Indigo Ghosts by Alys Clare

Author:Alys Clare [Clare, Alys]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448304103
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 2020-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

Jonathan and I left the church and went to his house, where he poured measures of brandy for us both.

‘I too have the sense that somebody is watching me,’ I said as we settled either side of the hearth. Jonathan had stoked up the fire, and the heat and, more importantly, the light were providing their age-old comfort and reassurance. The brandy, however, was the best restorative. I have often wondered who provides our vicar with such fine French brandy; someone, presumably, who values him as much as I do.

‘And as soon as you mentioned dreams,’ I went on, ‘I knew we had to speak.’

‘You too?’ he asked.

‘Oh, yes.’

There was a pause, then he said cautiously, ‘Would you like to talk about them?’

I wasn’t sure where to begin, so I started with the prosaic. ‘They began the night after I’d first gone to see Captain Zeke on the Falco, so that’s …’ I thought back. ‘Roughly a week ago.’

Jonathan shot me a sympathetic glance. ‘If your experiences have been anything like mine, that is a long time to have suffered,’ he said quietly.

‘I haven’t dreamed every night,’ I replied. I smiled briefly. ‘Only most of them.’

‘To describe what you see might help to disempower its force?’ Jonathan said tentatively. ‘And I take it that you have not mentioned the dreams to – to anyone in your household.’

I assumed he meant my sister. ‘No,’ I agreed. Then, for I felt he might ascribe my reticence to some fallible quality in Celia, I added, ‘I share many things with my sister, Jonathan. More, perhaps, than I should, but she is a strong woman and has endured much without breaking.’

Almost inaudibly he murmured, ‘I know.’

I stored away that soft, revealing comment, for it was not the moment to respond to it, and anyway I wasn’t sure Jonathan had intended me to hear.

‘The reason I have not confided in her concerning these wretched dreams is that I am ashamed,’ I plunged on. ‘Ashamed of my terror, ashamed of the instinct that would have me keep a light burning all night; most of all, ashamed of my new reluctance to close my eyes and yield to sleep because I am so afraid of what will come to me when I am helpless in the dark.’

Oh, but it was good to speak of it at last. I had been keeping it to myself as a way of pretending it wasn’t really happening, and the strain had been considerable.

‘You describe it well,’ Jonathan said. ‘What will come to me. It is precisely what I feel, too.’ He paused, thinking. ‘Something lurks, patiently waiting, until I cannot fight it, and then it slips into my dreams and it is as if somebody is pushing it.’

I nodded eagerly. ‘Yes, precisely that. I see a huge animal, just out of sight among a tangle of trees and undergrowth – a jungle, for there’s a sense of great heat and humidity. It moves with the sinuous stealth of a great black

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