
Basaja felt a shiver run through his spine as he slid into Boka’s skin as smooth as fish cutting through water. He took a few moments to adjust to the physics of locomotion, the initial ungainliness of its limbs upon possessing a human.
A dog yelped and scampered off his path as he rounded the corner leading to Boka’s house. He froze, but the dog had already dashed away, ears bent low. At that moment, Basaja had been very close to bailing from his new host. The only thing that, perhaps, mortified him was the keen awareness of dogs.
Dawn had began to deepen when Larai assigned to him this job, which really was a punishment. He was to take Boka’s Totem. The youngest aljani in the coven by far—two centuries in human years—Basaja was the center of attention. It didn’t help that he dwelled in the corporeal world a lot; he had even interacted with a few humans. Whilst bani Adam were shallow and remarkably unaware of the things that existed outside their limited senses, Basaja knew they were also capable of the profound. According to Larai, his behavior was more befitting an unruly human child.
It was an afternoon flush with deep shadows. Boka’s house was a bungalow painted a dull shade of blue and set some distance from a busy street. A forest of weeds had sprouted from the gutters. Behind the house stood an old, gnarled kuka tree. The four stools outside the house were meant for visitors, but no one was sitting on them. They were coming, though, Basaja knew. Boka’s services never fell out of date.
Basaja swept into the house the way Boka would have done. Was there a little flourish in his steps, he wondered. The house was cold. The room he entered had a faint air of decay. The walls were blue and the paint peeled generously in places; small, tied-up nylon bags and plastic bottles were everywhere. Animal pelts and bones hung on wooden hooks on the walls, and in one far corner, the skulls of some unnaturally large rodents grinned down.
On the floor, in the middle of the room, sat a young man with a dismal light to his eyes, an assistant of sorts, grinding some dry substance on a metal tray until only a thin powder remained. If the assistant detected any change in his master’s demeanor, he didn’t show it. Basaja sat and the two of them worked together in silence, with the economy of movement that came to people like artisans.
A knock came and the assistant went to get it. He returned with a woman carrying a sickly child in her arms. The assistant slipped outside in his quiet way while the woman sat before Basaja. The child, yellowed and emaciated, couldn’t have been more than six. He was getting sicker with every medication given, the mother said, and she feared one of her husband’s other wives was responsible. He was the only male child and therefore she possessed some influence over their husband the other wives didn’t have.
Basaja stroked his beard, the end of which was pierced with red. He laid a hand heavy with rings on the child’s forehead. You understand the evil eye is on your boy, he said, somewhat brusquely. The woman was aghast. We will banish the evil eye, said Basaja. The assistant’s shadow darkened the doorway. He poked his head in. Someone was outside. This person could not be kept waiting. Basaja dipped a finger in a calabash filled with some dark oil at the corner. Banishing the evil eye with several oily swipes on the child’s chest, he tied an amulet around his arm, and then told the woman to return the next day at sunset while he prepared a special ritual for the boy.
A tall, stern-faced man in an elegantly pressed kaftan and a careful smattering of grey hair entered. He wrinkled his nose and, eyeing the small stool the woman had just left contemptuously, waited until the assistant dragged in a chair. Though the air was heavy with silent apprehension, Basaja smiled at the man. Welcome, Chairman, he said. Boka, said Chairman, you have failed me. Chairman’s hand went into a pocket and out came an object, shaped like a frog, whiter than an egg, and no bigger than a ten kobo coin. It teetered on his palm then found a delicate balance. Did you use it as I said you should, Basaja said, somewhat lamely. The assistant coughed nervously by the door and Basaja, with a slight jerk of the head, signaled for him to leave.
Basaja tried to keep a calm albeit slightly concerned face though nervous excitement brewed inside him. This was the Totem he was to look out for. Only he could see it for what it really was—a trap for aljanu. There were a few of them scattered around. A wielder of one of these things could command the being trapped inside to do his bidding.
Fortunately, Chairman did not know how to use it despite Boka’s instructions.
Chairman leaned forward. I paid you well, he said. Basaja eyed the Totem in his hand. He could simply snatch it now and be done with it. But Chairman needed to be taught a lesson. And because he was a man of means, his knowledge of this powerful relic put the other aljanu at risk. Today he wanted to incinerate his political opponents, tomorrow it’ll be something bigger. Basaja knew enough about the greed of bani Adam.
“Follow me”, Basaja said, climbing to his feet. “Something has made the Totem impotent. I shall remedy that.” Basaja, without waiting for Chairman, strode out the back door. One needed to sidle when approaching the door, but Chairman rushed through, knocking over a pile of dried leaves and sending one skull crashing to the floor.
The gnarled tree at the back of the house overlooked a large tank of reddish water. Haphazard lines had been drawn on the ground, and a particularly hot breeze wafted clumps of blood-stained chicken feathers into the air. Shiny nails stuck out of the tree’s stem which had swirls and streaks of grey running up to the topmost branches. Basaja cupped his hand in the water and splashed it on the tree trunk. Right above his head was a small red string trailing from a nail. Basaja stuck his hand out and Chairman grudgingly gave back the Totem. His head swirled; the powers of the being stuck in the trap were faint but still formidable. He tied the Totem with the string where it dangled listlessly. Come back in three days, he said. A few more rituals need to be made.
Chairman stuck his chin out, the moustache trembled. “Do you take me for a joke?” he asked. “I want it remedied today.”
“That will not be possible”, Basaja said.
Chairman’s hands rose towards the red string.
“Don’t touch that!”
But the deed was done. The air cracked with a keening sound, the sky turned an eerie grey, and where the tree was there suddenly stood a door. There was light coming from underneath it with a chorus of whispers, haunting and primordial. Basaja felt ice in his stomach. He tried to bail from Boka’s body but he was rooted in the spot.
He felt small and negligible. He felt human.
A voice floated in the air. Free at last. The door swung open; beyond it, the ground was strewn with slate. Something brushed past Basaja’s ear and when he turned Chairman’s face was slowly turning from a rictus of shock to a feral grin. His eyes were feverishly intense. He was possessed, and the aljani was old and mad.
Basaja felt himself being sheared off Boka’s body. Regardless of what he did, he couldn’t stop it. The dimension behind the doors had him in its grip. Chairman raised his hands and stared at them as if seeing them for the first time. He tightened his hands into fists and all the knuckles popped. “Only one may leave, and only one may enter,” he said. And he was gone, disappearing in a cloud of dust.
The door swung shut and Basaja floated around. The piles of slate stretched on and on to no end. He wondered for how long that aljani was stuck here, all alone. He grinned. It wouldn’t be long before the Totem fell into the hands of some other human.
About Ridwan

Ridwan Badamasi writes from the ancient city of Kano in northern Nigeria. A Biochemistry undergrad in Bayero University, his works have appeared in Praxis Magazine, Kalahari Review, Salamander Ink Magazine, and elsewhere. You can find him on Twitter: @RidhwanBadamasi