THE LAST CALL FROM KARURA

Part One: The First Call

The night air pressed cold against Brian's window, carrying the distant hum of Thika Road. Inside his bedsitter in Roysambu, he lay motionless, watching the water stain on the ceiling spread like a map of somewhere he would never go. His phone lay on the mattress beside him, silent for once. No calls from his mother asking about fees. No messages from the university reminding him of deadlines he was already failing to meet.

He had come to Nairobi with dreams. Now, in his second year, the dreams had shrunk to fit inside this single room with its cracked walls and shared bathroom down the hall. Three thousand shillings remained of his fees. His father had sent what he could after the harvest failed. The rest was a hole Brian did not know how to fill.

Sleep would not come. He had stopped expecting it to.

At 2:17 a.m., his phone rang.

He reached for it automatically, already bracing for bad news. But when his eyes focused on the screen, his thumb froze an inch above the green button.

The caller ID displayed his own name. His own number.

Brian Omondi

07********

He stared at it for three rings, four rings, telling himself it was a glitch. A network error. Something technical with an explanation he did not need to understand. On the fifth ring, he answered.

"Hello?" His voice came out rougher than he intended.

Silence. Then breathing. Not his own.

"Brian." The voice spoke his name like it knew the weight of it. "Listen carefully. You don't have much time."

His hand tightened around the phone. The voice was his. Every inflection, every pause, every breath—it was him. But it was not him.

"Who is this?"

"You know who this is."

He sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. The room felt smaller suddenly, the walls closer. "If this is a prank—"

"No prank." The voice was calm, steady. Tired, even. "In three days, everything will change. Be careful who you trust. And Brian..." A pause. "Don't take the shortcut near Karura tomorrow."

The line went dead.

Brian lowered the phone and sat in the dark, listening to the hum of the refrigerator downstairs, the distant bark of a dog, the beating of his own heart. He checked the call log. The number was his. Every digit.

He told himself it was nothing. A wrong number that happened to match his. A sophisticated scam. Something.

He did not sleep.

---

Part Two: The Shortcut

Morning came grey and heavy. Brian moved through it mechanically—washing his face with cold water, putting on yesterday's clothes, stepping out into the Nairobi air that smelled of roasting maize and diesel fumes.

He was late for his 8 a.m. lecture. Dr. Mwangi had warned the class last week: one more absence, and he would mark them incomplete. Brian had already missed three classes this month, picking up shifts at a car wash in Zimmerman to send something home to his mother.

As he walked along the main road, he calculated his options. The direct route would take twenty-five minutes. He would walk into the lecture hall thirty minutes late, and Dr. Mwangi would look at him over his glasses with that particular disappointment that felt worse than anger.

But there was the shortcut.

It cut through the edge of Karura Forest, a dirt path that locals used to bypass the main road. Fifteen minutes, maybe less. He had taken it a hundred times before. Everyone took it. The stories about Karura—the muggings, the disappearances—were stories. Things that happened to other people.

He reached the turn-off. The path stretched ahead, swallowed by trees that blocked out the morning light. He could see the first hundred meters, then nothing.

Don't take the shortcut near Karura tomorrow.

He stood at the entrance for a long moment. A matatu driver selling tickets nearby watched him with idle curiosity.

"Unaenda ama hutaki?" the driver called out. Are you going or not?

Brian looked at his watch. He was already late. He was always late for something.

He took a step forward.

Then a sound stopped him—the roar of an engine, too fast, coming from the direction of the main road. He turned in time to see a boda boda racing down the narrow path ahead, the rider's shirt flapping wildly. The bike swerved to avoid a pothole, clipped a rock, and skidded sideways. The rider lost control. The bike slammed into a pedestrian—an old woman carrying a sack of vegetables—and both went down in a tangle of metal and cloth and scattered greens.

Time stopped for a breath. Then the screaming started.

Brian stood frozen at the mouth of the path, watching the rider stagger to his feet, watching the old woman lie still. People began running from both directions. Someone was shouting for help. Someone else was on their phone, calling an ambulance.

If he had walked onto that path. If...