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RITUAL WOMAN

  A story by Ugochukwu Kingsley Ani

  Ritual Woman is a work of fiction. At such, all the characters and the places used in this book are all imaginary. All the characters in this book, should they bear any resemblance to persons living or dead, are purely coincidental, as they are all the products of the author’s imagination or are used very fictitiously.

         

  Copyright © 2015 by Ugochukwu Kingsley Ani

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any mechanical or electronic means, including information storage and retrieval systems without the prior written permission of the author.

  Cover Image: By Anita Brown

  Cover Illustration © 2015 by Adrian Banks

  © 2015 by Ugochukwu Kingsley Ani

  Except from The Wedded Whore © 2015 by Ugochukwu Kingsley Ani

  Ritual Woman: An occult/paranormal novel/ Ugochukwu Kingsley Ani

  eISBN

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  For Barkings, for making this possible. Thank you, always . . . and Nony . . .

  RITUAL WOMAN

  Fidelia stood there in the front of the headmistress’s office, her eyes misted with tears, her looks dazed and thoroughly confused because of the fact that she was currently at a loss about what to do at that moment. Where had it all gone wrong? she wondered to herself for what felt like the hundredth time that afternoon.

  Her only daughter, Bianca, was missing. And not only was the girl the only female child she had, the girl was the only child that God had blessed her with during the duration of her marriage to her husband of fourteen years.

  She had rushed down from her law office because of the fact that she had the afternoon off due to the fact that the matter she had in court for that day had been adjourned to another day for the following week and so she had chosen to take the time to pick her daughter up from school so they could be together. It had been quite some time since the last time she and her daughter had the day with each other to gossip, and so she had chosen this day to make it up to the girl.

  Now, the girl was nowhere to be found now. There was nobody too that could agree to know her whereabouts since the school time had long elapsed and the girl was supposed to be waiting for her driver to come and pick her up so she could go home and get ready for the private tutorial session she had every Friday evening to brush up on her English and Mathematics.

  ‘Madam, we are still trying the very best we can to look for Bianca,’ a voice said, jarring the bereaved woman back to the present time.

  Fidelia turned around to look at the headmistress, a fair-skinned woman with a crown of neat Afro curls atop her head. The woman looked flustered and agitated, the long nails of her left fingers digging into the soft flesh of her right palm.

  Fidelia nodded, at a loss of words too. She understood that the woman was finding it extremely difficult with the disappearance of her daughter because her daughter was a girl that was personally acquainted with the headmistress due to the fact that she was one of the stars pupils of the school, having represented the school in many national academic competitions and had won them for the school.

  ‘I think it is time for us to call my husband and tell him about the fact that our daughter is missing from school and there is still no sign of her,’ Fidelia said wearily, struggling to keep the fear and terror she was feeling at that moment out of her voice and her face. She had to maintain her calm.

  ‘I will do that for you.’

  Fidelia nodded, grateful to the other woman for being the one to break the news to her husband. She knew that the school kept a very comprehensive database of all the parents and guardians of the pupils of the school, so it would be easy for her to be able to reach Nick. And Fidelia felt with a sinking feeling of dread that she had failed her husband again. She had failed him first by giving him a girl, and then she had failed him secondly by not being able to get pregnant again even though it was eleven years since the birth of her daughter. She knew that there were pressure coming at Nick from all sides for him to get married to another woman but he had kept to her.

  Oh my God! My daughter!

  And it was then that the real enormity of what had happened to her struck her. She let out a wail of sheer anguish, her eyes glued to her watch as her mind churned out the numbers of the hours her daughter had vanished from the school. She was crying now, and she was almost unaware of hands steadying her, of voices coming together and setting up verbal queries as to what had transpired. She was in pain, and she could feel it in her bones that something bad had happened and something worse was about to happen to her only child.

  ‘It will be all right,’ the headmistress was saying, sounding soothing, like a mother.

  Fidelia was shaking her head. ‘No, it won’t be all right,’ she wailed, and then her sobs came harder. She doubled over, her fingers clutching at her breasts as all her maternal instincts rushed out to her daughter, wherever the girl might be at this moment in time. ‘My daughter is in trouble.’

  ‘Don’t be so negative, Mama Bianca,’ another woman chided her. ‘Let us all pray that the girl is safe and will be found soon.’

  But Fidelia was shaking her head, and then she burst out laughing. It was a near maniacal laughter that jarred the people around her, most of them mothers like she was who had dropped in to pick up their kids and take them home. But then they had stopped what they were doing to be a part of the pain of the woman. To her it was absurd for her to be thinking of her daughter being when she knew that the girl was seriously in trouble. What had happened to her only child transcended child’s play_ the girl was in serious danger.

  She knew it deep within her bones. She could feel it.

  Then her husband arrived, and when the news was relayed to him, he took his wife in his arms and started issuing orders into his phone. Call the police; notify all the other children that were in her class and those who were her friends to know if she had said something to any of them about where she was headed to before she had disappeared; get copies of her pictures so they could be circulated around the neighborhood with great speed; notify the neighborhood vigilante group so they could also help with the search for Bianca. And so on and so forth.

  Fidelia had very stunning pictures of her daughter on her iPhone; she had them emailed to the school’s mail address and, within moments, they had copies already being circulated around. Nick was by her side, holding her hand and talking speedily into his phone, dispensing information about their child to the powers that be. He had taken control, just like he always did in moments of trouble.

  Fidelia felt very grateful that she had him there with her; she had never known what to do except to sit down and wail about the disappearance of her only child when she should have been taking steps to have her daughter found. She was ordinarily someone that was always in charge, but when it came to matters that were emotionally involved, she always became no more than an emotional wreck.

  ‘We’ve done the very best we can do at the moment,’ Nick said to her as he sat down beside her and held her. ‘I believe that we will find her very soon.’

  Fidelia looked up at him with eyes that were filled with despair. ‘What if you’re wrong?’ she asked in a very strangled voice, as if she was terrified of speaking what she felt. ‘What if something bad has happened to her?’

  ‘Have some faith,’ Nick chided her, like the other woman had done several minutes ago. ‘Maybe she’s gone off somewhere on her own and had fallen asleep. She could be sleeping around here somewhere.’

  Even though she really wanted to believe the words her darling husband was saying to her, she felt it deep within her that she was walking on egg shells and it could crack w
ide open at any time. And what if what her husband was saying was true_ that their daughter had gone off somewhere and had fallen asleep and forgotten that she had to get home and do her homework?

  But then, it felt most unlikely, she reasoned. Bianca was never the kind of girl to wander off on her own when she had express instructions to the contrary about what she was expected to do. Bianca had always been a very quiet girl, always content to play with her dolls and read her books_ advanced books that girls of her own age would never understand_ and she would never go off on her own provided you’d given her a very tangible reason as to why she shouldn’t wander off.

  Fidelia then decided to give up on her tears and her pessimism and hope for the very best. But when it turned to seven P.M and the girl was still nowhere to be found, real panic set into her. Going home while her husband went off on a search with some men to find the girl was a very difficult thing to do, but she knew that she had to go home or else she would go crazy. Besides that, she felt that she would only be in the way of the men that were trying to find her daughter for her. For now, she could be nothing to them other than a liability.

  When her iPhone rang, she sprang up from her chair to answer it, thinking that perhaps it was her husband calling with news of her daughter. But it turned out to be her younger