V - Creaking Stone Pines

The night wind got up and the Stone Pines behind the house creaked and cracked, making bits of them fall to the damp soil below. Some of the bits of bark and rotten tree fell like a drumstick to a drum on the low pitched roof and glass skylight making them sound like huge pieces of debris. Jason lay awake listening, hearing the night and its own unique natural soundscape. It wasn’t like a storm in the town where litter bins would scatter, street lights would bend and car alarms would go off. He could feel the draft blowing under the door and looking at it he could see a chunk of rectangular light. His eyes were wide, he was fully focussed, the shutters rattled as the wind from the common whistled and sung through cracks, He looked up out of the gloom and saw the shape of her turn.

‘Are you awake?’ she said.

 

‘Yes’

‘It’s only a storm, it’s like this a lot’

‘I’m going walking tomorrow…’ he said resting on his elbows

 

‘…don’t go where I told you’ she interrupted

There was a silence while he ignored her ‘…now I’m a local, Letti’

 

‘Yes, you are now’ she laughed

 

‘I’m going to walk up in the hills. Come with me’

 

‘Take the longer way around’

‘I will’ he said. Because she lost her husband that other way, up on the river, where it flattens out, where it is shallow. She had told him that story a few times now and still it didn’t make sense. Why hadn’t the police sorted it out? After all they had found him and suspected no foul play, giving the cause of death as a heart attack. ‘Tell me about it again’ he knew she would know what he meant

‘Oh’ she whispered. ‘There is nothing much to tell that I haven’t already told you. It was a shock to find him like that’

‘You didn’t find him though?’

‘No’

‘Or see him?’

‘No, no I only saw him when they had laid him out in the mortuary’ she stopped to compose herself, her voice thick and unsteady with emotion. ‘Something  I haven’t told you though. There was a knife wound, more like a sword they said’ she was crying. In the darkness his eyes had adjusted, he could see her now, she was looking peacefully around the room. ‘He was a nice man. We weren’t married. He wasn’t violent or aggressive so I doubt he got in a fight up there; he wasn’t like that, but he could’ve got into an argument or something, these things happen’

‘You’re not worried about being out here, since it happened I mean?’ he said. The knife wound changed everything, why hadn’t she said?

‘No. I’ve lived here all my life, since I was a little girl, I don’t know any different. But he would go walking for two or three days at a time. I would ask him where he’d been and he’d always say up in the hills. I thought he was skipping back to town so when I found out, I told him not to’

‘Why?’

‘I didn’t want him sleeping rough, coming back stinking and half starved’

‘No, of course not’ Jason said, not knowing how to react. He lay flat on his back gazing at the ceiling. He traced his eyes across the grid like pattern of concentric circles that gave the illusion of further depth. THUD. He sat up sharply looking at the door.

‘It’s only the house’ Letti said not moving an inch from where she lay.

 

‘I might go and see’ he said pulling off the cover.

‘No, don’t’ she said calmly, but her actions betrayed her as she gripped his arm. Their eyes met, locked. Hers were more intent than his, more fiery. He backed down pulling his arm away from her.