Bamboo Grove by the Brook

Part 5 - Reality or Nightmare?

'Who's going to sleep where?' Wanjiru turned the volume of the music and shouted.

'I am going to take the tent.' Peter's arm shot up.

'Then Logan and I will take the mattress on the floor. Niks and Mama Njeri can sleep on the bed.' Wanjiru finalized the sleeping arrangement.

'No. I will sleep with Nikki on the mattress. You and Logan can take the bed.' Mama Njeri was standing at the door, ready for bed. She had taken off the customary headcover she always uses. Nikki had hardly seen her without it. She looks almost a different person. Nikki thought.

'But..' Wanjiru opened her mouth to protest.

Mama Njeri put up her hand to stop her grand-daughter in mid-sentence. 'I promised Nikki I would sleep next to her and I don't feel like taking the bed tonight.' She smiled and took out the mattress from the closet. 'You know when I was a little girl I and all my sisters and half-sisters used to huddle together in my mother's nyumba*  if it rained like this at night. There would not be enough room on the bed. We used to make a thick bed of straw on the floor and sleep. Rather we would remain awake all night and talk quietly while my mother snored on the bed. It was our slumber party. I feel like reliving those moments.' Mamma Njeri tried to hide her anxiety that sat heavily beneath her laughter. She did not want Nikki to take the bed next to the window.

Wanjiru shrugged. 'It is you who will start snoring soon while we will talk all night.'

'I am already sleepy.' Peter yawned loudly from inside the tent.

Wanjiru turned off the main light and switched on a foot lamp. The room was immersed in a soft, dreamy, greenish glow. In that semi-darkness, the trees outside cast a shadow on the wall opposite to the window. Mama Njeri left the curtain slightly parted before she went to bed. She wanted to remain awake for as long as possible but soon she drifted off.

'I told you she would start snoring.' Wanjiru commented from under the blanket. Outside, the storm had let up but the rain was still lashing, after a brief pause. The plan to stay up all night did not materialize. Soon the room was filled with the sounds of soft snoring of various rhythms. Nikki was dozing off. She was too frightened to go to sleep but the fatigue of a sleepless night soon took over.

Nikki did not know how long she slept. A peculiar feeling woke her up. She was too groggy to realize what it was. She called Mama Njeri a few times but there was no reply. Thinking she was sound asleep Nikki extended her arm to touch Mama Njeri, but she caught a handful of empty space. She called Wanjiru and Logan but no reply. Gosh, they are all sleeping like zombies! She thought. Nikki wondered where Mama Njeri could have gone. There was no sound from the toilet. Suddenly she noticed that the room was in complete darkness. Where did the light from the foot-lamp go? Wanjiru would not switch it off. She never did and Nikki knew that for sure. Someone had closed the curtains too. Alarmed, Nikki now sat bolt upright, all traces of sleep completely gone.

She looked around; there was no one else in the room. Mama Njeri, Logan, Wanjiru, Peter along with his tent everything just vanished. In fact she noticed the bed was not there and she was not even sitting on a mattress; she was sitting on a damp floor. Her heart pounded in her chest and she felt a knot in her stomach. She screamed everyone's name; there was no answer, not even an echo.

There must be a door or something. Nikki got up. She was standing amidst an infinite darkness. The eyes were of little use here. She knew she would have to use her senses and her hands. Her head hit the ceiling but she did not feel any pain. Surprised, she touched it. Her hand felt an uneven surface which was neither too hard nor too soft. What's going on? What is this place? Nikki questioned herself. The hair at the back of her neck stood up and her stomach clenched.

'There must be a way out,' she mumbled.

Nikki walked with her arms stretched in front but did not feel any wall; there was just a dark abyss that was threatening to swallow her. She kept walking. Her outstretched hand felt something. For a moment she thought it was cobweb, but then cobwebs are not long, thin, and yet like hard strands. They felt more like the roots of trees. There were not just one or two; she felt masses of them as she kept walking. Suddenly a thought struck her like lightning and she froze on her track. Nikki realized in her horror that she was underground. Tears welled up in her eyes. The knot in her stomach became tighter and a deluge of pure terror flooded every cell in her body.

She had a dreadful feeling of being watched by an invisible glower. Then it started - the sound that has become all too familiar in last couple of days. The whispering was coming from every direction; from her left, from her right, from the back; the whisper was emanating from the dark abyss ahead of her. Nikki put her hands over ears and let out a scream, but she could not hear her own voice. The whisper drowned out everything else.

'Nikki. Nikki. Niks.' Her disoriented mind could not make out from where the words were coming. How do they know my name? They always whisper. How come they are talking so clearly? She could not see anyone. Then she felt a sudden jerk, as if more than one hand grabbed her and were jerking her continuously.

'Niks, what happened? Why are you screaming like that?' Nikki opened her eyes. She was bewildered to see Logan clutching her shoulders and shaking her.

'Poor thing is so terrorized! What happened dear?' Wanjiru's mother was sitting next to her. Wanjiru, Peter amd Mama Njeri's three pairs of anxious eyes were fixed upon her face. A perplexed Nikki looked around. She was sitting on the mattress. It was the same room where she went to sleep.

Mama Njeri handed her a glass of water. 'You had a nightmare dear.'

With a trembling hand she took the glass and drank in a gulp. Nikki looked at Mama Njeri and slowly shook her head. 'I didn't dream. I woke up and found myself elsewhere. It seemed I was underground.'

'What are you talking about?' Peter asked incredulously. 'You were here all the time. You suddenly started screaming. Even mum woke up and came running to our room.'

'I think you had a dream within a dream.' Aunt Miranda said soothingly.

'Perhaps not, Miranda.' Mama Njeri took the glass from Nikki's hand and looked at it intensely. 'See the mark of soil on the glass.' Her voice was thoughtful; it was as if she was speaking to herself. Nikki checked her own palms. Blackish soil was on her palm and some were sticking even under her nails.

'Yep. Something's not right here.' Logan commented as she removed a dry, thread-like substance from Nikki's hair. She held it up towards the light. 'This is definitely dry root.' Nikki checked her feet and sure dirt and soil were sticking there too.

'Your clothes are also damp.' Wanjiru said. 'I will give you a change of cloth.'

'This does not look good. I have neither seen nor heard anything like this in my entire life,' Mama Njeri said anxiously, 'at least not in real life. Only in the stories my mother told me.'

Note: *In older times in the Kikuyu household every married woman had her own hut called nyumba.