Seance

Midnight. The air around the main house on the farm Taurinos is impregnated with the wonderful aroma of the many cypresses that form hedges around the house. The six lads are here in Andrés' bedroom for today's dreaming session. I am staring at the two bullfighting swords on the wall on a panoply, Andrés' snapshot of himself sitting on a bull of the farm. A bull on top of another, I thought, while I tried hard to supress a seizure of laughter that started to form at the very thought I had just had.

"Are we going to sleep sitting?", was the first thing Bruno remembered to ask.

"There are some sleeping bags in that corner over there", said Andrés, pointing the direction.

"I ain't gonna sleep in no fucked sleeping bag. Gonna sleep in my bed", protested Adriano, scowling at us all.

"Adriano, let's try to stay together at the same place. Just to be on the safe side, in case everything works out the way it should. You might get confused in a separate room, all by yourself, you know."

"I don't give it a fuck", he retorted, "I want to sleep on my soft bed."

"Want to sleep in mine?", offered Andrés.

"I want to sleep in my bed."

We were all exchanging looks, astonished at his tantrum. We still tried to talk him into staying together, all in vain.

"Ah, I can't stand these frills from Adriano sometimes", said his younger brother looking at the room's door, after Adriano left.

Dead silence at night, only the nocturnal frog and cricket orchestra outside. I sat on a chair in the corner of the bedroom and was gazing at the kids all inert in their sleeping bags. Anderson snored a bit louder than I'd like to hear for night noises. Suddenly, he moved to his left side. Opened his eyes and turned them to me on the chair. He had seen me. He was now out of his body. Got up from the sleeping bag as I tried to tell him not to look at his body lying on the floor lest he was surprised enough to be afraid of the experience.

"What about the others?"

"They're still sleeping, let's wait and see what happens."

Anderson went on to tell me about dreams he had been having lately. He told me he had dreamed I was the Mayor of Taurinos. I jokingly asked him whether he'd vote for me at the next elections in case I was a candidate to that position.

"Ah, it's difficult for people here to vote for outsiders", he was quick to explain, "but in your case, I think I'd do it differently."

"What are we talking about?", asked Bruno at our side now, recently raised from his sleeping bag.

I asked Bruno to refrain from looking back to the sleeping bags; he smiled, half embarrassed half confused and asked me why. I told him he was still in his sleeping bag. He refused to believe me, though he wouldn't look back at the others. It lasted until we heard Andrés' voice right behind him. Bruno looked around and saw Andrés at his side. He also saw the sleeping bags and himself sleeping in one of them. I glanced at Anderson, but not before I saw how strongly and wildly Bruno was pulled back into his own body after the discovery. End of message for him, at least for today.

"I wonder if you could possibly refrain from directing people's attention to the sleeping bags; it'd help us a great deal tonight", I told Andrés.

"My bad", was all Andrés found in his records to tell me, wearing an embarrassed expression.

"Can't a man sleep in silence any more?", complained Renan, rising and coming up to us while sleeping in his bag in the corner of the room. He apparently had no idea he was out of his body. Renan had been distant when the dreaming sessions started; in fact, only Anderson, Andrés and I played an active part in the process.

"Welcome to the middle of the night", said Andrés nonchalantly.

"Why is everybody up?", he asked, rubbing the sleep off his eyes.

"No one here is awake, Renan, not even yourself", said Anderson.

He beamed as he learned things had worked out. His beam lighted the whole room until we were all bathed in light; I even had to ask him to stop smiling for a while. When the normal mood was re-established, we stayed there waiting for the others to join us. Guilherme still took long to join us; his younger brother looked impatient.

"Want me to kick him? He'll get up in no time…"

"This is not the way things work, Renan."

My only concern was Adriano, isolated in his own room. I wondered whether he was going to succeed apart from us, with nothing more in his hands than his will to get out of his body. Renan amused himself by looking at himself in the bag, getting a kick out of the same item that had terrified Bruno, sending him back to his own body in a frantic fashion. Guilherme woke up without the need of a kick in the back, as I had foreseen and asked about Bruno and Adriano. I told him what happened to Bruno and that I had no clue what was going on in Adriano's room. I had scarcely finished the sentence, when we heard a scream coming from Adriano's room. I told him it was no good to try it by himself, but he wouldn't lend me an ear anyhow.

We went down to his room like a committee only to find him sitting in his bed beside his own sleeping body. He had wide open eyes turning, scanning every inch of the room. Alarmed.

"Your friend Meire is in the room with the police", he said, "can't you see her?"

"Meire? Here???" I looked around out of pure instinct and reflex.

"At your side", he said, astonished.

There was no one in the room besides me and the five lads. I looked at the others and they seemed as astounded as myself. I realized Adriano could see something we could not; decided to test him and his ESP.

"Can you talk to her?"

"That's all I've been doing since she showed up."

"Ask her about my husband's name."

I heard him repeat the question gazing at somewhere near my left side and heard him as he answered:

"She said his name is Paulo."


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