The afternoon was surprisingly gloom like the sun didn't see any reason for shining today. Afternoons had been like this for the past six days and Paul James knew certainly that the rainy season was drawing near.
He groaned in despair as he remembered he had to fix the church's leaking roof. Rain in Umuda was always disastrous. When it poured, it poured endlessly like its wish was to drown all of Umuda. It was during this rainy season that Umuda's pagans sacrificed to their gods. They believed the gods responded to their prayers through the persistent rain.
It was also during this period Paul and his church members go on rigorous evangelism. Most of the times they get kicked out of houses or insulted on the streets. There had been a time one of his church members, a pretty young lady, had been waylaid, beheaded and later used as a sacrifice. Paul had been furious yet there was no way he could get his revenge. He preached Christ and Christ never preached "Revenge". Yet, nothing would discourage him. He knew he had been sent here to Umuda for a reason and until he converted every soul, he wasn't going to stop.
Today, he was heading to the home of one of his new converts. The man had been a former Amadioha priest but Paul had preached to his mother and she had preached to her son who decided to come to the way of Christ. He had just heard that his wife had been delivered of a baby and he, as a Priest, wanted to ordain the child into the Catholic Church. When he got to their little wooden home, it was quiet, so quiet for Paul's liking. He knocked on the door but there was no reply. This he did six times, yet he heard no answer.
"Brother John, it's I, Father Paul!"
Silence. Paul decided to himself that they were possibly not at home.
Until he heard the cry.
Without waiting a bit, he made for the backyard where he met a sickening sight. Brother John was standing in a corner, head bowed, his wife laid at his feet weeping while a horrid looking and scarily dressed Amadioha priest held their new born baby upside down, still covered in blood, its placenta dangling, over a burning fire. It suddenly dawned on Paul that the child was about to be burnt.
The Amadioha Priest was chanting incantations and was forced to stop because Paul's appearance was startling.
"Nooooo!!!" Paul yelled in rage and yanked the baby from the priest.
"Abomination!!!!" The priest wailed like a wounded lion.
Brother John and his wife were utmostly surprised.
"This is abomination instead!!! Killing an innocent child is abomination!!!" Paul yelled at the priest.
"You don't know what you're toying with, you infidel!! This sacrifice has to be made to the gods or this family would never live in peace" The priest said and pointed to Brother John and his wife.
"You're the infidel!!! Innocent blood to appease the gods. How does that even sound to your ears? Insane?!!" Paul asked.
The baby was wailing now.
"And Brother John, I thought knowing the way of Christ meant desisting from useless superstitions like this. But clearly now, I don't think you understand what it means to be a Christian"
With determined rage, he took the bloody child in his arms and walked out on them. The priest rained evil curses behind him.
But Paul's mind was no longer there. He suddenly found himself in his past, so many years ago when the same fate of this child would have happened to him if not for God.
*** *** ***
His name had not been Paul James, his birth had not thrown his parents into a state of happiness, infact, according to his foster mother, Mother Larry, he didn't have a christening like normal children had.
When his mother had given birth, she had given birth to twins, a girl and a boy, and according to the cult his father was in, it was a taboo for a member to have twins.
So it had happened that that very night, these one day old children were taken to the forest where they were to be drowned in the river. His sister had been the first to be drowned but Mother Larry, a British missionary and some of her Christian friends, arrived just in time to save Paul from being drowned. His sister had not survived it.
For two months, Mother Larry nursed the child and she had named him Amadi, after his grandfather, wishing to give him a native name. She had no child of her own and Paul was all too precious to her.
Until his own parents came to claim him. Mother Larry had told him that they had come to take him away, forcefully. She had not wanted to let him go, fearing that they might kill him but they had promised that no harm would come to him.
What she had not known was that they actually wanted to initiate him into his father's cult. As long as he was in his father's cult, the evil he and his twin sister were supposed to have brought, would not happen.
His life in his parents' home was unbearable. They made him do unspeakable things. Every night, he had to bathe in black water, every morning, he ate his father's bitter kola, every evening he attended the cult's meeting.
Anytime, his father's business refused to grow or his mother hardly made sales for the day, they always blamed him. He had a younger brother, Obinna, who later became Joyce and Francis's father, and he was his parents' favourite. They saw him as a responsible son while Paul was loathed.
"You should be dead by now, not giving everyone unnecessary headaches" His father would tell him.
Then Chima happened.
He had known her from his childhood, a very beautiful girl who had been his playmate. He never knew she would grow up to be as breathtakingly pretty as she was. He had tried every means to woo her but she had refused him.
One dreadful night, he called her to his house while his parents and younger brother were away and made the biggest mistake of his life.
Paul had always known himself as cursed and he had always known he would do something that would land him in trouble. Paul never knew what came over him but the next thing he knew, he was on top of Chima. She had left his house that night, dejected and disflowered.
News soon reached everyone in Umuda about what Paul had done. Chima's relatives wanted to burn him alive but his father's cult members would never accept it. They blamed Chima for getting so close to Paul.
Two months later, Chima got pregnant and Paul decided he had to accept the baby. He had told his father but he had flared up.
"Never!! Over my dead body!! You will not marry a trader's daughter!! Don't you know it is against the rules of the cult? Chima will never be your wife!! You've brought disgrace to everyone of us!"
Paul insisted that he would accept Chima's baby.
One night, he was not called to the cult's meeting and it was for an evil reason.
He had woken up, astonished, to the sounds of chanting and gone to his father's secret room where he had seen the worst scene of his life.
Someone had severed Chima's head and placed it in the middle of the room, cultists going around it in a circle. He could never forget the way Chima's lifeless eyes had seemed to stare at him, telling him she would continue to haunt him for the rest of his life. The reason they had killed her, he never waited to know.
That very night, he ran to Onada where Mother Larry lived. He remembered himself pounding on her door, falling to his knees in tears as she opened the door.
"I hate them!! I hate them!!"
They came back for him but he was older now and he refused to go with them. That was the last time he had seen his parents.
He went to the Onada Monastery and found peace in its confines. He changed his name to Paul James after he had being baptized. When he came out, years later, a full grown Priest of God, Mother Larry had told him to go to Umuda and meet his parents.
"No way!! I have no business with those infidels!!"
"That's the problem, my son, you've got to learn how to forgive" Mother Larry had told him.
When he arrived at Umuda, he found out his father had just died that morning, hanging from a tree, not long after he confessed to the death of Chima. Paul had buried his own father. As for his mother, she had left the house one morning and never came back.
His brother, Obinna, became a Christian through Paul's preaching. He had had Francis and Joyce but sadly, his marriage began to crumble because of his conversion. His wife was an atheist and believed she couldn't spend the rest of her life with a Christian.
Francis and Joyce were sent to live with him and when he had been called by God in a vision to go back to Umuda, they went with him.
*** *** ***
Paul soon got back to the Church, a bloody wailing baby in his arms. His church workers gave him scrutinizing looks but Paul need not worry about them. He called the choir mistress.
"I want you to get me Mrs. Danni. She is the only one who can nurse this baby" He told her.
"What's going on here, sir?" His choir mistress demanded.
"It's a long story. Just do as I say"
Before she turned around to leave, Brother John's wife barged into the office.
"Father, I beg of you!! Have mercy on me, I want my son!!" She pleaded.
"Apparently you tried to kill him several minutes ago, it's clear that you don't want him!!!"
"We were ignorant. The priest told us if I give birth to a son as my first child, then disaster would befall my family! Please, have mercy. I feel too weak!!" She wailed loudly.
"Sir, I would advise you to give her her son. She just delivered and she is not all that strong for emotional outbursts" The choir mistress said.
Father Paul grew silent. Only Brother John's wife wails could be heard. He looked at the baby in his hands and a sudden pity hit him. The infant was too tender to be experiencing all of this.
"Where is your husband?"
"He can't bring himself to come here. We are both ashamed"
"Here, take your son and be the responsible parents you should be to him" Paul said and handed her the baby.
The choir mistress hurried to get something to wrap him in. She soon arrived with clean, white towels.
"We'll bathe him in the church's bathroom" She told the boy's mother.
"He is just new in this world. Don't make him regret he has you as his parents" Paul said and wished his parents had done the same thing....
Iam 