Page 12 of The Moment I Met You
The church is quaking and shimmering, its once-solid form now flickering, as though I’m seeing it through a heat haze. When it starts to fall, it seems to come in slow motion, inevitable and deadly, mocking the flimsy protection of a single restaurant table.
The man shoves me firmly down against the ground, twists his body even more completely around mine, bends his head and tucks it next to mine. The sound is awful, unnatural, drowning out everything else. All I can do is hold on to him, sobbing. I realise I don’t even know his name as I shelter within his arms. The last thing I remember seeing is that father, stretched across the table as his family cowers beneath. His limbs are limp and dangling, his eyes glazed and empty, staring unseeing into the chaos.
Chapter 4
I have that weird sense you have when you are dreaming, and you know you’re dreaming, but you can’t find a way out. When you let out a scream that is smothered to a whisper. When the urgent thrash of your limbs becomes a twitch of a finger. When you are trapped inside a hellscape of your own making.
In this one, someone is holding me face-down into a pit filled with grainy sludge. I am trying to struggle free, but my body isn’t responding. I feel paralysed, and no matter how hard I try to kick and fight, wicked hands hold me still. I know I need to break free so I can become a hummingbird – that being, of course, entirely possible in a dream – and fly away.
The dream me tries to shout out, but every time she opens her mouth to bawl for help, it fills even more with thick, oozing mud, choking out all sound and sliding down her throat to solidify into brick in her windpipe.
I can’t breathe, or move, or make a sound. I am terrified.
I tell myself over and over again that it’s just a dream. That if I can force myself to speak, to wake myself up, then the nightmare will be over and I will open my eyes and everything will be fine. The curse will be broken.
I make one last, desperate attempt to cry out, and eventually I manage one ragged murmur. It is not loud, but even that sigh seems to be enough, and I wake up.
I wake up, but the nightmare doesn’t end. The curse is not broken. It is still dark. I still cannot move. I can still barely breathe, and although no hands are holding me down, neither do I have hummingbird wings.
I blink my eyes over and over again, waiting for that rush of relief I know will come soon, when I am properly awake, when I know I am safe in bed, heart still racing with panic but able to laugh at it all in the cold light of day.
No matter how much I blink, though, nothing changes. I concentrate on the simple things first – inhale, exhale, do it all over again. The air is stuffy and dusty, and each time I suck in a breath, I seem to take a mouthful of grit with it. My lips are dry and coated in the stuff, my eyes sore.
I force myself to keep breathing, telling myself to stay calm, and as I do, I start to remember. Remembering is not good. Remembering brings the panic back, as my bruised mind catches up with my bruised body and reacts to this new reality. One that I cannot wake up from.
I was with the Swedish man. In the square, in Santa Maria de Alto. We were drinking wine, talking, finding an unexpected connection. There was … what? A landslide? An earthquake? Yes, definitely, I think, as the terrible images come back to me: an earthquake.
The ground trembling. The world breaking. The screaming and the wailing and the splintering. The table above us, shaking and creaking as the collapse went on, the hiss of gas and the boom of fire. Children crying. The man from the coach, lying across his family, trying to protect them.
The Swedish man dragging me down to my knees. Talking to me, holding me, telling me it was all going to be fine. His arms around me, his cries of pain as the church came thundering down. And then … then there was this.
This, here, in the dark, sucking in dust.
The fear starts to invade me again and I push it down. Fear is the enemy right now. I decide to carry out a self-applied triage, and move my head slowly from side to side, relieved that I can. I do the same with my arms and legs, testing how much it hurts, what I can feel and what I can’t.
My legs are trapped, by what I don’t know. It’s heavy, but not agonising, and I can still wriggle my toes. My extensive medical training – watching TV shows set in hospitals – tells me that this is a good thing at least.
My left arm is sore but all right. My right arm is, I think, broken, or at least badly damaged. Any movement, from the tips of my fingers to my shoulder, results in the kind of searing pain I’ve never experienced before. We’re not used to pain, are we? We take ibuprofen the minute a headache makes itself known, we have anaesthetic at the dentist, we have pills and potions that take the edge off most things. I’m not used to pain – not pain like this – and I like it about as much as I’d have expected to.
I try to ignore it, and carry on with my assessment. My tummy is off, like it’s been punched, and there is a dull humming in my ears. My whole body feels battered and compressed.
There is moisture on my face, and I use my good hand to wipe it away. It’s sticky and gunky, and I think it must be blood, so I can add some kind of head wound to the list.
There is more room around me than there was in my nightmare, but not a lot. I can raise my head, maybe roll to one side or another. I can’t see much, though, not even the slightest chink of light is coming through into this dank cave.
I reach out and grope tentatively around, feeling chunks of rubble and moist soil beneath my fingertips, under my nails. Above I can stretch my arm mostly straight, before my hands encounter a smooth, flat surface. I pull away quickly – it feels too much like the lid of a coffin for me to bear. It sets off a primal panic that takes me what feels like an age to control.
It is, I think, as I lie there with my eyeballs rolling, forgivable to feel scared. It does not make me a wuss. I am alone, in the dark, breathing air that is clogging my lungs, trapped. I have a broken arm and blood all over my face and no idea what to do next. Can I find a way out? Can I dig myself back to the surface, with a broken arm? Is there even still a surface to dig my way back to?
How much longer can I breathe this air in before I suffocate? How long can I go without water? How much blood can I lose?
All of these thoughts shout loudly in my mind, competing to see which one can freak me out the most. I am immediately filled with shame and anguish, and I tell them to shut up and back off. I am alive. I have survived, and I know so many others probably didn’t. I don’t know what became of the man I was with, and I have no idea where Harry even was when it all happened.
The last thing I felt about Harry was a sense of relief when he left me alone, and then I sat and told a complete stranger that I wasn’t in love with him any more – and now I don’t even know if he’s alive or dead.
My breath starts to come in panting gusts, and I know I have to stop myself spiralling into a panic attack and concentrate on what I can do to get out of this. On finding out what happened to Harry – because if I am alive, then he could be too. Knowing Harry, he’ll be fine. He won’t have a scratch on him, I tell myself.
And the man … the man who held me. Who tried to protect me. I don’t know if he has survived as well – but if he has, I need to find him too.
