OLD SOLDIER NEVER DIE!

House 12, Aramoru close was Old soldier's Two-storey ediface. The last house on the close where we lived ever since I was an embryo.

'Old soilder', as popularly called by most people on the street was a former military officer in the Biafran army during the civil war in 1967

With the way he was without scars or lifelong injury, it was seemingly hard to believe Old soldier fought in the Nigerian-Biafran war, killing over 35 adversaries as he claimed.

Even at 84, he was still walking erect with his sturdy and well proportioned body.

He was an old but frisky, funny man who made all the little children his playmates, the youth his peers and the elders his talking buddies.

Everyone loved being around him not only because he was a good story teller but because he seemed to know the history of Nigeria and all her leaders better than a well-rounded book of Nigeria's current and past affairs.

He once told us a story of how he and his unit of soldiers ran out of ammunition in the middle of a hellish gun battle. He said in a loud, husky voice;

" I thought it was the end. Like in a trans, I began seeing angels from the realm of their majestic glory calling me home. It was a magical sight to behold. At that moment, the enemies knew what had happened. They knew they had to fully unleash their possible attacking strategy because we were very much defenseless. they began ploughing forward, keen on bringing my men down. The Lieutenant asked for an order but I didn't give any because I was lost in a spiritual realm, with harmonious classical music being ministered to me by multitudinous angels.

My men had no other option but to retreat and run for their dear lives. I was left to die. They thought I had died. Then in a short while, I came back to reality. I didn't want to die yet, even if the angels song was one thing I would want to hear for the rest of my life. I still wish to drink from the stream that flows on sediments of the earth. I still want to live no matter what. Hastily, I looked round for an escape route and I found a heap of hay and hid myself beneath. Today, the rest is history!."

Everyone applauded the octogenarian. His stories were insightful they thought.

Everything was going on well with everyone and Old soldier until something tragic happened.

Like rubbing olive oil on the two palms, things became slippery and started getting out of hand when it was observed that old soldier was gradually becoming the shadow of his former self.

Old soldier wasn't the muscled, physically fit old man we used to know. His head was looking oddly shaped, apparently bigger than his scrawny, skinny and pallid bag of bones called skin.

Old soldier no longer came out to tell stories like he always do, neither did he relate with people the way he formerly did. He was indoor all day, all night.

Days turned weeks, weeks matured into months and still, nothing was heard of old soldier.
Everyone cared to go check up on him but no one dared to. They never know what could await them on their quest in finding out what went wrong with him.

His house wasn't as extraneously tidy as it used to be. The flowers were now overgrown. The windows looked dusty like it had never been cleaned for over hundred years. The appearance alone was scary– could possibly be compared to an abandoned house that was occasionally hunted by ghosts.

It was the wispy light of a burning candle that could be seen through one of the dusty windows that gave people the conviction that someone was still living in that house.

Many claimed they heard loud cries from the direction were the building was positioned. Few said they once saw a figure standing in front of the window laughing hysterically at God knows what. Nobody could phantom what was really going on at house 12. Still, no one dared to Move an inch closer to the rusty gate of the building.

One evening, after much deliberations were made during an impromptu gathering of few elders of Aramoru, seven hefty looking young men were appointed to go into old soldier's house of darkness so as to put the residents of Aramoru in light. They were to report to the elders and all other residents what they saw after their journey back from the last house on the street of Aramoru.
On entering the gate, they had only walked few steps when they began hearing alternating cries of new born babies and neurotic laughters of what seemed to sound like that of young maidens.

Fretfully, the young men walked up the stairs to the room where a burning candlestick was seen. All standing in front of the door, they heard a voice soliloquizing inside the room saying;

"The cries and laughter
of the unresting souls you heard,
were the ones I battered
during the days of sorrow and fear,
their skulls I scattered
in shrines, for my life I spare."

On hearing this, one of the seven men broke into the room and met old soldier in a horrifically inexplicable state. smiling devilishy at them.
Without thinking twice, they all took to their heels, not looking back, terrified at what they saw.
They got to the square were everyone waited for a feedback; breathing heavily like rats who escaped a weird cat's claws of death. None of them could explain what he saw. All they could say was;

"Old soldier never die"
"He will always live.. for he has redeemed his soul with that of many"!

©️ Yomi Spontaneous