Tormented At Night

I sleep badly, coming to often in the dark to the sound of banging pipes behind the walls and the night wind. Mrs Winters' words to me at the house on Headersleigh Bridge replay each time I drift off, disturbing me again. I won't be angry if you hurt Craig by accident, but you've got to tell me what you did to him.

I wander over to the sink for a glass of water and switch on the television, leaving the volume on silent to avoid disturbing Robert. I sit and watch the twenty-four hour news, wrapped in an old jacket, shivering from a mixture of the cold and post-trauma nerves. I wish Lana were here. I'm too tired to sleep, too tired to concentrate. I feel old.

Poor Craig. Poor Mr Winters.  Poor Mrs Winters.

I drift off again. All night, I keep waking to the sounds of pipes and the wind and Mrs Winters' reproachful voice. I dream that I'm in the woods at the bottom of Whaley Hill in the rain and fog, waiting for Vince Macarthur to show up. He appears, slithering through the mud towards me, but it's not really him. Instead, it's Craig's dad, Mr Winters, dressed in a set of pyjamas. Sneering, he points at me, then to a tree: 'Alan, lad, you took our lad, so now I'm going to take yours.'