I had only ever seen the Neck-breaker once. And that was when my grandfather had died. She had come for him under the dusk of the setting evening sun disguised as a cloaked stranger, but I knew who she was. I knew what revelry was afoot. My grandfather had warned me about her. About her magic tricks, and her deceitful ways.
“Oh, the Neck-breaker will come for me soon, I need only wait,” he’d say.
“Is it true? That she actually breaks necks?” I’d ask naively.
“No, my child. She’s called the neck-breaker because she comes at that vulnerable last moment of a well-lived life when one is appreciative of all that was and has been, and stares into the sky for their soul’s depart. That is neck breaking,” he’d say enigmatically.
My guka had sworn he had met with the Neck-breaker on multiple occasions and made peace with her. I often wondered how he knew her to be a woman. Perhaps, because the warm embrace of death was supposed to be comforting like a woman’s touch? Or maybe, death was meant to be as cold and critical just like a female? I found the whole concept baffling. I was born into the Balunda clan of the Bumula district so superstition, myth and legend were not a foreign indulgence. I still remember vividly the days my mother was sprawled up together with her friends as they discussed the latest supernatural happening in the neighborhood. From: mother-in-law cursed sister-in-law to possible suspects at the true identities of the annoying night-runners that plagued our village. It was all very interesting, and I was a very curious child. So curious, I might have even tried to catch a night-runner once. Of course, my mother warned me against taunting random strangers that run around naked at night. But I wanted to see if they were the strange hominids, my brother had painted them out to be, to me. I wanted to see what derangement had occurred so much in their psyche, it incentivized indecent exposure. Well, technically, it wasn’t indecent exposure because they rarely revealed themselves to anyone.
But to me, it was straight exhibitionism. Locals loved postulating theories as to what made them do that. Some said that they did that to retain their magical powers as witchdoctors. Others said that if you saw or touched a night-runner, that you were doomed to become one. But that didn’t stop my curiosity. It was worth the sacrifice. And so, in just the same mysterious reputation that night-runners donned, so too I thought that was how the Neck-breaker would resemble. Probably appearing in the shape of some naked woman come to ferry a Luhya soul to the land of the dead.
“Nafula, night-runners are not vengeful spirits, what do you mean!” Nekesa, my friend, told me.
“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying the spirit of the Neck-breaker is like a night-runner”
“But night-runners serve only one purpose,” she said, “to annoy the hell out of everyone,” she continued, “even the other night one came right by our house and started throwing stones at our roof and hitting our door. My mother opened the door to scream at them and they ran away into the night”
“I don’t think the Neck-breaker is like that,” I said.
“Well, if she is as you say, then death would be really annoying”
I know it seemed rather uneventful for ten-year-olds to discuss the complicated concept of death seeing that we (and most especially, I) hadn’t really understood it at length. But that was our reality. And the reality of my experience. I remember the day the Neck-breaker came for the spirit of my guka as he lay in his casket in the funeral home. I saw her. At least, vaguely. I had snack away from my mother’s dominating clutch out of urge to not sit in one place too long. My grandfather’s wake at the Simtondo Funeral Home was painfully long and as boring as any preadolescent girl could take. So, in between the moment of silence and yet another agonizingly dull worship song, I snack away into the rooms beside the church, and further behind the pastor’s residence. The church was a pretty small section of the entire funeral home so it wasn’t a labyrinthine effort that needed placing. Anyway, I found the small room, as it stood a single solitary room detached from any main buildings.
Its door was hardwood, it appeared. And it was painted this ominous shade of dark brown. And I could have sworn I saw a dark mist resonate from its hinges and frame, and then dissipate into the air around me. I grabbed on the latch and twisted then pushed the door into the larger room before me. And there at the very center of the room was the casket. Placed upon a low table. Supposedly low enough such that anyone of any height may peer inside. The casket was of exquisite make. Built into its sides were golden handles presumably for carrying him to his resting place. I was still too short to peer inside, so I reached for the plastic stepping stool. And as I stared at my guka’s face; as I looked at the contours in his skin to see if he would flinch if I’d try to pinch him, I wondered to myself this ridiculous obsession my tribe had with death. Did it really have supernatural undertones or was it forced? Just some made-up cultural norm? Growing up in the capital, people always almost only made fusses about weddings and marriage and feasting during such happy occasions, it seemed strange watching all this meticulous planning for someone who was already dead. Hadn’t they no further use of their bodies?
I stopped prodding my grandfather’s body and just stared blankly at his lifeless face. He looked as though he were asleep. And that’s when I saw it. As I raised my head, I saw her standing at the corner of the room. It wasn’t of a normal human manifestation. It almost looked like a ghost. A silhouette. She had no face. No arms. No legs. But her outline was shaped as a person’s. And all of a sudden, a darkness fell upon the room. But this darkness was of a strange sensation because I could only see the casket and my grandfather, and her silhouette that did not dissolve into the dark that surrounded us.
Then, she started approaching me. And with each step she took, I could feel the reverberations in my toes and heels pass across the floor of the room. With each step, it felt like she shed away a layer of reality. And I felt fear. I felt something worse than despair, worse than dread. It gripped at my throat, impeding my breath, and it entered my heart rushing it till I could most certainly feel the thump in my ear, in my bones. It felt engulfing. It felt…inevitable. Was this the sensation of death? Was this its calamity?
As the dark figure stood before me, on the other side of the casket, it appeared to tilt its strange silhouette of a head to peer at my grandfather’s face. And right then, in just an instant, the shroud of darkness seemed to peel off and unveiled the face of a beautiful woman. So beautiful she was, all the fear I bore seemed to have melted out of me instantaneously and was immediately replaced by absolute awe. Her skin was as dark as night without a blemish in place. And her eyes, round and evenly placed they were with innocence peering out from behind them. She smiled at me. She placed her hand upon mine, and just then…
“Nafula! What are you doing here!” I was jolted awake by my mother’s voice. I fell to the floor as she tried to catch me.
“You are not allowed here while the service is going on,” she lectured, “hebu twende,” she ordered in Swahili as I got up quickly and made for the door.
As the slow and inebriating service continued, I kept thinking to myself:
WHAT WAS THAT?
I was certain of one thing, however…
THAT WAS NO NIGHT-RUNNER.