Nuzo Onoh is an award-winning Nigerian-British writer of Igbo descent. She is a pioneer of the African horror literary genre. Hailed as the "Queen of African Horror", Nuzo's writing showcases both the beautiful and horrific in the African culture within fictitious narratives. Nuzo's works have featured in numerous magazines and anthologies, as well as in academic studies. She has given talks and lectures about African Horror, including at the prestigious Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies, London. She is a Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award recipient. Nuzo holds a Law degree and Masters degree in Writing, both from Warwick University, England. She is a certified Civil Funeral Celebrant, licensed to conduct non-religious burial services. An avid musician with an addiction to JungYup and K-indie, Nuzo plays both the guitar and piano, and holds an NVQ in Digital Music Production. She resides in the West Midlands, United Kingdom.

Unhallowed Graves by Nuzo Onoh

Oja-ale is the night market run by the dead. Everything can be bought for a deadly price. Alan Pearson is a sceptical British diplomat, contemptuous and dismissive of native superstitions...Until the day he receives a terrifying purchase from the Night Market which defies western science and logic. And Alan must finally confront the chilling truth of Oja-ale. - Night Market - Oja-ale. A dead child returns to haunt his grieving mother with terrifying consequences - The Unclean. The ghost of a drowned slave is resurrected from his watery grave to exact revenge on the family that betrayed him and sold him into slavery, with tragic consequences - Our Bones Shall Rise Again.

Three chilling stories of revenge by the restless dead buried in Unhallowed Graves by the frontrunner of African Horror and author of The Reluctant Dead, Nuzo Onoh

 

REVIEWS

  • "William Friedkin once said, "True horror is seeing something approach." Nuzo Onoh's work exemplifies this saying. You can see the events unfolding, you know something is coming, and yet you protest, "No this cannot be," as you crawl backwards in your seat... Nuzo Onoh's writing is potent."

    – Lovecraft Ezine

  • "The three novellas in Unhallowed Graves are elegantly written horror. While there is a subtle hand crafting the stories, they do not shy away from visceral descriptions of violence and stomach-churning description. Unhallowed Graves is an example of the short form of horror packing a powerful punch."

    – Hellnotes

  • "...Onoh doesn't shy away from the nasty, gritty details when creating trauma to put her characters through. I dare you to suppress your shudder when you read about corpse water."

    – Dirge Magazine
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

(Ukari Forest - 9pm)

My husband's corpse lies on the raffia mat, spread underneath the giant Iroko tree that towers over the thick vegetation of Ukari Forest. The Iroko tree is legendary in the ten clans of Ukari and even beyond. Its broad branches reach up to the skies, fighting for airspace with the eagles and the kites. Its circumference covers at least eight arms-length of marriage-age men. Its roots are so swollen they escape the depths of the earth, projecting barked talons that crawl across the forest, staking its territory and frightening the rest of the vegetation to a cowering distance. The other trees in the forest hug themselves tight, stealing the sunlight from the skies while bowing their leafy obeisance to the Iroko tree, paying homage to their great lord, just as the humans of Ukari village kneel to it.

All is still. Nothing breaks the grave-like silence of the vast forest. Apart from the occasional snake or lizard, no other creature stirs in the perennial gloom of this accursed forest. From my kneeling position by my late husband's body, I force my bloodied eyes to look upon his reviled face, coal-dusted by death and decay. His features, swarthy and harsh, have not yielded their cruelty to death. The white cloth shrouding his bloated body is stained with the death fluids seeping from his fast-decomposing body.

In the two nights I've spent in the forest with my husband's corpse, I have been unable to keep my eyes from his face….and IT. I feel its malignancy, the threat in its unnatural turgidity. I live in terror of what IT would do to me should I take my gaze away from its terrible erectness.

I look away, return my gaze to his face. My body shudders yet again, expecting those swollen lids to lift, his cold eyes promising harsh retribution for sins I can never recollect. Yet, I cannot escape. I am rooted to my husband's side by limb-freezing terror. My heart leaps into my mouth, filling it with bile and panic each time the trees stir, the dry leaves rustle or an owl hoots his midnight vigil from a distant tree. Had I slept, my dreams would have been dreams of escape, freedom - and peace. But I am forbidden that relief, chained as I am to my husband's corpse by the witch-doctors' powerful incantations and the customs of our land.

I am a prisoner in a jail without bars. I am the condemned, convicted before her trial. I am the accused, facing her judgement at the one-man jury in the court of the great Iroko tree, known to the villagers as The Tree of Truth. The Tree of Truth is the final arbiter in every dispute in the village, the righteous judge and jury that condemns and sentences with ruthless efficiency. It is said that none who is guilty ever escapes its merciless justice. Its roots are swollen with the blood and cries of its victims, men, women and even children, accused of crimes ranging from witchcraft to night-flying. And I, Desdemona, first daughter of Ukah, wife of Agu of Onori Clan, have joined that wretched fraternity of The Tree. I am a condemned criminal awaiting my fate beneath the unforgiving leaves of The Tree of Truth.

As I prepare to endure my third and final night by the side of the putrid body of my late husband, I know with a feeling of total despair that my ordeal is far from over. Even if by some unbelievable stroke of fortune The Tree of Truth rejects my blood; if by some divine intervention my husband's vengeful spirit fails to strike me dead by dawn as is widely expected in our village, I could yet be dispatched to my own ancestors' hell by a myriad of foes, too strong, too powerful, for a mere widow to resist.

For, I am the most accursed of widows. I am a widow without offspring, cursed with the womb of a man, my belly filled with soured eggs that will never again yield the precious fruit of a child. Even worse, I am a widow without a son, left without protection like a day-old baby abandoned in the middle of an African thunderstorm, exposed to the flings and thumps of the merciless force of nature.

For my failure to provide my husband with an heir and name-protector; for my desperate and foolish attempts to produce that precious gift; for my own mad folly and ignorance, I will pay with my life when the cock crows in the dawn and his relatives come to extract the life from beneath my chest - my coward's heart, my foolish heart.