Free What I Tell You In the Dark by John Samuel Page B

that. Far from it – it’s galling for us all, the way they’ve taken to heart all that babbling you did – but He needs you to stop it now, okay? Whatever it is you thinkyou’re doing, you’re going to need to back off. Others will take care of this for you.’
    â€˜Oh will they?’ I get myself ready to leave. ‘No, I’m sorry, but this is my mess, and I’m going to clean it up. I can’t sit by and watch anymore. I’m tired of just watching all the time. I’m so tired of all of it.’
    â€˜You stay right where you are,’ her voice commands me, under new strain, about an octave deeper. ‘You callow brat.’ Here we go. ‘Is it not enough that you poisoned the well once before with your mindless promises about heaven and eternity? You do realise what you’ve done, don’t you? These people are shooting for another life now, thanks to you and your jam tomorrow fairy stories.’
    â€˜Yes – exactly . Why do you think I’m here?’
    She fixes me with a desolate stare.
    â€˜I really don’t know. But what I do know is that you should not be here. And you know it too.’
    â€˜The hand that errs,’ she mutters as she rifles in one of the equipment drawers, ‘is not the hand that heals.’
    She holds out to me some vials of morphine and a large sealed syringe. ‘Use these. Return yourself to Him. Throw yourself upon His mercy.’
    â€˜No.’ I stand up, like a giant in this confined space. ‘I must find an ending.’
    She makes a gesture I’m not sure how to describe. More than a shrug, less than a shudder.
    â€˜An ending is exactly what you will find. He will show you no kindness if you refuse Him now.’
    So this is it .
    Do I say it or think it? I cannot tell. No matter, there are no words left to speak. It is a mutual kinesis – not just me, but Him too. Another hand must set the fire in this dry straw.
    â€˜He will put you in the earth,’ are her final words to me.
    That’s what they call it, when He casts one of us out.
    â€˜ Lama sabachthani ?’ I croak. Forsaken again. Godforsaken.
    I stumble out of there and push past her partner. He doesn’t seem especially surprised to see me leaving like that. People in sudden aggressions, refusing help, it’s part of his job. Mine too.
    The way back to the flat is a blur. Houses, doors, railings, fences, people peeping out of windows, a dead something under a bush – it all goes scudding by me. A wet trim of fallen leaves runs along the side of the pavement. Its musty stench of rot and damp is still in my nostrils as I open Will’s door.
    Inside, it’s the most I can do to reach that sofa again. I am suddenly overwhelmed by fatigue. It is choking in my throat, aching through my limbs. My entire frame is working to a new gravity, like it wants to be way down there somewhere, in the earth’s core. All around me is the detritus of insomnia. How long since this body last slept?
    The most I can manage is to roll down on to the floor and crawl over to the mattress. Lying on the sheets, I blink slowly. Curtain down, curtain up again: I see the carpet and the small pile of books beside the makeshift bed, Aquinas’s fat face in there. I blink again, but this time my eyelids will not open. There’s nothing more I can do.
    It’s been a proper, old school Monday. Lundi. Lunes. Howl at the moon day.
    I take a deep breath. All sound shuts out, leaving only the slow, steady beating of this heart, telegraphed to me through the springs of the mattress, remote and rhythmic. The drum call of a forgotten outpost.

5
    The moment I open my eyes, I feel the change.
    I pat my body, checking for what I do not know.
    Can this really be it? The dark descent?
    Are these my hands now? My flesh? Or am I being tricked by imagination? This sudden feeling of being fastened here just another fluke sensation.
    Reason