Chapter 3 — The Vanishing Bloodline
Efe didn’t sleep.
All night, he sat by the window, staring at the city lights bleeding faintly through the blinds. His thoughts were like broken glass, jagged and scattered. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Tunde’s outline in that armchair, featureless, pleading.
By morning, he couldn’t stand it anymore. He needed an anchor. Someone who had known him his whole life. Someone untouchable.
He dialed his sister, Amaka.
Her voice came sharp and tired on the other end.
“What is it, Efe? It’s not even 7.”
Relief rushed through him. She was real. She was still here. “Amaka, thank God. Please, tell me you remember Tunde. My guy, my best friend—”
There was a pause.
“Tunde who?”
His throat closed. “Don’t… don’t play with me. We grew up with him around. He came to Dad’s burial. You cried on his shoulder.”
Another pause, this time colder.
“Efe, I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but I’ve never met a Tunde in my life.”
He gripped the phone harder, desperation flooding him. “Then tell me this — do you remember Dad’s burial at all? Do you remember—”
Her voice sharpened, like a knife pressed against his ear.
“Efe. We never buried Dad. He’s still alive.”
His heart stuttered.
For a moment he couldn’t breathe. He whispered, hoarse:
“Amaka… Dad died five years ago. Cancer. We buried him in Benin.”
On the line, his sister laughed. A bitter, mocking laugh that didn’t sound like her at all.
“You sound crazy. Daddy’s downstairs right now, drinking tea.”
The call ended.
Efe sat frozen, phone still pressed against his ear, hearing nothing but the faint static buzz.
He went to his mother’s old photo albums that afternoon, his hands shaking so badly the pages tore.
In every picture — his father smiled. Healthy. Standing at birthdays, weddings, graduations. Smiling in pictures that hadn’t existed yesterday.
The funeral photos were gone. The graveyard shots were gone.
In their place: blank spaces where he remembered crying, where he remembered holding the coffin lid as the ropes lowered it into the earth.
He staggered to the bathroom mirror and stared into it. His reflection was pale, trembling. But worse than that—
The photo frames on the wall behind him, reflected in the mirror, didn’t match what was on the wall when he turned.
In the reflection, his father’s portrait hung where the clock should have been. When he spun around, only the clock ticked.
He looked back — and the reflection smiled at him.
By nightfall, he couldn’t take it. He ran into the hallway again.
The door was waiting.
It was always waiting.
This time he didn’t hesitate. He shoved it open and stormed inside, slamming it behind him.
The bulb flickered violently.
The diary was already open on the desk. The words bled across the page as though written in real time:
Bloodlines are fragile. Fathers, mothers, sisters — all of them can be rewritten. The more you fight it, the faster they unravel.
Efe slammed the diary shut. “What do you want from me?!” he shouted. His voice cracked against the walls, swallowed instantly by the silence.
From the armchair came a sound. Not creaking — breathing. Heavy, wet, uneven.
His blood froze.
Slowly, the chair turned again.
This time the shape was clearer. A man. Broad shoulders. A face forming in the blur.
His father.
But the eyes were wrong — empty, bottomless pits sucking the light from the room.
“Dad?” Efe whispered.
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