Free What I Tell You In the Dark by John Samuel

wakened from death. Blinking in the pit of their grave. It has the quality of an omen, a scene from one of those Tarot cards – one of the bad ones. Il Giudizio .
    Don’t stop, don’t look. That’s the secret. Just shake it off and move on.
    Around the corner from Will’s flat I get a text message from Natalie.
    Ed meeting @ 5pm , it says. Will call after. We can make this happen .
    Yes. Exactly. I tuck the phone back in my pocket. We can make this happen. I step off the kerb.
    Something hits me, hard, slamming me face first on to and off it in the same second.
    The next thing I know I am sitting up on the tarmac with a circle of strangers looking down at me. My face is warm and wet. Blood is dripping on to the front of my shirt. My nose is beating like a bull’s heart.
    â€˜I couldn’t miss you!’ a semi-hysterical Indian man is gabbling at me. ‘Vy don’t you look?’
    Someone, a woman from the circle leads him away, speaking to him quietly. I hear him even in the distance, saying, ‘You saw him stepping right in front of me.’
    â€˜Don’t get up,’ a voice tells me. One of them, a cuddly looking woman, has squatted down next to me. ‘Stay where you are until the ambulance gets here.’
    â€˜I don’t need an …’ ambulance gets lost in my swooning effort to stand. I reach a wobbly half-crouch then sit back down hard on the ground. ‘Okay,’ I concede, ‘maybe I should just …’
    â€˜Don’t get up,’ she repeats, a little more firmly this time. She puts a half reassuring, half restraining hand on me.
    When the paramedics arrive they shine a light in my eyes and ask me some resoundingly clear questions about who and where I am. By this time (it’s taken a good twenty minutes for them to get here) I feel pretty much back to normal. The fogginess has burnt off, although a low, menacing ache has set up shop in the mid to back section of my head. And my nose is throbbing to such an extent that my entire face seems to have joined with its pulsating rhythm.
    They take me into the back of the ambulance to put some wadding in my nose, or at least one of them does. The other one stays outside, talking to the driver who hit me, the Indian guy, who continues to flit around like a moth.
    â€˜You’re lucky to have got off so lightly,’ she tells me. ‘But I’m just going to shut the door while I put the cotton in there. I think I may need to make a manual adjustment to your nose – is that okay with you?’
    I nod, pointlessly since her back is turned to me while she pulls the door to. I’m about to say it in words when she turns around again. But I don’t. I don’t say anything.
    â€˜No need to stare like that.’
    Her voice has changed, she has changed, but it’s different this time, not like it was with the guy in the pub. She has none of the rage that Simon (was that his name?) had, and she’s actually speaking normal English too, like she’s bothered to notice what you’ve all been up to in the last few hundred years.
    She doesn’t appear to hate me either, which is a little unnerving.
    â€˜He wants you home,’ she tells me, making it sound like the most attractive thing in the world.
    â€˜Then maybe He should have picked a better driver,’ I say.
    â€˜You know as well as I do what I’m talking about. He could cut you off any time He wants – but He doesn’t want to play it like that. Not with you. He’s giving you a chance here. He wants you to be able to come back – while you still can.’
    Ah right, so not entirely non-threatening then. Still, a nicely phrased, backhanded threat is a far sight more pleasant than being called a fool and a weakling, or whatever it was that last one said.
    â€˜But I’m not finished here.’
    She sighs and sits down on the fold-out seat opposite me. This is much more like an