By Neil Primus
IN THE BUSY little farming community of Green Grove, business thrived. Agriculture was everybody’s business. Some tilled the land. Others planted, nurtured and reaped. Then the goods were sold and the cycle repeated.
On a hill overlooking the burial ground stood a solid wooden house. In it lived a farmer named Kingston, aka Yam. He had a green thumb and made plenty of money through agriculture. He was married and had two sons. They lived a peaceful, happy life. That is, until a stranger visited their home.

It all began on a Saturday night. After taking a few drinks with the boys Yam went home. By 10.30pm he was fast asleep. Sometime after midnight he had an unusual dream. In the dream an old man stopped and spoke to him
“Yam, why yo causing me so much pain?”
Confused and puzzled he denied this.
“Not true skipper. I don’t even know you.”
“I realize that but you don’t understand.”
“Understand what skipper?”

“Look, the truth is I died over 100 years ago. After a few decades everyone forgot me. They came and bury someone right on top of me. It too much for me, I can’t take the years of pressure.”
“But what dat got fo do wid me?”
“Yam, four years ago you bury yo grandmother over me. Move her now!”
Yam jumped up from his strange dream. At breakfast he told Petal about it. His wife laughed and the children joined in. He ended up laughing too.

“Daddy like yo go to bed wid a heavy stomach.”
The conversation ended on that humorous note. The next two nights Yam got dreams of the same man requesting the removal of his grandmother. In frustration he gave the man an answer.
“NO!”
That changed everything. From the next night the entire family got a visit from the dream-stranger. He pleaded at first then changed tactics. Next he began to disturb their sleep. Hair was tugged, toes and ears tweaked and bodies tossed out of bed. When nothing happened, every member of the family was attacked in their dreams. The stranger started pressing down on them and choking them. Every time they went to bed they would wake up panting for breaths. The Jumbie kept this up every night.

In desperation, Yam visited a friend who was a spiritualist. The man advised him to do as the stranger asked. Yam went into the village council and he was assigned a new plot of land to bury his grandmother. He did not tell them anything about his recent experiences.
A few days later the remains of his grandmother was removed from her original place of burial and re-buried in another section of the small cemetery. The dreams stopped immediately.

Little did Yam realize that his plight with the dead had only just began. The new plot he was assigned turned out to be the burial site of executed convicts.
Guess who he’ll be hearing from soon?