Why Donkeys Have 44 Teeth

On an ordinary Thursday night in Ngong Avenue Estate along Ngong Road in Nairobi, nine-year-old Jack Dulu had the most extraordinary dream ever. He dreamed that a donkey was talking to him. The donkey was at his bedroom window, tapping on the pane and calling his name.

“Jackie,” it was repeating with every tap. “Come out to play, come out to play . . .”

This was extraordinary because the number of times Jack had ever seen a donkey in his life could be counted on the fingers of his left hand. Like most ordinary folk, he didn’t think about donkeys. They never crossed his mind when he wasn’t seeing them. He had seen them along the road pulling carts loaded with yellow water jerricans, but that was all he knew about them.

In his dream, however, he was trying to scream but could not make a sound, and he could not run. As if tired of tapping on the pane, the donkey opened the window and pushed its head through into the room. It was a black donkey, and it was grinning at Jack.

“Jackie, come out to play,” it said again and reached down to grab Jack with hands that looked like human hands.

Jack woke up when the donkey touched him. Sweat was pouring from his face and armpits, and his bedsheet was damp. He sat up and glanced quickly at his bedroom window. He saw that it was still closed, and the curtains were drawn over it. He glanced across the room to see if Susie was there. As if aware that he was watching her, she turned and drew a blanket over her head. Her reassuring presence calmed him down, and he returned to sleep.

“I dreamt that there was a donkey at the bedroom window,” he announced at breakfast. He had cleaned himself and dressed up for school. Susie, who was the first one to wake up in the family, had toasted tomato sandwiches and prepared tea for breakfast.

“That is so stupid,” Lin said moodily. She was fourteen years old, and “stupid” was her favourite word. Susie had said that it was because Lin was an adolescent. Jack didn’t know what that meant but thought it had to do with his sister being too skinny. His best friend, Roy, said Lin was as skinny as a shadow. There was a skinny girl in his class called June who was also rude.

“It is not stupid,” he protested and then took a chunky bite of his sandwich, chewed it, and washed it down with tea. He liked hot tomato sandwiches. “The donkey wanted me to come out and play with it,” he explained.

“Well, how smart is that!” Lin exclaimed and burst out with sarcastic laughter. Susie laughed, too. Even Jack’s father joined in.

Jack sulked. He stopped eating. “I’m not telling you the rest of my dream,” he told Lin.

“Show me where it hurts me if you don’t tell,” Lin continued laughing.

He brooded for some time and almost called her Linda, but she would beat him up for that later on. Only their father was allowed to call her by her real name.

“Eat, baba. Finish your breakfast,” Susie pampered him, and he resumed eating. He didn’t get to tell them how he had been terrified of the donkey and how the donkey had tried to grab him with hands that appeared human. Maybe it was a good thing that he didn’t tell them. They would have laughed their heads off if he had.

On his way to school, just as the bus trundled past Dagoretti Corner, he saw a grey donkey carrying a load of charcoal. It was walking slowly, the load heavy. It was shaking its tail constantly, warding off flies, and for the first time in his life, Jack noticed that its tail was shorter than that of a cow. He also noticed that its hooves were not split and that its jaws were protruding powerfully as though it chewed bones. He thought the donkey in his dream had a bigger head than this one.

He wondered why he was seeing this donkey today of all days, considering his dream. Must be just a coincidence, he thought. Or maybe he was just now starting to notice them. Why would he dream about a donkey, anyway?

“Have you ever seen a black donkey?” he asked Roy, who was seated next to him.

“I hate donkeys,” Roy said promptly as if he had been expecting the question.

“Why?” Jack asked.

“Because they are animals. I hate animals.”

“Why?” Jack asked again.

“When you are stupid, people call you an animal.”

Jack didn’t say anything about that. Nobody had ever called him an animal. He guessed he wasn’t stupid.

Roy was older than him by one year but still his best friend. They came from the same estate and were in the same class. Jack felt that Roy was tougher than him, braver, and more confident. Unlike Jack, who had only two sisters and no brothers and whose father was an engineer at Kenya Power, Roy had three brothers and no sisters, and his father was a soldier in the Kenya Army. Jack’s mother was dead, but Roy’s mother was alive.

A fat boy in class called Fadhili had pushed Jack from the line during lunchtime. Jack had fallen and hurt his knees. Some kids had laughed at him. He had cowered from Fadhili and had been about to start crying when Roy stepped out of his position in the line and helped him up. Roy had looked at Fadhili in the face and shouted, “You are fat like a mandazi for aliens!”

The dining hall had exploded with laughter. Jack had laughed, too, forgetting his pain and embarrassment. Fadhili had cried.

“I dreamt about a donkey,” Jack said.

Roy gave him a quick look full of curiosity and surprise. “What happened? Tell me all about it.”

Jack did. He couldn’t recall how the dream had started. He just remembered the tap-tap-tap of the donkey knocking on the windowpane.

“That is funny,” Roy said thoughtfully. He leaned back in his seat so his back and neck were straight. He looked down at Jack like an adult looking down at a child. Jack thought he was trying to mimic his father.

“Remember that kid Millicent who disappeared and was found dead in the garbage place?”

“Yes,” Jack said.

“Her mother told my mother that she had been dreaming about donkeys.”

Something terrible ran through Jack, and he shivered. He looked anxiously out the window as if expecting to see the donkey with the load of charcoal still there. It had been left behind.

Millicent had vanished one Tuesday evening when they were returning home from school. It had been raining, and the roads had been jammed with traffic, making them get home late. The school bus had dropped them at the usual drop-off point outside their estate gate, and Jack and Roy had charged into the compound with Roy leading the way and Jack following energetically, their shoes splashing water on their shorts and bags. Millicent was behind them. It was the last time she had been seen alive.

The police had searched the estate and questioned everyone who lived there, including Jack.

“Did you see her getting out of the bus?” Jack had been asked.

“Yes.”

“Did you see her following you?”

“Yes. She was covering her head with her bag.”

“Did she enter through the gate with you?”

“I didn’t see her. She was behind us. We were running very fast. Me and Roy.”

“Did you meet anyone on the way?”

“Only the security guards at the gate.”

“Did you see anyone else?”

“No.”

The security guards had been arrested as suspects in the case but were released two weeks later when Millicent’s head was found in the estate garbage dump by the garbage collectors.

“Are they coming back to work here?” Jack had asked Lin. He had been convinced that the guards were the culprits.

“Possibly,” Lin said. “They are innocent.”

“But how can they be innocent?”

“Because people now think that Millicent was eaten by an animal,” Lin said. “Her neck was found to have markings of animal teeth. The medical examiner said he will try to identify the animal.”

Only Millicent’s head had been found. The rest of her body had disappeared for good.

“You think she was eaten by a donkey?” Jack now asked Roy. His stomach was tensed.

Roy laughed. He was still sitting like an adult. “Donkeys are not cannibals,” he said with authority.

“What is a candy ball?” Jack asked.

Roy laughed again. “Cannibal,” he corrected. “A cannibal is an animal that eats meat.”

“Idiot!” shouted the skinny girl called June. She was sitting in the front row and had been listening to their conversation. She had turned back to face them. “A cannibal is an aminal that eats itself,” she explained.

“Get fried, you omena!” Roy shouted back. “You are as skinny as omena! A cannibal is an aminal that eats itself,” he mimicked disparagingly. “How can an animal eat itself?”

June sank back in her seat, almost tearful. Her seatmate was laughing at her.

“Carnivore,” another kid called Osman said, looking at Jack and avoiding Roy. “Animals that eat meat are called carnivores.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Roy said dismissively. “Mind your farts.”

Jack laughed. He had relaxed without even knowing it.

That evening, he asked Susie about Millicent. He had worried about Millicent the whole day.

“What killed Millicent?” he asked.

The question caught Susie off-guard. She had never discussed Millicent’s death with Jack and she did not want to. That death had made her anxious, and she had been worrying about her kid brother whenever he was out there on his own, especially in the evenings. The animal that had been said to have killed and eaten Millicent had never been identified. Where that animal had eaten Millicent’s body had never been found, either. How it had dumped Millicent’s head in the garbage bin within the estate but carried away the body without leaving a trail of blood was still a mystery, too. The story had died off in the media, and Millicent’s family sold their house and left the estate.

Susie turned around to look at Jack. She was warming supper, which had been prepared earlier by Anne, their daytime housekeeper. She thought of the best way to answer the question.

“Why are you asking?” she deflected.

“Roy said that she had been dreaming about donkeys before she disappeared.”

“That boy is a bad influence.” She seized the opportunity to steer the conversation away from Millicent’s death. “Do you know what that means?” she asked.

“It means he will make me do bad things,” Jack said.

“Exactly. Don’t listen to what he says. In fact, you should stop hanging out with him.”

“But he is my friend,” Jack defended. “He doesn’t make me do bad things; besides, he protects me from bullies at school.”

“That is because he is the number one bully,” Susie emphasised.

“But he bullies only bad kids,” Jack said timidly, studying his sister’s face to see if he would be in trouble for saying that. She was the closest thing he had to a mother, and he loved her so much. His mother had died while giving birth to a child who would have been his junior, leaving him in the care of his sisters. Susie was twenty years old and going to the University of Nairobi to study Actually Science, which his father said would enable her to work for insurance farms after graduating.

“Bad kids should be reported to the teacher, not bullied,” Susie said. “Your friend is unhappy. His father came back from Somalia a different person and has been too hard on him and his brothers.”

Jack had been afraid of Roy’s father for some time. He remembered Roy telling him that ever since his father came back from Somalia, “if you make noise in the house, he beats you up with a belt, and if he calls you, you have to say ‘Yes, sir!’”

Jack was glad his father was not like that.

Susie turned to stir the stew she was warming. The smell of meatballs was wonderful. Jack loved meatballs. They were like doughnuts made of meat. He could stuff a whole one into his mouth and enjoy it as it broke into a thousand pieces of pure delicacy. He could feel his stomach dancing already in anticipation of being filled with those delightful meatballs. One time, Roy had called another kid in class a meathead, and Jack had laughed until his stomach hurt because he had been thinking about meatballs.

“Did Millicent dream about donkeys?” he asked, shifting back to the subject of his interest.

“I don’t know,” Susie said, turning to him again. “I don’t think she did, though. People don’t dream about donkeys, baba. They are not interesting animals. Even people who keep them just overwork them to death with heavy loads day in and day out.”

“Do donkeys eat meat?” Jack asked. Although Roy had assured him that donkeys were not candy balls, he wanted to hear what Susie would say.

“No,” Susie said. “Donkeys eat grass. They are domestic animals, and the only domestic animals that eat meat are cats and dogs.”

“Then why do they have forty-four teeth?” Lin asked. She had sneaked up behind Jack. She had been in her room since coming back from school. She spent a lot of hours in her room. Their house had three bedrooms, and Lin had insisted on having one for herself despite Susie’s pleas that she should leave it for Jack, who would soon need to have his own room.

“What do you mean?” Susie asked her. She glanced quickly at Jack.

“Cats have thirty teeth. Dogs have forty-two teeth. Cows have thirty-two teeth. Goats and sheep, the same. Even lions have only thirty. But donkeys have forty-four teeth. Forty-four!”

“What are you implying, Linda?” Susie said impatiently. Again, she glanced at Jack.

“Don’t call me Linda,” Lin said moodily and was silent for a moment. “Listen, bro,” she started, staring into Jack’s eyes. “I think donkeys can eat meat if they want to. They can even chew bones. They have strong jaws. Have you seen their jaws? Samson in the Bible used just one jawbone to kill a thousand people. One jawbone! A thousand people! I think when they eat grass, sometimes they catch a lizard or a frog or a small snake, and they chew it and swallow it.”

“That’s a lie, Jack,” Susie said. “If they catch anything they don’t eat, they spit it out.”

“Dogs eat mandazis and beans,” Lin countered, raising her voice. “Dairy cows eat dried blood and ground bones. Why won’t donkeys eat meat?” She paused for effect, still staring at Jack, ignoring the look of disapproval on Susie’s face. “Nowadays, animals eat what they can find. If a donkey can find meat, it will eat it. Might even enjoy it and start looking for some more. Who knows these things?” She gestured mysteriously with her hands.

She left to go back to her room before Susie could rebuke her. She was hurrying, but as she reached the stairs, she stopped, turned, and said: “Remember, bro, they have forty-four teeth. Forty-four! You can’t have forty-four teeth and waste it on grass alone. Cows have thirty-two teeth to eat grass. And because goats and sheep also have thirty-two, it seems that thirty-two is the magic number of teeth for eating grass. Donkeys have twelve more teeth. Not two more. Not four more. Not six more. Twelve more. Think about it.”

Jack was shaken. “Did a donkey eat Millicent?” he asked.

“No,” Susie said with certainty. “Don’t listen to Lin, okay? She is just trying to frighten you. Do not let her. Donkeys do not eat meat. Some people even slaughter donkeys and eat their meat, but donkeys themselves do not eat meat,” she repeated.

“What happened to Millicent?”

“Listen, baba,” Susie said soothingly. She put her hands on both sides of Jack’s face. Her hands smelled of fried onions and garlic. “Have you ever seen any donkeys in this estate?” she asked.

“No.”

“Did you see any donkeys at the gate the day Millicent vanished?”

“No.”

“Then donkeys didn’t kidnap her. Do you think donkeys can kidnap people?”

“No.” He shook his head.

“Millicent was kidnapped and killed by people, not donkeys. Police are still looking for those people. One day, they will be caught and jailed. So don’t be afraid of donkeys, and I don’t want you thinking about Millicent. Think of something nice like . . . meatballs. Think about how much you are going to enjoy these meatballs. Okay?” She smiled at him.

“Okay.”

Jack felt better afterwards. He didn’t think about Millicent or donkeys.

The black donkey came back into his dream. This time, it did not just tap on the windowpane and call Jack to go play outside like before. This time, it was in the room and standing over Jack, where he slept. Jack could feel the immensity of its weight hovering over him.

“Jackie,” it said in its harsh voice. “Are you afraid of me? Are you afraid that I will eat you like I ate Millicent? I ate Millicent. She tasted like meatballs.”

Jack was incapacitated on the bed. The donkey even knew that he loved meatballs. He was calling for Susie, but his voice was completely lost. He was greatly distressed, and he wished the donkey would go away. The donkey opened its mouth wide and reached down to eat him.

He woke up screaming in the night. He kept on screaming even after he had become aware that he had been dreaming and that there was no donkey in the room. He woke up Susie, who sprung out of her bed and crossed the room to his bed.

“What is it?” she asked, alarmed, although she only had to look at him to understand. She went to the window, pushed aside the curtains, and opened it. She looked out for a moment.

“Stop crying, baba,” she said soothingly. “There is nothing out here. You want to take a look?”

Jack quieted down. He wiped his face and nose with the backs of his hands. He was snivelling. He considered his sister’s question for a second and then shuffled to the window. He didn’t see any donkeys outside there. The security lights were bright enough for him to see clearly, even at this time of the night. Satisfied, he pulled back, and Susie closed the window and returned the curtains.

“Come and sleep on my bed,” she said.

She got in first, and he followed her. She snuggled him as though she were his real mother. He felt warm and good, his tension dissipating. He was fast asleep before he knew it.

In the morning, at breakfast, Lin brought up the subject of the donkey, much to Susie’s chagrin.

“Was there a donkey at the window last night?” Lin asked.

“Linda, please. Please!” Susie said with exasperation.

Lin considered her with hostile eyes, wanting to retort with her usual comeback of “Don’t call me Linda” in such cases. Instead, she said: “I heard something. I was awake, okay? Mom!” she added sarcastically.

Susie saw that Jack was goggling at Linda.

“What did you hear?” their father asked. He seemed interested in what Lin had to say.

“Footsteps,” Lin said. “Not like a person’s footsteps. A donkey kind of footsteps. You know, the clip-clop-clip-clop of hooves on the pavement outside the window. Like when someone is wearing funny high heels they can’t walk in properly, except who would be wearing high heels and walking outside my window at 1.00 am?”

“It is a strange world, siz. You’d be shocked,” Susie told her.

“Why do you think it was a donkey?” their father asked.

“It made a sound. It snorted,” she said but looked uncertain. “Donkeys snort, right? Also, you know the way when you dream that you are running from a monster, you wake up sweaty and your heart beats like you were actually running? Well, I thought that there must be a donkey around here somewhere for Jack to dream about one.”

“There is no donkey around here,” Susie objected.

“Maybe there is a witch in this estate hiding a donkey under her bed. How would you know?” Lin returned in anger.

“You are crazy.”

“I also heard it on the roof.”

“You heard a donkey on the roof?” Susie couldn’t believe it.

“Yeah, so what?” Lin returned, shrugging and looking at their father. “I heard what I heard.”

“I heard something on the roof, too,” their father said. “I thought it was some kind of a nocturnal bird or something. Seemed heavy from the sound it made.”

There was a short silence around the table. Susie was staring at Jack with motherly concern while Jack gaped at their father with wide confounded eyes. Terror flashed through him and he started sobbing. The donkey in his dream had been real, he thought. It had jumped out of the window and hid before Susie could see it. It had eaten Millicent.

“Dad,” Susie implored. “Help me here, please. Kindly. Our brother here thinks that donkeys eat people and I have been trying to drive such notions out of his head. A little help here will be greatly appreciated.”

Their father started laughing and then realized the gravity of the situation and stopped. “Donkeys can’t eat people,” he said, shaking his head and wondering where this absurdity of donkeys eating people had come from. Who had been filling his son’s head with such nonsense?

“They are herbivorous animals, Jack, like cows, they are friendly. The worst they can do to you is kick you with their hindlegs.” He stood up from the table. “Who wants to go for a Saturday ride?”

Only Jack raised his hand and stood up after him. He was smiling from ear to ear.

It was a half past six when Jack returned to the estate. The November sun had sunk down, the night creeping in earlier than usual. Security lights were blinking back to life one by one. Jack was in a state of buoyancy. He’d had the best day in the world. He had gone to his father’s office and met his father’s friends who said they were on a dayshift when Jack asked them why they were working on Saturday. His father had a lot of friends. When he grew up, he wanted to have a lot of friends like that.

His father had taken him to a power substation in Dandora where he had worn a helmet, a reflector jacket and oversize safety boots. He had learned about power and voltages and currents, and how electricity was transmitted, stepped up or stepped down, and transmitted again.

Later on, they had gone to a restaurant called The Epicurean where he had the most tasteful roast chicken he had ever eaten. He had almost cleared half a chicken by himself.

But the best part which excited him the most was when his father told him that he was the firstborn son of the family, the only son for that matter, and so he had to be strong and brave for his sisters. He should aim to grow up a strong man and protect his sisters. He would make his father proud if he did so. He had been extremely thrilled to hear his father say those things. He was burning with uncontainable joy. He couldn’t wait to tell Roy all about his adventures.

As they disembarked from the car and his father went into the house from the parking, he asked for permission to go see his friend and his father turned back and nodded. There would be no school tomorrow, and so he did not need to go to bed early. He ran as fast as he could, barely breathing, his heart pounding away in his chest.

The shortest way to get to the Atamos’ from the Dulus’ was through the playground. You had to go as if towards the gate, enter the playground through the basketball court on your right, and then cross to the driveway that served the houses on that side of the estate. The Atamos’ house was on the left. The normal footpath was winding along the driveway and it was lined with flowery shrubs on both sides. The shrubs were neatly trimmed, some of them topiaries, but they were almost the same height as Jack and he did not like them for that, especially in the evening when the street lights made them produce long shadows. Somebody could hide there and scare him. Some children liked to play in them.

As he was crossing the basketball court, he heard someone calling, “Jackie, Jackie!”

It was the voice of the donkey from his dream. That harsh, grating sound.

He stopped, petrified. His heart seemed to roll down into his stomach and start pounding harder than before. His knees were trembling and all his excitement had evaporated. He was too weak to run and too breathless to scream for help.

“Jackie.”

In his terror, he could not tell from which direction the sound was coming. But when he wheeled around and around, he saw that it was a boy his age calling him so, standing in the shadow of the backboard. There were still children in the playground.

Jack stared at the boy while trying to catch his breath. He bent down and put his hands on his chest.

“You scared me,” he panted.

At first, he thought the boy was Osman, Leyla’s brother. Osman was the only kid in the estate who wore long clothes. But Osman didn’t call him “Jackie.” Nobody called him “Jackie” except . . .

He straightened up and took a deep breath like his father had said he should do when he felt scared. He didn’t run; he wanted to be brave like his father had told him to. His eyes never left the stranger.

The boy emerged from under the shadow and edged towards Jack. He was carrying the ball he had been playing with in his left hand. He was wearing an oversized black thobe which sort of swelled on his back.

Jack had no recollections of Osman ever playing basketball.

“Jackie,” he said.

“My name is not Jackie,” Jack retorted. He was gulping for air, his lungs still burning. He needed another deep breath.

“Well, that is up to you to choose,” the boy said. “You can either choose to be Jackie, as in Jackie Chan, or you can choose to be Jack, as in a jerk.”

Jack had never seen this boy before. Maybe he was new in the estate. People were always buying houses here. Maybe his family had bought Millicent’s family house. Susie had said that you couldn’t know everyone in this estate and there was always going to be a stranger.

Jack relaxed a bit. “My name is Jack,” he asserted.

“You choose to be a jerk?” the boy mocked. For some reason, he seemed bigger than he had been a moment ago.

Jack contemplated that word. He didn’t know what it meant but he guessed it was a bad word from the way this boy was pronouncing it.

“Don’t call me that,” he warned. He was slowly regaining his composure.

“Then Jackie it is,” the boy said triumphantly. “I like Jackie Chan. He is my favourite. I have seen him grow up from when he was just a little boy like you until now when he is a great movie star.”

Jack didn’t understand what the boy was talking about. He saw Jackie Chan as a kid? Which movie was that?

When the boy had moved up close and the basketball court floodlight fully covered them, Jack could not tell whether he was a child or an adult. Jack had never seen anyone like this. The body of a child carrying a face so old and so ugly. He was what Lin would call “a boy-man”, young and old at the same time.

The boy-man had a long, old face, scarred with wrinkles that seemed to have been there for a long time. His chin was jutting forwards and his forehead slanting backwards, leaving his face sort of upturned. His nose was huge and widely spaced—like a car’s headlights, Jack thought strangely—and his lips sagged, wet with saliva. He was drooling. His jaws were jutting outwards so that when he closed his mouth, his cheeks swelled as if his mouth was full of food. His eyes were too far apart, his stare lacking focus. He was also sort of bent forwards like a hunchback.

Jack did not like him. He stepped away from him. “Where do you live?” he asked.

“Around here,” the boy-man said but did not elaborate.

“Do you have a disability?” Jack asked. He had been taught in school to treat people with disability with respect and to assist them whenever they needed assistance.

The boy-man laughed. His voice was mirthless.

“I can hide anything but I can’t hide my face, can I?” He seemed to mock Jack.

Is he growing taller? Jack wondered, bewildered. The boy-man seemed to be expanding. His back was twitching on its own, as if he had a tail.

Jack inched further away from him. He looked warily around the playground and saw that most of the children had returned to their houses. The children who were still playing didn’t seem to be taking any notice of him. The estate was increasingly quieter and quieter.

“What do you want?” he asked apprehensively.

“To be friends,” the boy-man said. “He stretched his right hand towards Jack and Jack saw that he had enormous dirty hands with dry fingers. Thick muscles swelled down his forearm and a network of veins crisscrossed above them, both beneath a coat of straight black hair that was more like the fur on animals.

Jack flinched from him. He didn’t want to be friends with this person and he didn’t want to shake his hand.

“What is your family name?” the boy-man asked, withdrawing his hand.

“Dulu,” Jack said with another step back.

“Nice,” the boy-man said, grinning and stepping closer. His lips peeled all the way back when he grinned, exposing all his teeth. He had a lot of teeth. Jagged teeth. Curved teeth. Teeth over teeth. Broken teeth. Stained teeth. Ugly teeth. “Jackie Dulu,” he said. “You are the Dulus. Wonderful. Reminds me of The Dooleys from way back. Do you know The Dooleys?”

“No.”

“Too bad. They made a song called The Chosen Few. Beautiful song. When it came out, I thought it was meant just for me and my family. We like music. We were human once before Tiamat turned us into what we are now and cast us into the abyss. Long, long ago, in a time before time, we were the first humans, when the universe was full of music and the gods enslaved us and mixed our essences with those of donkeys and bats, desiring intelligence, strength and the ability to fly in the dark. We served Tiamat faithfully, that ancient witch, the mother of chaos, that incarnation of the formless deep, who used us as her messengers, but afterwards banished us forever into the abyss where we slumbered like the dead. Luckily, your kind keeps digging tunnels into the earth and you freed us, and you must now bear the fire of our wrath, you, the beloved offspring of Tiamat.”

Jack didn’t know what the boy-man was talking about. He noticed something that made him start hurrying away. The boy-man straightened up abruptly and stood about six feet high. He had been bent to hide his true height from Jack. What Jack had thought of as his thobe now looked like an overcoat and it was twitching like wings. It was not a cloth he was wearing; it was part of his body. He was no longer a boy-man, but a man. A fully grown man. Maybe even a thing, a creature. What kind of a man could he be, anyway?

“Do you dream about donkeys, Jackie? Do you dream about us?” the thing asked. It was grinning again. Snarling, really.

Jack sped towards the Atamos’ house.

The thing chased after him. It was galloping like a horse, its feet clopping on the pavement.

“We want you, Jackie,” it was saying. “We will get you no matter what. You can run but you can’t hide from us. We are the chosen few and we will get you. Beware of the sky because sometimes we fly.”

Jack accelerated and never looked back. If he had, he would have seen that the thing had vanished from behind him and that there was a giant black thing flying over the estate.

He burst into the Atamos’ house without knocking and startled Mr. Atamo, who rose from his seat in a split-second, standing straight like the soldier he was.

“Holy Kabuga!” he swore, scowling. “Jack, is that you?”

Jack wanted to say, “Yes sir!” like Roy had taught him but he could not speak. He was breathless and his chest was on fire.

Roy’s father dashed past him and went outside the house. He came back several minutes later.

“Who was chasing after you?” he demanded. He was a big man, built like a rugby player.

Jack tried to speak but coughed instead. His throat was dry and itching.

“Roy!” Mr. Atamo shouted suddenly, startling Jack. He was facing upstairs.

“Yes, sir!” Roy shouted back. He came down running as if he was also being chased.

“Give your friend some water,” Mr. Atamo said firmly.

“Holy Kabuga!” Roy exclaimed when he saw Jack, his eyes bulging. “Jesus and the Saints! Where did you come from and why are you looking like someone tried to bury you alive?”

“Give him some water, will you?”

Roy went to the kitchen and came back with a glass of water. Jack drank it gratefully.

“Where have you been all day, bro?” Roy was asking. “I looked for you all day and then you pop up in here looking like you’ve been dancing with the Devil.”

Jack pointed outside. “There was . . .” he started and coughed again.

“There was what?” Roy pressed.

Mr. Atamo was also looking at him with interest.

“Something chased after me,” he said finally. He was still shaking but the water had helped him.

“What did it look like?” Roy pressed. “Did it have wings? Was it flying?”

Beware of the sky because sometimes we fly

Jack looked at Roy questioningly and nodded.

Roy turned to his father. “I think it is here.”

“Jack, are you sure?” Mr. Atamo demanded.

Jack nodded again.

Roy and his father went outside. Jack followed them but remained at the door. He dreaded the night. He saw that Roy and his father were searching the sky with their eyes. They knew something about the monster that Jack didn’t know.

“If it is here, we’ll catch it,” Mr. Atamo was saying.

“We’ll catch it,” Roy repeated after his father.

They came back to the house and Roy invited Jack to his room upstairs. Mr. Atamo went back to watching TV from his seat.

“Did you also hear something on the roof?” Jack asked. He had managed to catch his breath.

“Roof?” Roy questioned.

“My sister and my father heard something on the roof last night.”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“Then how do you know that it flies?”

“I’ll tell you, but first you have to tell me where you were the whole day. You decided to go AWOL on your bestie, right?”

“I went out with my dad,” Jack said. His enthusiasm for the day had evaporated. He couldn’t recall why he had been so excited in the first place.

“That’s great,” Roy said. “Your dad is nice,” he added when they reached the room he shared with one of his brothers. Two of his brothers were in boarding schools outside Nairobi. The eldest was in the university. “My dad used to be nice like that before he went to Somalia, and Al Shabaab did a number on him and his team. Nowadays, he is angry all the time.”

Roy didn’t look happy when he said those things about his father. Jack felt sad for him.

“Did your dad buy the newspaper today?” Roy asked. He climbed onto his bed and sat down with his legs folded in a Budha-like position. Jack climbed after him and sat in a similar fashion.

“Yes.”

“Did you read it?”

“No.” Jack’s father read the newspaper after returning home in the evening.

“You should have,” Roy said. “It says Batman is in Mathare.”

Jack was lost for a moment. “Batman?” he asked. “Like on TV?”

“Yeah.”

Jack still didn’t see the point of the story. Why did it matter if the people in Mathare were watching Batman on TV? “They like it?” he asked.

“No, they don’t. That is why it is news.”

“If they don’t like cartoons, they can watch something else,” Jack said, thinking about Lin telling him that she hated cartoons.

“It is not a cartoon,” Roy laughed aloud at his friend. “Oh, poor Jack! Are you telling me that the only Batman you know is the cartoon Batman?”

“Is there another kind of Batman?”

Roy sighed. “Anyway, don’t worry. There is a reason we are friends. You need me.”

He pulled out a copy of Saturday Nation from a bedside drawer, unfolded it and handed it to Jack.

“Look at the headline,” he said, pointing.

Batman in Mathare was the main headline, and below it: Sightings reported of a winged creature hovering over the slum at night. Children believe it is Batman. Parents say creature could be responsible for child disappearances, begs gov’t to investigate. Full story on Pg. 7.

Jack flipped to the referenced page. The story began with the details of a mother named Martha Kwamboka, who had lost two boys in one day. They had disappeared in the evening after returning from school. They had been playing outside the house.

Nilikuwa kwa nyumba nikiwapikia, the mother was quoted saying. Nilipotoka nje kuwaita waingie ndani, sikuwapata hapo walipokuwa wanachezea. Nilidhani walienda kwa jirani. Kuuliza, hakuna aliyewaona. Hadi leo hawajaonekana.

The paper said she had been speaking with a lot of pain, having no hope, “a tormented look on her face . . . her gut-wrenching tears.”

Jack scanned the rest of the story and closed the paper. He didn’t like it, and it was worsening his day.

“It is not Batman,” he told Roy.

“I know,” Roy said.

“It is a creature with wings.”

“Did you read what one of the mothers said?”

Jack thought he may have missed it. “What did she say?” he asked, reluctant to open the newspaper again.

Roy took the newspaper and returned to page 7. “Right here,” he pointed at a paragraph towards the bottom of the page.

Kilichonishangaza ni ya kwamba watoto wangu walianza kuwa na ndoto kuhusu punda.

Jack read the quoted text in silence, again and again, until his eyes froze over the words. At some point, he stopped seeing them, though their implications continued to reverberate in his mind.

Do you dream about donkeys, Jackie? Do you dream about us?

“All the lost children were dreaming about donkeys,” Roy said. “It is estimated that 6538 children have disappeared in Nairobi alone in the past year. My dad said that it is almost eighteen children per day. Imagine.”

Jack looked at his friend without saying anything. He felt weak and lay down on the bed.

We will get you no matter what. You can run, but you can’t hide from us.

“Don’t be scared,” Roy comforted, observing him. “Me and my dad will catch that monster. We think it is the one that killed Millicent.”

“It said we,” Jack said absently. He was losing focus on the conversation.

“What?” Roy asked, shaking him back to focus.

“The monster that was chasing after me. It said, ‘We want you, Jackie.’ It is not one monster.”

“It talked to you?” Roy asked in astonishment.

Jack narrated the whole happening on the basketball court.

“Jesus and the Saints, Jack! Osman, then monster? Holy Kabuga! I think you saw the Devil.”

Jack was quiet. Now that he’d had time to contemplate the story as he was telling it, he wondered why he had not taken off as soon as he had begun noticing the oddities in the monster. He could have been killed and eaten like Millicent and the other children.

“They were human once,” Jack said, remembering. “Someone turned them into donkey people with wings.”

“So it seems,” Roy agreed.

Jack hung out at the Atamos until after the 9 o’clock news had been read.

“Can you ask your dad to call my dad to come get me?” he asked.

“No need of that,” Roy said, climbing down from the bed. “Me and my dad will gladly take you to your place. My dad said he wants to get that monster. He has a pistol,” he added proudly.

Outside, the estate was quiet. Yellow lights spilled out from curtained windows. The security lights, together with the driveway and footpath lights, shone brilliantly. Mr. Atamo led the way while Jack and Roy brought up the rear. Jack did not see anyone else outside at this time.

They had just exited the Atamos’ compound and were on the main driveway when wings suddenly flapped above them like bedsheets in the wind.

They looked up in unison, braking without even knowing it. Their eyes were wild, searching the sky, and their breaths held.

Something swooped down on them. Jack saw it coming, a huge black thing, wings folded behind it, descending rapidly.

Jack made an attempt to run but Roy grabbed him firmly. “Don’t worry,” Roy said.

Mr. Atamo reached for his pistol, which had been carefully tucked in his waist. He did something with his thumb, then pointed it up and fired three consecutive shots.

The creature squealed louder than the crack of the gunfire. It was thrown off-course, and its wings unfolded as it tried to regain balance. Jack saw that they were as wide as blankets. He watched it until it crashed in the compound next to the Atamos’. It crashed on a car belonging to Mr. Muga, and made a thunderous sound that shook the estate with a jolt. All the car alarms went off, and dogs barked wildly in the neighbouring estates.

Mr. Atamo ran towards the creature, and Jack and Roy followed. Jack heard the steel doors creaking open as neighbours rushed out of their houses and began shouting their inquiries. He envisioned Susie worrying about where he was and his father rushing out of their house to come find him. Invigorated by this vision, he ran faster.

The creature had fallen on Mr. Muga’s brand-new Mazda Axela and completely destroyed it. The car was almost flat on the ground, the wheels bent sideways, and the glass sprayed everywhere. The creature’s wings were almost covering the entire car.

The creature was still alive when Jack got there. It was stirring and groaning in pain. A bullet had lodged in its forehead, which should have killed it, though for some reason, it hadn’t. Another bullet had grazed its abdomen but without any serious damage, while the third one had struck its neck and destroyed the arteries there, disabling its flight. Blood was spurting forth from the wounds. It looked black in the LED lights, and it stank.

The creature looked like a hairy offspring of a human, a donkey and a bat. It had an elongated equine face, its lips thick and loose, concealing jaws lined with rows and rows of sharp, bone-crushing teeth. Its ears were too small for the size of its head, almost entirely made of holes filled with delicate coils of protruding membranes the colour of a desert sky. Its eyes were frighteningly human, albeit set too far apart, having some form of intelligence in them and seeming to plead for its life. It had toeless feet so short they reminded him of the stumps of amputated legs. Curved knifelike retractable talons, designed for killing, were projecting from the blunt ends of its stunted feet. Its fingers were designed for gripping, long and curled, the palms rough and leathery and lacking the lines on human palms. Its nails looked human but dirty, black, and as hard as hooves. Its skin was loosely folded leather, its wings those of a bat.

Mr. Atamo shot it three more times in the head. It made a disturbingly high-pitched human-like squeal and then went limp. It was almost as if it had called out for help.

Mr. Muga pushed aside his window curtains and peered outside with eyes filled with dismay. He was a tall, gaunt-looking man of fifty with an elongated beer belly. He looked all shrivelled now.

“My car,” he cried hoarsely. “My new car.”

He came out too feeble to stand on his own, supporting himself on the wall. “You are going to pay for my car,” he cried.

Jack wondered whether he was seeing the monster or not.

Mr. Atamo ignored him completely and spoke with the guards who had just arrived. One of them informed him that he had called the police.

Soon, the compound was swarming with neighbours. Jack looked for his family but could not find them in the throng. He was pushed further back towards the driveway as adults jostled one another out of the way to view the dead Batman of Mathare—as the newspaper had called it. Some people were taking photos of it with their smartphones. Others who had read the story in the paper were congratulating Mr. Atamo.

As he was searching for Susie and his father among the adults going past him, Jack heard a distant squeal somewhere in the night sky. He looked up searchingly but did not see anything. Too much light around him had rendered him unable to see far into the sky. Whatever was coming was still beyond his eyeshot. He listened again but heard nothing. Nevertheless, he was sure he had heard something above the din of the crowd.

Me and my family… We are the chosen few.

“Roy!” he shouted, facing Mr. Muga’s compound. “Roy!”

The commotion was swallowing up his voice. He started fighting his way back to where he had left Roy. He had to get Roy out of there. Roy would have done the same for him. He looked once towards his own house and hoped his family would be safe there, praying they would not come here.

“Roy! Roy!”

He was still calling out for his friend when he heard several squeals just above Mr. Muga’s house.

The residents of Ngong Avenue Estate had been cornered.

A woman named Ayaan Mohamud—known in the estate as Mama Leyla after her lovely firstborn daughter who got along with everybody—looked up in terror and let out a nerve-chilling scream. She scared her neighbours, who broke up in a panic and took off helter-skelter. The sky was blackened by numerous creatures ready for vengeance. They were circling over Mr. Muga’s house like vultures over a carcass. Mama Leyla began running after her friends, but she tripped on her abaya and sprawled on the pavement, where she was quickly trampled to death. Blood poured from her mouth like a river in Hell.

Mr. Atamo raised his Glock 17 9mm Luger pistol and fired randomly into the sky until the gun clicked emptily. This time, he did not hit anything as the creatures flew swiftly and in circles. He pulled a new magazine out of his pocket, and as he was reloading, one of the creatures dived down on him and dug its terrible claws into his shoulders, tearing his collarbones and shattering his shoulder blades. It raised him as if wanting to fly away with him, gripped his neck with its powerful hands, and ripped off his head with one bite.

Roy was dumbfounded. He was gaping at his father’s headless body jerking on the pavement and thinking that it was impossible. Nobody could kill his father. His father was the only soldier in the estate. His father had fought the Al Shabaab and survived. His father’s team had been slaughtered, but his father had taken down five terrorists with nothing but his Glock. His father had said that he could only die in a war. Was this a war? No way it was. How could his father be dead? His father had taught him never to be afraid of anyone or anything and to never be fat like the children in the estate who were fat, like snacks for cannibals.

Roy was still dumbfounded when his own head was split in two by a talon the size of a sickle. He collapsed right where he was standing. He kicked about for a while before becoming still. His body was picked up and shared between two monsters.

A man named Calvin Kiarie—CK to his friends—who had recently moved into the house vacated by Millicent’s parents, and who was a newly licensed gun holder still target-practising in the shooting range, had come prepared with his gun. It was an old .44 calibre magnum with a powerful recoil. He had bought it cheaply from a retired government detective known only as JJ. He raised it up with both hands, which were shaking badly, aimed, and fired at one of the creatures. Instead, he shot Mrs. Muga who had been standing in front of him. He shot her in the left cheek and blew off half her face. Blood was jetting forth and chunks of flesh were falling from her head. She was trying to say something or to scream—CK couldn’t tell which—but the sound of her choking on her own blood was driving him mad. Her tongue was dangling on the open side of her face.

“Fuck!” CK swore in terror and dropped the gun. “Fuck! Fuck! . . .”

He was still swearing when one of the creatures grabbed his head in its dreadful jaws and crushed it like food. Pieces of his brain were squirted from the creature’s mouth.

Mr. Muga, who had been mourning his car above all else, saw what had happened to his wife and shrieked violently. He turned to flee into the house, stumbled, fell, rolled, got up on his knees, and instead, crawled confusedly towards Dorothy’s corpse, thinking that she did not want him to leave her alone. He was halfway there when he was picked up and sliced in half by one swing of the deadly talons, his intestines spilling on his fleeing neighbours.

The guard who had phoned the police was called Bernard Njoroge. He was thinking that when all this horror had ended, his colleagues who had been fired for negligence in the death of Millicent Mubari would be reinstated at work. He would prove to the company that Millicent had been devoured by a chimeric creature that looked like something out of the book of Revelation. He would do the right thing and save his colleagues from a lifetime of joblessness. He thought all these things while sprinting for cover, hunted by an apocalyptic beast. He was an altruist, a faithful Christian, worried about his colleagues’ welfare while his own life wasn’t assured.

He leapt over the footpath topiaries and dropped into a compound belonging to Dr. Denis Oloo, who had been a surgeon at the Nairobi Hospital but who was now dead, gutted like a fish. He contemplated hiding in the topiaries but decided to get under Dr. Oloo’s Toyota Fortuner, where he lay down still like a corpse. The beast hunting him landed in the compound and sniffed him out. It put its unnaturally long hands under the car, lifted it high up as if it weighed nothing at all, and then used it to smash Ben-Njoro to death. Ben-Njoro was all pulp when the beast flew away from there. He was smudged on the pavement like a mosquito slapped on the wall. The police whom he had called never came.

Jack ran towards his house. He had started running after seeing Roy’s brain oozing out of his head. He was ducking as the creatures swooshed above. He was almost past the playground when a fat man suddenly fell in front of him and tripped him. He fell and hit his head on the pavement, and for an instant, it was like all the lights in the estate had gone out. He could hear a ringing sound in his head. He scrambled to get up, his legs wobbly, his head throbbing, but the fat man, scrambling, too, fell on him and crushed him with a hundred and sixty kilograms of flesh. He passed out.

When he came to, he was under the Subaru Outback his mother used to drive but had since been bequeathed to Susie. The fat man had carried him and shoved him under there. He had been a kind-hearted man and he had felt sorry for falling on a child. His name was George Kipchumba, and he had been shredded into a putrid pile of fat and guts.

Jack slithered out from under the car and bolted into the house. His body was an explosion of pain as he ran, his muscles on fire. The house was empty. He didn’t find Susie or his father. He searched for them both downstairs and upstairs in vain. By the time he found Lin in her room, he was too weak to stand on his own legs. He collapsed on the floor. The shock of losing Susie and his father devastated him. Lin was lying in bed with her earphones plugged in her ears, listening to the new hit song called Together To Get Her by The Hus Bands. She was humming along, completely oblivious to what had been going on.