Free I Know Where the Bodies Are Buried by Oliver Clarke Page B

least, walking through the countryside. The sky was getting dark, faster than was natural, changing from daylight to night within the space of a minute. The area around me grew quiet and still, the birds fell silent, the breeze dropped to nothing. I looked down at my hand and saw a torch in it, the light streaming from it was pointing to the nearest small cluster and trees. I felt myself following the beam, unable to stop myself walking towards the trees. It was when I walked into the copse that I heard the sound of breathing behind me. I spun around and saw a figure, a slightly darker shape against the unnatural night. I swung the torch beam around at it but the bulb flickered and dimmed to almost nothing before it reached the man. I don't know how but I knew it was a man, a man I knew. I stepped back, my heel hit a tree root and I felt myself go backwards. My arms span as I tried to keep myself upright and then I was on the ground. The hard earth knocked the wind out of me and a shard of pain shot through my head as it hit another root. I lay there, looking to the side, unable to move, unable to do anything. The torch was beside me, working again now. The beam lighting the ground in front of me. I saw the legs of the man as he walked towards me. I felt like if I had another minute I'd remember who the man was. Even thirty seconds would be enough for me to place him. Then I saw the shovel in his hand, hanging at his side. The blade was dirty with mud and I realised that behind him the ground fell away. He had dug a grave with that spade. My grave. He swung it, that filthy blade rising up until it was above his head. I could see the light of the torch glint off it; see his two hands gripping the wooden shaft of the spade. His face was hidden in the darkness though. The shape of it just visible but none of the detail. I heard a swish as he swung the spade down at me, stepping forward as he did it. I caught a glint of torchlight shining off one of his eyes as he did it and I realised it was wet with tears. When I saw that eye I knew who he was and the knowledge filled me with terror. And then three things happened. I felt the blade hit my throat, the edge of it striking and crushing my Adam's apple. My phone rang, the shrill ringtone cutting through the dream just as the shovel blade started cutting through my flesh. I woke up choking and coughing, my hands going to my neck, expecting to feel the hot pulse of blood and the wetness of torn flesh. They didn't of course, felt instead just the rough stubble and my familiar soft jowls. Relief flooded through me as I realised two things. It had just been a dream. I couldn't remember who the man was. I knew that I had known but where that thought had been was now nothing. A blank space. An emptiness.
I picked up the phone, still coughing, and pressed the button to answer it. I was unable to speak but raised it to my ear and coughed into it.
"Meet me in ten minutes," it was the man from yesterday. The jittery man. Who else would it be?
I managed to stop coughing and found my voice. "Okay. Where?"    
"I'll be outside." He hung up.
Five minutes later I was pulling open my front door. I hadn't washed or shaved. Just pissed, splashed cold water on my face and mixed a dessert spoonful of coffee granules with water from the hot tap. I stared at myself in the hallway mirror as I drank the foul brew. The nightmare was starting to fade from my memory and I was thankful for that because I suspected that if it hadn't been I might have decided not to go wherever it was he was taking me.
I had to go though didn't I? Because if I didn't I'd never know.
What I saw when opened the door wasn't what I'd expected. I thought he'd just be standing there but instead he was sitting. Sitting in a Range Rover. It wasn't new, was probably 12 or 13 years old but it was still several thousand pounds worth of car. I hadn't expected him to be driving at all, let alone something like this.
He saw my