Beyond

Where am I? it’s dark, too dark here... I’m so cold... what is this place? It’s narrow, small... I can’t move... Air... there is no air! I can't breathe... It’s... it’s a wooden chest... a kind of coffin! Oh my God... I’ve been buried! But I’m alive! They buried me alive! It doesn’t... it doesn’t open... nothing moves... Help... Help... help! -

He woke up with a scream, panting, dripping with cold sweat. As his breathing returned normal, he realized he was at home in his bed. He looked at the clock: four zero zero. -Five- he thought, -it's the fifth time I have the same dream, the same bloody nightmare.

He went to the bathroom. By that time, he certainly would not be able to go back to sleep. Washing his face with cold water, he looked in the mirror.

- Five times and always the same dream, the same scene, the same words... What does it mean? I must be stressed. I work too much and I sleep badly. I’ll have to decide to see the GP at some point, this isn't normal -

He tried not to admit it, but there was something about that dream that was so realistic as to freeze his blood.

But like all dreams, this too ended up dispersed, fragmented and melted between the traffic of the rush hour, the data on his screen, and the countless emails.

The moments he thought about it, though, he felt that the story was not over and that the strange nightmare would return.

From that night on he decided to keep a notebook on the bedside, to write down every detail of the dream in case it would return. And some nights later, the dream returned.

Changed in appearance but not in the substance: he was in the open countryside and under the light of a morning sun he saw a stranger, dressed in black, crossing a meadow.

The stranger walked in silence but every gesture, every step of his, expressed a painful heaviness, an overwhelming sadness.

He could not see his face but something indefinable in his whole person made him frighteningly familiar. When the stranger reached a huge oak tree, he placed flowers on the grass, laid down and after resting the flowers on his chest, he took a mortuary pose.

At that point the strange haze around his face disappeared... and it was like looking in the mirror!

The mysterious man murmured a few words in a feeble voice, among which he was only able to understand "help me... please". Then the stranger closed his eyes and gave his last breath...

He woke up. The clock said five-thirty. He remembered every detail and took note of any single one.

Then he began to reflect on it. He didn’t know the place, assuming it existed... But a dead man with his face asking for help...

He worked too hard. He had always told himself that too much work would end up killing him. That dream had to be a kind of warning, the advice to unplug it a bit. And to do it as soon as possible.

He called off, put some stuff in a bag, went to the station, bought an open ticket and got on the first train that came within range, without even knowing where he would arrive.

Accustomed as he was to plan everything, he thought that the best way to break the cycle was to know nothing and to take that strange, improvised vacation as it would come.

There weren’t many people in his carriage and the rhythmic beating of the train on the rails rocked him to such an extent that he dozed off. And he dreamed.

He was on the same train and from the window, he saw the stranger in black, in the distance, in the middle of a meadow near a huge oak tree. And the stranger looked in his direction as if somehow he was waiting for him.

The whistle of the train inside a tunnel woke him up, he rubbed his eyes and looked outside into the light of the newly-risen sun. A large green lawn, with a huge oak tree in the middle ran past him.

He thought he was still dreaming, blinked several times to make sure he was awake.

The train abruptly began to slow down, there was a small station nearby.

Mechanically, like an automaton, to not give himself time to think whether what he was doing was stupid or not, he got off the train and went towards that lawn. For some reason, something had called him to that place, that meadow, next to the big oak tree. He didn’t want to know anything else. He didn’t want to believe anything else.

He knelt by the big tree, threw away his jacket and began to remove at first fistfuls, then handfuls of soil, wider and wider, deeper and deeper, as in a trance. He smeared his hands, his arms, his face, drops of sweat began to fall from his forehead into the hole that was spreading under him.

Suddenly he stopped.

The edge of a wooden crate protruded from the ground, the homemade kind of stuff done with planks, nails and hammer.

With difficulty, he unearthed it. He was almost certain of the content and, with trembling hands, tried to open it.

The rusty nails inside the rotten wood did not last long and the morning sun lighted up a skeleton in a black suit: the handle of a stiletto, perhaps a letter opener, stood out between the ribs, where once the heart had to be. A strange sadness made him extract the rusty blade from those poor remains.

He returned to the station, dirty with soil, and cleaned himself up with the water from the fountain he found on the porch.

Seeing him in that condition, the station officer asked him if he needed help. “Send a priest and an undertaker to the big oak tree over there in the meadow”, he replied. From his expression, the officer clearly had not understood such request, but he said he would do it nonetheless.

The conductor woke him up from the deep sleep he had sunk into, to check his ticket.

He was on the train, opposite direction, and from the window, he could see the landscape running away. He wondered if he had dreamed of everything for the umpteenth time.

Out of the corner of his eye, for a moment, he thought to have seen, far away, running back in the middle of the countryside, under a huge oak tree, a figure in black waiving at him with his hand raised.

He stood at once to look out the window, nose on the glass, but something stung him to his thigh. Slowly, cautiously, he pulled out his pocket an old, rusty, letter opener.