Hands up, Orlu led the way in, then Sunny, Chichi, and Sasha. Once they were inside, the door softly shut behind them. However, only Sunny vaguely noticed. They were too busy looking ahead.

30

ABOMINATION

They slowly entered the high-ceilinged main room. It was like entering a palace. The sound of their footsteps echoed off the intricately mosaicked walls. A closer look at the walls revealed that the fractal patterns were made from the tiny wings of black, red, green, and blue beetles. As she walked toward the center of the tennis court–sized room, Sunny felt the temperature increase with each step. Orlu came up beside her, his hands raised and ready to undo the juju that came at them. He lowered them. “It stopped,” he said.

“What did?” Sunny asked.

“Something was about to happen,” Orlu said. “And then it didn’t.”

“I’ll bet it’s because of Sunny,” Sasha said.

Sunny looked down at the floor. It was smooth and glossy, as if it had been polished an hour ago. And it was tiled with millions of flat circles that could have been glass, plastic, or something else. They were arranged in a fractal pattern that made Sunny woozy when she looked at it for too long. She couldn’t say what color it was because it used every color she could imagine. It was like a constantly blooming flower. At the center of the room stood the trunk of the fat dead palm tree that reached through the wide circular hole in the ceiling. The top of the palm tree probably kept the rain out, if it did rain here.

Hung on the walls were large ceremonial masks, intricate and expressive. It reminded Sunny of Sugar Cream’s office, if her office were magnified by ten and the masks were creepier. There was one that hung on the wall that looked made of solid gold. It was as tall as Sunny and as wide as the expanse of her arms. Its face was thick-lipped, wide-eyed, and bulbous-nosed. Its lips were pursed and puckered as if it was ready to spit a lot of something. Sunny moved out of its range.

She moved on to the one that appeared full of water, the wall visible through it. It had the expressive round face of a smirking woman with Yoruba tribal markings on her cheeks. Sunny couldn’t resist; slowly she reached out to touch it. She hesitated. If this place were booby trapped with juju, maybe she shouldn’t. But she’d always been this way with gelatin, bubbles, and any liquid substance that took a shape. She couldn’t help just one poke. Her finger sank right into it. “It’s water,” she said to herself. Yet here it defied gravity and hung on the wall.

There were four others. One made of wood, but it sprouted roots that created a mane around the roaring face. It also hung from roots that burrowed into the wall. The next mask was made of bronze. It was the head of a wall-sized dragon creature. One was a small boulder of stone with rudimentary openings that made two eyes and a tiny hole for a mouth. And one was made out of pressed garbage, plastic bottles, tin cans, crumpled paper, dried orange and banana peels, cassette tapes, and more. This mask took up the entire wall on the far side of the room. It was grinning.