The lagoon city of Lagos awoke beneath a shroud of humidity, its streets already thrumming with the dissonant symphony of honking danfos and hawkers selling suya skewers. In Ketu's labyrinth of decayed houses, Kunle navigated the waterlogged alleys, his father’s condemning sermons echoing in his skull like a curse. “Hellfire awaits those who stray,” the old evangelist had roared, but Kunle’s doubts festered beneath his quiet exterior. A cryptic text interrupted his brooding: “The road awaits.” He deleted it, unaware the message was a siren’s call.
Forty kilometers north, Amina Bello adjusted her hijab in the cracked mirror of her Ikeja apartment. The bitter taste of her betrothal ceremony lingered—her uncle’s grip on her wrist, the gold bangles clinking like chains. She tucked a forged passport into her bag, her fingers grazing a faded photograph of her mother. Outside, a street preacher’s cry—“Repent, for the end is near!”—chased her into the dawn.
Meanwhile, in Makoko’s floating slum, Mimidoo “Mimi” Ezeoke sang for a talent scout, her voice soaring above the stench of smoked fish. The scout’s grin widened, but Mimi’s smile masked the whispers only she could hear—phantom voices of girls like her, sacrificed to the ambitions of uncles and brokers. “Run,” they hissed. She pocketed the scout’s card, a lifeline to Lagos’s glittering stages, and ignored the oily footprints trailing her.
Fate collided with them at Jibowu Bus Terminal. Kunle, Amina, and Mimi jostled in the chaos of bleating goats and sweating travelers. A couch bus driver named Osas materialized, his gold-capped teeth gleaming. “Port Harcourt? I go fit carry you—no wahala,” he lied. His battered Corolla reeked of incense, the radio crackling with a Yoruba proverb: “Ẹni tó bá wọ inú okun, yóò rí i...” Whoever enters the ocean will see... The static swallowed the rest.
They sped east as Lagos faded behind them. Kunle glimpsed flames in the mangroves—demonic faces from his father’s sermons. Amina clutched her passport, her pulse racing when Osas hummed a hymn she’d heard at her betrothal. Mimi stiffened; a distant wail mirrored her nightmares. The car swerved, narrowly avoiding a goat’s carcass glistening on the asphalt. “Jọwọ, máṣe wá pa mí,” Osas muttered. Please, don’t kill me.
Nightfall transformed the Niger Delta into a realm of shadows. Oil flares glowed like hellfire on the horizon. When the Corolla stalled near a desolate creek, Osas vanished into the dark. The trio stumbled out, their phones dead. Amina spotted symbols carved into iroko trees—warding signs defaced by blood. A fisherman emerged from the reeds, his eyes milky with cataracts. “Mami Wata don dey hungry,” he warned. The river goddess is hungry.
Osas reappeared, a machete glinting in his grip. “Follow me if you want to live.” Reluctantly, they obeyed. Deeper into the bush, drums pulsed—a primal rhythm that synced with their heartbeats. The forest parted, revealing a clearing lit by fire. Hooded figures chanted around an altar strewn with politician’s portraits and Nollywood DVDs. Mimi froze; the talent scout stood among them, his face painted with ash.
Betrayal came swiftly. Osas’s phone buzzed—a text from Kunle’s father: “Save my son.” Torn, Osas confessed he was a reluctant cultist, his sister sacrificed years prior. “But if I give them you, I go free,” he rasped, shoving them toward the elders. The scout seized Mimi, forcing her to sing. Her voice cracked, then transformed—a chorus of drowned girls erupted from her throat, strangling the scout with spectral hands.
Chaos erupted. Kunle fought through visions of his father preaching atop a skull pile. Amina discovered a girl’s diary in the dirt: “They promised me stardom.” Osas, redeeming himself, slashed her ropes and thrust a USB drive into her hands. “Names. Accounts. Proof.” He fell, a dagger in his chest, his sister’s photograph fluttering to the ground.
They fled as the camp burned. Days later, they staggered into Degema, a skeletal town bordering Port Harcourt. The USB’s files—detailing a network of pastors, politicians, and Nollywood elites—were uploaded to a shaky Wi-Fi signal. Protests erupted, headlines screamed, scapegoats were jailed. But the cult endured, hydra-headed and hungry.
In the end, only Kunle remained. He settled in Degema, tending bar at a shack choked by gas flares. Amina resurfaced as an activist, her speeches tinged with madness. Mimi became a rumor—a phantom singer haunting the creeks. The files, though scrubbed from the internet, lived in whispers.
One humid night, a tourist asked Kunle for directions to Makoko. He gestured to the roiling horizon. “Follow the shadows.” As the man left, Kunle’s phone buzzed—an unknown number. Static hummed, then a familiar proverb: “Ẹni tó bá wọ inú okun...”
He dropped the phone, ash from his father’s photograph swirling in the wind like Lagos’s eternal smog. Some roads, he knew, never ended. They only coiled tighter, waiting for the next lost soul to stumble into their grip.