The Adventures of Tom the Terror

by Mike Ekunno

There was commotion when the gang of masquerades stormed the Udoka homestead on a 27^th December pre-dawn raid. Like bees assailing an intruder, they crawled over the perimeter walls, taking time to avoid the spikes; attacked every green leaf, stripping trees bare; downed banana and plantain stems, and smashed the earthenware pots the family used to store water. The wrecking expedition went on all the time against the background wailing of a dozen of the masked spirits lamenting the desecration of their tribe in a war chant:

Nzogbu nzogbu!

Enyimba enyi!

Zogbue nwoke!

Enyimba enyi!

Zogbue nwanyi!

Enyimba enyi!

It was a riotous syncopation in which both the call and the response came in irregular staccato. The poultry of the household, not used to such a rude awakening, contributed to the bedlam in loud quacking.

Papa Udoka, the venerable head of the family, had been tipped off late the previous evening about what was in store. The antidote was to meet the mob at the gate with a live chicken in order to stave off the impending retribution, and then make sure the more valuable  of moveable chattels were kept out of harm’s way. At the first inkling of the mob’s approach that morning, Papa had accordingly dispatched an emissary to try to stanch the approaching hurricane at the entrance. That worked but only just. The heroics of having spirit beings levy distress would not be mollified on the altar of a chicken sacrifice or any other thing for that matter.

So the vanguard of the approaching hurricane snatched the sacrificial bird from the emissary’s fearful hands, twisted its neck in a jiffy, and smashed it on the earth, where it lay writhing in death struggle. Now, one masked spirit made for the top of the perimeter fence, broke off a shard of the embedded broken bottle spike, and handed it over to the leader. Grabbing the writhing bird again, the leader ran the shard across its twisted neck, and blood squirted in a V-formation. By then the rear guard of the mob had approached and the storming of the premises commenced.

The blitzkrieg ended as abruptly as it started. The masquerades withdrew, having extracted, if not maximum damage, such a symbolic slice of it as to warn any future delinquent bent on such abominable enterprise.

***

Thompson, who was responsible for the enterprise of desecrating the masquerade cult of the Ifite community, was yet sound asleep in his father’s house. His offence belonged to the imaginary sphere because nobody in living memory had ever breached the taboo. Because of the rarity of its breach, the accompanying punishment had become fictional. Many said the culprit would be banished from the community. Others went from razing the homestead to his castration. The castration school was asked what would be done if a woman were the culprit. Their debate remains ongoing. One thing on which all parties were agreed was the levying of distress and the fine. The offending family would have its livestock and moveable properties distrained to be redeemed with a fine. The strong lobby from Papa Udoka had reduced the penalty to just the devastation witnessed that morning and a fine of ten yam tubers, a bottle of spirit, two gallons of palmwine, kolanuts and two live chickens, one of which was held out for ransom to the mob.

With the first crack of sunlight, neighbours descended on the Udoka homestead to find out what was amiss earlier. Among them was Donald, Tom’s daddy and the first son of Papa Udoka. His morning routine since returning from America for the Christmas holiday with his family included the mandatory call on his father to greet, “I putakwalu ula?” “Have you survived sleep?”

Donald didn’t have it coming – the sight that greeted him that morning at his father’s obi. The distraining mob had tried his own home but couldn’t breach its steel-gated, wire mesh-topped high walls. His father’s obi, where the family house sat, was a low-hanging fruit, so the mob chose it in the alternative.

“What’s all this, men?!” Donald asked of no one in his Yankee accent. Then he left the crowd outside and entered the obi where his father sat with some elders. “How dare they?” Don was livid as he took his seat. The rest of the seated sympathisers were relaxed but pensive. At their age, it’s said that nothing the eye sees would warrant the shedding of blood as tears.

“You won’t greet us?” It was from Don’s uncle, Papa’s younger brother.

Don immediately recovered his manners and greeted the elders – each by his cognomen, standing and moving round for a handshake and starting from his father:

“Ichie Chinyelugo.”

“Egbe Ntu.”

“Eke Nwe Ofia.”

“Eze Ego.”

“Eze Ego Oyibo,” someone corrected him. The adjective clarified that it was the Whiteman’s currency the man’s kingship was about and not the country’s diminished local currency.

The next elder’s cognomen had escaped Don and he paused with both right palms locked in suspended animation of a handshake. “Remind me.”

That plea brought on side comments about how American living had wiped away memory of home folks.

“Not that,” Don’s uncle came to his defence. “Ichie Gaskiya decided to bear a foreign nickname, that’s why.” Don immediately took the hint.

“Ichie Gaskiya,” and the locked palms disengaged.

After he took his seat again, it was Eze Ego Oyibo who asked what led to this – the devastation staring at them on the forecourt. The question was directed at their host but it was his returnee son who answered.

“It is my fault, really,” started Don before he went on to give the elders the backstory to what played out that morning.

***

Having arrived from Texas with his family for the Christmas holiday, Thompson, Don’s second-grade son, was all fired up for his first African visit as a grown boy. He was a toddler the first time the family visited with his Chicago-born mother and Don’s wife, Wendy. In the one week they had been home before Christmas, Tom, The Terror had shown all how he earned that suffix to his name. Bulky for his seven years, he had warned his village playmates that he wasn’t ‘fat’ but ‘big’. He looked like an uncle to his village playmates and the grapevine (out of earshot of his mother) said he was being fed America’s human variant of broiler feed. Full of Yankee energy, Tom relished the wonder of rustic living in the village with poultry and livestock roaming free. Often, he set out to catch a chicken and ask him if he was brother to the one at KFC. On the chase, the hapless birds got flustered and would quack noisily, causing Mama, his grandmother, to plead with “Nwa Amelika” to leave her birds alone. At other times, he would try to ride a goat like a horse. The poor animal would flatten on the ground and bleat from the sheer heft, drawing Mama’s lamentation on how “Nwa Amelika” would kill off her prize animals before she got a chance to sell them for Christmas. Every wakeful moment for Nwa Amelika had something intriguing to explore and not even the bumper-to-bumper policing from his aunty would leash his random instincts.

On Christmas Day, while his parents entertained guests, Tom’s aunty, Chimamanda, readied for the day’s sightseeing outing. Lots would be on display at the Ifite village square and no ripened damsel would miss out on the throng of eligible bachelors on the hunt. There would be masquerades giving chase to giggling coquettes and having them screaming girlish screams. There would be dances and troupes – men, women, young, and old. Seduction would be hawked on curves and bulges from new Christmas wear that hugged full-figured bodies and litres of liquor with gaiety all over the air. It was in that zeitgeist that Chimamanda readied to leave home all dressed up. Tom got wind of the outing and clung to her like a leech intent on not being left behind. She tried to dissuade him by saying it was going to be a trekking outing and nobody was ready to piggy-back any weight for tiredness. Tom stuck to his guns. His mummy had to dress him up and ask the driver to take them. “Chim,” she called out to the departing Toyota Sienna, referring to Chimamanda by her own Americanised short form of the name, “I’m charging you with looking out for him.” Her charge was to turn out prescient upon their return at 7:36 pm.

Tom’s head was covered in sand with one leg of his sneakers missing when they returned. He got smuggled by the driver through the rear door like a renegade. When Chimamanda entered the porch to the lounge downstairs, Wendy was on the balcony and looking down, she asked, “Where’s he?”

Chimamanda pointed to the rear, “Inside.”

“So, how did it go?”

The nubile agboghobia¹ collapsed on the porch in laughter, clapping her hands in wonderment. Her reaction piqued Wendy’s interest and she came bounding downstairs to listen to the report of her son’s escapades. Both women met inside the lounge and before Chimamanda could finish relaying the tales, Tom burst in naked and stripped for a bath. His daddy ran right behind and dragged him back to the bath where he ran water to scrub him down. While at it, he tried to debrief the little rascal.

“So, how did it go, Tom?”

“Very well, Dad. Hey, Dad, there were lots of Halloween costumes out there. Aunty says they’re masquerades.”

“O, yeah!”

“Those guys pack lots of canes.”

“They’re not guys, son. They’re spirits. Alien spirits of our ancestors. They come visiting us humans during festivities like Christmas and Ede Aro.”

“Oh wow! Ain’t aliens like zombies, eh? We saw many boy-aliens too. Can children be ancestors, Dad?

“For sure. Ancestor kids are the children of the spirit world.”

“They were dancing, Dad.”

“Can you dance like them?”

“Yeah, Dad, if I got their costumes.”

“I told you those are no costumes. That’s how alien ancestors roll.”

“You kidding me, Dad?! He was toweling his body at this time and paused to observe his daddy.

“No, son. I ain’t kidding,” Donald assured straight-faced.

After the adults of the house had had their fill bingeing on Tom’s Christmas Day escapades, the family retired for the night. Up at his children’s room, so designated in hope but hosting only the singular form for now, Tom wondered at his daddy’s assertion about the alien ancestors. How come ancestor zombies look so commonplace with nothing weird about them? A dozen unanswered questions agitated his young mind until sleep came, for which he had no answer.

Boxing Day broke with its trademark languid airs. Beyond a few boxes of candy left for Tom by the spangled Christmas tree, there was not much to the day in the African tradition. There were lots of dishes to be done, empty bottles packed and food flasks to be returned to the owners who sent some Christmas hospitality in them. In the laid-back apathy of the morning, Mama, Don’s mother, stormed his son’s house and made for the kitchen. She then proceeded to consolidate all the food gifts from well-wishers to the American returnees in one jute bag. Her mate, Mama Ngozi, had sent ede, the cocoyam in vegetable delicacy; another kindred family sent abacha; there were a couple of onugbu soup. All went into the bag in one messy mélange. Wendy came into the kitchen while her mother-in-law was at it and stood transfixed in horror at the wasting of such hearty hospitality. She had especially looked forward to tasting the abacha which looked appetising enough.

“Ma-ma!” she let out.

Mama looked back and acknowledged her in her halting English, “I think you all have woken up well.”

“O yeah. Thanks. And you …with Papa …and Mama Ngozi?”

“We slept well.”

“I kept that one made from cassava flakes for myself, Mama,” Wendy remonstrated.

“You want to die?”

“Oh no, Mama. Why would they want to poison us? How about all the stuff we sent out to people yesterday – would they also be trashed behind us?”

“Nwam, you not understand. They eat your food because you not poison them. You better pass them.”

Wendy circled back from the kitchen and up the staircase to her husband in bed to complain. 

“You won’t get it,” Donald muttered in resignation.

“And why the fuck is everyone saying the same thing?!”

By early afternoon, the Donald and Wendy household had recovered much of its spick and span looks thanks to the relentless cleaning, mopping, dusting and washing of Mama and Chimamanda. As the morning began its handshake to noonday, the festive feel began to fester and unfurl like a full moon. Masquerades and dances got their acts on the road again. They moved from homestead to homestead displaying and being gifted money. Not a few had entered Donald’s home because the gateman had been told to keep access open to them all in the spirit of the season. Each group came expecting their share of the American dollars’ largesse from their son and uncle who made good. Tom was having fun ingratiating himself as the go-between for the delivery of the cash tokens. Using the good offices of his new status, he tried to satisfy his curiosity regarding his daddy’s claims of Christmas Day. Some of the masquerades that came into their compound were adult ones that wielded canes. They would not flog the son of their benefactor, not to talk of an American boy with Aje Bota² written all over him. So Tom was allowed to be close-up with the masquerades while delivering their gift money. He would gawk at each figure looking for tell-tale human features. The limbs appeared like human ones but their speeches were in a guttural accent.

After lunch, it was time again for festive sightseeing led by Chimamanda who was home-girl. This time, there was no question about whether Tom would join. His mother elected to join the party armed with a handicam. Together the party rolled out of the gate at 2.35 pm.

Ifite village square on Boxing Day was a carnival on full throttle. Dances and masquerades which had spent Christmas doing the rounds of homes took their acts to town – literally. The season’s festivities had coincided with the town’s Ede Aro, a customary post-harvest celebration dedicated to the cocoyam. And 26^th December happened to be the climax of the customary fiesta when all masquerades big or small, lay or esoteric, harmless or dangerous, congregated on the Ilo Aro square. Indigenes of the more hinterland villages didn’t miss the opportunity to come out and feast their eyes at Ifite where they could get cold drinks at bars that had electricity from the national grid.

A fence of humans skirted the arena of Ilo Aro. Sections of the fence would flow to and fro like water in a polythene bag when one masquerade or the other teased the spectators into a stampede. Wendy had more than enough to record on her handicam. Donning aviator specs to douse the harsh sunlight and a T-shirt on a pair of jeans trousers which she calls pants to Chimamanda’s bemusement, the only thing that set her apart from the regular Ifite lady was the face mask she still wore. It was not for coronavirus. It was for the dust – a brown powder that settled on leaves, hairs, skins, cars and got inhaled silently. No true born of Ifite would use a face mask for the dust – for what? Harmattan dust was par for the course. There was something else that set Wendy apart from the regular fare but that wasn’t visible. She had to talk before you’d know she wasn’t a local fowl; that she was a feed-fed breed and not just that; that she was Yankee with full options not the pretend Been-to. Because of how people turned to gawk her when she spoke in a crowd, she always lowered her tone to a whisper while talking to Chimamanda or the driver. It was only her son who made her break that unconscious conditioning when she often had to yell: “Come back, Thompson!”

Tom The Terror was in his elements all the while and didn’t disappoint. Nobody would accuse him of being pliant. They had banded together – he, his mum and Chimamanda at the start, but with the stampedes and crowd presses at the approach of yet another of the nicely pesky masquerades, they soon drifted apart. Only the driver hung around where the car parked. Chimamanda held on to Tom, who silently tried to confirm his daddy’s assertion about the alien ancestral spirits. Now at the square with its enlarged production, some of the masquerades looked so weird as to make him want to take Daddy’s word for it. But then some others were quite pedestrian, with toes, human-like toes, peeping out of stockings. As if taking time out on his quandary, he brought out the chocolate bar his mom had given him from the Christmas Tree boxes and freed his left hand from his aunty’s clutch to unfurl the wrap. Unfurled halfway, a brown bar jutted out, and he took a bite. Then one of the boy masquerades approached him: “Nnaa, nyenum nwantonto, biko.”³

It was in a hushed tone, not the guttural voice of the masquerade kingdom. It was in the same human voice of his playmates back at home who pelted him with Igbo, not minding his lack of understanding. Tom didn’t understand Igbo beyond puta,⁴ but could guess what an outstretched hand and open palm meant for someone eating chocolate. All around them, the adults were focused far away with necks straining for a glimpse of some sight. Tom looked at the solicitous ancestral alien boy, grabbed the raffia strands under his neck and yanked them up. A bewildered face stared at him. Human face. Instantly, an alarm went up from the cheerleaders of the boy masquerade: “Chai! O taa nmuo.” ^{5  ‘’}Nwatakili-a-a etikpo isi nmuo!” ⁶

The pandemonium that attended the announcement had folks dashing to the scene while others ran away from there. The hapless ancestral spirit stood aghast, its cover blown while the mob asked who the culprit was. In the melee and before canes would start descending on bodies, Chimamanda gathered Tom’s bulk in her two arms and ran. Unlike Christmas Day when she wore heels, she was wearing flats, which aided her flight. Along their escape route, many were mobilising to the scene looking for who would have been responsible for such abomination. A double take told Chimamanda their car would be useless by then, having probably been blocked by a gaggle of other cars. She then let her cargo down and dragged him to the road where she flagged down a getaway okada motorbike. While the rider yet haggled the fare, she heaved Tom onto the back seat, then swung her left thigh over the seat behind him. “Run, I say!” she yelled, and the Chinese machine jerked off on cue.

***

The case at the Ifite elders’ council had dragged to mid-January over adjournments contrived by the elders’ long throat for palmwine, which both parties to the dispute must supply on every adjourned date. It was not up to them to tell the plaintiff that hers was a wild bush fowl chase, an exercise in futility. 

Mama Ngozi, Papa Udoka’s second wife and co-wife to Donald’s mother, was the plaintiff suing for her earthenware pots smashed by the distraining mob. She claimed those were heirlooms from her own mother, gifted to her at her wedding. Her grouse was that the mob should have properly directed their retribution to the culprit or his grandmother and not to she, Nwamgbafor, who had no America-based son, let alone an iconoclastic American grandson who wrecked the isi nmuo.

Don and Wendy had gone to plead with her, offering to pay for the destroyed items, but she insisted on replacement with the exact clone. When her docile husband was told, he asked whether she was the only one who didn’t know that “a broken bottle (read earthen pot) has no mekwatalism.” Papa Udoka knew better than dragging the community’s age-old customs before mortal judges. It was when the enraged woman asked why the mob left “that iron umbrella in their compound with which they watch what happens in heaven,” referring to the satellite dish in Don’s house, that the emissaries knew there was more to her hurt than broken pots. Everyone sat back and allowed her and her children to proceed to the elders’ council.

Through the adjournments, it was Agwu, the head of the masquerade cult, who represented the defendants while Donald attended as a co-defendant representing his son, Thompson. At the beginning, one elder had taken exception to Tom’s absence in court and asked why.

“No, he’s only a child,” replied the presiding elder, a Justice of the Peace, JP.

“That one that can impregnate a woman?” continued the objecting elder. The court erupted in laughter. Wendy was in court that day and asked her husband what the mirth was about.

“He said Thompson is old enough to have a baby.”

Wendy got up and left the courtroom.

As the family’s departure date to the US neared, the council had no choice but to wrap up its proceedings. Judgment was fixed for the next Afor market day, which was three days thence. When it came, the judging elders assembled like the cast of a Nollywood epic. The presiding judge started by saying that as non-corporeal entities, the masquerade spirits, being the visiting spirits of dead ancestors, could not be sued. Since they couldn’t be sued, the matter of compensation for their actions became academic. But to address the inequity of destroying Mama Ngozi’s pots when the offender was not her biological grandson, the judge warned that spirits carry their firewood askew, and any passerby could be poked by its extensions, not minding the victim’s innocence. On that note, the case was dismissed without costs, the flow of palmwine during its pendency having been enough as costs. But the elder didn’t say it like that. END.

End Notes

¹: Maiden. 

² : Literally, butter eater. A metaphor for middle-class kids. 

³: Friend, do give me a little, please.

⁴: Come out!

⁵: He’s betrayed a spirit.

⁶: This child has wrecked the head of the spirit.

---

Mike Ekunno is the winner of the inaugural Harambee Literary Prize and the author of the short story collection Soul Lounge. His fiction won its category in the 2025 Native Voices Award from Kinsman Quarterly. His work has appeared in numerous journals, including The Republic, The Brussels Review, The First Line, Mysterion, Bridge Eight, and Rigorous and Pensive Journal. In addition to his creative work, he consults as a freelance book editor and speechwriter. He remains unapologetically devoted to ABBA—and is, still, an Agnetha fan.