Chapter 2: Madam Koi koi
The night was thicker than palm oil. Adana had climbed high into the branches of a massive iroko tree (palm tree), her small body pressed flat against the rough bark that still felt strangely warm, as if the tree itself was breathing.
Below her, in the circle of roots, the Egbere waited, ugly gnome-spirits with dripping noses and twisted faces, clutching their tattered mats of wealth. Their constant baby-like weeping rose and fell like wind through dry leaves.
Adana's voice trembled but did not break as she began, clinging tighter to the branch:
"Listen well, weeping ones of the dark forest. This is another true tale from the same cursed school grounds. The tale of the One Red Slipper…"
At St. Agnes Secondary School on the edge of Ifo, there was a teacher everyone both feared and secretly admired. Her name was Miss Adeola. She was tall and strikingly beautiful, skin like polished mahogany, eyes sharp as broken glass, and a figure that made even the senior boys forget their lessons for a moment.
But her beauty was cold steel. She never missed a single class, not even when the harmattan dust choked the air or when heavy rains turned the compound to red mud. She arrived exactly on time, cane in hand, voice stern and cutting.
The students hated her for it. "Witch," they whispered behind her back. "She has no home, no husband, no life outside these walls."
One rainy afternoon, Miss Adeola came to teach the SS3 seniors. The class was restless, the air thick with the smell of wet earth and frustration. When Senior Chinedu, the biggest and most stubborn boy in the class, started agitating, talking back and disrupting the lesson, Miss Adeola did what she always did.
She brought the cane down hard across his back, once, twice, three times, in front of everyone.
Chinedu said nothing. His eyes only darkened. He sat back down, silent, while the rain hammered the zinc roof like angry drums.
When classes ended that evening, Miss Adeola gathered her books and walked the long path toward the teachers' quarters at the far end of the compound. The rain had eased into a drizzle, but the bushes along the path were still heavy and dripping.
She never reached her room.
Four seniors, Chinedu and his closest friends, had followed her quietly.
They grabbed her from behind, one clamping a strong hand over her mouth before she could scream. As they dragged her struggling body into the thick bushes, one of her bright red slippers slipped off her foot and fell into the mud.
No one noticed.
They tied her tightly to an old guava tree deep in the bushes, wrists and ankles bound with rough ropes. Chinedu looked at her one last time, his face twisted with months of built-up anger.
"Enjoy your perfect attendance now, madam," he spat.
Then they left her there.
Miss Adeola died slowly over the next three days, of hunger, thirst, and the bites of ants and mosquitoes. Her beautiful face became gaunt. Her sharp eyes grew dull. No one came looking. The school assumed she had simply left without notice.
But it did not end there.
At the first hint of dusk, soft cries began to rise from the bushes, a woman's voice, broken and desperate. Security guards swept the area with their torches every evening. The beams cut through the darkness, but they found nothing. Only silence.
Then, at exactly 12 midnight, when the students were supposed to be asleep in their dorms, the sound started.
Koi… koi… koi…
One foot hitting the ground normally. The other dragging a single red slipper that somehow never quite touched the earth properly.
Koi… koi… koi… Where is my red slipper?
The limping footsteps moved slowly down the corridors between the boys' and girls' hostels. If any student was still awake, peeking through a window or sneaking to the toilet, Miss Adeola would appear at their bedside.
Still beautiful, but now gaunt and terrible, her eyes sunken, her once-perfect skin dry and cracked like old bark.
One foot bare and muddy. The other wearing the single red slipper that made that haunting koi koi koi sound.
She would lean close and whisper in the same stern voice she once used in class:
"Where is my red slipper?"
If the terrified student stammered, "I don't know, ma," the next morning their body would be found in bed, dried up like a twig, skin stretched tight over bones, all moisture sucked out as if the harmattan had claimed them in a single night.
But if, in panic, they answered, "I know where it is, ma," they would be gone by dawn. Bed empty. No trace. Never found again.
After the first three deaths, the entire school lived in terror. Students tied red threads around their ankles at night. Some slept with their eyes open.
No one dared walk the corridors after midnight. Yet the limping footsteps continued.
Koi… koi… koi… Where is my red slipper?
Some nights the sound stopped right outside a dormitory door. Some nights it entered.
Chinedu and his friends tried to act brave at first. But on the seventh night, Chinedu himself woke to the sound right beside his bed. Miss Adeola's sunken face hovered inches from his.
"Where is my red slipper?" she asked, voice as strict as ever.
He broke. "I… I don't know, ma!"
The next morning, they found him dried up like a twig, mouth frozen in a silent scream.
The others who had helped drag her vanished one by one, some answering that they knew, never to be seen again.
To this day, on rainy nights near the old St. Agnes compound, if you listen carefully after midnight, you can still hear it:
Koi… koi… koi…
And a woman's stern, beautiful voice asking the same question.
Adana fell silent high up in the tree, her small hands gripping the branch until her knuckles hurt. Below her, the Egbere had stopped their weeping for a moment. Their wet eyes gleamed up at her through the darkness, hungry and unsatisfied.
One of the ugliest creatures tilted its twisted head and let out a long, piercing baby cry that ended in words:
"The slipper still walks… More, small storyteller. Give us another tale before the moon sets, or we climb this tree and take you down ourselves."
Adana's heart raced. She could feel the bark beneath her shifting slightly, as if the tree itself wanted to shake her loose. She took a shaky breath and whispered into the dark:
"Please tomorrow night… I will tell you another…"
The Egbere settled, but their cries grew louder, more impatient.
Adana pressed herself harder against the branch, knowing her stories were keeping death away for one more night only.
And somewhere not far away, in the bushes of the abandoned school, a single red slipper still waited for its owner to find it.