XIV - Charlie
Charlie
was not dreaming. His sleep was more
peaceful than it had been in a long time.
Somehow, despite all the horrors he had seen that night, he felt safer
than he ever had at home and his body had given in to the need for rest. So, when a pair of soft, cool hands began to
shake him awake, he resisted at first, rolling over as much as he could in the
small space of the chair and squeezing his eyes shut until he drifted back to
sleep.
“Charlie.”
It was Paige’s voice, he knew.
“Charlie?” She sounded worried and that made him feel
slightly guilty for not waking up for her, but the sleep he had just left was
so much better, he lay still a while longer.
“Charlie! Josh is missing, we have to go!” That brought him round. He sat upright, rubbed his eyes and stared
straight at Paige’s panic-stricken face.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“It’s okay, honey, but we need
to get a move on if we’re going to find him.”
“I know where he is.”
“You.. you do?” She looked like she didn’t believe him.
Behind her Henry was rising,
very slowly, from his seat and saying, “The boy has known much more than that
before now, so why not?”
It was strange to hear the old
man talking so much sense.
“Besides,” Henry added, “I have
a fair idea myself.”
Charlie gazed past Paige and
studied the old man. He examined his
slightly stooped posture, his rumpled hospital gown, details which helped to
make him a ridiculous figure, the same man who had denied the evidence of his
senses for most of the evening. But
then he reached his eyes and man and boy stared at each other for what seemed a
long time and Charlie realised that, in this one instance at least, they were completely
on the same page.
“He’s gone to the Kirk,”
Charlie said, looking at Paige once more, though he could see Henry nodding in
the background.
“It makes sense. He was suddenly very keen to get there after
the factory and I don’t think he’d mentioned it once before then. Plus he seemed to know things about the cult
we hadn’t yet discussed with him. There’s
something going on with that boy, you mark my words, and it’s more than likely
it’s all centred on that Kirk.”
“Then we’d better get going,”
Paige said, standing up, “we were all sleeping, so who knows how long ago he
left us.”
Henry rubbed his hip and
Charlie felt a pang of sympathy for him.
“We can take our time,” he
said, drawing the gaze of both adults, “dawn is a long way off yet.”
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