Israel Centeno Author

Manfred

Israel Centeno

I’ve had a recurring dream. It doesn’t happen every night, but it returns now and then, always the same, with an unsettling precision. It’s a dream that leaves me paralyzed, as if the horror isn’t just in what happens, but in the inevitability of it coming back over and over. In this dream, there’s a man. An ordinary man, but in his simplicity, in the sheer ordinariness of his appearance, lies the most terrifying aspect.

He’s a serial killer, someone who hides in plain sight within a small Protestant Christian community—one of those typical ones: organized families, simple lives, where everyone knows everyone. He’s married to the minister’s daughter, a much younger woman. She’s the kind of girl you’d see next door, someone’s neighbor—uncomplicated, devout, a believer who follows her parents’ faith without question. But her husband is something else entirely. He exploits his low-profile life, using his image as a common husband to plan each of his crimes with precision. Every time I dream of him, I know he is cruel, sadistic, deriving cold pleasure from violence.

There’s always a moment in the dream when the wife begins to suspect him. I don’t know how she figures it out—maybe she finds something, or maybe it’s just intuition—but suddenly, she knows. What follows is the most terrifying part. As if he has a sixth sense, he realizes that she’s discovered the truth, and he starts planning how to get rid of her.

It’s at this point in the dream where I become entangled. I don’t know how I get involved, but suddenly, I feel like part of the nightmare. Somehow, I’m connected to her family, and that implicates me. I know he’s also planning something for me, though I never see it clearly. The fear I feel in the dream isn’t ordinary fear; it’s something much deeper, almost supernatural. My mouth dries up, my chest tightens, and I know with absolute certainty that no matter what I do, I will be this man’s victim. It’s a metaphysical terror, as if not just my life, but my very soul is at risk.

There’s a strange ellipsis in the dream. At one point, I simply know that I’m already dead. I don’t remember how it happened, but I’m certain that I’m one of the killer’s victims. I’ve crossed over into a dark place where there are no references, no sense of time—just shadows extending in every direction. But the worst part is that even in death, the horror continues. I’m in a space where, if I take one step, I know I’ll fall into another death, one even worse than the last. It’s as if I’ve transcended into a reality built from layers of pain, overlapping rings of horror, where the killer keeps hunting me, even though I no longer belong to the living.

And I know he will kill again. This time, his next victim will be his wife. I know it, even though it shouldn’t matter to me anymore, because I’m no longer among the living. But the anguish consumes me. It’s a senseless anguish, because none of this should affect me anymore. Yet I feel that when he kills her, she will also fall into this dark place, and then we will both be trapped here, eternally fleeing from this man—not just for what he is, but for the persistence of his evil.

There’s something ineffable about his crimes, something I can’t quite describe, as if his methods are beyond comprehension, indescribable, almost divine in their perversion. It’s a horror that goes beyond the physical. Sometimes, in the dream, I find myself speaking of “gods” in the plural, because the mind of this man, his actions, seem like the work of higher entities—cruel beings who play with human souls. And in those moments, I feel like I’m in hell, a hell where the worst part isn’t the pain or the death, but the impossibility of escape.

Every time I wake from that dream, I feel a brief sense of relief, but only for a moment. Because I know it will come back, sooner or later, and I will once again face that man, with his implacable coldness, in that shadowy place where one never stops dying.