The Mushroom House

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A mission is either possible or impossible, so was my case at the age of 11. Back then, I used to make my own laws, rules and regulations to suit whichever thing that pops up for and against me.
Okay, that's by the way.
For the record, I grew up in a family where I was the only child of my father. Due to the fact that my Daddy wanted more kids, he married another wife when I was five while my mom proceeded to almost to her menopause years.
I saw this as my major challenge as my stepmother was not the happy type.
Yeah, playing with her was like messing with a hungry tiger. For that reason, I avoided her like a green grass garden full of green snakes.
My mom on the other hand resisted her from taking full control of what my father eats so as to avoid her from giving my father love potion.
Yeah, she's capable of doing such thing because she was unable to have a child of her own after five years of marriage.
At 6 years of being married to my father, my stepmother still had no child of her own. This changed her agenda from being a neutral housewife to the wicked type. She stiffened her face everyday all day, just to scare me away from even saying good morning to her.
This increased the level of avoidance of her in me.

On my 11th birthday, I decided to explore some buildings in my father's compound in the absence of my mother. It was fun discovering some hidden truths about my father who starched some goodies beneath our building. Down in the crawl space, my father hid some money of different currencies, machetes, ancient guns like those used in the first world war, some of his properties when he was a young boy and many fun this about him.
As I crawled to my mother's room, I discovered that she also hid some pancakes, lipsticks and many old-time photos of her and other young men holding her from left to right. I laughed while viewing her childhood photos because she looked very small with less hair on her forehead.
When I crawled to my stepmother's room, I saw nothing. Not even a pen was there. Everything was just blank, neat as if she does clean up on hourly basis. This got me thinking and worried.
Of course yes, I wanted to know more about her past in order to fight her present and presence in our house.

A week passed after my fun discoveries and I wanted more.
In front of our house was a mushroom house lived by my grandmother before my father was able to build a family house for the entire family.
From my observations, the house has been locked from the day that my grandma was buried. The house usually has footprints around it in the morning and by noon, the footprints disappear. Also, there used to be noise oozing out from the windows of the house in the midnight.
Yeah, a lady's voice most times and deep laughter at times. Is that my next tomb to raid?

On a beautiful Monday morning of Salah holiday, everyone was in the parlor viewing a movie presented by African Magic TV, I sneaked out to complete my mission in the compound.
My grandma's house was the target and nothing seemed to prevent me from raiding the island full of tombs.
Yeah, there could be many gold jewelries inside there or artifacts which need to be honored.
I peeped from the windows of the mushroom house and saw nothing because, everything was covered with thick black wrappers, but their structures were observable.
I looked back to observe if anyone was watching me, but no one was present.

Boom!
I used my father's key from his crawl space to override the padlock.
As I entered the house, everything looked new and fresh as if it was used few minutes before I entered.
I walked from left to right, just to identify which item I should unveil before others.
"There you are!".
A small center table with a structure looking which looked like a spindle.
I unveiled it slowly, should in case it was a snake, it would be easier to close it back to whatever that was used to bound it.
After removing the covering, the second covering revealed that it was a knife pinned on something on the table. I hurriedly removed the clothing since I've seen the first content.
Lo and behold, it was a knife pinned on a dolly's head with red ribbon tied very stiff on it.

"My God?!"
"How did I get here?."
I forcefully dragged the veils away, hoping that I could understand what they were used to cover, but I became more confused.
"Hello!"
"Who's there?!"
"I'm lost finally!"
I heard voices from the darkest side of the room, asking several questions.
As a kid ful of thoughts, I ran out of the house straight to my father's parlour to call for help.
As I got there, I saw my stepmother pointing a pistol at my father while my mother laid down on the floor burying her face on the ground.
I slowly walked away from the parlour to find help for my parents.
At first, I went to uncle Uche who discouraged me with painful words saying "I don't interfere with my brother's family issues".

I left his house immediately to see auntie Sade the herbalist to reveal every detail of my findings.
She quickly followed me to the house and getting to our compound, she paused, illustrated as if all the evils on earth emanated from our compound.
She first stopped my stepmother from shooting my father for not giving her a child, secondly she summoned some able bodied youths to invade my grandmother's mushroom house to bring out all the items of her shrine.
"What?!"
I thought that it was my stepmother's shrine?!

Auntie Sade burnt every single item from the shrine before wishing my father well in his new life.
For me, it's just and exploration, but to them, it's everything good on their way.
After two years of the invasion, my mother and stepmother gave birth to two handsome bouncing baby boys.
Waw!
The skeletons in my grandmother's mushroom house was really at work. Thanks to auntie Sade for her great powers and understanding.

This is my short story for inkwell 74.
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