do you mean by that?” I asked her.

“You have a gift bro, she said while her face turned moody, although it killed our mother you can still use it for good.” 

“I have no idea what it is, talk less of how to use it for good” I replied 

“Then how are you going to explain this to me? Unh” she asked referring to my coming back from the dead. 

“I don’t know, but I know this is a curse, I don’t know how I will live when all my mates will have died and when the so-called power even made me kill my mother.” I said to my sister

“Only you get to determine if it will be a curse or a gift and trust me you don’t want it to be a curse, she said smiling at me, gift of immortality” She said sarcastically.

“Hmm, I breathed in, when will I be able to leave this place?” I asked her relaxing a little bit. 

“The doctors have done every test they need to do but it showed nothing abnormal so you can come home tomorrow.”

“Would you be coming with your husband tomorrow” I asked her.

I was glad I had my sister to hold on to, at least I have an anchor to keep me from killing people if it ever comes to that.  

“Who told you I have one?” she asked raising an eyebrow and smiling.    

“Don’t forget I know you well enough to know you wouldn’t have kids if you don’t have a stable husband, I said, you hammered that statement into my thought you know?”.

She smiled at me “I’m so glad you’re back from the land of the dead, who knows maybe Mom would wake up too someday”.

“We never can say” I replied, but we both know it’s very impossible

“And by the way my husband is a very busy man, he’s an accountant, when we get home, you’ll get to meet him, I’m sure you’ll like him”. 

“I hope so” I said to myself. 

“Aunt Marie got married”.

“No! I replied smiling, I thought she said till death do us part”. 

“Apparently, your being in Coma is enough to make her find pleasure elsewhere” My sister said teasing me 

“Where is she now?” I asked smiling.  

“She’s in a nursing home in Kansas”. 

“She has gotten that old?” 

“Yeah, of course it’s been fifteen years dummy”. 

“Oops, its late, she said glancing at her silver Rolex strapped around her wrist, see you tomorrow” she told me as she stood up to leave. “I don’t want to leave yet but I have to go make Dinner for my kids, I’ll be back here in the morning” She said just before she walked out of the door.  

As she left everything was so quiet that I had gone on one of my ‘Journeys’ as I called it back then, that was when I noticed the rhythm on the Holster monitor. Then a nurse came in to disturb my concentration. She was checking on me “How’s our dead man doing?” she asked me, apparently, I’m a medical miracle. 

She looked at my vitals, wrote something on what looked like a chart and then asked “I hope you’re comfortable enough to be discharged tomorrow?” Her mouth twitched a little bit when she said comfortable like she had a problem saying the letter F.  

“Yes, definitely” I answered her. I stared at her for some while letting her facial expression sink into my head. “Who said nurses aren’t beautiful? That’s surely a big lie.” 

“Ok, good, I would leave you alone to sleep now” She said and walked out of the room with the chart.