Oyo was never silent. By day, its markets roared with traders’ voices, the call of bus conductors, the clatter of motorbikes. By night, generators hummed and music spilled from bars into the humid air. But in the alleyways, in the half-forgotten corners where shadows clung, silence could swallow a man whole.
Kunle was a street vendor, selling woven hats, beads, and old trinkets from a stall near Dugbe market. He had little—just his stall, his brother who helped him, and his stubborn dream that fortune might one day tilt his way.
It was at the end of a slow afternoon that he first saw the mask.
A trader from the hinterlands had arrived with a cart full of scrap: broken tools, cracked calabashes, fragments of statues. At the bottom lay the mask, half-covered in dust. It was carved from dark wood, the grain rippling like muscle. Its teeth were long, sharp, and uneven. The eyes were deep hollows, but somehow they seemed to glisten in the light.
“How much for that?” Kunle asked.
The trader frowned. “That one? Better you don’t buy. It’s not… good.”
Kunle laughed. “Not good is why it will sell. People love strange things.”
He paid a small note and carried it home, pleased with his prize.
⸻
That night, he hung the mask on the wall of his one-room apartment. It seemed to fill the space, watching, though Kunle told himself it was only wood.
But he woke at midnight to a sound. A wet, rhythmic chewing.
He sat up, blinking in the dark. The mask grinned at him from the wall. Its teeth glistened, and something dripped onto the floor.
Kunle scrambled for the lantern, heart hammering. In the flicker of light, the mask looked normal again—wood, teeth, hollows. Yet on the floor lay a smear of something red.
He whispered a prayer and told himself it was a dream.
⸻
By morning, the sound had faded from his mind. His brother, Ayo, laughed at him when he described it. “Maybe you dreamt of food, eh? You work too much.”
But the unease stayed with Kunle.
That night, the chewing returned. Louder. Hungrier. Kunle pressed his palms over his ears, shaking, whispering prayers. He dared not look.
When he woke at dawn, Ayo’s mat was empty. His sandals were gone.
Hours later, neighbors found the boy in the alley, his body half-eaten, face frozen in a silent scream.
Kunle collapsed, wailing. But when he staggered back to his room, the mask was smiling wider. Its teeth glistened fresh.
⸻
He tried to destroy it.
He built a fire and threw the mask into the flames. But the fire bent away, wood refusing to blacken. He plunged it into the river, but when he returned home, it hung once again on his wall, dry and grinning.
He begged the local imam for help. The holy man sprinkled water, recited prayers. But that night, the chewing grew louder than ever, shaking the walls.
By morning, the imam’s compound was silent. His family gone. Only bones remained.
⸻
Kunle’s neighbors avoided him. His stall emptied. Whispers followed him through the streets. “The man carries death with him.”
Desperate, Kunle sought the old diviner on the edge of town. The man’s hut smelled of smoke and bitter herbs. His eyes clouded with age, yet sharp with knowing.
“You have fed it,” the diviner said before Kunle even spoke.
“I didn’t mean to,” Kunle sobbed. “How do I stop it?”
The diviner’s face was grave. “The mask does not feed on food. It feeds on blood, on fear, on kin. It has chosen you as its keeper. You cannot starve it. You cannot burn it. The only choice is whether it eats strangers… or eats you.”
Kunle trembled. “Then… I must give it others?”
The diviner’s silence was answer enough.
⸻
That night, the chewing began before midnight, frantic, impatient. Kunle stared at the mask, tears streaking his face.
“I won’t,” he whispered. “I won’t feed you.”
The chewing stopped.
For a moment, he thought he had won. Then a new sound came. Footsteps. Slow, dragging, wet. From the corner of the room, shapes unfolded—faces he knew. Ayo, the imam’s daughter, the neighbors who had vanished. Their eyes were empty, their mouths chewed away, and yet they walked toward him, guided by the mask’s hunger.
Kunle screamed.
⸻
By dawn, his room was empty. His stall stood abandoned, beads scattered, hats trampled. But the mask remained, hanging from the wall, grinning wider than ever.
Now, in the market, people whisper. At night, when they pass the stall, they swear they hear chewing.
And if you look too long, too closely, you’ll see the mask watching you. Its grin a little sharper. Its teeth a little redder.
Waiting.
