It was a dark and windy night in Willikies with flashes of lightning, booms of thunder and the smell of rain in the air when Zuri and Joshua were riding their bikes as fast as they could to get home. They could not see anyone else on the road but every time the lightning flashed they saw things jumping out from the bushes and when the thunder boomed they heard weird laughter and screams coming from the old empty houses along the road. Zuri and Joshua were very scared.
illustration by Freya Platts-Costeloe, third placed in the Wadadli Pen 2011 art challenge.
Suddenly the rain came down and they had to take shelter in the nearest old house. It was dark inside and they thought they could hear things running around. Then, they heard a weird voice asking “who are you
and what are you doing in my house?’’ followed by a boom of thunder and a bright flash of lightning. Zuri and Joshua jumped and held each other.
“Who are you?’’ Joshua, who is always the braver one, asked in a frightened voice. The voice replied, “I am your worst nightmare…..I am the Willkie’s Jumbie and no one comes into my house and escapes.”
Zuri got his voice and said, “But it is raining and we only want to shelter.”
“I don’t care!’’ said the Jumbie, which started to sing ‘’Two likkle boy fuh de jumbie jamboree, no one come in my house and get away.’’
Joshua pleaded in a frightened voice ’’ please don’t keep us here.”
The Jumbie laughed ‘’ha ha ha ha ha ha ha you should not come into my house.’’
Joshua and Zuri were more scared now. ‘’Please don’t keep us here,’’ Joshua begged again but the jumbie only laughed and started to sing again ‘’Two likkle boy fuh de jumbie jamboree.”
Just then the rain, the thunder and the lightning stopped and the moon came out. The jumbie got quiet. Zuri whispered to Joshua ‘’let’s get out of here”.
“But how?’’ asked Joshua. Then Zuri remembered Grandma telling them that when you are running away from a Jumbie you should throw salt over your shoulder because the Jumbie would stop to count the grains. But they had no salt; then he also remembered that if you leave your shoes in a Jumbie’s way it would try to put them on to follow you and this would take all night because Jumbies don’t have any feet.
“Take off your shoes quietly and leave them,’’ Zuri told Joshua.
‘’Why?’’ asked Joshua.
“Never mind, just take them off and don’t make no noise,” whispered Zuri. They took their shoes off and moved quietly towards the door.
Just then, the Jumbie started singing again “Two likkle boy fuh de jumbie jamboree”. That’s when Zuri and Joshua grabbed at their bikes but the bikes fell making a loud racket causing the Jumbie to shout “Hey! Where are you going?”
“We are going home,” said Joshua.
“You can’t leave,” said the Jumbie.
“But that’s what we are doing now,” said Zuri as they picked their bikes up and jumped on.
The Jumbie shouted “Stop! Stop!” and rushed towards the door but as soon as it saw the shoes it stopped and whispered “oh, shoes! and so pretty” and immediately tried putting them on. Meanwhile Zuri and Joshua were riding as fast as they could to reach home but they could still hear the Jumbie back at the house screaming and struggling trying to put the shoes on.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Zuri Holder is a 10 year old grade 5 student at The Sunnyside Tutorial School. He enjoys playing cricket, football, the computer game Cricket Captain, and the board games Snakes and Ladders and Sorry. He also enjoys reading, especially Caribbean stories and the Adventures of TinTin. Zuri is a member of his school’s pan side and a drummer with The Antigua Dance Academy.
Zuri’s imagination has opened the door for him to the second place spot in the 12 and Under Category of the Best of Books Wadadli Pen Challenge 2011.
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