I had a weird dream. It was about shamans, a hill, and a priest.
🌄 The Hill
It started on a hill, in a small hut surrounded by tall, unnervingly perfect trees — each one spaced just a little too evenly.
Inside sat a shaman and a young woman, maybe his daughter. They spoke in voices that weren’t their own, shifting tones and even shifting faces with every sentence.
It felt like he was tuning her spirit, aligning something unseen but deeply present.
I wasn’t just watching.
I was floating outside myself, yet somehow also one of the spirits inside that hut.
Everything pulsed with a slow, ancient rhythm.
Then the hut flickered.
The walls peeled away and suddenly I was staring at the ruins of a huge unfinished stone building — two floors high, wrapped in vines, green swallowing grey.
It looked abandoned, but the air still hummed with ritual, as if the memory of ceremony clung to the stone.
🌒 Same Hill, Different Time
The vision shifted again.
Same hill, but the hut was gone — replaced by a bamboo house sitting low on the earth.
It was night. The air felt denser.
Inside was another shaman — older, heavier, carrying that same quiet, fatherly presence.
I stood outside, half-hidden behind the trees.
A man came walking up the slope — the shaman’s son, maybe.
He stopped at a stump, picked up a whip, and went inside.
He wasn’t afraid.
He looked hopeful. Peaceful.
Like he knew exactly what was about to happen.
🔥 The Ritual
Inside, the two sat across from each other, speaking softly.
I could hear the cadence but not the words.
The shaman’s voice thickened — deepened — possessed.
The air tightened.
Then the whipping began.
It wasn’t violent; it felt like punctuation, or invocation.
Each strike echoed through the bamboo like a pulse.
That’s when I realized:
I wasn’t alone in my watching.
Someone else was inside my mind — a man, rigid with fear.
He felt like a priest: foreign, burning with sharp, holy certainty.
Spanish, maybe. Or maybe that’s just the shape he took.
He couldn’t stand it.
He charged inside the house, screaming accusations, prayers, exorcisms.
👁️ The Faces
The shaman turned toward him.
And his face began to shift.
Man → woman → child → corpse → stranger → ancestor.
Dozens of faces flickering in a blur of pain, defiance, and something ancient.
The priest screamed louder.
I screamed too.
The world cracked open.
⚡ Awakening
Then—
I woke up.
My wife was shaking me, eyes wide.
She said I’d been yelling in my sleep.
I could still feel the echo of that hill in my chest.