Osas was dead. Suddenly, it was like death was heavy in the chilly air, waiting and seeing, mocking its yet unclaimed victims, it made Lekan shiver violently.

She had been in a hurry to push to the front of the disaster and the heady scent of blood, now she wanted nothing than to run far away from it. She began the push away, until she was a considerable distance from the dead, until she could breath clear air again but she could never erase the bloody sight from her head.

Lekan saw the moment the deaths dawned on the crowds of her mates and the other staffs, at first, it had been a sight they wanted to see, to gossip about, but now the gravity of it was settling heavy on their shoulders, that the Warden didn't even have to shout twice for them to clear the path and retreat like frightened mice. The Warden himself was dressed in his pyjamas and barked in a shaky voice that the generator be turned on for proper lighting.

The second they did, the murmurs rose, some expressing disgust, some even tainted with repulsive excitement, but there was fear in all of them. It was a sign clear without being spoken or written; in the end, death comes for all of us.

Except this death was premeditated, it was planned and Lekan knew it. It scared her how many others knew too, how many others had planned it.

The thought alone made her want to vomit, that was until she caught sight of hazy figure standing besides her, the last person she wanted to see.

"That wasn't unexpected." Zeke said. Lekan cast a gaze at him, peering closely into his face, noting that he looked the least bit uncomfortable, she wondered if it was because it reminded him of his own death.

"So you keep saying, but I don't know why."

"Because it was supposed to happen, because someone always dies this way every year in Mary Slessor."

Lekan cast his a sharp look. "I thought you didn't remember anything about your death."

"Almost nothing, my memories are hazy, I can remember my name, my fears, my dreams, ambitions  but every time I try to remember the events leading up my death or my family, I come up blank. But this is common knowledge, you would know this if you asked around."

Nehemiah, Lekan remembered, Nehemiah would know. She wondered if this why he hated his time in Mary Slessor, although there really wasn't anything to like.

She was in the motion of answering Zeke when she noticed the glances being cast at her. It was then she remembered that she was the only one who could see Zeke, to others, she was simply a lunatic speaking to the air. She gave them a sheepish smile, and gave up when they shrunk back in fright.

She bet that before sunrise, the rumour would have spread that not only was she a troublemaker, she was also crazy.

Lekan resorted to speaking in whispers through her teeth.

"The Warden's your father." She told Zeke quietly. "That's what I found out."

He didn't speak for the longest time, only when the Warden screamed to the crowd gathered that they returned to the girls dormitory, all of them including the boys. Nobody dared to protest, they had seen all there was to see — Lekan wished they weren't dead wrong, wished she didn't know that some of them would be next, like she had known for Osas.

"That's not the worst, is it?"

Lekan gave a shake of her head. "No, more people are going to die, I think their murderers were yours and I think your father has something to do with it."

As they walked, Lekan recounted the story to him, telling him of the Warden's strange phone call. He nodded to every sentence and every time his face grew grimmer.

He stopped right in front of the girls dormitory and she did the same, brushing shoulders with a burly boy who turned to give a long stare.

"Do you think he did it?" Zeke asked.

Lekan was thrown aback by the question, even though she knew her answer. She sighed and blinked up at him, noting for the first time that he was only a few inches taller than her.

"In comic books, there's the bad and there's the big bad." She began, and if she weren't so exhausted she might have smiled at the baffled look that made his jaw drop.

"Why are we talking about comic books?" Zeke gave a teasing smile that was only half genuine. She ignored his words.

"I am making a comparison, and if you must know, I draw comics." Lekan didn't know why she told him that, only that she had wanted to. Very few people knew that she liked drawing, it wasn't like she had a hoard of friends to tell it to, when she had told Nehemiah, he had given her a grin and bought her several sketch pads and drawing tools, he thought it was something she liked doing as a hobby.

Nehemiah didn't know that she secretly harboured the dream of one day becoming the next Stan Lee, and maybe that was why she told Zeke now, because speaking it out to more people made it feel less like a stupid dream, no matter how far fetched it was.

Still, when Zeke's lips parted slightly in surprise, she was pleased, good shock or bad shock was still shock. It didn't matter to her.

For so long, she had reveled in the shock of others, whenever she spoke decent English, their mouths would hang open as if they didn't expect a street rat to be anything other than a street rat so she was now hell bent on shocking all of them with everything she did.

"Do I think The Warden has something to do with all this? Yes, but do I think he's the mastermind behind this, no. I'm not sure what he has to gain from killing his own students."

"You know they will rule these deaths a suicide?" Zeke told her.

"They look like suicides." Lekan admitted, for the first time, she doubted her theory, what if it was nothing supernatural instead? What if it was just a suicide? That reason was more reasonable, more logical, than the Warden dipping his hands in their blood.

When she looked at Zeke, he was smiling, because he knew very well that that was as far an investigation those boys would get, and even if there was a murderer, it would never be proven, never even be thought of. Just like Zeke's own death.

Lekan was determined to find out, so she told Zeke. "We need to find out how you died."

***

Like an ominous warning, the next day was heavy with rain, every time Lekan stared up at the dark blue clouds she expected the rain to come down in harsh torrents but it only seemed to grow gloomier. Amongst other obvious reasons, the rain was another excuse for classes to be cancelled and every one seemed to take it well, the fear was long gone and now gossip spread like a swarm of bees after their victim.

Rumours swirled about the reasons why three seemingly normal boys chose to take their own lives. Zeke had been right, nobody worried that there might be a malevolent spirit or entity after their lives, they instead thought that it was nothing but the foolish decisions of three dead boys. Lekan had overhead a lanky boy joke about how the dead boys were probably rotting in another version of hell, the first version being Mary Slessor itself and she had wanted nothing more than to sucker punch him and all his friends that laughed along.

But that would have put her in the sight of the Warden again, it was why she was surprised when she was summoned by the grouchy matron to the man's office. Lekan admitted to herself that she was partly curious, she hadn't gotten a clear look at him during the incident at midnight, there was no telling if he was pleased or if he even had a hand in anything.

A part of her wanted to believe that he didn't know anything, that strange phone call was nothing but a strange coincidence, she didn't like the role she was slowly shifting into —hero, after all, there was truth in the Warden's words; death is a call we must answer.

Who was she to interfere with it? By all indications, she was safe from its clutches. Except, she had been among the twenty four chosen for the evening class by the maths teacher she was beginning to doubt was anything but innocent, and while she could sense death, it didn't mean she could sense hers. The thought was a new one and even scarier than the former.

Lekan halted her steps at the threshold of the door, it wasn't the Warden sitting in his office, it was Nehemiah and her mother in her wheelchair. They were discussing in hushed tones that told her that there was no good reason to be here.

Lekan took a moment to stare intently at her mother's back frame. Folu Daniels and Lekan had never gotten along, the former was almost always in the hospital for most Lekan's childhood but the last straw had been when she found out her daughter had  taken to selling her body to afford the drugs she needed urgently.

Nobody had cared that she had been only thirteen, barely a teenager, the bosomy pimp only cared that she was thick in all the right places, so did her 'customers'. Folu had been positively furious, but mostly angry at her own self, both mother and daughter had never moved past it. Now, while she was still frail that she needed the wheelchair, she was looking less thin than the last time they had seen each other.

Nehemiah must have been keeping good on his promise to handle the medical bills, Lekan hated every bit of his kindness, because she knew he didn't have a secret stash of money, he was taking it out of whatever salary he got running a NGO.

"Is something wrong?" Lekan asked, finally stepping in and regretting it when her mother turned her head. She might be less thin, but Lekan could see how hard every inhale was, how her chest rose and fell with visible effort, how her dark skin stretched thin over hollow bones. Every struggle had been worth nothing.

"Lekan!" Nehemiah brightened in a manner that was too cheerful to be true.

"Olamilekan," Folu said flatly.

"Ekasun, mummy." Lekan returned the greeting, bending her knees slightly in an subconscious movement.

"Where is the Warden?" Lekan asked. "Why are you here?"

Nehemiah and Folu were quick to exchange a glance, her mother gave Nehemiah a glare that told him to break the bad news instead. Although it must not be all bad if Folu could take it, so Lekan steeled her spine. She had a few questions of her own too.

"He's not here, for now." Nehemiah told her. "Mr. Badmus called me himself last night, 3am to be exact, he told me what happened."

Lekan frowned. To her, it was strange that The Warden would tell Nehemiah something that had nothing to do with him, especially since she hadn't even been involved.

"He was arrested this morning."

Lekan took a step back. "Arrested? Why?"

"It was clearly suicides."

Nehemiah gave a grim nod. "Lekan, do you know how many suicides have happened under the Warden's eight year watch, almost fifty." He said. "The police decided to look into it and he was arrested quietly this morning, only a few of the staffs know this."

Lekan wanted to sit down, grip onto something at least. Fifty suicides? Things were even more worse than she knew.

"Why are you here?" Lekan heard herself ask.

Nehemiah shared another look with her mother, it was still unclear why the woman was with him although it was clear that they had both rehearsed this. Maybe she was to be the voice of reason.

"Things are still unclear for now, but as your lawyer, it is my job to work out these things before they happen, I have filled for an appeal and I am hoping for a quick court date."

"But we agreed to wait a while, to get good merits, then we'd have a fighting chance." Lekan pointed out. The sudden changes were dizzying. "Why are we changing plans?"

Nehemiah inhaled sharply.

"Because in a matter of weeks, Mary Slessor will be shut down, it was decreed this morning by the government."

***

Boys will be boys, The girl had heard this many many times, pondered it many times, why weren't girls granted this same immortality?

It was what Helen, the bosomy woman who ran the run down brothel said when any girl complained about a customer being rough, she would hiss and flippantly comment it in her nasal accent. It was a universal excuse and the girl began to chant it to herself whenever she saw them; the strange pack of hazy men that would line themselves in front of the brothel, leering at the scantily clad girls. The girl learnt that death never changed a man, never made them any worse, or any good.

The girl wondered what would happen the day girls began to be boys, when girls fought back with bruised knuckles and bloody grins.