Acid Rain by R.D Rhodes (ebook reader txt) 📕

“Okay.” I said.

We hit the road at a good pace. The sun sank behind the mountains. Clouds hovered low and threw huge shadows of themselves on the ground.  We walked about a mile out of the village, a grey river gurgling on our left, black silent forest on our right, and the road ahead.

“Are you okay?” Harry asked.

“Yeah. I’m fine. Why?”

“Just wondering. You’ve been quiet since this morning, since you got back from that walk.”

“Mm.” I muttered. I didn’t want to talk about it.

I could feel the darkness coming in around me.

“It’s just seeing all that, on that scheme, it makes you sick.” I said.

He nodded and pulled his hood up. Our new boots sounded heavily on the road. “Yeah. I know what you mean.”

We walked in silence. I could hear nothing but the river. Then Harry halted in his tracks, “Wait a minute, that’s not really it, is it? Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, fine. Stop asking me!” I snapped. I kept walking, faster.

An owl hooted from somewhere in the woods. We came upon an old stone shack, sheltered away in a flat bank at the right side of the road, surrounded by leafless trees. We looked at each other and wandered in for a look. The oak door was open on its hinges and we stepped inside the bare rock walls onto the bird-shit covered floor. By the old fireplace someone had painted in large white letters “The ghost of Annie Lewis stays here. Keep away.”

I went up the wooden staircase to the top floor, Harry right behind me. Taking care not to step through the empty spaces, I stood up over the floorboards. Half of the corrugated iron roof was missing, and the other half of it was so slanted there was hardly room enough to stand. But it was empty. We went to work laying out our sleeping bags in the small pocket of space.

I got into my bag and watched through the missing ceiling as the clouds rolled past and the night stars came out and got brighter and brighter along with the full moon. Harry set up the battery-operated lamp-light and started spreading jam sandwiches for tea. It weighed on my mind.

I didn’t hear a single car pass the road.

It was all so quiet out there.

There wasn’t even a squeak from the birds.

I thought about it.

“Harry?” I said.

“Yeah?”

I pulled my covers in tighter and tried to get the words out, but they never came. I kept looking at the stars and tried to get it out.

“What is it?”

“I…nuthin. Just thinkin’ somethin.”

“Do you want cheese in your sandwiches?”

“I was raped.”

Chapter 38

The wind sucked right out of me. I had said it. I had told someone.

There was a strong, sharp silence.

“Um, er, okay,” Harry stuttered. His black eyes were as wide as I’d seen them. He sat down on the bare floor next to me, picked up his sleeping bag and wrapped it around my shivering body.

“When did it happen?”

I looked back at his long, thin face as he waited.

I sat up and inched into the slope of the roof. I looked up at the sky then back at Harry then at the floor. “It started when I was twelve. My dad, he,-he,-did it when I was twelve.”

Harry nodded. His scarf had slipped a little, and in the bright moon's light, the right side of his neck was glistening red.

He waited for me to say more.

I exhaled deeply. My soul was in me somewhere, but it felt like it was hanging out on a line. I waited for my strength to come back.

“My mum and my dad were happy, till they broke up when I was nine.” I told him. “I had the best childhood up till then, and they loved me. But he lost his job. He was a politician. They caught him swindling money, and my parents got unhappy and broke up. My mum didn’t want anything more to do with me. She found a new man with two kids and moved on, so I was left with him. And one night, when I was in my bedroom, he came home late, opened the door. Pulled down the covers and, and did that to me. He said it was my fault mum had left him. Said he was going to teach me a lesson. Then he came in the next night, and the night after. Even when he got his old job back and a new girlfriend he kept coming in. But I had nowhere to go, I didn’t have any other family, I didn’t know what to do. I was just a kid. And he kept at it for two years. Then last year I... I killed him.”

Harry’s eyes were impassive. He nodded calmly and encouragingly. “How did you kill him?” he said softly.

“I, um,..I can’t really remember it much. I just-..,” I took a great deep breath and spoke quickly to push it all out, “He came into my room again, after he hadn’t tried it for all those years. I pushed him away. I said he made me sick, and for some reason he looked at me funny then just walked out the room. But I lay there, thinking, and then my mind just went blank. It was like I was on auto-pilot. Like I had to do it. I got up and went downstairs, went into the kitchen drawer, and took out a knife. Then I went through to the living room, he was watching TV. He had his suit on and his back to me, and I stabbed him in the neck. He screamed but I didn’t feel a thing, I was like a zombie. I pulled it out and stabbed