"This is too much!" She snapped up.
"But why? What's wrong?" He protested.
"Get out! Get out of this room immediately!" Helen snarled, grabbing him by the jacket and pulling him out of the chair with force, dragged him to the entrance and thrust him out.
"Females shouldn't do certain jobs," Stevenson said with his mouth still full from behind the door.
"I don't want to see you or hear you anymore," she said furiously.
"Anyway, if I were you, I'd try first to track down the caller," the doctor shouted as he moved away, then started mumbling his sandwich again, wondering what he'd done that was so terrible. Helen let her shoulders slide down the door, holding her breath, struggling against her stomach to not give up to gagging. She managed not to vomit by a whisker; as soon as the crisis had passed she opened the window searching for some fresh and clean air because she was sweating cold. She let a few minutes go by, when she judged that her stomach had completely subsided she returned to her desk and pressed the intercom button.
"Yes, boss," Cindy answered from the switchboard.
"I want everyone in the meeting room within twenty minutes," she ordered while continuing to rub her little finger against the rough fabric of the side pocket of her trousers because she felt again it pricking intensely.
"But Sheriff, the agents are almost all out," Cindy objected.
"I don't give a damn, tell them we have bigger fish to fry and to let whatever they're doing go."
"All right, boss, I'll do my best."
Helen hung up and took the report written by the agent Mario Benelli, who had been the first to arrive at the dumpsite. She sighed and read it again for the tenth time, continuing to scratch his finger more and more furiously.
James immediately realized that it would take weeks for the garden to get back on its feet. Although in those days of December the climate was practically the same as in the summer, there were no ideal conditions for gardening. In fact, lately the wind was blowing mainly from the sea, making the air too salty, as well as hot and humid, and from day to night, there were really consistent temperature changes. At least two-thirds of the plants he had already checked up had definitely gone, he looked doubtfully at the few that he had mercifully splinted the trunk and judged that if he managed to make half of them survive, it would be a true miracle. He was thinking resignedly that year he would have to find a different location for the fir tree when suddenly he felt an intense gaze pointed at the back of his neck. An alarm bell rang in some remote corner of his consciousness giving him a shiver down his spine. Looking at the ground he spotted the shadow of the person silently appearing behind him, the blood shuffled in his veins because his arm was suspended in mid-air just above his head, ready to hit him with his own spade. James promptly rushed forward with a somersault to get out of the path of the spade and jumped to face the enemy, but instead, astonished he found Harry. The boy was staring at him with a piercing gaze, but completely blank. James had the impression that he was into a kind of trance. A slight tremor shook his lower lip, a thin trickle of blood had come out of his right nostril and was dripping onto the yellow t-shirt.
"Harry ..." he tried to call him gently, but he kept staring at him.
"Harry," James repeated, troubled. He moved to his side to talk to him in the ear, raising his voice a little, but the boy's eyes didn't follow him. While staring off into space, his lower lip leaned further and began to tremble a little harder, an intense shudder began to shake him from head to toe as his father looked at him powerless, unable to decide if and how to intervene.
James recalled that he read that waking up a "normal" person in those conditions could produce disastrous consequences in his psyche, so he thought that doing it on his son could even be more devastating. Unexpectedly, just when he was about to give in to panic, his son was shaken by a stronger tremor and immediately stopped shaking.
"Daddy," he exclaimed, putting him in focus as if he had just woken up, and James started breathing again. "Harry... are you not feeling well?"
"Of course not, I'm fine, why do you ask?"
"So what happened to you?"
"Nothing, what should have happened?"
"You're bleeding from your nose," James informed him, wiping it with a handkerchief, then tipped his head back to stop the bleeding. When he raised his head he noticed a kind of small scar behind his ear and he was surprised, he did not remember that Harry had ever been hurt at that point.
"I didn't notice," said Harry, taking the handkerchief from his hand.
"What do you need the spade for?"
"The spade? Ah yes, you forgot it in the kitchen when you came to drink and I brought it back to you ... "the boy replied letting it fall to the ground," ... but why do you keep staring at me like that?"
"Nothing important, forget it. Have you already finished assembling the model?"
Harry shook his head and became absorbed again, and James had the feeling that he was leaving again.
"... Harry?" He called worried.
"I'm sorry for your creatures, I know how much you care about them," the boy said, calling the plants as his father usually call them. "Do you think you will be able to cure them?" He asked, getting down to lovingly caress a battered plant.
"Trying does not cost anything, does it?" Answered James using what was now their catchphrase. He smiled slightly, but Harry got up without answering and started looking very far away with a very serious expression printed on his face. Harry and James stood there for a few minutes, side by side looking at the expanse of sunflowers that covered the entire side of a nearby hill, then James saw that Harry seemed to be completely recovered and so he picked up the gardener's toolbox moving to the next flowerbed.
"Dad..."
"What's up?"
"I haven't told you a lie, I don't really remember anything!"
"You already told me, and I told you I believe you," James assured him, looking him straight in his eyes to convince him that there was nothing to worry about. "Now I have to continue a little further with the plans, then we'll go and buy your glasses," he added, taking a step.
"Dad, I'm scared!" Harry suddenly exclaimed in a voice so distressed that it shocked James, his hand unintentionally opened, dropping the toolbox.
"And what should you be afraid of?" He asked distressed.
"I don't know, I just know that I had strange dreams. At first, they were fun because I was flying and I could go through things like a ghost, then suddenly everything turned blue and my dreams have become very ugly, but I just can't remember them ... I don't remember anything. I woke up and my knees were scratched, but they didn't hurt and after a while, they were already healed" he said.
"Maybe you were wrong. Maybe you dreamed that too, maybe you were just scared about something and ..." hypothesized James perplexed, but he couldn't finish his speech because the boy started to get excited.
"I wasn't wrong!" He shouted vehemently. "So it's not true that you believe me! Look at my knees!" He added angrily and James obeyed. He noticed that on his knees there were small crusts similar to the ones of a fall of a few days
