It first began when the farmlands and waterbodies in Bodokilo, a coastal village in the Niger Delta, were overtaken by a dark tar-like substance. The once thriving ecosystem, filled with various species of flora and fauna, terrestrial and aquatic creatures, were poisoned by an oil spill from a damaged pipeline. One early afternoon during planting season, flowers bloomed under the sun, and chirped in the trees. But slowly, like the sun ceding to the moon, thorns sprouted from the ground like ribcages, strangling the flowers. Oil seeped into the neat lines of the ridges, unnoticed by the farmers until it was too late. People screamed, their faces masked by terror as they watched the thick, black liquid feast on their fertile soil.

From a distance, the farmers heard screams. They looked at one another in confusion. Then, they stared at each other again, at their lands, and in the direction of the screams. It came from the sea and sounded like the shrills of their wives who happened to be fisherwomen.

The farmers dropped their hoes, cutlasses, and farming forks, and ran towards the sea where they found their wives with nets of black, dead fish. They watched their wives dump the nets on the shore, speechless. The farmers glanced at each other and the sky, and asked what’s happening to our peaceful village?

The fisherwomen’s legs were covered with rough rings of thick oil, that stretched from above their ankles to their feet, even after they removed their ponchos and rubber boots.

The farmers watched in horror as uncaught sea creatures rushed out of the polluted waters, only to die minutes later. Suddenly, the wail of a man like some beast caught in a snare echoed through the village, coming from the mud house at the top of the hill, visible from the shore. The farmers and fisherwomen turned toward the sound. The men placed their hands on their waists, while the women cover their mouths in fear.

The farmlands and waterbodies had become an unrecognizable wasteland. Between the trees, they saw a figure running toward the burning shrine. Only a part of its thatched roof was on fire, the part facing the sea. The ground beneath the shrine trembled as if it were about to collapse. The villagers watched as the figure managed to stop the fire from spreading, using buckets of water. A collective sigh swept through the crowd, and they clapped in celebration, grateful that at least one thing had been saved.

Amidst the silence that followed, a fisherwoman began muttering prayers. She rolled on the sand, her anklets and necklaces ringing like bells. No one knew how to stop her so, they listened carefully to her words. In a trance, she pointed at the damaged shrine and shouted, “Nebeka! Nebeka!! Lives among us.”

The villagers turned to the shrine, searching for the goddess, but saw only the figure who had put out the fire. It was the leader of the Goni cult, recognized by his white wrapper, a pop of color against the dark, burned shrine.

“Keep quiet, woman! What has come over you?” a man shouted, spitting on the ground. “Or has the manifestation of these terrible happenings put a curse on you?”

“Is that not Adim, Farmer Akwa’s wife?” the fisherwomen whispered, searching for her husband among the crowd.

Akwa stepped forward, pleading with his wife to stop her madness. He covered her mouth with his palm, silencing her. While the villagers knew of Nebeka, the vanishing goddess of the Goni cult, not all were believers. Some worshipped God, the supreme being, while others believed nature was created by nature. The cult members, fearing Nebeka’s wrath, begged Akwa to silence his wife to stop her from making the goddess more angry, before they hurried to join their leader at the top of the hill.

Those who remained on the shore murmured among themselves, “What is there to get angry about when she behaves like someone controlled by a curse.”

The husband shooed them away. He wiped the dust from his wife’s face and carried her on his back. As the drizzle began, the villagers fled for shelter. The rain mixed with a black powdery substance, burned their skin like acid. They wrapped themselves with banana leaves and dragged themselves home.

*

Later, as oil workers toiled atop the plant dressed in their blue and white gears, they spotted a mysterious creature on the shore—a beautiful woman with an extraordinary dark glow, resembling molasses. Her black cotton dress flowed like seaweed, and strange creatures gathered at the heels of her feet before floating back out to sea.

“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” The plant manager asked, tapping a nearby worker.

“Is it just me or is she very close to the plant?” The manager asked again.

“No, she’s standing on the seashore.”

“Then how come we can see her so clearly?” The workers went back and forth with their questions and confusions. They thought it was strange for them to see the woman considering the oil plant was almost three miles away from the sea.

“I thought the villagers said the sea is dead,” a couple of the workers yelled out after seeing schools of iridescent fish, shimmering jellyfish, and a host of other strange creatures flapping at the feet of the woman with some wrapped around her legs before she walked away in the direction of the forest.

At the bar east of the sea, after their shifts at the plant, the workers shared their unusual sighting. Some described the woman as both alluring and terrifying, while others called her the strangest creature to ever emerge from the sea. Eavesdropping on their conversation was a Goni cult member. He left his beer glass half-empty and stomped out of the bar.

People who noticed him leave, murmured among themselves, “They call him the listener, the whisperer, the ears of the cult’s leader.” The villagers were not surprised to see the man leave and they warned the workers to be careful at night because the Goni cult believe anything extraordinary is Nebeka and because of the oil spillage she was angry.

“An angry goddess shows no mercy to her enemies” another villager said and this frightened the workers.

The Christian villagers in their midst simply said to the workers, “Ignore these cultists. I’ve lived here for many years and I’ve yet to see this Nebeka.”

“What if Nebeka has already possessed one of the fisherwomen in our village?” One of the cultists asked in all seriousness.

The other villagers who believed in nature laughed at his question and spat on the ground before they spoke in unison, “It is nature that is angry and her wrath is greater.”

“Why will a goddess possess an ordinary fisherwoman?” An oil worker in a slurred and incoherent voice threw his question into the air for anyone to answer.

“To punish those who have destroyed her lands…and the sea.” Another cultist responded. “You might want to be very careful on your way back.” He teased the oil worker.

This created a tensed atmosphere in the bar until the bartender turned up the volume of the music which some people sang along to. One after the other, the workers left the bar, tipsy, half-drunk, dead drunk, or just trippy. They left in small groups of two, three, and four.

*

That night, on their way back to their quarters, one of the oil workers decided to take a short cut to his apartment by himself. Worried, his friends urged him not to stray from the path they were walking on together, especially at night.

“Where do you know in this place that you want to take a short cut? Was it not only a month ago that you arrived in the village or has the drink taken over your brain?” They laughed together and teased him.

“I might be the lucky one to see our beauty from the sea again? Who knows maybe the goddess will grant me a wish?” He waved at his friends and promised to see them the next day.

It was not his first time following the short cut especially during the nights he was exhausted from work. He lived on the other side of the company’s quarters because of his status as a contract staff unlike his friends who were permanent employees.

That night as he walked through the sparse forest and muddy road with black birds squawking at the top of the trees and crickets chirping the night away, he saw a hazy figure walking on the opposite side of the trail he followed. He looked up to see a thick cloud covering the moon. His eyes became sleepy and he wiped them to stay awake, but their lids kept closing. He forcefully fluttered his eyes open and when he looked ahead, he could have sworn that he saw the Goni cult’s leader dressed in a white wrapper tied around his waist. The leader pointed towards the direction of the sea. But when he blinked his eyes again, there was no one there.

The trail became hilly as he continued walking. It was strange because he had never considered the trail as hilly the many times he had taken it. From his right side, he heard the sound of a broken twig. He turned around, checked his sides, looked upward and saw a bird dropping from the sky. He cowered and closed his eyes causing him to fall face flat after tripping on a thick tree branch. When he opened his eyes, he found himself lying on the muddy ground. His dress and palms were stained. The oddest thing was the fisherwoman that stood in front of him.

Where did she come from? Has she been following me all along? Fear gripped him. She appeared familiar to him but he could not remember where he could have possibly met such a beautiful woman in the small Bodokilo village. The woman looked just like any other fisherwoman at first. But when she moved closer to him, he noticed her reddish-brown eyes that glowed in the dark. Her skin was very fair with stripes of black lines drawn across her exposed skin. She was dressed in a flowy black dress that looked like it was made from mud and leaves. Her hair was decorated with sea shells and had water dripping from it.

“Would you like to have a drink with me in my house?” he asked because he did not know what else to say in his drunken state. He leaned on a tree bark as he attempted to continue his journey back home because he believed the woman was not going to answer him.

“Yes.” She offered her hand to pick him up from the ground. He took it and was surprised by how easy it was to pick up a woman considering how hard it had been prior to his arrival at the village. Their eyes met and for a moment he could have sworn that her eyes resembled the spherical lens of a fish’s eyes.

“Are you Nebeka?” He asked, pulling his hand away from her grip and staggering backward. The woman simply stared at him.

Back in secondary school, his mother had always told him women like their men fresh the way they enjoy their beef and they eat it only when they love it or when the men loves them too. Taking to her advice, he had always shied away from any form of sexual intimacy because he hoped that someday he would find a woman he loves and that loves him too.

And that night he fell in love with the strange woman at first sight. He was delusional enough to believe that the woman reciprocated his love because of her willingness to accompany him home. When they arrived at his quarter, they went straight to his bedroom where she settled down comfortably. After, he went into his bathroom and took a shower to freshen himself up. When he finished, he went into the bedroom and found the fisherwoman seated on the edge of his bed.

Under the dim light, he clearly saw the tattoos that resembled the inscriptions of an ancient language he could not understand. He traced them with his fingers. Then he went and got them cups which they used to drink palm wine. The worker drank himself to a stupor. They made love until they slept off.

In the morning, he woke up to find himself shirtless. He stretched his arm across his bed hoping to grab the woman’s waist. Instead, he felt something squishy and wet squiggling on his palm. Slowly, he twisted his head. When he saw what was on his bed, he screamed his lungs out with his eyes bulging out of their sockets.

It was a viperfish with its needle-like body and sharp teeth piercing into his palm. Seeing his blood spill onto the bed drove him crazy. He gritted his teeth and fought to remove the creature. It remained glued to his body. He cried out for help thinking the fisherwoman from the previous night was still with him. No one answered him.

Left alone on the bloodied bedsheet in his quiet apartment, he suddenly remembered the conversation that the customers had at the bar the previous night about Nebeka. One of the villagers, a drunk farmer had shared a story about Nebeka that his late father told him,

“Nebeka appeared at night in the forest to seduce any man caught following the path. The men always fell for her beauty. She would spend the night with them and vanish the following morning. But her beauty was only an illusion uncovered by the sunlight.

From the sea, she came. On the land, she died. Her restless soul lurks the earth protecting the places of her birth and death. And her anger was expressed in various shapes and form.

The lucky one to sleep with her might have his soul weeping in the morning.”

The story had spooked him for a moment but he shrugged it off after a couple of his drinks. Others had laughed at the farmer’s ridiculous take. One of the customers had even hollered with a beer bottle wrapped in his palm, “What harm can a beautiful lady do?!”

Another person had snickered, “A woman is like a flower, very delicate. But don’t you dare exploit her or she’ll break you.” They continued drinking and enjoying themselves.

*

After the cult fixed Nebeka’s shrine, they observed the Guawara feast. This feast was dedicated to the offering of sacrifices to the vanishing goddess. The air around the shrine grew stiff and chilly. Outside the building on its walls were twisted vines and crooked roots. The shrine was made of weathered wood and rusted corrugated metal. At the back of the shrine, the fisherwomen twisted and wrung the necks of the sacrifices. Their hands were stained with blood. From where they made these preparations, they could hear the men humming an ancient worship song to exhort the goddess.

One of the fisherwomen offered to go fetch water from the barrel on the other side of the building. On her way, she saw what seemed like a log of wood next to the barrel. Upon a closer look, she found out it was a passed out naked fisherwoman with scratch marks all over her body. She screamed and her voice echoed and alerted the others.

“What’s the problem?” One of the male cultists who came from inside the shrine asked the screaming woman. The only thing the frightened fisherwoman could do was to cover her mouth with her palm. She fell to ground and grabbed her body.

“Go and call the leader. He will know what to do.” By this time, all the members had gathered and the leader showed up last.

The leader approached the naked fisherwoman as though afraid that she could get up at any time. He squatted and tapped on her cheeks to wake her. There was no response. He checked her pulse which was very faint. He opened her eyelids to find a wispy cloud hovering over her eyes and he stumbled back. Upon a closer look, he realized it was the fisherwoman that rolled on the seashore the day the shrine caught fire. The same woman that announced the presence of Nebeka.

“It’s her, Akwa’s wife. The woman who went crazy after the oil destroyed everything.” The man crawled backwards away from the body in shock but the people shoved him forward and told him to do something since he knew how to treat diseases and illnesses using herbs and other local treatment.

When he moved closer to the woman again in an attempt to revive her, he smelled a strong, pungent, and unpleasant odor. He covered his nose and checked for the source, and that was when he found oil oozing from several cuts on the woman’s back.

“What’s that coming out of her body? Why is her blood black? Where’s her husband? Doesn’t he know something’s happened to her?” The voices of Nebeka’s worshippers swelled into the air as they asked many questions at the same time.

The leader touched her body for the third time and he felt a pulse with an otherworldly energy. Her now opened eyes glowed. Everyone gathered watched the sight wondering what the leader—who also happened to be the healer—would do. In a wooden mortar, he ground some herbs and placed them on the woman’s oozing back. The cultists stood aside watching their leader.

The woman’s skin began to crack and it sounded like the cracking of twigs. White and orange Lilies and Anemone plants bloomed from the woman’s back. No one could believe it. The cultist began humming and jumping, their humming now one long ceaseless note. Eventually, the naked woman’s body turned into a garden of flowers that lasted for a brief moment. A heavy fog built a wall around the cultists. It separated them from the garden of flowers that had formed around the dead woman. They heard strange voices singing like a thousand mouths in mourning the naked woman.

They formed a circle in the fog and braced themselves for the appearance of the mouths—the people who were mourning the naked woman. The voices transformed into the fluttering of wings as birds gathered them.

As the fog lifted, the vibrant garden that had bloomed from Akwa’s wife dried up before their eyes, the flowers turning to ash as they crumbled into the soil. The cult leader, his face pale, stood at the center of the circle. “Nebeka’s message is clear,” he whispered, his voice trembling. “The goddess is furious. We have contaminated her lands, her sea, and her shrine. This is only the beginning.”

The villagers exchanged fearful glances, their hearts heavy with dread.“Nebeka appeared at night in the forest to seduce any man caught following the path. The men always fell for her beauty. She would spend the night with them and vanish the following morning. But her beauty was only an illusion uncovered by the sunlight.

From the sea, she came. On the land, she died. Her restless soul lurks the earth protecting the places of her birth and death. And her anger was expressed in various shapes and form.

The lucky one to sleep with her might have his soul weeping in the morning.”