“What did you just say?” asked Edwin in a wheezy voice, made so be disbelief. He came out of the police station on the morning his bail was arranged, accompanying his wife home.
“I said what you heard.”
“I doubt it.”
“I checked my account and it showed nothing, nil, zero naira.”
With a slight laugh Edwin shook his head. “There must be a mistake. We’ll get to the bank right away and rectify it.”
But the bank told them the same thing, and after hours and hours of haggling, Edwin was bushed. They came home in the afternoon and he was still angry at everything.
“This is not going to be another trick of that idiot’s. He doesn’t know the code. I’m getting the new lawyer to sue that bank with my last dime.” He stormed into the house as he spoke and was going toward the steps when Yvonne called.
“There are some visitors here,” she said.
Two smart looking men greeted hem at the door. “Are you Edwin Igwe?” said one.
“Not another arrest,” he wailed. “I just got out of gaol.”
“No, not another. On the contrary we are from National Mortgage Bank, and you are on our property. We have a court order to evict you at once.”
Yvonne held the door for support while Edwin found it difficult to breath with a sense of detached amusement.
“Really? I have never seen mental patients in smart suits,” he said tactlessly.
“This property was mortgaged for a loan of twenty-one million naira with the bank, sir, and that includes your store stocks—both of you.”
“Our stores?” the difficulty was now due to shock.
“Your wife’s superstore and your spare parts store, sir, and this house to boot. We are here to ensure you comply with the court order. Can we come in?”
“Wait,” he said helplessly, his throat constricted painfully in his attempt to restrain his emotions. Behind him Yvonne was giving vent to hers in full force. The wracking sounds of her sobs tore through him like a hot knife. “Wait a minute…Are you telling me that we mortgaged out house?”
“Yes.”
“For twenty-one million?”
“It’s impossible not to believe the papers, sir. I believe that before this court order was acquired due notifications were given.”
“It’s got to be a mistake.”
Yvonne spoke haltingly from behind.
“Are you…saying…that we have lost out…both our businesses and our house?”
“Don’t say that, honey. It’s not true.” With a mechanical gesture, Edwin slid an arm around her body. “I believe the order those not say we have to follow you now. Why don’t you give us till tomorrow to get in touch with our lawyer?”
“Although, I seriously doubt the usefulness, we shall let it be.” As the door closed the acrid smell of smoke drifted into their nostrils. There was no sign of the children in the house.
“Edgar?” called out Yvonne. “Yolanda!”
There was a loud clink of metal from the garage and both made into the spot only to rush into swinging wet wood each…
It took a while for them to come awake, but they did and the most revoltingly unwanted sight met them. All the children had been handcuffed together, then the end cuffs had been secured to the window grille so that they formed a line with each other but couldn’t move away from one another. On the far edge of the garage, a stove burned with a frying pan beside it on the floor. It seemed weird combination, and presiding over it all were Claude, Dione and Brimilda.
“Hello, Edwin and Yvonne.”
Both looked up only to face the cold metallic nozzles of revolvers.
“Did you miss us?”
“Mummy,” Chas shouted from the garage. “Mummy.”
“Chas, I’m right here.”
Clicking his tongue, Claude grinned. “How appealing. Mother-son unity.”
“Why are you doing this?” she cried.
“Why am I doing this?” He rose from his stoop where he had handcuffed her to the nearest bar. “We have no Mother to call ours that’s why, You think I’m a killer? No. Heaven forbid. I’m not. You made me one, when you took my father’s life and our mothers’. You set us away from the love of our parents and gave your children all you could, emotionally and financially, with the money you took from us, a legacy our father left us. You didn’t even have the decency to pay our fees for us, and now, I thought I’d see how you like it all taken away from you. The house. The business. The money in the bank. Everything.”
“You are bluffing,” spat Edwin from where he was cuffed on the floor. “I am? You think so?”
“I know so.”
“Yvonne, does the word “YONE” ring any bell at all?” said Dione to the woman who paled beyond recognition. “Sure it does. It’s password for your account which I transferred to an anonymous account”.
“What for?”
“Stop that stupid line of questioning, Yvonne. It wasn’t yours in the first place.”
“In that case,” said Claude heartily, “I’m sure the word ‘TIO’ sounds familiar to you, Edwin. Your password that sent two million seven hundred and six thousand, three hundred and fifty-two naira into the hands of the real owner. Me,” he gloated.
“You have made your point then?” asked Edwin.
“No, not yet.”
“Why don’t you just get out?” shouted Edgar.
Claude sauntered in there to him. “As a mater of fact we will go now, since we have claimed our things, but the lives of Matthews and Ezeh and his son are not enough, are they, Edgar.” He punched him in the face and he spat blood. “As a matter of fact we want you to know what its like to be orphans, to feel some that we felt when your father killed our parents.”
“But we had nothing to do with it, “begged Lewis in tears.
“So did we, but your father didn’t look upon us. He took it like a monster and left us on our own. We were so young to cope but at least you are old enough, and here we shall end the feud that started a generation ago in this family.” He paused. “I guess you know what its all about. Your father and your mother, with the help of Barrister Mathews and Captain Ezeh, killed all our parents; our mother; our dad and Brimilda’s mother.” Going out abruptly he dragged Edwin across the floor into the garage with the aid of the cuffs and dropped him. Yvonne was dragged in also.
“You see that frying pan? It contains tar. You know what I’m going to do?… I’m going to put the tar into the pan, put it on that stove and let the fumes choke you all to death in here, but not before Edwin confesses to his crimes.”
Turning he picked up an axe by the wall and Brimilda ran out and came in with a long heavy pestle. Edwin’s eyes filled his face at the sight but he was too confined as it was, and could only gawp stupidly.
“Well, Edwin, tell your children what you did to our dad and mothers,” he urged.
“They need to know, if only this will end the feud, and you better do. It might be your only saviour.”
“Go and join your father,” screamed Edgar.
“I will,” laughed Dione heartlessly. “We will, but not before we make you feel some of the pain we felt.”
Claude looked down into Edwin’s eyes pathetically. “Uncle Edwin,” he sighed, and memories flooded, tears into his eyes. “I can’t tell you how much it hurts inside, even after the years gone, to think that you did it, but you did. I cant make things right. They say two wrongs cannot make a right. Maybe they are right, but I don’t care. You took away some lives callously, and now you pay.
“I’m going to chop off your fingers with this axe to make you feel pain and then pound you with this pestle, crush every little bone of wickedness in your body to make you cry out to heaven, to cleanse your soul with your tears and blood if heaven will accept you, which I seriously doubt,” he said, lifting the axe in the air. His eyes followed the arc of the axe above the head and word rushed from his lips. “Please don’t do it, Claude, I beg you!” He was helpless now, at his mercy.
“Why?”
“Please,” shouted Yvonne.
“You are as guilty as him”
“Please, for our sake!” The agonised plea came from Yolanda, tearfully wrenched.
“Your father didn’t look back for our sake, so why should we?” Dione snapped. From her hold, Yolanda looked at her with imploring eyes. “I beg you Dione, for the sake of God.”
“Keep God out of this.”
“I’m sorry, Claude,” cried Edwin suddenly, silencing his children for a while. “I am terribly sorry. Please forgive me.”
Yolanda’s mouth hung open. “Dad, you really did it?”
It was a mistake.” Which it was.
“So it is,” hollered Claude, bringing the axe down to his index finger. Edwin howled in raw tears and sent his family into tears. “That wasn’t a mistake, Edwin. It wasn’t. Killing my father was no mistake, and certainly not the three of them. It’s annoying not to say the least about it. Mistake indeed!”
Edwin groaned and groaned and Claude swapped the axe with the pestle. Lifting it, he brought it down on his head, sending gush of blood from his nose with a swing on his head, and knocking his head to the floor in a pool of blood.
Yvonne shrieked in fear and shock and the children wept for them.
Turning he brought the head of the pestle on Yvonne’s knee. “Take that you wicked woman. You can’t stop me from killing you because you didn’t stop your husband from killing our parents before now.”
“Claude,” cried Edgar, thoroughly humbled by the scene of blood and raw pain been delivered to his parents. I’m sorry.”
“You should be,” he sneered, “clinging after another man’s wealth, living in the lap of luxury while we ate sand and subsisted on water.” He delivered another blow of the pestle on Yvonne’s other knee, and the sound of crepitation was heard. The woman screamed open-mouthed, but then her mouth shut in grief and agony and she could only try to bear the pain.
Claude delivered another on Edwin’s hands and Edgar shrieked away from the sight of his father’s finger on the floor. Maddened both by the constant pleas and his own tears, he sent Dione out of the room angrily. “Get out, Dione, and take Brimilda with you.”
They all wept for their life.
“Pay your last,” he warned them seriously, and to their horror he lit the stove, deposited the pan on the fire and as the first plume of smoke, acrid, choking, lethal bluish-green smoke lifted into the air, he stood over Edwin and Yvonne with the pestle shedding tears and lifted it above his head.
Chas coughed in the corner of the room from the inhalation of the smoke and as if in a slow motion, they all screamed as he brought the pestle down.
“No-o-o-o-o-o-o!”
But it was too late. The pain inside him couldn’t bear that and they were all crying at the same time, his voice choked with tears and grief uprooted all over again. The pestle came down, chanting, “Here… Pain… Agony… Misery… Pain… Death… and… Pain…”

Holding onto his sisters, they went out as the smoke billowed thicker and stronger and he went on to inform the police that he had killed someone.
He towered over the huge figure on the bed in the hospital room, looking down at the worn face. Edgar turned slowly and saw him, then hate began to pour into eyes but he was too weak and they were too dull to show it effectively. He couldn’t speak yet; he had suffered from third degree burns and inhalation of poisonous smoke.
“Don’t think I came here because I love you, Edwin,” he said arbitrarily. “Nor should you think I’m sorry about what happened because I’m not the least bit. The trouble, I say, should end with us, but that’s not to say I’m offering the olive branch. It was offered once and you passed up the chance. Knowing your nature you might see this as a challenge. May be you are right, but then remember that you are nothing on me when it comes to that.
Our fathers didn’t do well, but it doesn’t warrant your fathers killing our parents, does it? He never even cared what happened to us, whether we drowned or sank. Take it or leave it, but I wont be that cruel to you. I want us live and remember what happened to us all, how we lost our parents due to one man’s greed namely your father, and to keep the posterity from repeating this mistake of ours.
“I don’t want you to come out of the hospital and start appealing for aid on TV, or leaving on the streets like we used to. We have had a taste it ourselves. I’ve rebought the house, Edwin, and I’m giving it to you as a gift from us because it was rightfully mine and not yours. But it’s a gift, not a bribe, and heaven forbid it to be a compensation; Money cannot save people or thongs right. It’s just to keep your arses off the streets. Also, I…we have put up a fund with the two million and blah, blah, blah, naira I took from your father into a fund for you. You can feed and go to school fine.
“As for other things, we shall see about it later on, But that’s all for now. We are going away from here, Edwin, to try to live down the memory of what your father did, and I suggest you ponder your life before you return to your waywardness. I have to go now. Say Hi to your siblings, and all that. Try concentrating on getting well.”
He was already out of the room but it took a long while for the words to articulate from Edwin “Think you,” but it was just a whisper.

With a last goodbye the door shut Roxanne outside and pulled away. She stood waving for a while and her hand fell to her side wearily, languidly. The car stopped abruptly, the reversing lights on as it came back to stop by her side.
Claude leaned out of the car briefly before stepping out. He stood just in front of her, watching her face intently for a while, forming the words.
“Roxanne, we would like you to come with us,” he said, sending a spurt of laughter from her mouth. “We could start right afresh all over again; go back to school and you could become a model like you wanted.”
She shook her head in tearful wistfulness. “I thought you’d never ask me,” she sighed and threw her arm around him. Both rushed back into the car and it pulled away.
It had been one hell of a mission but it had been hectic as well to the point of being dangerous, teetering on the brink of all that was evil but he didn’t want to think about it. That was the only way he could survive it all.
When the car drove past the house he thought it was a good name after all: the Igwes. Only if they tried to make a go of it.
When at last their plane headed into the blue sky of December he looked out his port onto the city where the agony had started and ended, presumably and felt a shudder. Was this a victor? He doubted it was. But later he would try to unravel it all. Later.

Looking away from the pictures on the wall, Yolanda sighed heavily. Her father, mother, uncle, his first and second wife, whose history and tragedy she now knew still remained in her mind. Joining Edgar at the window that gave onto the gravesite, mounds of red earth below, he too sighed. This victory wasn’t even pyrrhic. They had narrowly escaped the hand of vengeance, a spited vengeance of the loved ones. It had been more of a lesson of pain and agony, lecturing them against greed and hate, but had it been worth it? They would never know until they could read from their own lives if it was a veritable lesson.

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