Night runners

It was a quiet night in the village of Kisumu, the kind where the sky’s so dark it swallows every trace of light. The moon hung like a lantern, barely peeking from behind the clouds. I was alone in my grandmother’s house, deep in the heart of the Nyanza region. The air was thick with the smell of wet earth, the kind that comes after the rains.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. It had been happening for weeks - strange noises at night. It started with soft tapping on the window, like fingers drumming lightly against the glass. At first, I thought it was the wind, but the tapping would come every night, always around midnight. I never dared to look.

On this particular night, however, the tapping came louder. More insistent. I got out of bed, heart pounding. I tried to stay calm. “It’s just an animal,” I told myself. I crept towards the window, peering out into the dense savana that stretched behind the house.

Nothing.

But then, I heard it - the unmistakable shuffle of feet. Not on the dirt path leading to the house, but in the trees. The night runners.

You see, there’s a legend in our village - the tale of the 'Wanyama wa Giza