I just added another zero to the dosage of my Amitriptyline. I didn’t do this yesterday or the day before because a white-dress-nurse would notice it and, probably, interpreting it as a doctor's error, change it back. But today is Wednesday, and this afternoon belongs to the auxiliary nurses: the ones in blue, the ones that don’t know jack shit. For me, another zero means cardiac arrest, another zero means death, and I'm bubbling within with such unbridled glee that this pen trembles in my hand. See, I am old, I am bored, and only the anticipation of my end can excite me thus.

But even at this hour something nags in my mind. A piece of memory which stands alone in the decaying gyri of my brain, its peers long gone to that paradise known only to the senile, that place of Eden called dementia. This piece of memory bites at my mind with such tenacity that I'm convinced that in an hour or two, after one of the anorexic bimbos commits manslaughter, it would still stand, alone, in the hollow hallway of my mind like a figurine forgotten in an evacuated house. And beneath the ground, after the skull has crumbled away, it would rest on a velvet pillow sequined in gold and embroidered with damask lace.

See, sometimes in the 1950's, there was Triumph, James, Precious and I. Our names had been inspired by the church, a new fad, yet, in our semi-civilized town; but the catapult boys was what we called ourselves.

I

“My mama talk say e suppose rain again today.” Triumph said and immediately ran off to upset the mating ritual of two fowls, swinging his catapult over his head and hollering as though he had suddenly gone mad. He was the youngest—and smallest—and in an annoying way, the best with the catapult. He had an uncanny knack for the physics behind wind direction and the kinetic energy of flying stones. Sometimes even, he used rebound shots to make his kill. And at the end of every hunting day, Triumph always had the most kills which meant that we had to pay him in kobo the surplus he had over our kills. Inevitably, Triumph was going to become a millionaire; we were going to be peasants.

“My mama yan-ye-yanyanyanya!” James made a burlesque imitation of Triumph’s voice. He was the oldest (and according to Triumph, the ugliest) and it was a personal insult to his age that the little brat was always the one to feather his pockets.
Precious was the dreadlocked one who as a result of a childhood accident walked with a limp.

Thanks to his father, the school headmaster, he was the only one who preferred sane English to pidgin; this, earning him a lot of taunts from the boys. Precious also had a morbid fear of dead things and this made it impossible for him to win any hunting expeditions for after making his kill, he would immediately commence a bizarre jig which consisted of a slow stooping movement, a touch of the animal’s tail and then an explosive withdrawal followed immediately with a grimace and rapid stamping of his feet. He would do this until James came along and snatched up the animal.

Our game comprised mainly of lizards and the best grounds for these was the yard.
The yard was an old cemetery, an unterrifying stretch of land along Abbey road. Unterrifying, perhaps, because its shoulder melted casually with the dirt road, or because its tombstones were suffocated by the tall elephant grass which colonized the place, or because all the children played there with such nonchalance that the ghosts employed to the haughty job of terrifying people at cemeteries were duly exorcised.

But it wasn’t all safe.

See, we could kill lizards on our grandmothers’ graves, and crawl around our grandfathers’ tombstones but from the far wall we stayed clear. If any ghosts had been banished from the cemetery proper, then it had been exiled to the place behind the far wall. This fact didn’t need to be printed and distributed in pamphlets because if you went by yourself to the far wall, goosey bumps would pop feverishly around your arms, and your hair—every strand of it—would stand up as though you were struck by electricity. And if you had Buck like I did back then and you took him close to the wall he would begin to whine uncomfortably, tug at his leash and poop.

Behind the far wall the cemetery continued, but no longer as the town’s. If you climbed on the St. Mary and were as tall as James, you could see the crumbling tombstones and displaced cairns, and just before the world in your eyes became hazy and indistinct, you would see the stooping embers of the Goodswill house.

Yes, the Goodswill house. Even now goosey bumps are bursting out of my liver spotted flesh. It had been an orphanage and between it and our far wall, the Goodswill children lay, rotting beneath their cairns. Somewhere in this wilderness of the dead was the shed of the one-eyed Goodman Brown, the eldritch caretaker who was as mysterious as the Goodswill place itself. There were rumors that he had been a janitor at the orphanage before the fire and others that he was the ghost of Reverend Goodswill himself.

But I must tell you at this juncture, this isn’t a ghost story.

Rather, it is history narrowed, basically, to the day I caught a pigeon in the imaginary crosshairs of my catapult.

You see, a pigeon or any flying creature, unlike lizards or crawling things, was worth seven kobos, so when I beheld the pigeon dozing off on the far fence, I began to tremble with excitement. At this time, I had only a lizard in my knapsack whilst Triumph had five. The pigeon was the miracle I had always prayed for, the only reason why I followed my ma' dutifully to church on Sundays.
If only I could just aim right, if only I could just kill it.
I climbed up the St. Mary and sitting on her knee, I shut one eye and aimed and aimed and aimed. The bird awoke and started to dutifully preen its feathers. I aimed and aimed and aimed, taking my time, knowing that if I didn’t get it right this time, I was subject to a lifetime of slavery under Triumph’s rule. Soon, everyone noticed me and they paused to watch, their hearts in their throats, each wanting to cause a ruckus to scare the bird but bludgeoned, thankfully, by the urgency of the moment into a state of utter paralysis.

Soon, I let the stone fly and to my utter surprise, it struck the bird squarely in the face. It squawked—what a delightful sound that was—and fell down the other side of the far wall.
I, we, waited in anticipation of the sound of flapping wings and the sight of a resuscitated bird leaping up into the sky, but nothing came … and nothing came … and nothing came and I, my head bursting with seven kobos worth of joy, jumped down from the St. Mary screaming deliriously.
“B-but, it’s behind the wall,” Precious whispered in his annoyingly impeccable English, stepping away from me as if I had tuberculosis or something.
“E no matter. Una see me kill am now? Abi? I no need go get am.” I searched their faces eagerly.
“I no see anything o!” James said innocently.
“O’ bastard!” I cried. Turning to Triumph I said, “You see me now?”
“Forget am,” he said sullenly and immediately began to stalk his next kill.
Bitter tears sprung into my eyes. They felt like tiny pins. Seven kobos gone just like that. I had it in my hands and it was gone just as quick.
“I’m going to get it.” I said suddenly, deaf and blinded to fear. They gasped in unison. “And maybe I fit jus’ look insi'e the burn house an’ say hello to one-eyed Goodman Brown.” I added for flavor.
I ran towards the creepers which laddered the far wall and they stared at me as though I had lost my mind.
I had lost my mind.

II

The bird was exactly where I expected it to be and the moment I stuffed it in my knapsack, fear descended on me like dusk does on the earth. I turned around quickly and noticed to my insoluble horror that there were no creepers on this side of the far wall. I nearly screamed, but I was afraid of disturbing the sleep of the children who lay beneath my feet (already stirring perhaps), so I clasped a hand over my mouth. I glanced over the chest-high grass at Goodman Brown’s shed; a terrible image crept up my mind and I pushed it down quickly. I had imagined the one-eyed man bursting out of his shed, squinting behind his wet hair, brandishing a shovel and screaming: ‘Trespasser!’
“Hey, Peace.” James said behind the wall. I jumped at the voice, my heart nothing but a percussion instrument in my chest. I had thought it was one of the dead children. There was a slight scuffle and Triumph appeared atop the far wall.
“We dey go see the house, abi?” He said eagerly, rhetorically. Precious appeared next, followed by James. Now I looked at them as though they had gone mad.
“We can’t let you have all the fun.” Precious said and they jumped down.
There was only one thing more important to us as children than our parents and that was competition. My friends didn’t want me to come out alive and bursting with bragging rights. “Fools,” I muttered.

Triumph immediately began to waddle towards the burnt house. James followed suit. I stayed back. Precious hesitated, searching my face. He began “You look si—”
I would never know what he meant to say that day for he was immediately cut off by a hollow cry from Triumph as he fell into the hole. We ran forward to where he had fallen and gazed down at him in shock. The hole was a rectangular space in the ground just large enough to hold a coffin and nothing more. It was ten feet deep and six feet wide but the strange thing about it was that the earth which must have been taken from it was nowhere to be found! It was as if the block of earth had just evaporated.
“O’ God! I don die o! Dem don bury me o!” Triumph babbled hysterically. He had twisted his ankle and he lay askew in the grave.
“It’s the grave of Zoe!” Precious muttered suddenly, affrightedly, limping backwards and all the time pointing at the dwarfish headstone.
“Wetin? Wetin!” Triumph gasped, stretching his neck and trying to sit up. The head stone was an old grey chunk of stone. Inscribed on it was:

Zoe Goodswill
1927 — 1931

And beneath this, scratched in a jagged child's scrawl was:

1933 — 1934

A deathly silence settled around us, even the wind seemed to stop swaying the grass. James was the first to speak, “E be like say im’ live five years, then die two, then live again one more year.”
Precious came hobbling forward. “It’s Zoe,” he said urgently as if we hadn’t already seen that. “Zoe Goodswill. Didn’t you ever hear the adults talking about him?” Veins bulged all over his neck and his fervor terrified us all.
“What is it?” Triumph whispered, quietened by our demeanor.
“Tell us,” I said to Precious, “Who be Zoe? Who e’ be?”
“He was a child at the orphanage, I heard my uncle telling my da’. He had a disease, a horrible one, was born with it—”
“Leprosy?” James ventured inanely.
“No, it was a syndrome, plenty diseases under one name. The orphanage could not afford to cater for him. He was expensive, too expensive. They needed gadgets and equipments.” Precious paused to take a swallow and in that pause, I could hear the voices of the elephant grass as they exchanged secrets. I could hear my heart thumping in my head. I could not feel my little testicles anymore.
“They tried to give him to the city people but they wouldn’t take him either.”
“So he die?” Triumph asked.
Precious raised his voice for Triumph to hear, “No, my uncle said that they killed him.” We gasped.
Precious continued, “Like a horse, they took him to the back and shot him upside the head.”
“And them bury am for here?” James asked with fresh realization.
“And im’ come back for 1933?” I asked, not wanting to believe it.
Precious continued, “But then he came back, nobody knows how, said he was all twisted up with the syndrome, his head was turned around like an owl’s, his hunchback half the size of him. And there was the bullet stuck in his head like it was when they buried him. They said he killed all the children and tortured the care takers—said one eyed Goodman Brown lost that eye to him. In the end, he burnt the whole place down.”
“It’s all a myth.” James said with a veneer of disgust.
“Look at the stone,” Precious cried, “Look at his handwriting!”
“Git me out! Git me out! Commot me for here o!” Triumph hollered and despite his pain began to claw his way up to the surface.
“Who’s there?!” The shed door crashed open suddenly and Goodman Brown, the caretaker, came flying out. At first I thought I was imagining again but James and Precious scampered separate ways.
“Who’s trespassing?” Goodman Brown cried and trudged in our direction.
“Shh!” I whispered to Triumph and bent double, I crept behind a large anthill. From my location, I could see the Zoe headstone and on the other side, I saw James shinny up the far wall like a monkey.
“Who’s there?” Goodman Brown came running through the tall grass and I saw with new fear that he carried a Dane gun. “Who’s there? Who’s trespassing?”
In a minute, he was upon the hole and as if stung by the sight of it, he withdrew with a cry.
“No!” He screeched. “Not again. Zoe? You again? You’ve come for my other eye, have you? Why wouldn’t you just die? Why?!” And more out of fear than of anger, he pointed his gun in the hole. I, too paralyzed to do anything, just stared as if my eyes were painted on.
“It’s me! Triumph!” Triumph screamed.
“I have no reason to, you bastard child! Absolutely no reason—”

III

Aha! The axillaries have arrived. The one with big tits is reading my case note and smiling at me. In a minute she would reach for the syringe and needle.
I had better finish my journal quickly.
Yes, er', wasn’t I telling you about my wife Shirley and how they took her limbs because of her diabetics?

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