A Curious Child
A magnificent ocean cliff stretched for miles on every side. It stood majestic and unmoved as waves, bright, blue and unforgiving, crashed into it. Above the cliff were mansions spread across the length of it; the serene beauty of their expansive manicured grounds forming a perfect counterpoint to the violence of the ocean below. Beneath the mansions and above the waves was the uncommon sight of a boy, barefoot and climbing his way across.
Few things are as attractive to danger as a curious child left unattended. Mwadime, with confidence only a ten-year-old could muster, deftly climbed across the cliff face, without even a scratch from the jagged rocks on his feet. Unknown to his parents, who were always busy, he had done this many times. As soon as Mwadime discovered that most of the houses were empty, the neighbours only visiting for the holidays, the temptation to see what lay beyond his home’s walls had become overwhelmingly irresistible. In Mwadime’s estimation, if there were no adults, there would be little trouble to be had from trespassing. And so sure was he of himself, that the danger of falling never truly occurred to him.
Today, he had a particular house as his destination. It was a towering white building with a large glass dome on top, reflecting the sun for miles, almost like a beacon calling to Mwadime. It had always seemed too far, but he had known that he would have to go there. Everything else he had done had been practice for it. It was to be the grand prize of his excursions. And today, after all this time, he was finally ready.
When he was sure he was at the right location, he climbed upward, peeking over the edge. He did not see any guards or groundsmen as he had found in some of the other houses and sighed with relief. He was too tired to sneak around. He pulled himself up and brushed the dust off his clothes and the neat cornrows on his head. Finally, the smile on his face was almost painfully wide with pride.
Few things are as attractive to danger as a curious child left unattended. Mwadime was right that the danger did not lie in the waves below. He was, however, wrong that it would have lain with adults above. The truest danger lay within the seemingly empty house before him, silent as death, for even the wind dared not approach it.
***
The house was a sight to behold. The coral stone walls, the large, curved windows with accents of mahogany timber and the elaborate carvings on the door gave it a feel of something from another time. Even the reflective glass of the dome atop it all seemed old somehow. It gave the feeling of something that had stood there for centuries yet was preserved and unaffected by the passing of time. But, for all its beauty and strangeness, it did not hold Mwadime’s attention for long. It was hard to blame him, for the grounds irresistibly drew the eyes. They were covered in flower bushes, the rows curving into each other in complex and unreadable patterns.
An explosion of colours – pinks, purples, reds, blues, and yellows – bloomed in endless combinations. Mwadime admittedly knew very little about flowers, but even he could tell many of them did not seem like the kind that could grow in Kwale. The question of who cared for this wondrous garden vaguely crossed his mind, but he was too spellbound to give it much consideration.
One bush in particular stood out to him. The flowers on it were made up of tiny rows of petals that seemed to spiral to the centre. The petals were stark, bloody red in the centre, gradually fading into a delicate pink towards the edges. Mwadime had never seen anything like this flower. He ran his fingers over the petals, and it was soft and powdery. When he pulled his finger away, he felt like it had been vibrating at his touch. Like most things he did, it was impulsive, but he decided to take one home with him. He did not know where he would keep it to protect it from the harsh climb back, but that was a problem for later.
He realised it was a mistake even as he pulled to pluck the flower, but his hand’s motion was already beyond the point of no return. He did not understand why he was filled with a sense of wrongness, a feeling that only grew worse as he held the detached flower in the air. He stood motionless momentarily, then gasped, stepping back, struggling to keep his balance. To his utter horror, the broken stem he had pulled the flower from was dripping with blood.
This is okay, he tried to convince himself. Maybe some flowers just have red liquid inside them.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
What do I know about flowers? He looked at the flower in his hand, which was also bleeding. Don’t be a stupid baby. This is just how this flower is.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
He wanted to believe his justifications, to try to believe that this was something he had never heard of. But he knew, knew it the way he knew his name, this was blood. He put his finger under the broken stem of the flower he held, and the single red drop that fell there almost drove him to tears. Before he could think up a new theory, the flower in his hand twitched and started to scream.
The scream was shrill and piercing, and it felt like a long needle pushing into Mwadime’s ears. The petals on the flower had flared out, revealing an oval-shaped hole that wobbled as it screamed. He tried to drop the thing and found that he could not let it go. A terror unlike anything he had ever felt before engulfed him, and he started to try and shake the flower off, but it only screamed louder. The flowers on the bush he had picked from seemed to turn and face him.
The tears were falling down his face now, and he found that he, too, was screaming. However, he had stopped moving. He stood, frozen in place, afraid to move again.
“Put it back on the stem,” a voice whispered next to him. No, it didn’t whisper; that was too simple a word to capture the true essence of what he heard. The sound was like a soft breeze blowing past his ear, and if it had not shaped words he could understand, he would have been certain that that was what it was.
He turned to see a woman, tall and so thin she was skeletal, standing next to him. A strange fabric was wrapped around her, patterned in shades of blue that danced like waves in the ocean to a wind that only the fabric seemed to catch in the still air. Her face was dark as obsidian; her skin, her lips and even her eyes, which were only discernible because of his reflection in them, were all the same shade. She tilted her bald head impatiently, and with that same breeze of a voice that seemed to only carry to his ears, she said, “Put it back on the stem.”
Mwadime, seeing nothing else to do, reached out and placed the flower back where it had been. It stopped screaming, and the petals retreated to their original position. The other flowers settled back, seemingly appeased by the silence. He found that he could let go now, and he did, but the flower stayed in place as if it had never been anywhere else.
He turned to the woman, finally taking a good look, trying to ascertain how much trouble he was in. She reached out to him, and he flinched, seeing that even her fingernails, long and sharp, were as dark as the rest of her.
“I’m sorry, I…”
“Shhh,” she said with the sound of a wave crashing into the cliff.
“I was just…” she silenced him by placing a hand over his mouth, gripping tightly, nails digging into his cheeks.
“What strange flower is this in my garden? Small and noisy,” Mwandime noticed that while her mouth moved when she talked, the motions seemed entirely different from the words that came out, like she was speaking in a different tongue that he could somehow understand.
She placed a finger on her lips and stared at him as if deep in thought. “We shall have to find the perfect place for you. You will grow bright and strong. I know.”
Mwandime tried to shake away, but he found her grip seemed to affect his entire body. He could not move.
“Yes,” she nodded approvingly. “I know.”
A Precious Land
Chacha stood at the cliff’s edge, covering his eyes as he watched the setting sun, already halfway past the horizon. The ocean dominated the vista in every direction. Calm waves, dark, orange and unbothered, swayed lazily. The fading sun’s light cut a widening line of white across the water, from the horizon to the cliff, but the darker waters around seemed to thin it out and overwhelm it slowly. To Chacha, it looked like the sun was trying to hold on tight to the water as the night dragged it down over the horizon. Behind him, a garden of flowers turned to watch the light’s hopeless battle with the dark.
There are few things as attractive to danger as a curious child left unattended; one of those things is a man with loose morals in his heart and a scheme in his mind. Chacha had been dismayed at the sight of the house and grounds when he had driven up to the property, so well taken care of when he had expected neglect, but he had not let that deter him. Seeing no one, he had climbed over the gate and started exploring. Chacha was, though he would have protested against the appellation, a con man. His speciality was land scams. So, when his contact at the lands registry had sent him the details of this property, with the brief that the only known owner had been dead for over fifty years, with no dependents, it had been too tempting to resist. He had taken off for Kwale at the break of dawn the very next day.
He had walked the entire length and breadth of the five-acre property, assessing everything. The grounds perplexed him, so meticulously taken care of, yet there seemed to be no one on-site.
Who was taking care of it? He stroked his long beard, puzzled. In the end, he decided it did not matter. He was sure the land had no legal claimants from the documents he had seen. A new title deed in the name of a company he controlled, some well-placed bribes and promises to officials and police officers he had in his pocket, and it would be his to sell. The figures were already adding up in his head. He kissed the gold crucifix he always wore and marvelled at his good fortune. The smile on his face was almost painfully wide with expectation.
Chacha was right in believing there lay no danger in law, procedure or on any claims to the land. What he did not know was that the truest danger lay in the breeze he had not felt as he stood over the cliff’s edge. It lay in the gaze of flowers that turned, watching him across the property as he climbed back over the gate and into his car.
***
He had barely started driving when he could not shake the feeling that someone was watching him. He looked back and around, but he saw nothing. He did not know why he was filled with a sense of wrongness, and it only grew as he sped up, trying to escape it.
I’m probably just tired, he tried to convince himself. It’s been a long day.
He wanted to believe this; he tried to blame his weariness, but he knew with the finely honed instincts needed for his profession that something was wrong.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
He turned slightly to see water dripping from his roof down to the fabric of the passenger seat. But how? There had been no rain, and even if there had, how had it penetrated his roof? The car was new.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
The seat next to him was already soaked through. He looked back at the road and slowed down, but when he turned back, a young boy, no more than ten years old, sat next to him. A strange fabric was wrapped around the boy, patterned in shades of orange and yellow that billowed and rippled like the sun glistened ocean at sunset. His face was dark as coal; his skin, his lips and even his eyes, which were only discernible because of his reflection in them, were all the same shade. The darkness was only broken by lines of neat cornrows, white as sea foam.
“Who the hell are you?” he demanded.
The boy only continued to stare at him. That unblinking stare unnerved him, and his hand unconsciously closed around the crucifix around his neck.
“You should not have come,” said the boy with a low whisper that reminded Chacha of putting his ear to a sea shell. “You should not try and take what is not yours.”
Before Chacha could say anything, the boy reached out and grabbed his wrist. Nails, dark and sharp as talons, dug into his skin. Chacha found that he could not move. He saw a sharp curve in the road ahead but could not turn his wheel.
“You will make an ugly flower,” said the boy. “But there is still grace to be found in ugliness for those who know how to look. This, I know.”
Tears of frustration found Chacha’s eyes as he desperately tried to break the grip and take control of the car. His foot felt heavy, disobeying his instruction and stepping harder on the accelerator.
“Yes,” said the boy as the car left the road; Chacha screamed as they ran over an uneven mound of soil. “I know.”
A Morning Sail
Muthama sat in a fisherman’s boat, staring at the sun rising over the magnificent ocean cliff before him. The dawn sky was shaded in hues of blue, pink and a delicate purple that reflected across the sea beneath him. The water was calm, almost still, and the waves seemed little more than large ripples sliding past. He sat in a boat with Bahati, the fisherman, as it floated on the edge of the cliff’s shadow, the demarcation between light and shade so sharp and stark it seemed they were caught between two worlds: the gentle tide slowly but surely, pulling them into the shadows.
There are few things as attractive to danger as a curious child left unattended; one of those things is a man desperately searching for truth. For almost a month now, Muthama had been trying to get footage of the infamous estate in Kwale that many called Billionaires Row. He had gone to great lengths chasing the opportunity, and until this moment, it had seemed like a futile quest.
The news of two disappearances in this area over the last year, a child and a known scam artist, had pricked at Muthama’s journalistic instincts. His initial reaction had been to dismiss the coverage as sensationalism, only a story because it happened among the rich, but something about it seemed off to him. Something under the surface of the story called to him, demanding he find the answers. Unable to ignore the matter, his research revealed a pattern of barely noticed disappearances in the surrounding area that went back decades.
He had chipped away at the mystery for many nights, trying to make sense of it. Was it human trafficking? Organ harvesting? A serial killer? Ultimately, he decided to survey the area himself; perhaps a clue would be revealed. Throughout his career, he’d found that being on the ground, even when he found no new information, always set his sails toward the answer. Getting there, however, had proved more challenging than he had expected.
The increased media attention in the previously quiet neighbourhood had security and police on the lookout for strangers with cameras. They were overzealous in their responsibilities to protect the privacy of the area. He had already been arrested twice during his mission, and the bribes required for his release had not been cheap. Worse, his boss was getting impatient, telling him to give up the story; still, he was determined to get to the bottom of this.
A chance encounter with Bahati, a fisherman who frequented his hotel offering boat rides, had given him the lifeline he sought. Bahati was intimately familiar with Billionaire’s Row and suggested that he needed to approach by sea if the road was impossible. No patrols were in this area; even if they were noticed, they would have plenty of time to escape. It was still dangerous, but the opportunity had proved too tempting for Muthama to resist.
Muthama fiddled with the controls of his drone, engulfed by impatience now that his goal was so close.
“Mkubwa,” said Bahati, clearly uncomfortable with the silence, “that thing will not help, haiwezi kusidia.”
“What makes you say that, Bahati?”
“Hii kitu…” Bahati shrugged. “This thing is more than scientific, jibu hapa ni kienyeji. Everybody knows majini stay here. They did this thing you are trying to study.”
“Is that so?” Muthama did not believe in the ubiquitous stories of djinn along the Kenyan coast and had found the superstition tedious in his investigation. But, as Bahati was his ride, he felt the need to indulge him.
“Nyie watu wa bara…” Bahati laughed at his city scepticism, “I have been fishing here for 20 years. I know what happens. There are Majini here. Everybody knows. Hawa matajiri wamefanya mikataba za kishetani au wana maadui wengi. No big secret.”
“Well, I believe there is a reasonable explanation. That’s what I am here to find.”
“Hebu niambie, maji yaliingia kwenye gari vipi?” Bahati pressed.
Tell me, how did water get into the car?
The conman’s case was one of the stranger ones. His body had never been found, but his car had been discovered overturned and empty, except for the fact that it had been flooded. Nobody seemed able to explain where all that water had come from. Mainly because the water had only been in the cabin, and the car’s exterior had been bone dry.
“Umeona sasa?” Bahati declared triumphantly at his silence. “Many people disappear; the majini here are very strong.”
To avoid further conversation, Muthama nodded and started up his drone. The loud buzz it made silenced Bahati as it flew over their heads and up the cliff. Muthama watched the screen as the view rose from the shadows, revealing the beautiful landscape.
He slowly panned the drone across, recording house after beautiful house. He did not see anything that told a story, but these things were never immediate; he knew something would reveal itself on further study. The fact that he was getting the footage was enough. Muthama could not hide the glee from his face, a smile cutting across it so wide that it was almost painful.
A burst of colour in one of the compounds caught his eye, but he couldn’t quite make it out. He considered for a moment if it was safe to dip low and get a better look and decided to do it. The worst was that they caught the drone, which he did not think was likely. He guided the drone lower and focused on that property.
“How does it look?” Bahati finally said, overcome with curiosity.
“Stunning!”
The colour became defined as the drone hovered over, and he made out flowers. Hundreds of them. The bushes curved in what seemed to him like a symbol from Arabic writing. He made a mental note to research what it meant. The clearer the scene got, the more confused Muthama became. The flowers were beautiful, but he had never seen anything like them at the coast. Against his better judgment, he guided the drone lower.
The myriad colours — pinks, purples, reds, blues, and yellows — bloomed in endless combinations, revealing themselves into clear forms. Muthama felt himself overcome with a sense of wrongness that he could not shake off. He had grown up on a flower farm and was well versed in the field, but for his life, he could not identify even a single one of the flowers.
“This is so strange,” he said to himself, “I’ve never seen flowers like this.”
“Flowers?”
“Yes, one of these houses has a garden of them.”
“That is not good, Mkubwa,” Bahati was alarmed. “They say Majini like flowers.”
Muthama scoffed and ignored him. Muthama had no way of knowing, but he was wrong to ignore Bahati. He was wrong that there lay no danger in djinn. That was where the truest danger, the greatest one, lay.
Suddenly, the screen buzzed and went black and unresponsive. Had he taken the drone too far out of the range? No. The drone would have warned him. And failing that, it would have started returning to the boat. He tapped the screen and turned the device over.
“What the hell is going on?”
“What is it?” Bahati’s panic was palpable.
“The controller. It’s…wet.” The entire back of the device was covered in water droplets.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Maybe water splashed on it, and I was too engrossed to notice. Muthama tried to convince himself. That must be it.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
He wanted to believe that a rogue wave had splashed onto the screen, but he knew with the finely honed instincts needed for his profession that something was wrong. The screen flickered back to life, and an image filled the screen. He studied it, trying to decipher what he was seeing.
“Jini,” wailed Bahati, just as Muthama realised what he was looking at. The screen showed an image of the back of his head.
He turned alarmed, and a man sat in the boat with them. He sat calmly, the drone resting on his lap. A strange fabric was wrapped around him, patterned in shades of pink and purple, fluttering gently with the breeze. His face was dark as a moonless night; his skin, his lips and even his eyes — which were only discernible because of his reflection in them — were all the same shade. The darkness was only broken by a gold crucifix around his neck and his beard, white as Kwale sand.
Bahati looked as if he was ready to jump over the side of the boat and take his chances, but he was stuck in place. The man turned to Bahati and turned his head quizzically. Muthama did not understand the words the thing spoke, but Bahati heard him loud and clear. You should know better than to be here.
Bahati wailed, curling into a ball on the boat’s floor in an attempt to prostrate himself before the thing. He stuttered with desperate apologies, but it ignored him, turning back to Muthama. Under that gaze, his lifelong disdain for superstition shattered in a moment. The creature gently picked his drone from its lap and dropped it into the ocean. With a movement almost faster than he could see, it stood with a grace that did not upset the boat, whipping its hand forward and wrapping fingers around Muthama’s throat. He could feel pricks of pain in his flesh.
“A curious flower,” the man-thing whispered with the sound of shuffling sand on the beach. “Yes, this will be a fine addition. Persistent and tenacious, this I know.”
Muthama managed to grab its wrist, but his energy failed as soon as he did it. He could not fight his way free.
“Please…” he begged, “Please.”
“Yes,” the thing said with a nod. Muthama noticed that the boat was filling with water, but he could not tell where it was coming from. “I know.”
A Gift of Flowers
The moon, bright and full, fought for her space against a cloudy night sky. Gusts of wind howled across the ocean, propelling waves with them in eruptions and crashes, turbulent and unforgiving. The mother of flowers flew around the house on the cliff with the lines of her wavecloth, black, blue and white, thrashing behind her, matching the ocean’s fury. She weaved in and out of the light beams and shadows among her flower bushes. She wore the skin of a man this night, not that any would have seen her if they looked.
The flowers in her garden trembled with anticipation, excited by the winds; they knew it was time. She hovered above them, calling to them, her flowers, her children. Her voice carried over them, bold as the breaking of waves. The flowers swayed and called back, like the tinkle of little bells. Across the garden, the flowers released an invisible dust into the wind. This was her art; this was her call.
Like a flower could attract insects with its scent, her call would travel far and wide and draw her prey to her. It worked best with the curious, the greedy and the obsessed. It latched on to these things, growing them, tending them, and aiming them in a particular direction until they could no longer be denied. It tamped down their fear and reason the closer they got, until it was too late.
The Mother of Flowers was not a malicious creature; she simply acted according to her nature. She needed bodies to survive in this world, and so she took them. They didn’t last long; her life force burned through them too quickly, but she didn’t kill them. She simply turned their spirit into one of her flowers. Flowers that represented the essence, the true nature of a person, better than any human body could ever aspire to; this, she knew.
She was Djinn to the core of her essence, but she was also a mother in the end. She believed that children deserved to stay close to their mothers. This was why Mwandime’s mother had found flowers at her doorstep, lying in a puddle of water, days after he disappeared: turquoise jade flowers with tiny petals. She had not known why the flowers had given her such comfort, why they seemed so familiar, even if she had never seen the kind, why she had felt compelled to keep them. The flowers were strange, like tiny ten pointed stars, nestled in an intricate nest of bracts. They seemed to hum when the wind grew strong, always leaning towards the ocean, no matter which way the wind blew.
Chacha’s mother had also found flowers at her home with large, spreading petals of different shades of brown, speckled patterns and a striking gold-flecked throat. They were hideous, with a strange texture, fuzzy and powdery, and dust that came off; they seemed more like spread-out, hairy moth wings. Still, she found that she loved them with an irrational fervour.
Muthama’s mother had cried when she held her flowers without knowing why. Their large petals rose and drooped, a warm peachy-coral at the centre blending into a vivid orange, vibrant with the intensity of flames towards the drooped tips. Two stalks rose from the centre of the flower, and anyone who saw them would say they looked like they watched everything.
The flowers the mothers received never seemed to wilt or wither, even if they were not watered. They stayed as fresh as the day they arrived.
The Mother of Flowers did not kill. More than that, she never let a body burn out completely. When she was done with one, she simply left it and put the spirit back – this was when the flowers died, when the disappeared would return.
Many spoke of the day when their loved ones vanished, but few told anyone about their return. Always older, sometimes much older than their time away could explain. The mothers could always tell it was them by their scent, the smell of the flowers they had cherished in their absence.
Though the families never said anything, neighbours whispered about Mwadime, Chacha and Muthama, the strange old men no one seemed to know. In their different neighbourhoods, the same topics dominated the conversation: how they smelled of sea and flowers, how, if you looked at them from the corner of your eye, light and shadow seemed to warp around them, how they rarely spoke, and when they did, it was only in strange whispers.
The three old men avoided heights and the ocean and seemed averse to the sound of dripping water. On starless nights with a full moon, they seemed to stare into the sky, feet rooted to the ground and swaying like blossoms, waiting for something. Waiting with an earnest, terrible patience that no passersby could have understood, for the Mother of Flowers to come back for them.
