TEN

January 9

Nii delivered Susan’s panties and a lock of her hair to Ponsu in a small, clear plastic bag. The priest nodded approval. The two chickens Nii had brought along were squawking from the inside of an old rice sack. Ponsu looked inside and grabbed one of the fowls—a dirty white hen that lost a few feathers as it struggled to get away. Pressing the hen down on a flat stone, Ponsu quickly cut its head off. The creature’s legs and wings went through a series of violent spasms.

“Stand there,” he said to Nii, pointing at a spot in the courtyard, around which several dwellings were built. The occupants looked on with interest.

Holding the chicken’s neck down, Ponsu made a circle of blood around Nii, finally laying the bird at Nii’s feet.

The second chicken got different treatment. First, its beak was tied firmly shut with a length of twine. After its decapitation, Ponsu let it run around like a cavorting drunkard until it collapsed in the dirt. He looked at the severed head and then turned to Nii. “Tonight, you come with me to the Awudome Cemetery.”

They arrived past one o’clock in the morning. The sound of traffic from nearby Ring Road West was soft compared to the daytime tumult. Nii didn’t like cemeteries, and certainly not in the dead of night. He was shivering, not from cold but from fear. Ponsu, leading the way with the anemic beam of a mobile phone, appeared unaffected. He had obviously been to Awudome Cemetery several times. It was a huge expanse of land, but the priest appeared to know where he was going. Nii followed him in lockstep to preclude even the slightest chance that he lose sight of the priest and find himself lost in the dark among the dead. The crosses and headstones were dark shadows and Nii could have sworn he saw some of them moving. Every so often, he stiffened and looked behind him as he thought he heard something or someone moving in the brush.

At last, Ponsu stopped at the corner of the cemetery closest to Awudome Road. “Dig a hole here for the chicken head,” he instructed Nii, handing him a crudely fashioned wooden trowel.

Nii went to work. Ponsu’s phone light was fading with its waning battery.

“It’s okay,” Ponsu said, once Nii had dug deeply enough. “Stand there.”

Nii went rigid as he saw where Ponsu was pointing. “Please, you want me to stand on the grave?”

“Yes. The chicken’s beak is tied so that your sakawa victims can never say no to you. They will try, but they won’t be able to resist, no matter how much money you ask them for. So, you must stand on a grave and have no fear.”

Nii tried not to appear flustered, but his legs were shaking the entire time he stood on that gravestone, and it seemed an eternity before Ponsu allowed him to get down.

“Within two weeks,” the priest declared, “you will see the money start to flow.”