My eyes fly fully open. I swallow over and over again, but that damning taste of dirt doesn’t leave my throat.
How? When? Who—?
The house? It can’t be. Genevieve? I don’t believe it.
I should be hyperventilating, maybe. My eyes are hot but dry, and my breathing is steady despite my quiet devastation. I haven’t died in so long I’ve forgotten how much I hate it.
My hands fist the sheets in front of me as I take stock of my faculties. There’s nothing amiss—at least, nothing outward that I can easily pinpoint. I swallow again, convulsively. If it weren’t for the earthy taste in my mouth—
Had I died in my sleep? Ridiculous. Impossible. But it’s the only reasonable explanation. It has to be, because if it isn’t—
No. I refuse to believe it. I can’t.No.
Who’s whistling?
The moment I register the noise, it stops.
There’s someone in my room; a blurry figure in the corner of my eye. Years of training means I don’t further react. I stare into space with my lips pursed, like I’m still lost in thought.
Internally, I activate the protective charms in my beads. My glasses are resting on the bedside table. I don’t reach for them.
The blurry figure takes a step closer. I’m pretty sure it’s a woman. I’m also pretty sure it’s the same one I’d seen in the window the previous evening. But something about her eshé has me viewing her like a potential shannde—an evil spirit—instead of the harmless shannko I’d assumed she was.
She takes another step, faster this time.
I still pretend not to notice; most shanndes get their power from acknowledgement.
I’m lying on my left side, facing the wardrobe resting against the wall opposite me. She’s approaching from the corner of the room by the foot of the bed. I deliberately unfocus my eyes further, but don’t close them, don’t pretend to be asleep.
The smell hits me, and it takes everything in me not to retch. Its a mixture of mould and rot and death, warm and ripe and sticking to the back of my throat. With each step she takes, whatsounds like pieces of flesh fall from her frame, landing with sickeningly wet thumps on the tiled floor.
She doesn’t stop until she’s standing directly in my line of sight.
I want to gag so badly its making my throat ache and my eyes water.
I brace myself then look up and meet her gaze, instinctively knowing she’s not going to leave until I acknowledge her; clearly her eshé is strong enough for it not to matter. I don’t want to know what might happen if I keep pretending she’s not there.
My first thought is,in fifty years, this is what Genevieve might look like.
She grabs my throat, and screams into my face. Her appearance morphs rapidly; she goes from elderly to middle-aged—it could’ve been Genevieve herself standing in front of me, plus a few wrinkles and a touch of grey to a shoulder-length loosely-curled afro—to a walking corpse with no hair and rotting, peeled skin, maggots squirming in the ripped flesh of her right cheek, revealing black gums and equally deteriorated orange teeth underneath.
“TELL HER THERE ISN’T A DEMON. TELL HER SHE SHOULDN’T TRY TO—”
Her voice cuts off as her face morphs again, her bones rearranging underneath her skin. Her grin stretches her face almost in half, her eyes turning completely black, her teeth sharp points.
The hand around my throat squeezes viciously, almost crushing my windpipe, before the shannde disappears with bitten-off shriek.
I lean over the side of the bed, coughing and clutching at my throat. Oh fuck, that fucking hurt. What the fuck was that? Is she actually a shannde? Despite the tension in my shoulder bladesand the defensive way my eshé had braced itself, I’m still not sure she’s an evil spirit.
Or—I suck in a sharp breath and my limbs grow cold—is the shannko being possessed by something else?
My unease lingers even after a long, hot shower and I leave the guest bedroom. I can’t stop thinking about the way the shannko’s appearance had shifted, morphing almost as if it had forgotten its true age, though it never went younger than the Genevieve of now.
This house has to be Genevieve’s ancestral home, with a strange shannko of her family’s either stuck behind or refusing to leave. Is it her mother? Her grandmother? Some older ancestor?
The hallway is a little dark from the lack of windows, and quiet. I glance at the solitary door on the opposite wall, then turn and head for the living room.
I’m nervous to see Genevieve not just because of my strange dream slash nightmare, but because I want to ask if she’s had any contact with the shannko. I refuse to think about the damning taste of dirt in my mouth.
