THE DOOR OF NO RETURN. EPISODE ONE: THE KEY.
KEHINDE AKPORIEN@akporienkehinde866986
8 days ago
She had two missed calls from a dead woman.
The timestamp read 3:14 AM.
The woman had died at 3:13 AM.
The drive to Ile-Aye took four hours and three wrong turns.
Ada had been warned. Her supervisor at the University of Lagos had pushed his glasses up and said, very slowly, "That town is not well-documented for a reason, Miss Fayemi." Her mother had been more direct: "Ada, I'm not joking. Leave those people's history alone."
She had laughed at both of them.
She wasn't laughing now.
The town appeared between two hills like something that had been hiding. No signpost. No petrol station. Just red earth and the kind of silence that makes your ears ring. The kind of silence that means something was here before you and hasn't left.
Ada checked into the only guesthouse in town, a faded blue building called Ile Alaafia House of Peace which struck her as either ironic or threatening. The owner, a small man with eyes that didn't quite focus on her face, gave her a room key without looking up.
"The old woman at Number 7 asked about you," he said.
Ada froze. "I don't know anyone here."
"She described you." He finally looked at her. "Down to the birthmark on your left wrist."
She found the old woman Mama Agba in a room that smelled of camphor and old iron. She was sitting up in bed like she had been waiting, both hands folded over a rusted key the size of a man's hand. Her eyes were clouded but her grip was strong.
"Sit down," she said in Yoruba. "I have been holding this for you for forty years."
"I've never been here before," Ada said carefully.
Mama Agba smiled. It was not a comfortable smile. "Your grandmother was here. She left without taking what belonged to her." She held out the key. "You came for her thesis. But you will leave with something heavier."
Ada took the key. It was cold. Bone cold, even in the heat.
"What does it open?" she asked.
The old woman closed her eyes. Her breathing changed slowed, deepened, like someone descending stairs.
"Don't open it alone," she whispered.
Then she stopped breathing entirely.
Ada sat there for thirty seconds before she understood what had happened.
Then she grabbed her phone to call the guesthouse owner.
Two missed calls. Unknown number. Timestamp: 3:14 AM except it was currently 3:14 AM, and Ada was wide awake, and the calls had come in while she was in the room.
She pressed play on the voicemail.
Static. Wind. Then very faintly a voice.
A voice she recognized as the old woman's.
"She's already here. She already took it. God help us."
Ada looked at the key in her hand.
And somewhere beneath the floor of that room deep, deep beneath the earth something knocked.
What do you think is under that floor?
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