No Way To Escape | Novel

CHAPTER 61: 'IS IT GONE?'

I dreamt of Larry.

I saw him playing with sand on a beach. He was making a sand house. It was the five-year-old him. He was just in his tiny beach boxers and had a small plastic bucket and a spade in his hand. He was giggling as the water from the sea was touching his feet and receding back. The cool wind was fluttering through his long blonde hair. The beach was completely deserted. No facilities, no lifeguard, no brollies. Not even a single arm-chair.

Then I saw a man, in plain trousers and a blue cotton shirt, walking down to the boy. As I focussed my vision onto the face of the man, I realized it was Larry himself, as a man. He slowly walked down to the boy and just stood by him, witnessing his kid-self toiling over the sand house. My eyes were stuck upon both of them. I remember how much he liked beaches right from his childhood and how we used to visit Miami every vacation. My eyes were moist now and I could feel my throat and lips shaking.

It took him awhile to make it all over. As he completed making it, he looked up at the older Larry and started chuckling, holding his hand. The older Larry returned him a sweet smile and caressed the boy's hair. My eyes were flooded by tears now and I was sobbing. As I shifted my glance at the house he had made, I was shocked. It was The Warwick's; a sand model of it. My sobs came to a halt and my heart pounded inside my chest. 

I gasped and looked up at both of them. They were now looking at me. The smile on their faces had faded. Their eyes had fixed onto something behind me. Following their gazes, as I turned around, the skeleto-muscular Edward screamed right over my face.

I shrieked and woke up right in the darkness of the mansion. I was panting fast and sweating profusely as I saw Father Richard sitting by my side, resting his back against the newel post of the stairs. 'Don't worry. Just a bad dream. Not another Warwick nightmare', he said as he tried to get up. He was in extreme pain which was evident from his face. I had still been panting. 'Here, get up boy', he said as he forwarded his hand to help me get up. Both of us groaned as he got me up on my feet through my non-broken hand.

I felt as if I had been drained of all my energy. 'Why didn't you wake me up?', I asked him.

'Thought you should get a good sleep. It must have been a while, isn't it?'. I nodded my head.

'Ah! It doesn't hurt much back then but now I feel like my legs are on the verge of being torn apart', I said with an ugly grimace over my face.

'Hm. Your head is blood-soaked through the temples and brow... By the way, the sleeves tied upon your leg-wound had loosened. It had made you lose more blood. Perhaps that's the reason you fainted. I tightened them up', he said to me.

'Ah, thank you, Father. I think I should call an ambulance. My phone... um... yeah, must be in the kitchen. Wait right here, I'm coming back'. I limped to the kitchen, picked up my phone and called the ambulance while I walked back to the hall to accompany Father. He was now by the backyard door.

I walked up to him and asked, 'Is it gone? Like, really? Did we do it?'. He stood silent for a moment and then sighed. 'Yes, I can feel it. The silence in here is not so strange now'.

We walked down to the burial place and stood by it while waiting for the ambulance to arrive. Now I could finally make for the meaning of 'Free' in Ruth's sentence. It indeed signified freedom and it was for them all - all the souls trapped and tyrannized by the Devil's men. I glanced down at the pit. Dying ashes and flames all over.

'I must thank you for your timely decision to use the weeds', I told him.

'Yeah, when the doors closed by themselves, I could make it. We had lesser time. I rushed my digging and as I reached down, I uprooted and collected the grasses and weeds and yeah, you see... How did he hurt your leg?'

'Ah, just an elderly hound', I said as both of us shared a laugh; after a long time.

'When he finally raised his hand...', he said. 'I thought he will stop it. The coin did wobble a little though. But it was already too late for him. When it happened, the hand went back in and then as I limped in, you had fainted already'.

We got seated on the porch steps and continued our conversations until the ambulance arrived. Before leaving, he asked me what was I planning to do now. I told him, 'Have still got a work to do', as both of us split in different stretchers and were transported to the nearest hospital.