Sinking through time (#Wattys2014)

Chapter 23 - Clues

John woke up again; for about the twentieth time that night. He looked over at the glowing red light emanating from the digital clock on his bedside table. It read 5.10 am. He couldn’t take it anymore. He had to get up. His sleep had been restless all night. When he was asleep he was dreaming of Lucy and when he woke up sweating from his dreams he had thought about her. The same question came up again and again. Would Lucy ever remember him or had he lost her and all their happy memories together, forever?

John swung his legs out of bed and stood up. He quickly dressed in tracksuit pants and a shirt and put his runners on. He grabbed a towel and headed out the front door, opening and closing it as quietly as possible. He didn’t want to wake his parents. They would only worry about him if they knew how he was feeling.

As soon as he got to the road he started jogging towards the beach track. His speed picked up as he went. He wondered how many times it had been that Lucy had accompanied him on his morning run to the beach. Most of the time they would go for a swim too, tide permitting. It almost always ended in a splashing fight or a sand fight. On wet days they would still go down the beach but they would make their way to their cave and hang out watching nature and talking.

John could talk to Lucy about anything. From family history to problems at school; he could even talk to her about girls. Not that he’d had many girlfriends. Lucy had always been the girl John compared his girlfriends to and none of them had ever stacked up to Lucy. Now he wondered why that was. He pushed the thought from his head and concentrated on increasing his speed. Within minutes he made it to the end of the track.

John stopped to catch his breath. As it happened he’d stopped right where he’d found Lucy unconscious and barely breathing. He looked around to see if there were any clues as to what happened to Lucy. It was then that he spotted the quicksand pool again. John carefully made his way over to it.

John was flabbergasted. Up until the day he’d found Lucy lying there he’d never seen the quicksand pool before. He wondered how on Earth he’d managed to miss it for the last seventeen years.

He picked up a large stick he found lying next to the pool and tentatively poked the quicksand. A large slurping, sucking sound gathered around the stick. John had to use all his strength to pull the stick back out. Again the slurping, sucking sound was heard.

John came to the conclusion that he probably wouldn’t be able to make his way out of the quicksand if he somehow found himself in it, so he carefully backed away. He looked around the area for any clues that could lead him to discover what had happened to Lucy. He was about to give up looking when something blue at the edge of the track caught his attention. He made his way over to it.

Sitting at the edge of the track, not thirty centimetres from the quicksand pool, John discovered a small sack made of cloth. Poking out of it was blue material. Upon further investigation John found that the blue material was a dress. He recognized it immediately. It was Lucy’s.

John’s mind immediately took him back to when he’d found Lucy. She had been in a long dress. Long sleeves, long skirt. It hadn’t occurred to John until now; he’d never seen that dress before. Actually, he’d never seen Lucy in a long dress, ever. Why would Lucy put a long dress on and put her short dress in a cloth sack? It didn’t make any sense. Not unless she’d been forced to change. John wondered if Lucy had been assaulted and forced to dress up for some sick freak to fulfil his fantasy. It then occurred to John that Lucy may have even been raped. She’d been in a pretty bad way when he’d found her. She’d had sand all over her body and was damp.

John went back over to the stick that he’d dipped in the quicksand. It was wet and sandy where he’d dipped it in the quicksand. Very similar to how Lucy had been. Had the sicko that assaulted Lucy stuck her in the quicksand too? Is that why she had suffered from hypoxia? John dismissed this thought as quickly as it came. It had taken him all his strength to pull the stick out. If a whole person had been submerged, even Ironman would have had a hard time pulling them out.

John went back over to where he’d left the cloth sack. He looked into it and found what looked like beef jerky. Where would Lucy find beef jerky like this? It wasn’t packaged and looked like it had been handmade. Maybe it belonged to the sicko that had assaulted her, John thought.

He stuffed the beef jerky and the dress back into the cloth sack and made his way quickly towards home. Someone had to be told about the long dress. Obviously both his mum and Lucy’s mum had not picked up on it in their urgency to get Lucy to hospital; and the dress was probably cut off Lucy and thrown out when she got taken into the emergency room.

John knew this was important. Maybe this would be the key that unlocked Lucy’s memories. He picked up his pace and started to sprint home. During his journey home a question occurred to him. If Lucy was raped, would it be better that her memories stay buried within the recesses of her mind?