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He’s still sleeping and shivering from the cold when I pick him up and I bury my face in his fur and breathe in his familiar doggy stink.
“Hurry,” Viola says.
And I turn back to her to see her looking all around, the Noise still whispering all around thru the woods and the rain, the fear still on her face.
She returns her gaze to me and I find it impossible to hold and so I look away.
But as I’m looking away, I see movement behind her.
I see the bushes part behind where she’s standing.
And I see her see my face changing.
And she turns in time to see Aaron coming outta the woods behind her.
And he’s grabbing her by the neck with one hand and smashing a cloth over her nose and mouth with the other and as I call out and take a step forward I hear her scream from beneath it and she tries to fight with her hands but Aaron’s holding her tight and by the time I’ve taken my second and third steps she’s already swooning from whatever’s on the cloth and on my fourth and fifth steps he’s dropping her to the ground and Manchee is still in my arms and on my sixth step he’s reaching behind his back and I don’t have my knife and I have Manchee with me and I can only run towards him and on my seventh step I see him bring around a wooden staff that’s been strapped to his back and it swings thru the air and strikes me full on the side of my head with a
CRACK
and I fall and Manchee tumbles from my arms and I crash into the ground on my belly and my head is ringing so hard I can’t even catch myself and the world goes wobbly and grey and full of only pain and I’m on the ground and everything is tilting and sliding and my arms and legs weigh too much to lift and my face is half in the mud but half turned up and I can see Aaron watching me on the ground and I see his Noise and Viola in it and I see him see my knife shining red in the mud and he picks it up and I try to crawl away but the weight of my body sticks me to the spot and I can only watch as he stands over me.
“I have no further use for you, boy,” he says and he raises the knife over his head and the last thing I see is him bringing it down with the full force of his arm.
Falling no FALLING no please help meFalling The Knife The Knife Spackle spacks are dead, all spacks dead VIOLA sorry, please, sorry he’s got a spear FALLING Please please Aaron, behind you! He’s coming! no further use to me, boy Viola falling, Viola Eade spackle the screaming and the blood and no WATCH ME watch me no please watch me he woulda killed us Ben please I’m sorry Aaron! Run! E-A-D-E More of them we have to get outta here FALLING falling dark blood The Knife dead run I’m a killer please no SPACKLE Viola Viola Viola–
“Viola!” I try and scream but it’s blackness, it’s blackness with no sound, blackness and I’ve fallen and I have no voice–
“Viola,” I try again and there’s water in my lungs and an ache in my gut and pain, pain in my–
“Aaron,” I whisper to myself and no one. “Run, it’s Aaron.”
And then I fall again and it’s blackness . . .
. . .
. . .
“Todd?”
. . .
“Todd?”
Manchee.
“Todd?”
I can feel a dog’s tongue on my face which means I can feel my face which means I can tell where it is and with a rush of air clanging into me, I open my eyes.
Manchee’s standing right by my head, shifting from foot to foot, licking his lips and nose nervously, the bandage still over his eye, but he’s all blurry and it’s hard to–
“Todd?”
I try to say his name to calm him but all I do is cough and a sharp pain soars thru my back. I’m still down on my belly in the muck, where I fell when Aaron–
Aaron.
When Aaron hit me in the head with his staff. I try to raise my head and a blinding ache stretches over the right side of my skull all the way down to my jaw and I have to lie there gritting my teeth for a minute just letting it hurt and blaze before I can even try speaking again.
“Todd?” Manchee whimpers.
“I’m here, Manchee,” I finally mutter but it comes up outta my chest like a growl held back by goo and it sets off more coughing–
Which I have to cut short cuz of the sharp pain in my back.
My back.
I stifle another cough and a horror feeling spreads out from my gut into the rest of me.
The last thing I saw before–
No.
Oh, no.
I cough a little in my throat, trying not to move any muscle at all, failing at it and surviving the pain till it ebbs as far as it’s go
“Is there a knife in me, Manchee?” I rasp.
“Knife, Todd,” he barks and there’s worry all over him. “Back, Todd.”
He comes forward to lick my face again, the dog way of trying to make it better. All I do is breathe and not move for a minute. I close my eyes and pull air inside, despite how my lungs are complaining and already seem full.
I am Todd Hewitt, I think, which is a mistake, cuz here comes all of it back, falling on me, dragging me down and the Spackle’s blood and Viola’s face frightened of me and Aaron coming outta the woods and taking her–
I start to weep but the pain from the grip of the weep is so bad that for a minute I feel paralysed and a living fire burns thru my arms and back and there’s nothing to do but suffer it till it goes.
Slowly, slowly, slowly, I start to uncurl one arm from beneath me. My head and back hurt so bad I think I pass out for a minute but I wake again and slowly, slowly, slowly reach my hand up and behind me, crawling my fingers up my wet filthy shirt and up the wet filthy rucksack which unbelievably I’m still wearing and up and back till there it is under my fingertips.
The handle of the knife. Sticking outta my back.
But I’d be dead.
I’d be dead.
Am I dead?
“Not dead, Todd,” Manchee barks. “Sack! Sack!”
The knife is sticking in me, up high twixt my shoulder blades, the pain’s telling me all about it very specifically, but the knife’s gone thru the rucksack first, something in the rucksack’s stopped the knife from going all the way in–
The book.
My ma’s book.
I feel with my fingers again, slowly as I can, but yes, Aaron raised his arm and brought it down thru the book in the rucksack and it’s stopped it from going all the way thru my body.
(Like it did thru the Spackle.)
I close my eyes again and try to take as deep a breath as possible which ain’t too deep and then I hold it till I can get my fingers round the knife and then I have to breathe and wait till the pain passes and then I try to pull but it’s the heaviest thing in the world and I have to wait and breathe and try again and I pull and the pain in my back increases like a gun firing and I scream out uncontrollably as I feel the knife come outta my back.
I gasp and pant for a minute and try to stop from weeping again, all the while holding the knife away from me, still stuck thru the book and the rucksack.
Manchee licks my face once more.
“Good boy,” I say, tho I don’t know why.
It takes what feels like a lifetime to get the rucksack straps off my arms and finally be able to cast the knife and the whole mess aside. Even then, I can’t come near standing up and I must pass out again cuz Manchee’s licking my face and I’m having to open my eyes and cough in my breath all over again.
As I lay there, still in the muck, I wish to myself more than anything in the whole world that Aaron’s knife had gone thru me, that I was as dead as the Spackle, that I could finish falling down that pit, down down down till there’s only blackness, down into the nowhere where there’s no more Todd to blame or screw things up or fail Ben or fail Viola, and I could fall away forever into nothingness and never have to worry no more.