THE SEVENTH PROTECTOR

PART THREE

3.

Gareth lives in the here and now in the present day. His mother was born in Delhi, India, and was brought to live in Dublin, Ireland, when she was just three years old. Gareth's father was born in Blackpool, England. Work brought him to Dublin, when he was twenty-three years old, and this is where he would meet the then twenty-one-year-old lady he was to marry and together they would just have one child. Gareth's dad was a structural engineer, and his mother was a beautician and in this present day both mum and dad are no longer living.

Life had turned upside down the evening two police officers came knocking to the Hutton household. They had the unfortunate task of having deliver news to a nineteen-year-old Gareth Hutton. It is a horrible thing that in this day and age racism is still a prevalent thing. Abuse often came mum's way. Both parents were together in such a moment when dad was having none of it and for his interjection into proceedings, he received a knife to the gut before mum's abuse would physical.

Dad continued to interject for as long as he could to the point it would end the moment his life would be taken. All her desperation, all her screaming done little to bring a disgusting attack to an end. Desperate to be at her husband's side, she was thrown into the back of a large white van where abuse turned a sickening kind of physical.

Upon receipt of the news, almost everything left Gareth. His heart sank right into the pit of his stomach, blood drained from his face, his very own soul left him. He fell to the ground and almost everything which occurred in the next couple of hours would go on and be nothing other than a complete blur.

The next memory he does has from after being told what he had been told, is of being in a hospital corridor and looking to find his mother. Mum was alive at this point but not doing all so well. How he got there, he could not say though there he was all the same. Gareth hardly left mum's side over the following three days, and he was with her the moment her life came to an end. He held her hand as she passed, felt the weakness in her hand fade completely, and this is something that never will be forgotten.

After mum's passing, Gareth walked the halls of the hospital for some time looking for a way out while being held in a daze. He had been asked as to if there is someone available that could come get him and bring him home. He said he'd be just fine ... though he was and would be far from that if he had been honest. There would be something seriously lacking for a long time.

In time though, and in an attempt to move on with his own life, Gareth sold the family home and moved away. Living alone for the past four years and now just twenty-three years old himself, Gareth finds his life turned once again turned upside down, but rather than thinking why me? He now feels a sense of adventure, something he has needed for quite some time. He now has purpose no matter how odd this purpose may be.

***

'If I was to tell you something very strange, I wouldn't be scaring you, would I?' asked the driver of the car within which Gareth now finds himself being a passenger in.

'Depends upon what it is you would be telling me', came the reply.

'I had this dream last night that I was driving along this road, the road I just happened to pick you up on. And in my dream, I picked up someone that I had never met before. This someone in my dream just so happens to look a lot like you ... my name is Neil by the way.'

Gareth didn't quite know how to react other than by shaking Neil's outstretched hand and saying ... 'I'm Gareth.'

'Gareth, can I ask you? Are you a Protector?'

Once again Gareth was puzzled knowing not quite how to react to this question. Just as Gareth was about to attempt to give an answer his crystal began to glow, and cars soon pulled up along and either side of the car he was travelling in.