Chapter 14
She began to regain 'consciousness' very early morning the next day (although it would be some hours yet before she was truly awake). She awoke mumbling. Mitchell – who had just begun to flag – started up as soon as he heard the noise. He listened intently to the unintelligible ramblings.
"I, you know," (mutter, mutter) "thought," (cough) "you were there." Mitchell restrained the urge to shake her and demand what the hell she was on about. They were just ramblings after all, and should be heeded no more than the shell-shocked, feverish men in the trenches. But he couldn't stop himself listening.
"I had the strangest dream." Upon hearing this slightly more lucid utterance, he could not help himself;
"You slept?" It was hard to keep the surprise out of his voice.
"Not that kind of dream… I dreamt, when I was out walking…" she trailed off. He opened his mouth to ask again, but closed it when she began to speak.
"You'll remember, Mitchell. Underneath the bridge in London; that was the beginning of the end, though that sounds cliché." She had opened her eyes and looked up at him blearily, as he inspected her from above.
"What?"
"You don't recall? Of course you do. You will tell me soon that you do not remember number 242! How I should laugh if you did. Foolish child, how cruel it is to toy with me like that. The grey flannel was the worst… " She descended into utter gibberish again and Mitchell sat down once more. It was definitely better to ignore her whilst she was in this state. Somewhere, though, some small part of the nonsense struck a cord. The talk about bridges in London brought back vague pictures of something, but it wasn't as if it were somewhere one went only once in their life (if of course, one lived in Britain), and without specifics, it was just more rubbish. 'What about number 242?' something in himself told him that it would be safer to say that he'd no associations with the silly thing, but something else told him that there was an association, and that it was important.
She muttered loudly, but all that Mitchell could make out were the words "Stop!" and "Oh please… no more." If ghosts could catch 'flu, he'd say that she had it. But of course they couldn't catch anything anymore than a vampire could. A familiar sense of frustration washed over him, but he quashed it quickly.
All that mattered now was that she got better. Mitchell knew that it was his fault. He didn't know how, but it had been all his fault none the less. And now he had to put it right.