Drawing Blood

Chapter Forty-One

It would have been naïve of me to expect anything different. Will and I were too similar. We were too stubborn for our own good. If I were to say it was pretty, and we sat down and spoke to each other like adults, ironed out our differences, I would be lying. Angela had always said we were alike. She always said we had been cut from the same cloth. It would be her I thought of as Will's fury washed over me. It would be her warm laugh and affectionate smile I would return to in those months which followed.

... "Do you have any idea what that boy has done?! The danger he's put us all in?!"

Will terrified me. Even before I forced that confession past his lips, he terrified me. There was a coldness to his voice when he said that sentence, a darkness in his eyes; which, if I were to think about today, would still have me reaching for the nearest door in an attempt to escape. It would be the same expression he wore in my nightmares. The same expression I had tried hard to erase. Those little splices of colour which had made no sense to me whilst I was growing up, those vivid images I could never place. Memories locked away for years and years, they were. Memories which had tried to swim to the surface; only for me to push them back under, holding them down, drowning them. Up, they came. Up and up. Like a huge wave. A violent tsunami. The craziness. The sudden bright light. My own screams when I saw the blood-soaked hands reaching out for me. The wailing. Oh god, the wailing. And the cold wind against my face as I was bundled away.

It had all been real.

It had all been real.

And I had ignored all of it. Filed it in a box marked: Trauma.

"How could you be so stupid!" he shouted at me. "That boy is unhinged! Didn't I warn you against him?! Didn't I!? He led that journalist to us!"

"What boy!?"

"Adam!"

"Unhinged!?"

"Don't you dare talk back to me!"

I clamped my mouth shut. I observed him through a hardened gaze. Those mannerisms, those distinct quirks which made him a person. His traits. His patterns. All of them had taken on a different form once I had stepped into that hallway. His voice was different. The way he stood. The way he smelt. Everything about him changed. I recall, my presence seemed to enrage him. That, he could not even bring himself to look at me. Looking back, I suspect he wanted to hurt me in someway. I guess, it would have made him happy if I had cried, or screamed. All would have been valid under the circumstances. All would have been acceptable. I must have appeared callous and detached from him, that morning. I must have come across as cold and aloof. I must have seemed completely unnatural.

.... "Have you been listening to a goddamn word I've said?!"

If I were to tell you how it ended, how he had seen what was coming our way, you would have sympathised with him. His underhand tactics were justified, you would say. You would have done the same thing. I, however, would not feel that way. I held a strong sense of hatred when he raised his voice at me. I felt a surge of my own anger. If I had not held it at bay, then things may have been different. That conclusion, that twist in the plot which had been so carefully thought out, may never have happened, it may have never even occurred.

Jonathon had warned me how I would feel. He said, I ought fight the battle inside my head. I was to be on my guard, and let Will reveal his true colours to me. But it did not stop the involuntary chill which ran down my spine. Nor did it stop the fear unfold in my chest when I watched him straighten up, as though shedding his old self, breaking free. I may not be able to recall certain things due to the passage of time. I am older now, and some things get lost through the years. Yet, if I am to close my eyes, and not even concentrate, I can still see him roll his shoulders back, move his head from side to side, as though waking from a long and deep sleep.