Then, in time with the music, and just like the girl had, the old man started to hum, then sing that song. “Every move you make...I’ll be watching you...”
“Please,” I cried, turning and beginning to claw my way up the walls of the well. My fingernails dug and scratched at the stone surface, but I couldn’t get a hold. The walls were damp, covered in hundreds of years’ worth of moss and mildew. I glanced back over my shoulder. The old man was standing in the water, humming that song. The flap of skin which had been torn free during the car crash hung against the side of his face, making a wet, slapping sound.
“Please stop,” I cried, my heart beating so fast I thought it might just break.
Despite my pleas, the old man continued to sing. That same line going around and around in my head... I’ll be watching you... I’ll be watching you... I’ll be watching you...
...I’ll be watching you! I pulled the earphones out, just wanting that song to stop, and sat up in my bed. Sweat dripped from my brow, plastering my hair to the sides of my face. A splinter of grey dawn light cut through a gap in the curtains and gave my room a dim, smoky-like quality. I looked down at my iPod; that song by The Police was stuck on repeat. With a set of trembling fingers, I turned it off.
Chapter Fourteen
I threw on my bathrobe and padded to the bathroom. Feeling sick and with my heart still racing, I started to run a bath. While it filled with water, I sat on the toilet and had a pee. Why had I dreamt about that girl in the well? My mind raced. Had the girl in the well been hiding away in my subconscious because Vincent had mentioned her? How had she ended up in that well? The girl in my nightmare had told me she’d been pushed. By accident or on purpose?
I turned off the taps, slipped out of my robe, and climbed into the bath. The warm water lapped over me and I leant my head back. Staring up at the white ceiling, I thought of how the girl had been humming and singing. To picture her standing at the bottom of the well, her dark eyes staring at me, made me shiver and I sunk deeper beneath the warm bath water. Why had she been singing that song – why did she say that she would be watching me? Because you fell asleep listening to that song, dummy, my mind tried to reason. That’s all it was. You were listening to that Police track and the words and music filtered through your subconscious and into your dream. I splashed some of the bath water onto my face in an attempt to clear my mind.
Vincent had said that a girl had died by falling into a well ten years ago. What if it is the same girl – the same well – I had seen in my nightmare? And if it was, why? The old man was still haunting my sleep. He had been in the well, too. Was there a connection between him and the girl? Had he been involved in the girl’s death in some way? Michael had told me he hadn’t really known the old man, other than he was odd and spoke kinda strange. He definitely did that – calling me witch. But he only kept making a guest appearance in my dreams because of what happened out on the road, I reasoned. The old guy was my guilty conscience, come alive to haunt me. That’s why he wanted to talk to me. Would he ever be silenced unless I told the truth? I feared he would always be there – lurking in the shadows of my dreams – whispering the word Witch.
Who was the girl, though? I would only find that out if Vincent found more of the missing paperwork from the file he had mentioned. I didn’t have a contact number for him and I couldn’t risk telephoning the police station. I couldn’t let my father know that I’d been in contact with anyone from work. As my mind tried to reason out the dream and try and conjure ways of how I might find out who the girl was and why she came to be in that well, the telephone suddenly rang. With water dripping from me, I climbed out of the bath, wrapped a clean towel around me, and went into the living room.
“Hello,” I said into the phone.
“Sydney, it’s your father,” he said.
My heart leapt into my throat. Had he discovered that it hadn’t been Mac who’d returned my iPod, and that I had spoken with the new recruit, Vincent? “Hey, dad,” I said casually.
“I just called to see how you were doing?” he said.
I swallowed hard with relief. “Okay, I guess.”
“You guess?” my father came back. “Are you okay, or not?”
“I’m not sleeping too good,” I confessed, wanting to share my burden. I wondered how his sleep had been. Had his conscience been pricking him too as he lay alone at night? Somehow I doubted it. “I keep having nightmares.”
“They’ll soon pass,” he said, more like a doctor giving medical advice than a father offering comfort.