Chasing Ghosts by Madalyn Morgan (best fantasy books to read .txt) 📕

Mitch looked at Claire, his eyes gleaming with anger. ‘Right!’ He took a sip of his coffee. ‘He ordered us to leave so he could patch her up. She’d been gone for hours when two orderlies half carried, half dragged her back to the hut.’ Mitch shook his head as if to shake the memory from his mind. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. ‘As they dragged her along the ground her legs trailed behind her at odd angles.’ He cleared his throat. ‘She wasn’t able to stand so they threw her unconscious onto my blanket. She came to a couple of times during the night, said a few words, I don’t remember what, now, but when we asked her what she meant, she didn’t know. She had no memory of what happened to her while she was with Beckman.’

‘That’s how you were after your sessions at the hospital in Canada. You hadn’t been beaten, of course,’ Claire said, ‘not physically.’

‘She had been mentally as well as physically hurt. She slipped in and out of sleep. One minute her eyes were open and she was awake, then next they were closed and she was asleep. And all the time she shook uncontrollably. From being fast asleep, her eyes would open and they’d dart around the room. She would look at the window or the door and start screaming. We would calm her down and just when we thought she had settled she would open her eyes again. Once she said she remembered what had happened to her.’

‘And?’

‘She said guard once, and another time dawn.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

‘It sounds to me as if she told them that you were planning to leave at dawn when the guards changed over.’

‘We thought that too.’ Mitch shrugged. ‘If she did tell the Germans, it wasn’t her fault. She wasn’t able to recall anything that made sense. When she tried she became agitated, repeating the words guard and dawn over and over until she passed out again. Her memory had gone, wiped clean by drugs, or hypnosis, as mine had been by Beckman at the Louis Bertrand hospital.

‘She woke once and started to scream. We were worried the guards would hear and take her away again and give her another beating, so I laid down beside her to comfort her. I held her in my arms and rocked her until she quietened. She slept fitfully.

‘When she woke, she was lucid. She begged me not to leave. She said the only explanation for her loss of memory after being in the hospital was that she had been drugged, and there was no telling what she had told Beckman.

‘She begged us not to go, but it was too late. If we were heading into a trap, so was the Passeur who was waiting to take us across the Pyrenees. So, at dawn, when the guards were changing from night to day shift we made our escape.’ Tears filled Mitch’s eyes.

‘And the woman?’ Claire said.

Mitch hung his head. ‘The guards had kicked her so badly…’ He took a shuddering breath unable to speak. Tears streamed down his face. ‘Her legs--’ he said, at last, ‘were broken.’

‘So, you left her behind.’

‘Yes.’ He lifted his head and looked at Claire, his eyes searching hers, pleading with her to understand. ‘She told us to go. She said we had no choice, that she would slow us down. And she was right. She couldn’t walk. We’d have had to carry her.’

They sat again in silence. This time it was Claire who spoke first. ‘Did you think about me? When you were in the prison?’

‘I tried not to.’ Claire shot her husband a hurt look. ‘If I had allowed myself to think about you, I wouldn’t have survived. Guys who pined for their sweethearts didn’t last long. They either went mad, or they caused trouble and were shot. The guards singled out anyone who showed any kind of emotion. They saw it as weakness, a reason to take them out into the exercise yard and use them as a punchbag. I didn’t want to die in there, honey, so I compartmentalised the way the SOE trained us to do. I was stuck in that hell-hole for the duration of the war - however long that was going to be - or until I escaped.’ Mitch leaned forward and looked into Claire’s eyes. ‘But you were always with me, China,’ he said, his own eyes glossy with tears. ‘Safe in here.’ He patted his chest next to his heart. Safe in a compartment where no one could hurt you, but beyond my mental reach.’

Claire looked at her husband, trying her best to understand. ‘Honey, you were fighting with the Resistance. The few times I allowed myself to think about you, I drove myself insane with worry. After I was taken to Gestapo Headquarters, I knew nothing about the outside world. I didn’t know if you’d been arrested too. I felt sure that when the SOE got word I’d been captured they’d recall you. I didn’t know if you’d stayed in England or come back to France and were still working with the Resistance. For all I knew you could have been shot or blown up sabotaging a troop train, as Marcel was.

‘Putting all thoughts of you as far away from that vile place as I could, was how I survived.’

‘I understand,’ Claire whispered. ‘I’m sorry I asked. I did the same every time I went on a mission. I couldn’t allow myself to worry about you for fear it would affect my work, so I put you in that no man’s land compartment. And when Aimée was born…’ Tears ran down Claire’s cheeks. ‘I did the same with her. I daren’t think about her or you. If I had, and I’d lost concentration, I’d have