SPIRIT COUNSELLOR
Uchechukwu Nwaka
My world is empty. Like a void. I have long stopped seeing the meaning in many things. In the mundane normalcy of life. Every day, I wade through the stream of the collective consciousness called society. It does not welcome me. No. Let me rephrase. I’ve forgotten what it feels like to be welcomed. I just want to exist. Somewhere, but away from here. Anywhere but here. The other day I saw a place offering out-of-body experiences for just two thousand naira. Pathetic. Fortunately for everybody involved, it’s a scam. There was no spirit presence there at all.
Maybe that’s why I tried it.
The office is the same as it has been since I started using it a year ago. A shelf filled with books I’ll never read gathers dust in the corner. It has to look that way so that my clients can at least take solace in my supposed authenticity. The table is ridden with termite holes, but I don’t mind. There’s a part of the ceiling that’s leaky, close to the wall, and the wall paint on that side has peeled from a dull yellow to a duller brown. To think this is the most colorful piece of my life.
Sometimes I recline in the cheap chair and let my inner voices yell me to sleep. Their words are never nice. They’re always taunting me. Telling me about things that might have been. Who I could have become. I used to believe I had great mental fortitude. I still do, I think. The only reason the voices can’t get me depressed over the inadequacy of my life is because I’m already depressed about the inadequacy of… oh my.
Today the client is a part-time student of poly-Ibadan. She’s crying and shaking and I tell her it’s going to be all right. I don’t believe that, and I know she doesn’t either. However I have to tell her this because I believe I would have turned out differently if someone had told me the same words. If only those who were more interested in how much school work I had missed had asked how I really felt inside. I don’t know where they are now, and still don’t know how I feel inside anyway. That’s why I say I feel like nothing. Life is just a tedium that wears me out, yet I am not capable of ending it myself. At least this young girl did not encounter the Eater. Merely a plot from her father’s side. A plot involving carved likenesses of Eastern deities and blood sacrifices that has left her motherless…
I dread evenings. Especially ones like this when it rains and I can hear the wallowing of the elements. At these times, I feel a different kind of melancholy. One born of languor, but fundamentally heavier. I remember that I am a slave to the shackles of everyday existence. Of dealing with the normal. Occasionally I replay my tapes. Listen to what people described as their encounters with the preternatural. There’s nobody to listen to mine, and I tell myself I don’t care. Before the Eater there was nobody, why should there be one after? Maybe listening to others will help me overcome this gaping absence in my chest. This chasm widening to my own self-destruction. I walk home under the rain, my umbrella barely surviving the downpour. I lie on my bed and wonder why I can’t do things differently. Then I wonder about happiness, and all its different yet elusive colors until I fall asleep, and dream about that night when everything was taken away from me.
Then the cycle starts again.
* * *
This week begins, as other weeks, uneventfully. Some UI students come by, spinning tall tales just to mock me. I’m all too accustomed to this, what with my office located beside their school. Their exuberance is the height of my disgust. Their ignorance! I don’t let it show though. I scribble into my notes and give them advice that I never got to utilize in uni. I can see that they are disappointed when they leave and I wonder what they thought when they saw ‘Spirit Counsellor’ on the sign post beside the post office.
A man comes by later. Surprisingly he is considering a money ritual and the babalaawo has demanded he kill his mother. I laugh, but not audibly, or visibly. That’s some Nollywood bull-crap if ever I’ve heard any, but who am I to judge? Besides, the gods of this land are as mad as they get, compared to anywhere else in the world. Trust me, I know.
I’m tired of listening. Once upon a time I wanted to be a doctor. Wore a pristine lab coat in the university barely two plots away. Even though there was always pressure as a first child and all that, I seriously believed I could make it work. Even though people’s expectations of me were disproportionate to reality, I felt I could make it happen if I worked hard. Working hard was my strong suit. Truly. Med school was hard, yes, but there were geniuses who made it look doable. If only my parents understood that some things couldn’t be achieved with only hard work. Some talents could never be surpassed with countless hours of mind-wracking study. Why did you want me to be the best student so bad? I believed I could too, and that was my mistake. I should never have relied on my ability to work hard so badly. If I hadn’t given in to that final despair of failure, I might not have ended up here… even though now, I can’t really see what I could have become.
I tell the man to stay true to his heart. Crap advice, but he’d do whatever he liked anyhow.
I complain a lot about how my life is like a mosquito’s breeding ground, but in the madness of freedom that is the world today, I take solace in my routine. In the assurance of where I’d be and when. I am happy that I can be unhappy with my stagnation. That bleakness comes and goes and is with me anytime I want it. I am content with the nothing, and how I do not want to change it. Even if I do not get what I want – info on the Eater – through counselling, I can afford to work and feel others’ sadness at the same time.
I am still hoping to someday meet another victim of the Eater.
I close my door and step out. No customers today. I check my phone but I don’t really have anyone to talk to so I stash it back. Quebes looks tempting across the road, but I’m on a tight budget – spirit counselling doesn’t pay much. I give the plaza’s gatekeeper an ambivalent greeting and enter UI’s busy highway.
I’m a partial seer. Once in a while I can see spirits. A side effect from surviving the Eater and its carnage. I don’t fixate my gaze on them, that’s folly. Telling them you’re aware of their presence. One time last year I had an attack… horrible spirits of Yorubaland. I had just returned to Ibadan, and had to seek help from a very shady babalaawo. Let’s call him Baba.
All experience, I tell myself.
When I get back to the office, there’s a girl standing before my door. Another UI student. I’m not really in the mood to tolerate ‘smart’ youths, but I resign to charge her extra for any crap she tries to pull.
“Come in.”
I notice her eyes are red. Swollen. Her gaze is distant, far away. Her hands are shaking where they clutch her bag, and I’m starting to get worried.
“Hey, are you okay?”
She sits on the couch… and doesn’t make a snarky comment. Okay. Her braids are the black kind, her nails painted black, but everything else looks off. Like she didn’t remember to complement her already existing looks. By this, I mean makeup and extremely flashy jewelry. Not that I’m one to talk. I’m already questionable enough running a practice at twenty-something and looking like a forty year old man deep in mid-life crisis.
“I’m sorry sir,” she says after a while. “Somebody recommended this place.”
Really? Someone actually saw the online ad?
“Okay,” I’m going by the book here. “I’m Dominic Uchenna.” I consider adding, “Call me Nna,” but Nigerians don’t necessarily follow those rules.
I opt for, “What do I call you?”
“I’m Ifunanya Akinnola,” she managed. “I’m a UI student.”
“So. Do you have a problem?”
“Um, yes…” she pauses. “You’re going to call me crazy.”
“You’re sitting in a room rented by a self-proclaimed spirit counsellor. Crazy has already started.”
“Sir…” her voice drops down an octave. “I can see spirits.”
Not entirely interesting, and I haven’t totally thrown out my theory of her lying, but I want to see how much she knows. Or thinks she does.
“It’s nothing spectacular sir,” she continues. “I’ve been able to see them for a long time actually. Even spirit related things. Cursed people, haunted houses. Things like that.”
Okay. Now my interest is really piqued. She’s a seer, yet she looks like she’s seen a ghost.
I let her talk. That’s my job.
“Sir I’m not crazy.”
“I don’t believe you are,” I reply. “But you look pretty shaken. Why?”
“Sir I saw something…” and her voice breaks. “It… it ate my friends.”
Dread washes down my spine, and I hope she doesn’t hear the quiver in my voice when I ask, “What do you mean?”
“On the way to our hostel, three of us. There’s this construction going on in school and they’ve been felling trees. Last night… Well there was this grandfather tree on the way to our hostel and it was taken down. It was hollow inside.”
“A hollow grandfather tree?”
“Yes. It… it was inside. It ate them.”
“And how did you get away.”
She fishes inside her bag. After a brief moment she reveals a pendant. “My grandmother gave this to me before she died.” Ifunanya hands it over, and I run it over my fingers. “I think it’s a protection amulet. I woke up on my bed so I thought it was perhaps a dream… until their roommates declared them missing.”
“They aren’t the first ones no?” I ask, recalling a missing girls story I happened to hear the last set of UI students talking about.
“There have been rumors on Hive that people were disappearing, but there were no confirmed reports and I thought it was merely a prank by Tech boys.”
Hive? That was the name of the club I attended those years ago. Where everything happened.
“Ifunanya. What is this Hive?”
She pulls her phone from her jeans. “Here. It’s a social platform by some group of people in the Faculty of Technology.” The app looks like a blend of WhatsApp, Twitter and Nairaland. However the interface is a bee-yellow, and the icon is a curious cowrie.
Same as that place.
“… they are trying to make it the next Facebook. It’s currently UI exclusive, so it only works on UI grounds.”
This girl is on to something. I can feel it. This is what I’ve been waiting for.
“I’d like to see this app work,” I say. “And this tree.”
I can see the terror in her eyes, and I kneel before her on the couch, holding her hands. “I can help you get closure Ifunanya. Don’t worry.”
Worry!
“Okay Mr Uchenna.”
“Mr Nna is just fine.”
I have her wait outside while I push the shelf back. There’s a bunch of occult stuff in its back compartment, but I don’t need all of them. Just my wand – yes, it’s an actual wand, but not the Harry Potter nonsense – and a chalk I stole from Baba’s shrine. If his god is truly potent, let it fight the spirit for him.
I take a vial of holy water too… for good measure.
Evening descends quickly. We are on a path inside the school, but I know it’s not leading towards the dorms, private or otherwise. The silence is deafening, and even the obnoxious crickets are wise enough to stay away. Ifunanya is on her phone now, and a chat group is texting feverishly about the two missing girls from two nights ago.
“That’s the tree, Mr Nna.”
I let my torchlight illuminate the tree. Somehow the path has led to a quiet and secluded part of the street. Further up, lights from teachers’ quarters spill into the street on two sides, but both sides of the road where we now stand remain dark. The street lights are broken, and vegetation grows where the houses are absent. The darkness whistles an eerie tune, and the moonless night is not helping.
The fallen tree is truly hollow inside. The wood resembles wrinkled skin. Tough and scaly. I feel my heart beat faster in its chamber. Fear. I try to relish it. For the first time in four years I’m truly alive. I run my fingers along the length of the trunk while Ifunanya holds another torchlight in her hand, a safe distance away on the road. Truthfully, nothing seems out of the ordinary. The area is spooky, but that’s just it. I’m about to chide myself when I notice a trail of finger marks. It’s… red.
“Ifunanya,” and I get my phone to take a picture. Only, the spot on the tree is coming up stainless on the camera. Ifunanya trudges into the bushes. She’s literally trembling. She can see the blood stains too, but her camera can’t. A spirit phenomenon? A strange thought occurs to me then. Hive has a camera feature, and I ask her to try it.
Chills run down my spine when the blood stains on the tree trunk register on its camera.
“Oh my God.”
“What exactly is this app? How come you and your friends ended up here?”
Her hands are trembling now. “I-I don’t know sir,” she pauses. “We were actually supposed to meet someone here. Our hostels would have been locked, it was past midnight. We wanted to stay in a friend’s apartment at a lecturer’s boys’ quarters. It was at Bini Road, and we didn’t know where that was.”
“So this friend sent you their location. On this app?”
“Y-yes.”
“This is messed up Ifunanya. Is there anything else you’re not telling me?”
“No. No sir.”
I run my fingers through my hair. We leave the bushes. It’s not safe.
“So your hostel closes by ten. How did you manage to get locked out by midnight? A party?”
She nods.
“Very well. But why this app?”
“Didn’t I mention?” She swipes down her notification panel. “The app doesn’t need data. Not always. I ran out, so I had to use this.”
Did I mention I was getting a bad feeling?
We’re under one of the street lights now, and Ifunanya’s frightened expression is stark illuminated under the yellow light. I’m looking through the app, but I can’t figure out how it sends messages without data.
“What’s your friend’s address?”
She reads it from her phone. Block 4 BQ. Bini Road.
We are on Amina Way. After a few wrong turns and some helpful directions from a delivery guy, we’re in front of the house. Luckily, the girlfriend is outside. Probably coming in for the night.
“Tolu!”
“My God, Ifunanya!” They hug, and do girl stuff. Her expression darkens when she notices me.
“You called the police?”
“I’m not police,” I say. “I’m Dominic Uchenna. A spirit counsellor.”
Tolu casts Ifunanya a strange look. I’m quick at ad-lib. “I just want to confirm the location info you sent to your friend Ifunanya yesterday.”
Tolu wants to protest, but Ifunanya pleads. She opens her chat history and I can see the location she sent points directly above her house. I ask Ifunanya for hers, and it points back to the place we had just left.
“How is this possible?” Her voice is barely audible.
I have a faint idea. Techno-occultism. These days, highly established occult fraternities use Zoom for meetings. It was only plausible since ‘big-men’ who made money hardly stayed long in the country. Gone are the days of transforming into crows at night.
This however, is something I haven’t seen anywhere before. An app that had seer capabilities? Hijacked location data? Missing girls who all used the app? And the tree was at the center of it all. I wonder where the resident spirit is hiding tonight. It was not in the tree…
“Ifunanya, if you don’t mind I’ll like to have your phone,” I say. “I want to run analysis on the app. I’ll be back by noon tomorrow.”
I can tell she’s relieved to give me the phone.
“One other thing,” I add. “Could you let her stay here, Ms Tolu? Just for the night.”
“Sure.”
“Finally. I’d like you to have this.” I brandish a Styrofoam cup from my bag, and from it I pull out three eggs. “Keep them by the door. If this app is what I think it is, then you should be safe tonight.”
Ifunanya doesn’t complain.
“Are the eggs enchanted?” It’s Tolu instead. “Are you sure you’re not a scam that’ll just sell her phone and run off.”
“Ifunanya knows,” I say, heading to the street. “After all, she can see the curse on my back.”
* * *
It’s almost eleven. I call Dele to cash in a favor. He’s my tech-guy, and I want him to analyze this app for me. Hive. I’m getting the Eater’s vibe all over this, and mixed feelings. After I survived, therapy couldn’t save me. For two years I was sent to a Catholic church in Aba. They say Catholics don’t pray, I have no comment on that, but their secret rites are something else. Well let’s just say I’m now pretty confident of my chances against a wayward spirit.
Even the Eater.
It’s funny how the Eater is supposedly the damned soul of a powerful babalaawo from way back. Like colonial masters back. Baba had a medium that told me what had happened to my soul. How the Eater consumes so much so that the princes of the abyss cannot drag it into their pit. I step out of the mikraa, and stretch. God, how do Ibadan drivers fit six people into a tiny cab? Dele stays in Ojoo, and before long I find his flat. Nigerian hip hop music is blaring out of speakers within.
I knock.
“Who be dat?” He yells in pidgin.
“Nna.”
“Ahh, witchdoctor himself!” His burglary-proof door swings outwards. “My guy! How far now?”
I ignore him and enter his room. It’s stifling, as he uses his room for his business too. The air is thick with mosquito coil smoke.
“Isn’t this stuff bad for your health? And your computers too?” He shrugs. I hand him the phone. “I want you to analyze an app for me.”
Dele plugs the phone into his myriad of screens and system units. Doesn’t he care about radiation and cancer? And noise pollution?
“Interesting,” he says after a while.
“Why?”
“Omo Nna, you go like come back tomorrow oh. This algorithm complex wella.”
“Complex? It was built by a uni student.”
He shrugs, and I have no choice but to go home for the night. It’s almost midnight, and Ibadan dwellers aren’t too keen on late night services. By the time I get to my place, I’m tired but I can’t sleep. The app was the key to finding the missing girls – if they were still alive. Hive. Whoever’s running that app is as guilty as those shady babalaawo who deal with kidnappers.
I resolve to track them down tomorrow.
* * *
I’m young again. Filled with hopes and dreams for the future. We just concluded a major test, and coincidentally, the rest of the school is done with exams. Party broadcasts flash over my notifications panel, and I’m considering indulging. Didn’t they say ‘all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy?’
Besides, I need to drink something to banish this mounting post-failure depression.
One of the gang has a sugar daddy. A chief or something. Says he’s throwing a party somewhere in Ibadan. High class, real deal at one super-exclusive club, and he’s willing to pay for our entry. I don’t really like the idea, but the sugar daddy will probably book us a hotel if we get stuck outside and everything looks good…
The club’s name is Hive.
Things are never slow in a club. Everything is fast, loud, and bathed in a flurry of blue and red lights. A dizzying cocktail of loud music and sweaty bodies. A den of lust and liquor. A fancy ‘candy’ is going around. I pass, because I’ve had too much to drink and I’m barely dancing away the alcohol in my system. Nobody sees the hooded people at the corners of the room chanting in Yoruba. Nobody notices the drum in the center, or when the masquerade starts dancing with them on the dance floor, blue lights flashing over the dull machetes in its hands. Red liquid rises where the stoned dancers fall. The faces of the masquerade are grinning in twisted bloodlust, life dripping from its dull blades. It punctures the drum, and black smoke follows, hungrily devouring the souls of the fallen, swallowing the lights in its shadows with a trail of fire in its wake.
Then it comes for me.
All I remember afterwards is the burning club. The faint image of a hooded person speaking incantations over my head. Stopping my soul’s ‘bleeding’ as Baba put it. It is still leaking though. The seal isn’t entirely complete.
And neither is my soul. Not anymore.
* * *
Mornings are usually so-so, but today I manage to get a breakfast of agege bread, and flag a mikraa to work. I don’t look over my leads on that sugar daddy those years ago, or the burnt down ‘illegal club’ Hive. Or even my mysterious savior. Today, I’m closer to the Eater than ever before, and in proper tech-guy fashion, I get a call from Dele to pick up Ifunanya’s phone.
“I been work on the app overnight.” It’s evident, but I don’t point it out and just listen to what he has to say. By eleven, I’m back in UI, in front of Tolu’s place. I knock.
Ifunanya’s head peeks out.
“I got your phone. I need you to take me to the Tech faculty. And we need to talk.”
She’s ready in five minutes. She seems even more agitated. I notice the eggs are absent, so I ask about it.
“When we woke up this morning, their shells were broken, and the yolks blackened.”
Just as I thought. It came for her, but couldn’t get to her because she wasn’t with the phone. Probably why I survived because I never took the candy. I explain this to her, and she looks even more perplexed.
“Ifunanya you’re a seer right? When I analyzed this app, there were empty sections of coding. My contact called it unusual. Incomplete. However, there are actually codes on those empty patches. Codes only seers can see.”
“How is this possible?”
“I have no idea. But I think we should head back to the tree first.”
However, the tree is no longer there.
Ifunanya immediately wants to apologize but I hold her off. The seer-codes might have hijacked Tolu’s location info, and led the girls to the Eater’s location instead, but I cannot fully fathom how the tree itself had disappeared. I have a theory I’ve been working on ever since I left Dele’s place, and I’m suddenly itching to try it. I ask Ifunanya to lead me to the app’s creators.
The moment I see him, I know he’s the one. It doesn’t matter that he’s in the midst of a crowd. He notices me too, and takes flight. I chase after him, shoving youths with earphones in their ears and textbooks in hand. He’s running towards one of the hostels. I’m not fast, and I wholly dislike any form of physical exertion, but I have a few tricks up my sleeve. Almost short of breath, I pull a piece of red string from my back pocket. I’m muttering some Igbo – remember Aba – keeping him in sight at all times. I tie my pinkie and ring finger and bind them, and his legs clap together, throwing him to the dirt. It’s a forest shortcut, and we’re the only ones here.
“Please!” He’s begging all of a sudden.
Ifunanya catches up and he begins screaming for help.
“I want to know about your app.”
“Please don’t kill me! Please.”
“Are you a seer too?” and this time it’s Ifunanya.
He doesn’t reply.
I bind my thumb and he begins to gag and choke.
“Seer? Oh yes. Please stop. I just needed a good piece of project work done! Chief said he’d help me. Please!”
“Chief who?”
“I don’t know his real name. The only person I have had contact with is one of his aides. They helped me with the app!”
“How did you then write the codes? How did you become a seer?” I’m clearly losing my patience.
“A dream!” he cried. “The aide said I should follow the instructions from there.”
“And the instructions made you name your app Hive?”
“Yes sir!”
Dream possession! Maybe that’s why he can see too.
“And how come the app can run offline?”
“It’s a small scale network. It works like transferring files between devices using wireless hotspots.”
“All the features?”
“Just chats. The location services also have some glitches.”
Convenient.
“Now you will register me on this Hive.”
“In the dream. Only UI students!”
I tighten the string on my thumb. “You’re an admin, and I don’t care.”
“Okay! Okay!”
* * *
He lives off-campus. A surprise. He’s creating a user ID for me when Ifunanya speaks up again. “I can’t find the chat groups for the missing girls.”
“It’s a small glitch I’m working on,” he says anxiously.
“Some people are posting that you’re the one deleting them.”
“It’s a glitch from the system, okay? I’ll sort it out.”
I take Ifunanya into the corridor. “I think he doesn’t really know what a seer is. He might just be a temporary one too. He was probably tricked by whatever was in that tree into writing the codes for the app. He probably doesn’t know the difference between the human code and the other.”
“What about this Chief? The aide?”
“One thing at a time. Ifunanya, I’ve experienced something like this before. I have a plan, but I’ll need your cooperation.”
She nods.
I’m in the system. I head back to Tolu’s place. I’m inside, and am now trying to send location data over mobile network.
“It’s fine,” Ifunanya says. “No glitch.”
“Perhaps the spirit only hijacks it over the local network. How many girls were missing?”
“About six, last I checked. Including my friends.”
“Any new reports today?”
“No. But the groups might have been cleared.”
“We’ll assume it didn’t get any. Seven. Maybe you were meant to be the last one.” I think about the candy, and the link to the Eater. The app, and its link to the missing girls. The missing tree.
“I’ll be bait tonight.”
* * *
It’s one a.m. when I get Ifunanya’s location info. She’s supposed to still be at her friend’s place. However I left her phone in my office, so I’m getting the text from Tolu’s phone. My client’s safety first… I haven’t been paid either, so, you know. After leaving Tolu’s place, I hang around common rooms, and now, the library, where the local network is strongest.
The location I get however, is not Bini road.
I’m not an idiot. I have a feeling the texts are also monitored, so I had made up an hour of elaborate dirty chatting with Tolu/Ifunanya. Now I wanted to come over under the cover of night and let loose of some steam. Lies, but the Eater doesn’t know that. The location is leading me towards a girls’ hostel alright, yet the road is quiet, the streetlights are all dead, and even nature is holding its breath. There is nobody on the road this late, and even the security personnel are nowhere close.
The tree lies in the middle of the road. A pool of black liquid is swirling and bubbling from its hollow. I feel my palms freeze.
“You’re not supposed to be here.” The voice is multilayered, and its sinister chords scratch against the frayed edges of my soul.
“I’ve been looking for you, Eater of Souls.” I sound exactly like I am feeling, and it is not brave.
“You only escaped once before because you had not exposed yourself to me. Now, however, is a different story!”
I pull out my wand. The next scenes are high level occult stuff. I will choose to omit this, for your own good.
However, I walk out of it, covered in black goo and blind in one eye. I do not completely vanquish the Eater, mind you. It’s been alive for years, devouring humans during that time. However, it flees, and the missing girls are found the next day in their hostels, with mild migraines and amnesia. Hive has crashed too. Turns out seer-codes don’t run on all operating systems
Look at that. I cracked a joke.
Ifunanya paid well, and is now my assistant too. I still don’t understand how it works, just that the dusty shelf is no longer dusty, hmm. I’ve set my sights on the Chief, his aides, and this Hive. Spirits cannot take a person unless the person is made aware of their existence… or thrust into their path. This Chief has been the center of Hive, and if what I think is right, then Hive may be an organization of occult groups, and the Eater was just one of many…
I’m tired. Let me end it here.
* * *
A month has passed. Life has become slow again. Ifunanya is at a small window desk, just below the bad paint-job but the now-fixed ceiling. She has stopped social media, but I wonder for how long. A small knock drags me from my thoughts, and I tell whoever it is that the door’s unlocked.
It’s a boy. He looks like the daily laborers at construction sites.
“Hi. I’m Dominic Uchenna. Call me Mr Nna. The nice lady over there is Ifunanya. My assistant.”
“Mr Nna,” his Yoruba accent is thick. “My name is Joba.”
“Hello Joba. What can I help you with?”
“Last week I went through deliverance. I was possessed by an evil spirit.”
Nasty. But this is my job. Believe it or not, people need it. Need me.
“Tell me Joba,” and I lean in. “How does that make you feel?”
UCHECHUKWU NWAKA is a student of Medicine and Surgery at University of Ibadan, Nigeria. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in Cossmass Infinities, MetaStellar and Mythaxis Magazine among others. When he’s not trying to unravel the mysteries of human (or inhuman) interaction, he can be found binging unhealthy amounts of anime, or generally trying to keep up with an endless schoolwork. Find him on Twitter at @uche_cjn.