December 23, 2016.
Two days until Christmas. Eight days until the new year.
The air was thick with the scent of roasting meat and the sound of laughter. My siblings—Ade and Ngozi—had arrived from boarding school a week earlier, their bags stuffed with dirty laundry and stories of dormitory mischief. The neighborhood buzzed with excitement; strings of colorful lights draped over fences, carols hummed under breath, and the occasional firework cracking in the distance like a premature celebration of the year's end.
But something was… off.
I hadn't noticed it at first, not until Mama pointed it out while sweeping the front porch.
"Have you seen any rats lately?" she asked, frowning.
I shrugged. "Maybe they're on holiday too."
She didn't laugh.
It was strange, now that I thought about it. The usual scurry of rodents in the gutters, the nightly rustling in the trash bins—gone. Even the stray dogs that roamed the streets had vanished, as if they had all packed up and left town.
We didn't think much of it.
The day dawned bright and golden, the sun spilling over the horizon like melted butter. We gathered in the living room, wrapping paper strewn across the floor, the scent of jollof rice and roasted chicken curling through the air. Papa turned up the old stereo, and we sang along to carols, our voices clumsy but joyful. For a few hours, everything was perfect.
Then the sky turned black.
At first, we thought it was an eclipse—some rare cosmic event the news had forgotten to warn us about. But the darkness didn't pass. It thickened, swallowing the sun whole, plunging the world into an unnatural twilight. Two hours crawled by, and the streetlights flickered on, casting long, skeletal shadows across the neighborhood.
The sun was gone.
Not hidden behind clouds. Not eclipsed. Just… gone.
The street was plunged into an eerie twilight, the kind of darkness that felt wrong, unnatural. Neighbors stepped out of their houses, looking up, murmuring in confusion.
"What's happening?" Ngozi whispered, clutching my arm.
"I don't know," I said, but my voice sounded shaky even to myself.
Papa turned on the radio. Static hissed, then a panicked voice crackled through:
"—reports of sudden darkness across multiple continents—scientists are baffled—no astronomical event predicted—"
Then the radio died.
Two hours passed. The darkness didn't lift.
Then, as if the world itself was gasping for air, the blackness receded—but the sky didn't return to blue.
Then, as if the universe itself was playing a cruel joke, the darkness receded—but not into light.
The sky turned red.
Not the soft pink of a sunset. Not the fiery orange of a bushfire.
Blood red.
A wind howled through the streets, tearing at rooftops, rattling windows like an angry spirit. Thunder boomed, not from clouds, but from the crimson void above, as if the sky itself was splitting open.
And then… the things came.
Then the screaming started.
Not from humans.
From something else.
A deep, guttural shriek echoed in the distance, followed by another. And another.
Papa rushed to the window, his face pale. "What in God's name—?"
Then we saw them.
They poured into the streets like a flood—twisted, grotesque things that moved wrong, their limbs bending in impossible ways. Some had too many eyes. Some had mouths that split their faces in half. Some slithered on the ground like serpents, their bodies glistening with something wet and dark.
And they were fast.
Mrs. Okonkwo was the first to die.
One of the creatures—a thing with elongated fingers ending in hooked claws—leaped onto her back and pulled.
I turned away before I saw the rest.
Chaos erupted. People ran, tripped, screamed. A man tried to fight back with a machete—the blade shattered against the creature's hide like glass.
"Get inside!" Papa yelled, slamming the door shut.
We barricaded ourselves in, listening to the carnage outside. The screams didn't last long.
Soon, the only sounds were the wet rips and crunches of feeding.
Time blurred.
We huddled in the dark, praying, crying, barely breathing. Ngozi sobbed silently into Mama's shoulder. Ade clutched a kitchen knife like it could save us.
The TV flickered back on for a moment—just long enough to show a news anchor, her face streaked with blood, whispering:
"They're everywhere… they're killing everyone… God help us—"
Then the screen went black again.
Twelve hours passed like a nightmare.
Then, as suddenly as it began, the red sky faded. The wind died. The creatures… vanished.
But the world outside was no longer ours.
We stepped outside at dawn, trembling, disbelieving.
Bodies littered the streets. Houses were torn apart. The air smelled of iron and smoke.
Somewhere, a woman wailed, clutching the lifeless body of a child. A man staggered past us, his eyes empty, muttering, "It's not real… it's not real…"
Our neighborhood was almost a graveyard. Houses stood with doors hanging open, bodies sprawled across thresholds as if they had been trying to escape even in death. Some people wandered the streets, their eyes blank, their mouths moving but no words coming out. Others clutched the corpses of their loved ones, rocking back and forth, whispering promises that would never be kept.
We thought it was over.
We were wrong.
Because exactly twenty-four hours after the first massacre, the sky turned red again.
And the monsters returned.
To Be Continue.....