The Coming

The Body

The same nightmare keeps me awake. it must be late judging from the moons position about 3am i guess. Scully snores loudly beside me as I stoke up our fire and try to coax warmth back into my hands. I close my eyes and the painful image from my dream is still there. I am sitting on a cold

floor probably only 4 years old watching my step father fight with my mother. He slaps her and she hits him back, she wasnt defeated then, perhaps she wanted to leave him after seeing his true nature, perhaps everything would have been okay if she hadnt died and left me to fend for myself. I still remember the screams of my mother when he picked me up and locked me in the dark cellar. The last memory i have of her. She died in a car accident a few days later while I was still being kept from her under lock and key. A few years ago a chance meeting with one of my mothers old

friends revealed what was left of her family always suspected my step father might have had something to do with her death but his wealth translated into power over the police and nothing was investigated, apparently they also tried to get custody of me but since  he also had power over the courts this was futile. It never made sense why  he would keep me around, he hated me as much as I hated him and he had a new family more suited to his cruel nature. My step mother especially treated me with contempt and raised two horrid step brothers to be the same way.

Eventually I got the courage to leave, my conditions haven’t exactly changed, living with my step family might have guaranteed me enough food not to starve but living there was like being slowly posioned and I couldn’t take it anymore. I feel ashamed when I think about how I never told Scully where I came from. I guess I always thought if she knew I was the governors stepson she might leave me behind. Instead i tell her my chosen truth, that my mother was killed in a car accident and my father murdered like her family. She never pries she knows like most from the streets never to ask about someones life before because it is usually too painful, if someone tells you their story it is only if they want to. I sigh, as Scully starts to cough again. I move other to check on her but

she is fast asleep. ’what’s wrong Nathan’ she jolts up, she still has a good response to potential trouble. ‘Nothing sorry, you were coughing i was just checking’

‘oh was I indeed, what time do you reckon it is?’

‘3.25 am’ I smile as she playfully slaps my face.

‘back to sleep for me, few more good hours left before those blasted police patrols start, coming here and moving  us on, where  do they think we have to bloody go too?’ just as she seems about to launch into one of her tirades I hear it again the coughing and its not Scully but its close she hears it to and we lower our voices to whispers.

‘what do you think?’

‘I don’t know lad could be anyone, although with a cough like that they don’t sound tolike much of a threat’

The cough mixes with sound of splashing water confusing us both. Scully stands now to get a better look, ‘I can’t see anyone on the bank, hello who’s there?’ the sound of a light groan has us both standing now to try and identify where it is coming from, we walk closer to the waters edge.

I use the reflection of the moonlight on the waters surface to try and light the scene, and when I  see the dark shape snagged on an old shopping cart it doesn’t take me long to identify it as a body.

‘over there in the water’ I guide Scullys eye to the spot. Before I have time to speak she is wading into the icy water  ’we have to save her,

Nathan go get help’.

‘get-out of the water you will freeze’ typically she wades further in but starts to struggle with the current. There’s no choice but too run after in her, the  water is so cold it feels like swirling knives slicing my skin.

I catch up to Scully who is bent over the dark shape and as she motions to an arm we both start to pull the shape towards the bank towards our little fire. It takes us twice as long to heave ourselves dressed in our heavy wet clothes and the shape out of the water as it did to retrieve it. I am

exhausted, shaking wildly, but Scully is almost in a trance like state of busyness, moving around the shape, checking for a pulse and removing the long dark navy coat from its body.

She turns to me and shouts to get more help, I shuffle as quickly as my frozen limbs allow to the street above and manage to stop a cab by walking out in front of it. I am sure the driver might have driven around me if it wasn’t for a lucky break, a pair of young, emphatic doctors emerge and

come to my aid. I am so cold it takes me a while to shutter out the words about the others on the bank and they follow me too where Scully sits with the shape. Only it isn’t a shape  anymore, under the long dark coat was the slim shape of a girl close to my age I would guess. Her face is bloody

and swollen but her ivory skin, long black hair that sticks to her face and neck dark eyelashes convey she is probably gifted with beauty albeit not right now. Scully and I lie down on the banks exhausted and frozen. We tell the doctuors what little we know, that we found her in the water and

we don’t know how long she was there for. Above the sound of my teeth chattering I can hear Scully whispering, ‘peter you were right’ over and over again interupted finally when the ambulances arrive and load us up. Paramedics are shining lights in my eyes and shouting at me to stay awake,

but I am used to shouting so I block them out and let the heavy weight on my body push me down and send me off in unconscious – and for the first time in a long time a dreamless and wonderful sleep.