Chapter 3: The Boy with the Red Thread
679 Words
The morning after the dream, I woke with the feeling that someone had followed me back from sleep.
It clung to my skin like cold mist—unseen, unspoken, but there.
I could barely focus in school. Kehinde looked the same. Quiet, restless, distracted. We didn’t talk much that day, but our eyes met across the hallway more than once. And every single time, that pull—that storm waiting beneath the surface—stirred again.
But the real shift happened during Literature class.
We were analyzing The Gods Are Not to Blame when a knock came at the classroom door. Everyone turned. Mr. Ilesanmi—our wiry old teacher with eyes like slits—groaned and went to answer.
A boy stood there.
He was… strange.
Not in the way Kehinde had been strange—familiar, magnetic—but in a way that made my skin prickle.
He wore the school uniform, but it didn’t sit right on him. His shirt was too crisp. His shoes too clean. And around his wrist, barely visible beneath the sleeve, was a thin red thread that shimmered faintly in the sunlight.
“This is Taye,” Mr. Ilesanmi said. “Transferred from Ilaro. He’ll be joining us.”
Taye’s eyes swept the room—and landed on me.
He smiled.
Not warm. Not cold. Just… knowing.
I didn’t smile back.
---
During break, Taye found me by the water tank. He didn’t waste time.
“You’re Ayotunde,” he said. “And the other one… the boy who looks like you. Kehinde.”
I blinked. “How do you—?”
“I’ve heard stories,” he said. “Stories old enough to be forgotten, but not dead. About twins born of light and storm. About gates sealed long ago. And about the red moon that always comes before the awakening.”
I stared at him. “What are you talking about?”
He leaned in closer, and his voice dropped to a whisper.
“Your mark is glowing. You may not see it in the sun, but in the dark… it calls. And someone is listening.”
He turned to leave, but paused, almost casually. “When the dream comes again, don’t open the door.”
---
That night, I went to Kehinde’s house.
I had never been before, but something in me said we needed to talk—alone.
His mother welcomed me politely, but her eyes lingered too long on my face. Like she was comparing. Measuring. Wondering if I was the reason her son had stopped sleeping at night.
We sat in the small sitting room lit by kerosene lamp. The smell of fufu and egusi hung in the air. Kehinde sat across from me, elbows on his knees, staring at the flame like it held the answers.
I told him about Taye.
About the red thread.
About the warning.
Kehinde’s jaw tightened. “He knows too much.”
“And what if he’s right?” I said, pulling back my sleeve. “It’s glowing again. I saw it last night. Not in a dream. In my mirror.”
Kehinde didn’t speak for a while.
Then he whispered, “I’ve been seeing shadows. Not dreams. Not sleepwalking. Real ones. Watching me. Watching us.”
I felt it too. A prickle at the back of my neck. A shift in the room’s air. The kerosene lamp flickered.
And in the stillness, a knock came at the window.
We both jumped.
The curtain swayed.
Another knock. Tap… tap… tap.
Kehinde got up, heart pounding. He pulled the curtain aside.
Nothing.
But just before he turned away, something darted past the window—too fast to see, but not fast enough to go unnoticed.
It left behind a whisper.
“Open it…”
---
We didn’t sleep.
Not really.
And as dawn broke, I saw it in the sky for the first time:
A red crescent moon, faint, bleeding into the light.
The stories were real.
The door was waiting.
And something on the other side… had our names.
- Writer
