He took off his hat and set it lightly on the ground, as if it was a fragile piece of porcelain china. I now could see his face, tan with the sun that never came out and winkled with age. His lips were chapped and his nose was curved to one side ever so slightly. Strange thing was, put aside his skin, he looked very fit and youthful and I could only conclude that he was aging well. I heard winter could do that to a man. He was tall, with somewhat noticeable muscles, and black hair that was not even close to thinning or graying. He rewound from his bent posture and looked my way. To cover his eyes, their where sunglasses, though I couldn't imagine why, in this dimly-lit room somewhere in the middle of Canada, he needed them. Then a thought came to me, and soon it no longer could keep the status of being unspoken. "Are you blind?" I asked the old man. He smiled at this, as if not knowing what not to say to that completely. "That's how you start a conversation? Asking if a man has a fate infirmity? I say, what a rude man I think you to be, by just that one question." For some reason, I felt bad in saying this, but I couldn't say sorry. I knew he wasn't done talking just by instinct.
"You are observant. Strange, with the state you are in. But those that are blessed with detection are those that can not get rid of the gift. And that is why so many people don't have it; they kill themselves before logic does it for them." The man started to rock, and then stopped with the face I made. "What be your name?" His guff voice had lightened to one that almost had the same tone as my father did when he was drunk; calm, sincere, and ready to hear anything.
So, as much as I didn't want to give away my identity I said, "My name is Louis. Louis Moore. And who are you?" He hesitated for a second, like he couldn't remember who he was or he didn't want me to know. Then, clearing his throat, he answered, "What do you wish to know of my name? If you had wanted to know my name, you would have asked that first." I didn't know what he was getting at, but I wasn't going to be the guilty party in this. "If you had wanted me to know your name you would have spoken first, instead of having a room of silence, and introduce yourself." A wry expression came upon his winkled visage, and I thought he would leave. Instead his dry lips curved into a smile. "I see you are more clever than I first thought you to be, with the rude behavior and the car crash." I took much offense to this, even though half of it had been a complement. "My name is Hugo Caul, and I'm the one running this facility. You do know where you are, right?" How would I know? The windows were blocked and he was the only one that has talked to me this whole time. He was starting to annoy me. He caught my expression. "Oh yes. I keep remembering Sophie can't speak anymore." Anymore? "Well, no matter. This is a building of the park you luckily crashed in. Any further and I don't think I would have heard the explosion." My car had exploded? I don't remember that. Maybe it had been at a time I was unconscious. "You had gone a long way off the main road too. I'm surprised the tires could even stay on the ground." I thought he had gave a small bit of laughter, but then realized that he had sneezed."Bless you." I make up from the recesses of my mind.
"Thank you. Anyway, we brought you back here and gave you some medicine I learned to make from herbs my grandpa wrote down. They don't sit right with you though, do they?" The wolf... The wolf coming at me and the room being different colors than that I see now. "No they don't." I just whispered distantly. "Well, you probably want to rest." He got up from the chair, one more squeak coming from the wood. "Wait." I said, and this time it was not a pain that went to waste. "Please, will you call my family. They'll probably worried that I didn't come for Thanksgiving. The number is..."
This time, I know he laughed. It was loud and distinctly mocking me. When he had calmed down, he said, "No need to worry about that, Louis. The lines have been dead since you came. An that device you had was broken too." He still had a smile on his face when I asked him the date. "Oh yes. It's the 15th of November. It's been snowing for a long time." Without looking at me again, he left and I could hear a distant sound of a lock, which I wasn't in the right plane to decide it to be a good or bad sound inside my head. I forgot all about the sound, though, when the movie reel inside my head finally plays what Caul had said just a second before.
If I could, I would probably have my mouth open right now. I had been in here since October 7th, the day my Canadian family celebrated the holiday. I had been there for more than a month, sleeping. No wonder I felt so giddy, so weak. Sleeping was good for a while, but never for so long. My family had to be worried about me. The police or Mounties or whatever they have here had to be looking for me if my work had reported me missing.
I couldn't stay here any longer. I couldn't sleep until I got better. What if I never got out of this bed again, never saw my family again...
No.
I was over-reacting. Hugo had heard an explosion. He found me in the flipped car and carried me back to this historical building, which could explain why they wore such out-dated clothes. Hugo had treated my wounds and had taken care that I didn't die while waiting for the blizzard outside to stop, for the lines to be fixed or the roads to be clear so he could go to the nearest town and bring an ambulance over.
I should have thanked him, not question him. So why hadn't I?
