The night was cold and somber, a stark contrast to the earlier hours of merriment. Agbaje, a man of modest means, returned late to his humble abode in Obantoko, a quiet village with sparse dwellings. Obantoko was an unremarkable place—its fame owed solely to the strange tale of Agbaje, which had thrust the secluded settlement into an unexpected spotlight.
As he approached his small, dimly lit house, Agbaje began to unbutton his shirt, exuding a weariness that suggested a long day's toil. Yet, his energy was curiously unspent. On most nights, his routine was unchanging: a hasty retreat to devour his meager dinner of stale bread and fried eggs, prepared by the ever-present Aboki at the village's edge. But tonight was different. Agbaje could feel it—though he did not yet understand why.
Upon opening the creaking wooden door, he was startled to find his entire family gathered inside, led by his devoted wife, Ajoke. Their faces were alight with joy as they erupted into song:
"Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday, dear Agbaje,
Happy birthday to you!"
Though the scene should have filled him with happiness, an unexplainable disquiet stirred deep within him. His heart pounded unnaturally fast. He set his bag down, still clutching the greasy paper-wrapped bread and eggs. Without a word, he turned and bolted from the house, his movements impossibly swift, leaving his bewildered family frozen in place.
Agbaje ran—faster than seemed humanly possible—towards the dense forest that bordered Obantoko. His breath came in heavy bursts as wisps of smoke began to rise from his skin. His body writhed in agony, and a guttural scream tore from his lips, echoing through the night like a wild animal's cry. His eyes glowed crimson, his shirt shredded into tatters, and his transformation began.
Kneeling beneath the moonlit canopy, Agbaje's form shifted grotesquely. Where a man once stood, now crouched a majestic white wolf, its fur glinting eerily in the pale light. For the first time that night, he felt calm—a profound, primal peace enveloped him.
Moments later, the forest came alive with movement. Dozens, then hundreds, of wolves emerged from the shadows, their eyes gleaming with feral intensity. They gathered before Agbaje, awaiting his command. With a simple gesture, he led them into the depths of the woods. Yet, amidst their ranks, a singular figure caught his eye—a red wolf, its every move marked by menace.
Agbaje understood the unspoken challenge. The red wolf was an intruder, an enemy to their kind. It darted ahead, taunting them with its elusive speed. Despite the pack's relentless pursuit, the creature evaded them, disappearing into the night like a phantom. Hours passed, and as dawn's light crept into the sky, the wolves retreated one by one, fading into the forest's depths. Agbaje alone remained, slumped against a tree, naked and exhausted. His mind was burdened with the mundane worry of explaining his shredded police uniform and how he might secure fresh clothes without arousing suspicion.
Back in the village, confusion reigned. Ajoke and the others had waited well into the morning, but with no sign of Agbaje, they departed, leaving behind the remnants of their failed celebration. By the time the sun reached its zenith, Agbaje had managed to return to his office, where a massive birthday cake awaited him on his desk. Starved and unbothered by ceremony, he devoured the cake and its accompanying drinks with a voracious appetite.
His indulgence was interrupted by the shrill ring of his desk phone. It was a call from headquarters. A grisly homicide had occurred, and his presence was urgently required. Agbaje sighed, his thoughts oscillating between the horrors of the night before and the duties that awaited him.
For now, he would don the mask of normalcy, but he knew the truth—his secret was as wild and untamed as the forest itself.
Chapter 2:
THE RED WOLF OF ABEOKUTA
Akintola entered the cool, dimly lit office of Chief Inspector Agbaje. It was early morning, and the sun was only just beginning to filter through the narrow blinds, casting thin, slanted lines of light across the room. The air carried the scent of stale coffee and old paperwork. Agbaje, dressed in his crisp uniform, looked up from a stack of case files, his expression hard and weary. Despite his position of authority, there was something about Agbaje—a sense of hidden strength that made Akintola uneasy, even though he couldn't explain why.
Akintola snapped to attention and saluted, then dropped the bundle of reports he had been carrying onto the desk with a heavy sigh. His hands still trembled from what he had seen, and the white powder of fingerprint dust clung to the cuffs of his shirt.
"Sir, I've come from the crime scene," Akintola began, his voice strained. "It's...unlike anything I've encountered before."
Hours earlier, he had stood at the heart of a macabre scene. The victim—an elderly man known as one of the wealthiest and most influential figures in Abeokuta—lay sprawled across his study floor, surrounded by splatters of blood that had soaked deep into the thick, expensive carpet. His face was frozen in a mask of terror, his eyes wide and glassy. A thin beam of morning light had filtered through the half-drawn curtains, illuminating the dark red pool that had formed beneath him.
Akintola and his team had arrived at dawn, the first to respond to the call. They had roped off the area with yellow tape, and Akintola had moved through the room with careful, practiced steps, photographing the blood trails, the broken furniture, and the deep claw marks gouged into the walls. There was an intensity to the scene, an underlying sense of violence that made the room feel heavy and oppressive.
"It's not a man who did this," Akintola had said quietly to his team, after inspecting the deep, jagged wounds that crisscrossed the victim's body. "The cuts...they're too clean, too precise. They look like they were made by claws. Large claws."
His crew had paused, glancing around nervously. One of them, a young officer fresh out of the academy, turned pale. "But there are no wild animals in Obantoko," he said, almost to himself. "Not anywhere near Abeokuta."
Akintola had remained silent, his eyes tracing the splintered wood of the victim's desk, the overturned chair, the shattered glass scattered across the floor. Something about the scene felt wrong—wrong in a way that didn't fit any criminal case he'd worked before. He had a reputation for solving the impossible, but this...this was something different. His instincts told him so.
Back in Agbaje's office, Akintola repeated his findings, his voice steady, though inside he felt the weight of disbelief pressing down on him. Agbaje listened without interrupting, his fingers steepled beneath his chin, the sunlight glinting off the silver badge pinned to his chest. When Akintola finished, Agbaje leaned back in his chair, his face giving away nothing.
"Submit the body to the state autopsy department," Agbaje said after a long silence, his tone controlled and authoritative. "And don't mention anything about...claws. Keep the report factual."
Akintola hesitated but nodded. He couldn't shake the feeling that Agbaje was holding something back, that he knew more than he let on. There had been a flicker in Agbaje's eyes, a brief flash of recognition when Akintola described the wounds—a flicker that spoke of experience, not surprise.
Just as Akintola turned to leave, the office door burst open. Folasade, the eldest daughter of the deceased, strode into the room, her face pale and set, her eyes red-rimmed with tears. She was a tall woman in her early thirties, her posture rigid with grief, her voice shaky as she demanded answers. "What happened to my father?" she asked, her gaze shifting between Akintola and Agbaje, her tone desperate. Behind her, more family members clustered in the doorway, their murmurs filling the room like a low, insistent tide.
"We are investigating," Agbaje said smoothly, rising from his chair. He moved towards Folasade, his voice calm and authoritative, as if trying to steady the storm of emotions with his presence. "We will do everything in our power to find the truth. I promise you that."
Akintola watched them, feeling the tension tighten around him. Agbaje's assurance was confident, but something about his calm felt rehearsed, almost too perfect. As Folasade's grief-filled demands echoed in the room, Akintola could only think about the deep wounds he had seen, the scent of blood still lingering in his nostrils, and the way the victim's eyes had seemed to stare right through him.
He had seen claw marks before—long ago, during a different investigation when rumors of a strange wolf had drifted through the town like smoke on the wind. He pushed the thought aside, forcing himself to focus on the task at hand.
Over the next few days, the investigation went deeper. Akintola spent hours going over the crime scene photos, the forensic evidence, and the preliminary autopsy results. Everything seemed to lead nowhere. The claw marks didn't match any known animal, and there were no signs of forced entry, no fingerprints, no traces of an intruder. It was as if the killer had vanished into thin air, leaving only blood and mystery behind.
Meanwhile, Agbaje continued to oversee the case, his demeanor unchanging, his presence both reassuring and somehow...unnerving. Akintola noticed how his superior never seemed to sleep, how his eyes would sometimes take on a strange, almost predatory gleam in the morning light. Rumors of the red wolf and its clash with the white wolves began to circulate among the more superstitious in the community, whispered stories of an ancient rivalry that had once stained the forest outside Abeokuta with blood.
At night, when the station was quiet, Akintola would sit alone in the evidence room, staring at the reports and photographs, the fluorescent light humming above him. And as he worked, he would catch glimpses of Agbaje, leaving the office just as dawn began to break, always heading in the direction of the dark forests that lay beyond the city's edge.
It was there, in the quiet moments of dawn, that Akintola began to piece together the threads of a truth that lay hidden beneath layers of myth and half-forgotten stories—a truth that was somehow connected to the man who led the investigation by day and, he suspected, became something far different by night.
He remember owuye, the old officer who had been believed to be mentally unbalance, his story he thought may connect dots of his findings.