Read Online Crooked Vows by John Watt - Free Book Online

doctor leans forward, elbows on the desk.
    â€˜That’s fine. Now close your eyes and relax. You read that story only a few weeks ago. Think yourself back into that time, that place. You put the story of Saint Sabas down, and you look around. What do you see? What do you feel, or hear, or smell?’
    Thomas sinks back in his chair. He feels the smooth leather surface of the chair-back. And remembers. There is something different against his back: something massive and rough. An enormous tree trunk. Behind closed eyelids he looks around. Trees are all around him: giants of a size he has never imagined. Sitting on the ground with his back against one of them, he looks up the trunk of another directly in front of him. It has a few feet of rough bark near the ground, and above that it is smooth and pale. The smooth pale trunk goes up a long way; he can’t guess how far it is up to the first branch. Maybe seventy feet, maybe eighty, maybe even a hundred. He had no idea that such trees existed.
    Macpherson prompts.
    â€˜That’s good. Now look around a little further. What else do you see? Or hear, or smell?’
    Smell, yes. The smell of smoke. Not wood smoke, more like burning oil. And something else. A smell like burned meat. Charred black. Horrible. He pauses for a few moments, eyes still shut.
    Of course. How can all of this have fallen out of his memory? He looks at the main section of the plane—or what is left of it. The wing on the near side has been ripped off completely, and most of the remnants of it are wrapped around one of the immense tree-trunks. Smoke is pouring out of jagged holes in the larger part of the fuselage, and a few flames, but nothing like the smoke and flames of half an hour earlier. The rear section is a short distance further away, clear of the fire. We were at the back and we escaped alive. The others—he can almost taste the harsh smell of the burning flesh now. And hear the roaring of the flames. And the screaming—the intolerable screaming. As if people are being torn apart into small pieces. It goes on and on. He doesn’t know how long it is before the screaming finally dies away. He feels the horror of the pain, the terror of the others, trapped inside the mass of roaring flames and black smoke.
    Macpherson interrupts the flow of memory. There is a more urgent tone in his voice than before.
    â€˜â€œWe”’. You said “We have escaped alive”. Who else is there?’
    â€˜There is a girl. A young woman.’ Thomas stretches, finds a more comfortable angle for his legs.
    â€˜Does she have a name? Do you know her name?’
    Thomas hesitates.
    â€˜Not at this moment. I only found out her name later.’
    â€˜Well, then. To be true to your memories we should for the moment just think of her as a young woman. But how do you come to be sitting against a tree?
    Thomas shuts out the immediate scene: the shelves packed with serious books, the big desk with the older man leaning forward over it. He has a vague memory of staggering away from the wreckage of the tail section, looking down and finding he is clutching his book, still open at the story of Saint Sabas. Of course. He was reading it in the plane when the engines abruptly cut out.
    Cries for help come from the main section of the fuselage, but as he approaches it suddenly bursts into flames. For a few seconds he is unable to move, unable to decide what to do. The blaze flares up more fiercely. The calls for help change to agonised screams, but a blast of heat forces him to back well away.
    As he circles around the wreck, frantically looking for an opening to make a rescue dash in, the fire swiftly engulfs the whole plane, dense black smoke churning skywards in an ominous column. He watches with horror as a face appears momentarily at one of the windows: a woman’s face, surrounded by flames, hideously distorted by pain and terror, mouth open to let out an