Chapter 14

The feeling of weightlessness lasted for what felt like minutes and combined with the ice cold spray and the deafening roar my, senses were overwhelmed. I didn’t hit the water; it hit me like a locomotive travelling at ninety miles an hour. The freezing torrent took the breath from my body as I plunged beneath the icy waters. I was thrown about like a ping-pong ball in a washing machine, gasping for a mouthful of air whenever the current pushed me to the surface. I was spinning around and lost all sense of direction. I couldn’t tell if I was going up or down. Although I was using all my strength to stay on the surface, I was powerless against the force of the river and exhausted, I gave up fighting and let it take me where it would.

I don’t know how long I was in the river but I know where I got out. It was a half a mile south of the railway station at Betws. I lay on the bank freezing and numb from the battering that my body had taken on the rocks. Fearing that I would die from hypothermia, I dragged myself up and staggered through the fields towards the village. I could see the helicopter in the air, two miles north above Miners’ Bridge. Relieving a chestnut gelding of its horse-blanket, I trudged back towards the truck. The car park was virtually empty and the truck looked like an oasis to me. I threw off the blanket and sprinted across to the truck unhindered. Ten minutes later, I was heading south towards Llangollen with the heater blasting and the radio on. Being alive felt surreal, as I had given up back at the bridge. I had chosen to die there but God didn’t want me dead yet. I think he knew that I had more of Satan’s followers to kill before he would let me leave. The temple master, a man named Gaskin was next on my list and he would tell me where I could find Jennifer Booth before he died.