THE DOOR OF NO RETURN, (EPISODE 2: What is Beneath)
KEHINDE AKPORIEN@akporienkehinde866986
8 days ago
he detective had a scar on his palm shaped exactly like the keyhole.When Ada showed him the key, he stood up and left the room without speaking.He didn't come back for six hours.Ada didn't sleep.She sat on the edge of the guesthouse bed with the key on the table in front of her, watching it the way you watch something you suspect is watching you back. The knocking had stopped. The night had gone completely quiet no crickets, no wind, nothing. Just the key, and her heartbeat, and the feeling that something had shifted in the world.At 7 AM, she went to the police post.Inspector Dele Ogunwale was not what she expected. He was tall and lean with the kind of face that had seen something it couldn't forget not old, maybe late thirties, but with tired eyes and hands that were never quite still. He was reading a file when she walked in, and when she explained who she was PhD researcher, documenting colonial history, found a dead body he had nodded slowly, unsurprised, like this was a sentence he had been waiting to hear."Mama Agba," he said. Not a question."You knew her?""Everybody knew her." He stood up and reached for his car keys. "I'll need to see the body."She laid the key on the desk between them.Something happened to his face. Not dramatic just a small, terrible contraction, like a man swallowing something sharp. He looked at it for three full seconds. Then he stood and walked out of the room without a word.Ada waited. She examined the scar on his palm when he came back she had seen it when he reached for the keys. A curved line, deep and old. The exact shape of the keyhole at the bow of the key on the desk.She said nothing.He said nothing.They drove to the guesthouse in silence.Mama Agba's body was still in the room, undisturbed. Ada had locked the door. She unlocked it now, and they went in.The room was empty.Not just empty of the body. Empty of everything. The bedsheets, the camphor smell, the old photographs on the wall, the dented metal cup on the side table. All of it gone. As if no one had ever lived there. As if Ada had hallucinated the entire encounter.Except for one thing.On the bare floor, in the exact spot where the bed had been, were footprints. Hundreds of them. All facing the same direction. All leading toward the east wall and stopping there, pressed against it, as if a crowd had been trying to walk through the wall and simply... ceased.Ada's voice came out smaller than she intended. "Where is she?"Dele crouched at the footprints. He pressed his scarred palm flat against the floor. His eyes closed."Inspector." Ada stepped toward him. "What is this?"He opened his eyes. Looked at the wall."There's a room behind this wall," he said quietly. "It wasn't here when I investigated this building three years ago.""That's impossible.""Yes." He stood up. His jaw was tight. "A lot of impossible things are centered on that key you're carrying." He finally looked at her directly properly, for the first time. "Miss Fayemi. I need you to not go looking for what that key opens. Not tonight. Not alone. Not ever, if you can help it."Ada's grip tightened on the key in her pocket."What's behind the door?" she asked.Something moved behind his eyes. Fear, maybe. Or memory."The people who went in," he said slowly, "didn't come back as themselves."Ada's stomach dropped. "What does that mean?"He looked at her birthmark. The one on her left wrist. He looked at it like he recognized it."It means," he said, "that whatever is on the other side... knows your face already."TO BE CONTINUED IN EPISODE 3...
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