Dayo struggled to get free from the ropes that bound his body as the water entered his lungs and the effects of the sleeping pill where starting to take place.

He could see his life flashing before his eyes as he realized that his efforts were futile. He could only gradually stop struggling as his movements were getting more sluggish from the wave of sleepiness that washed over his body. His eyes were getting heavier and heavier, and his struggles seized as his eyes shut.

Dayo suddenly shut up from his bed. He was panting trying to gasp for air as much as he could as the feeling of drowning was just to real for him.

It was that nightmare again. He had been having that nightmare since he and some of his dormitory members watched a movie during his school's movie night that introduced one African legend and the next night being daring kids wanted to try the ritual for themselves and see what happened. That was over a week ago.

Dayo was a regular 15 year old SS1 science student at Real Heights High School which was an all boys school. His grades were considered good and always stayed within the A to B range just sometimes straying into C. His family was upper middle class in terms of income, but as he was an only child and his parents were only children too, he was usually lonely growing up, but he never lacked anything in terms of material goods and gadgets.

Although he was lonely because of lack of siblings and cousins at home and thus had a lot of gadgets to keep up with friends outside school, his parents never neglected him and he was well behaved for his age. He had never had his parents called by his teachers to complain in terms of bad behavior, but he also had a big behavioral flaw that worried his parents and often made him get in trouble at home. He was too daring. He was willing to follow his friends to do anything as long as he was not being explicitly disobedient to any rules that his parents set for him.

Because he was lonely at home, he hunted for friend groups in whatever environment he found himself which would be normal if he was not willing to do anything to fit in with the group in terms of being extreme. As long as it was not explicitly labelled as a bad behavior that he could get in trouble for, he would do it.

A good example of this is a week after the fire instructor came to his primary school and taught about ways to put out fire and what to do in case of a fire outbreak, a classmate actually brought matches to school and was playing with it. He was not going to report it because he didn't want to be a snitch, but because he felt he could put out fires on his own he got the fire extinguisher in his class ready just to be safe.

His classmate whose name was Banjo was lighting pieces of his jotter on fire during the school's lunch break where they served beans which visibly had a lot of palm oil in it. As he was playing with the paper, the fire didn't want to go out when he blew on it, so he shook the paper which slipped from his hand and entered the big bowl where the lunch for students who where not ready to eat was placed and caused a bigger fire.

Dayo carried the extinguisher and put it out instead of running away according to the fire instructor's instructions because he saw how his classmates liked the instructor that taught them how to put out the fire and he wandered if they would like him better too.

Luckily the fire did not spread beyond the big bowl as a lot of people had not yet eaten so the fire was still at the top of the bowl on the topmost food packs when he put it out.

When everything was settled, no one admitted to the cause of the fire, but the teacher who was meant to be in class with the other students during their lunch break but went to chat with her colleagues since nothing usually happened was reprimanded.

Dayo was praised for putting out the fire, reprimanded for not following the evacuation guides or calling a teacher, but was not punished or given much of a verbal lashing beyond that first talking to. That happened when he was around 9 in primary 3.

And his parents often thanked God that his daring that a measure to not doing anything that was illegal or that would cause him to have a bad reputation. In fact his parents understood that his moderation was so that his teachers and the other adults would not dislike him. He tried to make friends with teachers in school as well as his classmates, so naturally he would not do anything that could cause him to have a bad reputation among the teachers in terms of bad behavior.

But all that went out the window when it came to something extreme. As was mentioned earlier, Dayo was daring. He was so daring that the first time he really got in any trouble with his parents was when they were running late for church and he was ready at the age of 7, he left his house and went to church on his own. Since the church was not far, just a 15 mins walk and a 5 mins drive due to the estate's speed limit, his family often walked to church on none special days as a form of exercise and family bonding.

But when he was questioned later, his parents found out that the real reason for just walking on his own without mentioning it to them was because he taught that his Sunday school teacher would dislike him for going late so he didn't want to be late, and all his friends went to church early so he didn't want them to not be his friends anymore if he went late.

It was often a joke between Dayo's parents that if his friends told him to jump off a cliff, he would first jump before he considered the possible danger.

And although it was a joke it was one made based on other childhood events that happened to him growing up, events that he could see clearly as his life flashed before his eyes in his dream. Events that all together culminated in his current daring nature that made him unable to say no when his friends brought up the idea of doing the ritual together. Especially as a bonafide science student who scoffed at the idea of a supernatural but forgot at the point of the ritual the fact that as a Christian he had to accept the possibility of a supernatural.

It had only been a week since the ritual and he could gather from his friend's faces during class that he was not the only one affected by something. He could only hope that the effects of the ritual wore of soon and whatever was summoned soon got tired of torturing them. At that moment, he could never have imagined that he would be hoping to go back to this period when it was just the nightmares.

...Authors Note: Idk what this is going to end up as for now, we are definitely going to see some bad times for our MC and his friends as they deal with the nightmares and much more. Stay tuned for the next chapter which would mention parts of the movie and what the ritual was according to the movie....