the dimming of the light (Part 28)

my growing certainty that the Colonel had murdered my husband a theory supported by his sudden increase sexual innuendos towards me something a woman of my age had no difficulty in detecting only added to my loathing towards him and the increased sleeplessness I'd been experiencing

since my darling's death

and the fact that I had momentarily considered eating some of my beloved's body added more to my hatred although eating my husband could also be construed as an act of love and worship

aided by the fact that I could not get Sharon's Wicca incantation out of my mind the one she had chanted aloud as the burning boat finally slid under the water of our lake;

I step into the light of the Goddess, into her arms and into her protection

her light is my shield and Her embrace is my armour

She walks with me in my footsteps

She is above and below me

to the East and the West of me

Before and behind me

within and around me

round and round always pounding within my head my husband hadn't been in any way religious I am not religious and if I had been - current events would have driven it out of me

but Sharon, also not religious in any formal sense but she had an ancient empathy with the old religion - not with any conventional god but in the spirits of the earth, the water and the sky - and it did not seem inappropriate that she quietly voiced what she did

in her soft Somerset accent

I cried silently as I continued stroking the arrowhead on the stone yes yes it was tribal, primitive, but no law now existed to stop me, no punishment existed

only an ancient lust for revenge and the sooner it was done the better

* * *

Soon, a gentle dusk would descend, that soft mauve blanket which settled over he water the splashy chorus of the water birds and the collective calls of home-flying rooks

the all too familiar sounds and sights of our small patch settling for the night

Although the colonel had spent much of his time in his house next door, instead of the more efficient practice of staying with Chris, Sharon and me - I had watched him carefully

having just seen him leave the building to walk down to the lake

After stringing the hunting bow I tried to draw it to the full length of the shaft tipped with the broad-head I had earlier sharpened

I could not draw the entire twenty-nine inches I would have to make do with less than the bow's full power

as I approached the Colonel he looked up at me with a mixture of surprise and apprehension

by the time his eyes registered, in the dimming light the bow in my hands I had drawn string back to my right ear

I released it at the close range of no more than fifteen feet

and he didn't die instantly it took twenty minutes of hoped-for agony from the extensive tissue damage from the broad-head

that had completely penetrated the front of his torso and protruded obscenely out of his back

his blood pumping from the exit wound

the goose feathered fletching almost buried in his stomach

excruciatingly painful I hoped

but eventually it was the loss of blood that did it

(To be continued)

Peter Hunter 2012

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