Blood Rain

It wasn’t the red aliens that were the problem. It was the voodoo high priests that caused all the mischief. Monkey hands, parrot beaks, and baboon skulls were one thing. But when the blood rains came, all of the usual cons kicked into high gear.

The mantis-like, spindly red alien surveyed my vegetables with an air of fascination. He stopped on the okra, holding up a stalk and studying it. He was dressed in ripped whitewashed jeans and a Blink-182 T-shirt. But behind his disguise was a standard silver spandex jumpsuit, like they all wore when they came into town to creep around. Whatever else you could say about the red aliens, they were creepers by nature, with no sense of boundaries. I just wanted him to move along. I clenched a Final Notice of Foreclosure Auction in my hand, as if taking out my anger on the paper would save the family ranch.

Yahya Gabon took the deed to our ranch in foreclosure. Yahya was a cattle herder. But before that he had been a TAF General, and still had pull with the government. Yahya was hard. Implacable. Unyielding. A real monster. Yahya once shot and killed a six-year-old boy playing in his grazing pastures while the child begged for his life. The laws allowed one to protect their land from intruders. When asked why he’d done it, Yahya had said, “The signs on the perimeter say, ‘Stay Out—Trespassers Shot on Sight’ – wouldn’t mean nuthin’ if I didn’t follow through.”

The Police Nationale who had questioned him said, “Yahya—the kid was illiterate.”

“Guess he should have paid more attention in school,” Yahya had said.

The way Yahya looked at it was, when he set his eye on what’s yours, it was his if he could find a way to take it from you. Uncle Koffi was missing an eye from turning the other cheek in a fight as a boy. But the rock in the other kid’s hand had landed just right and shot the eyeball clean out. Uncle Koffi was a pacifist who wouldn’t even swat a mosquito. So, this was no contest.

I had told Uncle Koffi we should just give up the ranch. We couldn’t afford it. But Uncle Koffi was superstitious. He believed that fate could be wooed.

A few weeks earlier, I had gone with Uncle Koffi to the Akodessawa Fetish Market and met with Guedenon Benoit, “the Voodoo Man.” We entered his “office”—as he called it—which was a hut, with a square framed doorway lined with human skulls that looked like a no frills mine shaft leading into a catacomb. The standing air inside was stiff, musky, and moist. The walls of the inner chamber were filled with the dried heads of dogs, monkeys, birds, snakes, and every imaginable living thing you could think of. You could almost hear the animal sounds echo from the clay walls. Uncle Koffi gasped at the abundance of spirits filling this hovel. I did not share his sense of wonder. I joked to myself, internally, that this was, ‘The Great Roadkill Emporium of Lomé.’

“Here it is,” Guedenon said. His rounded jowl stubbled with patches of white, and his bald head shining from the torchlight. The basket was filled with little dried chameleons, with their helmet-shaped heads adorned with horns and bony lumps, like modern-day dinosaurs. It smelled like furry jerky, dried in the humid, tropical breeze. “Yes, yes, here we are.” After putting a handful of chameleons in a basket, Guedenon gathered a handful of dried parrots, each withered down to the size of a famished mouse. “Now. To change your luck, you will grind up the chameleon, and grind up the parrot.” Guedenon depicted the grinding while he spoke, taking up a pewter bowl and mallet to make the demonstration. The torchlight reflecting off his bald forehead. “You will mix this with soap and bathe yourself in it. Do this two times a day. Three days. Not a day more. Not a day less.”

Uncle Koffi tapped Guedenon on the shoulder while he looked for some other nonsense to sell us. “Did you hear about the Douleba?”

“You mean about the strangers whose minds could not be read?”

They were talking about these totems at the village gates by our farm that look like men sitting cross-legged, with arms extruded, and heads of black tar, with seashells for eyes. The guardians (or Douleba) are supposed to be able to scan the minds of foreigners entering the village, to discern if they have ill-intent.

“I heard that the Westerners, the lanky ones, who appeared before the blood rains—I heard that none of the priests could discern their purpose from the Douleba?” Uncle Koffi said.

“It is true,” Guedenon told him.

I wanted to scream. They are red aliens, you moron! No one knows what they want. But I couldn’t say anything, or I’d be committed.

I was the only one who could see them.

Ever since I was a child.

I had been hiking on Mt. Agou, exploring its ridges, when I saw a light in the mist and stumbled upon their cliffside observatory. Normally, it was cloaked. But something about the vapors in the mist had screwed with the effect. Did something to the light. When I walked into what looked like a temple from the outside, I saw a screen wrapping around the length of the chamber in a semi-circle. Large, spindly red mantis-like creatures with four legs on their hind parts were engrossed in the readings and images on their screens, tapping a way with long bony fingers on the consoles in front of them.

One of them turned its hooded eyes and triangular face in my direction and screamed, the pincers on the sides of its mouth flaring in fright. A group of them rushed toward me. I shielded my face. But they were not violent. That was when they gave me the scarab beetle amulet that allowed me to recognize them despite their cloaking tech and explained to me about the bright blue marble we inhabit.

They said, “It is not that Earth is special. There are plenty of habitable worlds with natural wonders. It is the size of the moon that counts. Our mission is to scan the cosmos to find other worlds that can host life—other worlds with just the right size of moon.” I had pressed the aliens as to why this was the case, and they had elaborated and explained everything in great detail—but I couldn’t understand much of it. “The only worlds that host life are those worlds with a moon that is just the right size to create a total solar eclipse,” one of the red aliens said. “And once that sacred syzygy goes out of balance—or is disrupted—life moves on.”

I had asked why they didn’t just place moons around any planets with the right characteristics. He said, “There is a directive against playing God. Each civilization rises and falls on its own merits. When the time comes, a people either mature and venture out from their home or are snuffed out.” It sounded dramatic, back then. But these days, I don’t know that a fair judge would deem us worthy of salvation. Least of all us Togolese—who were forever finding reasons to kill and brutalize one another.

The red aliens come from a sad, timeless dimension. Much like Togo. On their world, there are tiny microbes in the soil that cover everything in shades of red. The microbes are in the air. The soil. The water. And can lay dormant for centuries. Which is what is causing the blood rains. So much of this stuff is filtered out of the observatory that when they are here, they are literally pumping red die into the clouds day-in and day-out.

In Togo the next calamity is always waiting right around the corner. And word travels fast in Lomé. To stir people into a panic only takes the smallest of rumors. Strange lights flashing around Mt. Agou. Tall, spindly men in strange clothing loitering in the market. Match that up with omens like blood rain and a lunar eclipse and the entire populous was stewing with anxiety and murmuring up a storm. Especially Uncle Koffi. It was great for the priests. But you know what terror and intrigue is bad for? Selling vegetables. And fattening cows.

And for all of the divination and soothsaying about how the bloodshed of decades gone by would be punished unless the land was purified—how those cries reaching to heaven would compel the almighty to blot out the sun—despite all of that, all this voodoo accomplished was to tear into old wounds and inspire fresh political violence. Everyone in the suburban villages and the slums blamed someone for their troubles and sought protection or aid from the priests.

The radicals blamed the Union Party and the rich Kabyé tribe for subjugating the masses and censoring speech. For this and for that. And prayed for their downfall. The Union Party blamed the radicals for deceiving the public with lies and doubled down on censorship. And the disputes were much the same in the suburbs. Each side thought the other evil. Each side saw the issue as one-sided. Good versus evil. In a way, each side was right, and each side was wrong.

And our people, splintered in a thousand factions, with no unifying principal, pointed fingers at each other, much the same as our governors did, and old feuds spilled out into bloodshed.

And Yahya had sent a man to tell Uncle Koffi he’d be coming to the ranch the next day and it was time we cleared out.

I gripped the crumpled notice in a tight fist and looked up at the stranger.

* * *

The red alien at my vegetable stall in the Lomé Grand Market grabbed one of my best okra plants and gave it a once over, not knowing I could see through his disguise. “How much for one of these?” he asked in French.

“Why are you here?”

“I am looking for vegetables to thicken a stew.”

“Cut the shit,” I said. “We’ve been having blood rain for the past two months.”

The red alien laughed heartily. “It’s just from dust kicked up into the atmosphere from a dust storm.”

“For two months? Dust doesn’t take two months to settle.”

“Maybe it is some kind of algae, like a red tide.”

“It stained all my white clothes. It burned the leaves off the trees. People are using it to tattoo skin.”

“What do you think it is?”

“I know what it is. Red alien bugs. What else.”

His buggy eyes bulged, and his forehead furled, then he settled into realization. “You’re her—You’re Dora Igwe—Dora the explorer—the one who found us.”

“In the flesh.”

“Do you want to come watch the eclipse with us?”

“Why would I do that?”

“It is an important celestial event.”

“No disrespect. But it gets dark once a day. It’s called night. I really don’t get the novelty.”

“You wouldn’t, would you. I guess it’s like the suddenness of the enveloping darkness. It is metaphorical. Sometimes, you know, it is later than you think.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know, your people believe that war and bloodshed are like a virus. That it infects even the sun and the moon. And when the sun and moon get to quarreling, that brings about the eclipse. A final warning to change your ways.”

“Those are just Batammaliba folk stories.”

“They say the first mothers, Puka Puka and Kuiyecoke, told the villagers that the darkening of the sun was a warning to make amends for old feuds and live in peace, and the light will return.”

“You are a spacefaring team of scientific explorers. You know this is an astrological, mathematical event. It has nothing to do with violence.”

“Don’t be so sure, child. There is much you do not understand.”

As the red alien turned and walked up the long dusty road to the forest switchbacks, he turned and said, “Come watch with us, if you want.”

* * *

In the observatory, we waited for the eclipse. The red aliens were frantic. The one from earlier, who I’d nicknamed Tommy took the controls and lifted the ship to a hover.

“We’ve got to find a better vantage point,” he said.

As the ship floated through the Tongolese countryside outside Lomé, I could feel the eerie shadow chasing us down. The sky was full of fast moving clouds, and a low mist hung to the valley floor, slinking down the mountain slopes and resting on the fields.

The ship came to rest in Yahya’s grazing lands. And the moon obstructed the sun. The red aliens gasped, with a sound like the whistling of the wind. Like I said, though, I’m not superstitious. The whole thing seemed a bit overblown to me.

But there it was, the total eclipse. A black orb with the faintest halo of red, set against a black overcast and moonless sky.

Tommy turned to another red alien, who I’d known for years, and had nicknamed Freddie, and said, “The satellite has started moving too close, it is only a matter of time now.”

“Isn’t everything?” Freddie asked.

“Hey, what is he talking about?” I asked.

“Don’t you worry child,” Freddie said. “When the time has come, it will all happen very quickly.”

“She doesn’t know we are here for the moon,” Tommy blurted out.

“It is just the right size for the colony in HD 110067,” Freddie said.

Freddie made a gesture to shush him. But it was too late. I had heard it. So, for all our worries about our Earthly disputes, this was what the end of the world looked like. At least I wouldn’t end up being homeless. That had been the thought I’d been obsessing over for days.

I went to look out the back window, and it was just like Freddie had said. It was coming quickly.

Yahya was in the cab rolling the excavator toward the ship and the dipper and bucket were swinging down and about to crash through the ceiling.

The sound was deafening. Shards of metal and other materials rained down. Wires and diodes and mechanical pieces pelted our heads and the ground. The red aliens shrieked. Tommy was holding Freddie like a kid in a theater caught with an unexpected jump scare.

I ran out in the fields, under the dark, moonless sky. Yahya raised the bucket over and over, caving in the roof of the ship and tearing huge chunks of the fuselage out into his fields. Yhaya was smoking a Cuban cigar, and I could hear him yelling, “Serves you right. Trespassers.”

I guess a similar thing would happen soon to our ranch house, in the family for five generations. Maybe the barn too. That seemed to be the way of things, to tear down the old to make way for the new. Especially here in Togo.

Tommy made it out of the ship only to be met by the blast of a shotgun. “Got one,” Yahya shouted.

I just watched, frozen. The blast tore Tommy’s torso nearly in half, felling him. The blood poured and oozed out onto the dark fields. The pool of blood was red, just like ours. I guess however different we are on the outside, maybe all living things bleed red. We are a thirsty bunch, the living, hungering after that red nectar. To stir it. To shed it. To pool it and collect it.

Then Yahya turned to me and pointed the shotgun at my face. “Run,” he said. “Get off my land.” And I ran. Through the pitch dark fields. In the cool of the eclipse. Crying as I waited for a gun shot that never came.

Yahya yelled after me, “Enjoy your home, while you can. I’ll be coming for it.” And he laughed. A bellowing stomach laugh. An eerie, chortling, bone-chilling laugh. Inevitable. Unquenchable. Soulless.

And as I ran, tripping on rocks. Legs cut by tall grasses. I saw sirens in the night. At least twelve SUVs. The Gendarmerie Nationales—the National Guard. They were coming for Yahya. Alerted by the gunshots and the carnage.

A tall, friendly Fed with a pockmarked face jumped out of one of the vehicles and tried to grab me. “It’s okay, now. We’ve got this,” he said, but I wrestled away from him.

As I made it to the clearing and the dirt road, I dared a glance back at the haloed specter of the eclipse. I hoped Uncle Koffi would be back at the kitchen table, waiting for me with some vegetable soup. Blissfully impervious to the warring entities ravaging our lands.

The blood rains fell in a torrent. Coating the dirt road in a river of blood.

I guess not all monsters are created equal.

Ours take life without reason or remorse—just because they can.

A sliver of light emerged from the fading eclipse as I reached the drive to the ranch house.

Lighting my path. Warming the shadows.

Uncle Koffi was at the door, the smell of the fetish soap on his skin.

“Our luck is changing,” he said.