The night she caught me—

the wind didn’t sound normal.

It carried her voice.

Not loud.

Not screaming.

But sharp enough to follow me all the way back to the lodge.

“Run,” Marvelous shouted as I burst through the door.

I slammed it behind me, chest heaving, sweat dripping down my face like I had outrun something worse than a person.

Because deep down—

I knew I had.

“She saw you?” Johnson asked, already moving to lock the door.

“She didn’t just see me,” I said, still trying to breathe.

“She looked at me.”

The room went quiet.

Marvelous shook his head, irritated.

“You’re not even smart, Kenneth. You let an old woman catch you stealing chickens?”

“I didn’t let her!” I snapped.

“She just… appeared.”

That was the part that didn’t make sense.

One second, I was alone in the yard.

Next second—

she was behind me.

Not running.

Not shouting.

Just… standing there.

Watching.

Johnson laughed it off.

“Relax. Nigeria is big. She won’t come looking for three broke students.”

That made sense.

At the time.

So we did what we always did.

We cooked the chicken.

The smell filled the room.

Rich.

Perfect.

Better than anything we could afford.

We ate everything.

Not one piece left.

And after that—

we never went back to her house again.

Weeks passed.

Then months.

Nothing happened.

Slowly—

we forgot.

Life moved forward.

I graduated.

Got a job.

Left the city.

Started building something real.

And the truth is—

I became someone I was proud of.

A good job.

A good salary.

A house.

A car.

Respect.

“Kenneth, you’ve done well,” my boss told me once.

“You’re one of the most reliable people here.”

I smiled.

Because I believed him.

I even got married.

My wife was beautiful.

Smart.

Kind.

Everything I thought I deserved after struggling for so long.

“I love our life,” she told me one evening.

We were sitting in our living room, the air conditioner humming softly, everything clean, everything perfect.

“Nothing can stop this,” I said.

And I meant it.

Because by then—

I had completely forgotten her.

The old woman.

Or at least—

I thought I had.

Until the first sign came.

It was small.

Almost nothing.

My wife stopped eating chicken.

At first, we laughed about it.

“I don’t know,” she said, pushing her plate away.

“It just smells… wrong.”

Wrong?

It was freshly cooked.

Perfectly seasoned.

But she refused to touch it.

Then—

she started having dreams.

Not every night.

But often enough.

“I keep seeing an old woman,” she said one morning, her face pale.

“She’s just standing there… looking at me.”

My heart skipped.

Just once.

“What kind of old woman?” I asked.

She hesitated.

“I don’t know,” she said slowly.

“But every time she looks at me…”

A pause.

“…I feel like she knows me.”

That night—

I couldn’t sleep.

Because for the first time in years—

I remembered.

Her face.

The way she stood there.

Silent.

Still.

Certain.

And something else.

Something I didn’t understand back then.

She hadn’t shouted when she caught me.

She had said something.

Soft.

Clear.

“You will eat,” she said.

At the time—

it meant nothing.

Now—

it wouldn’t leave my head.

Days passed.

Then something worse happened.

My wife got pregnant.

It should have been the happiest moment of my life.

And it was—

for about three days.

Until she started getting sick.

Not normal sickness.

She couldn’t keep food down.

Not rice.

Not soup.

Not anything.

Except—

one thing.

Chicken.

Only chicken.

“If I don’t eat it, I feel like I’m dying,” she whispered one night.

Her body shaking.

Her eyes hollow.

I froze.

Because I remembered something else.

That night in the lodge.

The taste.

The way we couldn’t stop eating.

The way it felt…

too good.

Something cold moved through my chest.

“Kenneth…” my wife said weakly.

“Please… get me chicken.”

I didn’t move.

Because suddenly—

it wasn’t food anymore.

It was something else.

Something that had been waiting.

All these years.

And as I stood there—

watching the woman I loved slowly change into something I didn’t understand—

I realized something that made my blood run cold.

The old woman never chased me.

She never needed to.

Because whatever she said that night…

didn’t follow me.

It stayed inside me.

Waiting.

And now—

it was ready

to be passed on.