VIII - When you are Stronger

Chapter VIII

There was a pain that clamped hard as a vice to his chest. It made him clutch himself as he writhed on the icy ground, but all there was in his body was numbness. He looked down to see his own blood, it made him dizzy and weak and he pushed up against the roots of a tree into the cold of the long grass. All was a seething white light as an image of the man who had confronted him flashed in his mind. Then all was black as he passed out

He woke in hospital, remembering nothing. Then she walked in; Letti and she was smiling, beaming warmth. What should he say to her? He wasn’t even sure of her. He tried to recall, about them of any significant moments they had had. In slow reaction he gave her his best smile, but couldn’t remember much about anything.

‘Walkers found you’ she said plainly. He nodded and it jump started the conversation.

‘You had fallen’ she said holding his capita and tube ridden hand. ‘You were on the edge of a wood’

‘hmmm’

‘What happened Love?’

‘Dunno, I fell’ Jason mumbled, his mind flashing with memory, there was something bright, a blurred figure in motion. His eyes widened and locked on to the light fixture above.

‘What is it?’

‘There was someone there, he was talking in a garbled language, I couldn’t understand what was being said and then I felt pain and the man, yes it was a man, was gone.’

Jason was silent for a while, for as long as it took for clock hands to turn. She looked at him, her smile turning to a frown and then looked away as there was too much knowing in her now. He took the moment to think of Tiler the cat, the cat back at the shared house, so named as he sat up on the tiles sucking up the heat when any fine day would give any. Later in the day Tiler would sit on the armchair licking his paws before circling three times on the cushions and nestling down to sleep.

‘What did this person look like?’ she said.

‘An old man in rags. A soldier, I suppose’

Did this relate to what she’d seen over the years and what she’d been told when Keith died? It’d all been hushed up as there was no real explanation, the police couldn’t piece anything together. ‘Rest now’ she said knowing he had taken the lower route right into the path of them despite what she had said. ‘We will get you home soon’.

‘ I don’t want to go back there. There’s something wrong there’

‘There’s nothing wrong there, it’s just old is all. Old with history and sometimes that history comes back’ she said. He looked at her rousing all his mental energy. She looked back and he saw a new look on her face, one of fear and fascination.

‘You haven’t been truthful with me. Tell me what you know. The truth’

‘What?’

‘Tell me what you know about the house’ he said looking at her until she spoke.

‘I will when you are stronger, Jason’