42 - Hotel Narnia

The Freakish Roadside Hotel: Hotel Narnia

27, April 2012.
11:00pm

I am stressed out and a feeling of horror looms over me. I know where the stress is coming from, but the horror? Let me see if recounting the events that led to this moment can help…
The horror was not in my father’s face when my younger brother put a call through to him last week Wednesday. ‘This network is too bad,’ my father said as he hung up the phone and turned up the volume of the TV. I looked at my immediate elder sister Onome and stifled a laugh. We both knew that he had heard whoever called him just fine; he was just really angry at what the person had said. My father never said ‘Hello’ whenever he picked up his calls. He would howl ‘Yes?!’ and not say anything until the caller finished speaking. That way, we usually never knew who was speaking with him.
The horror was not in the second time Efe called. This time, my father picked the call and said, ‘Efeturi, leave my number alone. If you want to discuss your failures and indolence, call your mother. If you want to tell me that you have gone to the University we sent you, and dragged your grandfather’s name in the gutters, please get on your knees and tell your dead grandfather that. I have no business with you and if you call me back, I will surely disown you! Take my word!’ My mother, Onome and I jumped to our feet simultaneously like a conducted choir.
The horror was not in the call I hurriedly placed to my brother. His words were, ‘Abeg Ebube, abeg, help me and beg daddy. Abeg. They don expel me for here. Abeg. If you people fit come beg registrar with money. Hin go agree let me stay. Abeg.’ I thought he sounded strange because he never spoke such poor pidgin to me.
I am tempted to say that the horror was the journey my family had to take to Delta State University, Abraka. But it was not. It was my father’s intention to go there and openly disgrace his son, but my mother believed she would be able to sway his evil intention and sway the Registrar with the money she tied in a knot in her wrapper. We left Ijebu and got to the Ore-Benin road. I remember Onome saying, ‘Dear traveler, my aim of writing to you is to let you know that I want to feel your warm blood all over me and make love to your cries of anguish even as I feel life drain from your body. Thanks to the government, this will be possible. Yours lovingly, Ore road.’
The journey was terrible. From the stench of the unkempt baby whose mom sat beside me, to the bus that kept speeding in and out of portholes, I cursed Efe under my breath. At about 3am, I woke up to my father’s tapping, ‘Let’s go. The car has broken down. Stupid people. As if we did not pay money. If not for that foolish boy Efe, I will be resting in my house now.’ He looked at me as I rubbed my eyes, ‘You don’t know you’re a woman ehn? May you not be like that woman in the Bible that they stole her child from under her and she was still sleeping. Jonah-ess. Get down!’
The driver directed us to a hotel not far from where the bus broke down. People sleepily muttered thanks to God for allowing our bus break down close to a convenient hotel. As we walked down to the hotel, my father kept complaining and grumbling to my mother alternating between Efe and the Nigerian Government. We were so engrossed in his rants that we did not know when we got to the hotel. Looking back, it seemed the hotel suddenly appeared in front of us. This Hotel (which simply reads ‘Hotel Narnia’) is surprisingly tiny but fairly exquisite. My father said it is a new hotel and that it must have just been opened last month as he had not seen it up here two months ago when he travelled to visit his mother. I thought about how the hotel will definitely not break-even in the next 20 years.
The receptionist was a man and he kept smiling so broadly as though he did not know what else to do with the muscles in his face. He was looking at me while he talked to my family and it made me very uncomfortable. For some reason, his voice sounded so familiar but I am good with faces so I know I have never met him before.
He told us to take a seat in the lobby’s ‘comfortable chairs of oblivion’, but he laughed almost immediately and said, ‘some joke for the tiredness. Comedy is a tiger balm’. In my mind, I thought, ‘Much Wow. Such intellectual potential locked up in this village?’
But the horror was not in his smile, or in the way he kept staring at me even when we were seated. The horror possibly began when Onome went to pee and she did not return. Our room was ready and Onome had still not returned so my mother volunteered to go get her from the restroom while my father and I followed the bellhops to our room.
Twenty minutes later, my mother had not arrived so my father decided to go check on them. ‘Women,’ he said, ‘God must have made them in the bathroom, the way they keep returning and wasting hours there as if it is their hometown’ Sadly, I don’t think this feeling of horror came from that statement.

28, April 2012
3am

The horror is now!

I just woke up and it’s stark dark here with only the light from my iPad; and even this light will go out soon because my battery is only 10%. Immediately my dad left the room, the lights went off and I slept off.
Jesus, terrible things are happening here, right now and I don’t know what to make of it. I am sitting on the bed because all around the floor, there’s a colony of rats covering every inch of the ground. I don’t know how they got here, but they began to squeak immediately I woke up, as if on cue. There must be about a thousand here. Just squeaking.
What’s worse? There is no reception, no mother, no father, no Onome. They are not here and I can’t leave this bed. This is like a bad bad bad dream.
Hold on, I just heard a voice from the wardrobe by my left. Oh damn! Oh damn! There’s definitely someone here. I can hear him. It’s the voice of the freaky smiling receptionist downstairs. I can’t hear clearly but he’s saying something like: Onome. Mommy. Daddy. Left you. Scared?
I just heard Onome scream. ONOME!!! Jesus. I screamed ‘ONOME!!!’ and she answered me back. I have to go into the wardrobe.
Oh shit! The rats just advanced when I tried to get down. I felt them move towards me. They are on the bed now but they are just formed a circle around where I’m seated. OMG!! This had got to be a dream. I must wake up.
Wait... he’s saying something. ‘Abeg Ebube, abeg, help me and beg daddy. Abeg. They don expel me for here. Abeg. If you people fit come beg registrar with money. Hin go agree let me stay. Abeg.’
Jesus is Lord! He’s sounding exactly like Efe!
He is talking, saying, ‘Efe is gone. That was how I was able to take his voice and use it to call your father. Such a crazy father. But you are kind. And gentle. And you love your family. But kind and gentle and loving people die too. It’s why your mother and sister are gone as well. Oh! You think you heard Onome scream? No, I just used her voice. Let me show you again.’ He is screaming like Onome now. Onome is screaming and crying. It is her, I am sure. But I am not sure.
He is talking again, ‘Goodnews! Your father will not die. He will become one of us. We need his brutish soul. Hmm… Let us begin then. So, I like you which means I will take your voice slowly’
He is quiet now. Everywhere is quiet now. My battery is 1% now.

He is talking again, ‘The rats will first come and eat you up. Rats! Please leave her throat for me lovelies’
Jesus.

The rats are com -

• Written by Adeboro Odunlami