Boano

The cabin in the woods has been abandoned for years, but one night, while walking in the forest I saw a candle burning through the window.

“That’s odd” I thought “I must get closer to see who’s inside”.

I peeked out the window and my hard skipped a beat: here he was, standing tall in the middle of the room.

“That’s…Boano?! - the thought struck my brain - What’s happening? Is this real or am I dreaming?”.

Inevitably, my mind went straight to that day at the city park, many years ago, when me and a group of friends had the spookiest picnic ever.

I felt my body shivering in the dark night of the grove.

Squinting my eyes as much as I could, trying to breathe as softly as possible in order not to tarnish the glass of the window, while worrying if he could hear my heart beating, I suddenly heard a soft, calm voice speaking through the calm air.

“Don’t worry- my whole body winced - I am a friend. Are you looking for the stone?”

“What stone??” I asked, not knowing exactly who I was speaking to.

Nothing came, and I saw the flame of candle in the room disappear with a gust of wind.

My whole body was frozen, my heart beating like a jack hammer, the breath shallow and fast.
I calmed myself down for a second, and backstepped from the window, but my heel stumbled on something, making me fall on my butt.

What I stepped onto was a shining stone, and my sight fell on the words carved on it: - In memory of X- and in that moment I opened my eyes, waking up covered in sweat.

I laughed after telling my friends about the dream, then I see Micaela with a serious face “I also had a dream last night” she said “and it began with a stone shining in the moonlight, with the same exact sentence carved on it.”.

The whole group shouted up, while looking at her, and a few seconds of silence passed by.

“Then tell us the rest, what are you waiting for??” Roberta sounded upset.

“Well, ok, but chill out!” we could tell it was definitely hard for her to keep telling the story.
“So, after seeing the stone, I noticed there was a crowd of people all crying in grief: in that moment I felt sad, I don’t know why. I was wearing a long black cape, and I carried red flowers in my hands…I sensed that the flowers were very important, so I put them by the stone.”
Everyone were intensely following the story, while the hot summer day kept them sweating.
“I walked away from the stone, and when I was far way down this that seemed a mountain road, I heard a church bell ringing, and suddenly a rain of red petals began to fall, the same petals of the flowers I placed by the stone, and I woke up”

“Wow, this is weird. I had a dream also last night, and the first thing I remember, was red petals falling from the sky”.

Everyone’s mouth shouted again, and all the eyes were on Cyndy.

“This is getting weird - I said - there’s six of us here, and three of us had dreams that connected on some parts last night? Go on please!”

“Ok, so I’m walking and petals are falling from the sky, and I know I’m going to the church, and I’m dressed like someone in the ‘800. I get inside and there’s no one but a few faces, so I decided I would seat the last bench. I could smell the fresh paint, and suddenly I notice this handsome guy that sits next to me.”

“Was he handsome?” Roberta asked curiously.

“Oh you can say that! He was blonde, and he had the most handsome smile I’ever seen! So I smiled back when our eyes met: I could smell his perfume over the bench paint, and we both kept flirting with our eyes during the Mass, and when it was finally over, I felt he could bring me anywhere he wanted to.”

“Oh dear, it sounds like you found the man of your dreams, literally!” said Annie chuckling.

“I surely did. He asked me if he could walk me home, and I obviously said yes! While walking I felt all sorts of emotions, and by the time we were in front of my house I knew I was falling in love for him. I asked his name, and heart…he said his name was Boano, like the man of your dream Sandy!”

My heart jumped backwards : “Shut up! What are you saying, there’s no way!” I said.

“I swear to God I’m saying no lies, girl I know what the heck I felt with a man like that! But then he walked away, and I felt this hole in my heart, like all the happiness of my body were sucked by his absence, like I couldn’t live without him…and I woke up.”

“Ok, I feel weird, but there was Boano also in my dreams last night.” Annie said with a shadow over her face.

All the eyes were wide shut after Annie said so.

A thrill shaked the spines of the group, and I’m sure the temperature dropped of a few degrees despite the hot summer sun.

“Annie, don’t joke” I said.

“I’m not lying, you have to believe me!

Then we all watched Patty, that looked unnaturally calm “Don’t tell me you had a Boano in your dreams as well?!”

Patty chuckled nervously “Well, I actually did, but let Annie tell hers first!”

I’m sure that in that moment we fell all connected in a way that we never experienced before, and we all started looking into each other’s eyes, some terrified, some calm, some laughing.

“Annie, please, go on with your story” Roberta spoke for everyone.

“Ok, but I’m not as chill as you, and also don’t think it should be the right reaction to such a phenomenon. But ok, I’ll tell you what happened.”

“After looking at Boano disappearing on the horizon, I heard the caw of a crow, and I saw it landing on the fence outside my house. That vision sacred me a lot, so I run inside the house searching for my family, but no one was there. I called them for a long time, and I felt scared since no one answered me. So I went in the back garden to continue looking for them, but at one point I felt a huge weight on my chest, like some sort of negative feeling that failed to go away. As soon as I started looking around, I noticed I was surrounded by a huge amount of bad-eyed crows! Right after that I immediately woke up.”

We all gasped at the image Annie pictured to us.

The sun was starting to set down, and finally the air began to cool down, letting us breathe the first taste of the evening wind.

Our perceptions were all focused on the interlaced story that was unfolding in front of our eyes and minds, and the air we were exaling was full of tension.

“So, Patty, what about your dream? How was it?”

Patty’s face looked a lot worse than before: she was pale, and you could see the sweat on her forehead, despite the fresher temperature.

“Well...my dream went pretty bad- she said – you all better sit down and listen to me carefully”

Out gazes were racing on the other’s faces to see the reactions, the emotions and the feelings that everyone were feeling: nothing good going on.

“It started exactly with the crows. I found myself in the back garden of an abandoned house, surrounded by those filthy rotten crows, somehow still making noises and jumping around looking at me through hollow eye orbits. I felt an ancient terror rising up my lower back and my stomach twisting, so I turned inside the house. While running, I looked at my hands, and they were covered in blood, all sticky and viscid, like it’s been sitting there for a while. I tried to scream but I couldn’t, and it was an horrible feeling! I started looking around for help, and I found out I was in front of the attic door, that was all shattered. I rushed up the stairs only to find the bodies of my parents, slaughtered like beasts, with guts and blood on the floor. I managed somehow to withstand the horror, only to come to a dreadful conclusion: it was me, I was the monster who had committed the atrocity I was looking at.”

At that point, everyone were holding their breath. She kept telling the story “I heard a noise, like a cruel laugh coming from behind, and on the bottom of the stairs I saw a bonde man looking at me with the most evil but at the same time sexy grin.

“I’m gonna get you” he stated. “And that’s when I woke up, all covered in sweat and with a urge to vomit”.

“Did he say his name?” asked Roberta, visibly shoked.

“No, but I’m sure he’s the same man from the dreams of y’all, this man called Boano”.

After hearing Patty’s dream, all of us just sat silently, probably trying to grasp how how could it be that we were all part of a big, terrible shared dream.

While everyone was trying to get theirselves together, a rain of red petals started falling on us.

We all freaked out, Roberta screamed her lungs out and Annie became as pale as a white wall, Patty almost fainted.

I ran to the river nearby, it really seamed the only thing I could do. The river was dry due to the summer drought, so I could se the bed, and in the middle of the rocks I could see one of them that looked familiar! I screamed to the other girls to come and see this rock we talked about before and some of us saw in our dreams, with the carvings and everything.

The rock was covered with moss, looking like it was sitting there forever.

When everyone was there, I started scraping the moss cover off, and with a thrill of horror I saw the exact same writing I saw in my dream: “In memory of X".

At this point we were all frightened.

But as soon as Roberta said “we must go away”, a church bell rang in the distance.

We all started crying, except for Annie: her face was calm, and suddenly she started speaking with a deep, masculine voice, saying random phrases and laughing in the evil way we all knew from Patty’s part of the story.

She wouldn’t calm down, and with a surge of energies me and Roberta grabbed her, and I slapped her on the face, but nothing changed.

“We need to bring her to the church!” I said.

We tried to lift her up and drag her, but her strength was ten times more than her usual, and we couldn’t move her.

So I thought “I must act!” and run to the church to get some holy water.

I filled my bottle and run back, seeing the girls trying to calm Annie down, without success: I rushed in front of her and poured the whole thing on her face, that was distorted by the grin that only a demon could make.

Her screams raised to a higher pitch, making us put our hands on our hears, and ultimately collapsed on the ground, screaming something like “you’ll never get away with this” or some sort of spell.

Then silence.

We all stood there wheezing for something that seemed hours.

When we finally were able to get up, we checked on ourselves, some crying, some hugging each other, some just resting belly up. The night started approaching, and Annie finally woke up.

We were kind of suspicious, but she seemed the regular Annie to us.

She didn’t remember a thing, so we decided not to tell her anything, we just decided to get on the bikes and get away from that place as quick as possible.

We agreed to tell no one about the place and what happened.

Many years later though, we dreamed Boano again…but this is another story!