Source
The Boy in the River, about the sacrificial murder of a young boy in London, likely by a Yoruban cult. The author is a specialist on African religions.
I’d never liked the Chokwe death mask. I’d been uncomfortable when Faith had seen it on a trader’s table in the Brazzaville market. It would have been shaped around a dead girl’s face so that whoever wore it thereafter might draw up the spirit of the deceased. It was strangely beautiful, but the first night we’d had it in the room with us we’d both had chilling nightmares. We’d hung it on the wall of our home in Bath, and occasionally, when I’d been working late, the thing had given me the creeps.
“I put it up on my study wall when I unpacked,”she said. “And I’ve been getting blinding headaches ever since.
She hadn’t told me before because she couldn’t see how her headaches could possibly have anything to do with the mask. But as soon as she took it out of the room, the headaches stopped. As an experiment, she’d passed the thing on to her mother, for whom it had no connotations. But her mother had started to have awful nightmares in which the mask featured, and now she wouldn’t have it in the house.
‘And she smells,’ Faith went on, ‘of wood smoke. She always did a bit. But sometimes it’s really strong. Almost choking.’
I didn’t like the way Faith had called the mask ‘she’, as if it had a personality of its own. That wasn’t something I wanted to consider.
‘Burn it,’ I said. “We can’t do that, can we?’
‘It’s just a lump of wood,’ I said with as much conviction as I could manage. She chewed her lip. “This shouldn’t be happening, should it? Two rational people…’