Manolis was ready to turn, walk away. He was disappointed and dissatisfied. But then, he pulled up the plastic visitor’s chair and sat. And for no reason other than his own amusement, he decided to play along.

‘Yeah, yeah, mate. It’s me, it’s Con. Come to see how you’re going. How you feeling?’

Without warning, Rex started to become agitated. He rocked from side to side and turned his neck in every direction. Manolis wondered whether it was the medication and considered summoning the nurse to administer a sedative. But Rex soon calmed and began babbling under the cloud of concussion.

‘Have you killed him, Con? What have you done, have you killed Dingo?’

Manolis arched an interested eyebrow. Killed what? A dingo? Or did he mean… Jimmy Dingo?

Speaking with no teeth, Rex was hard to understand. But he continued.

‘Stabbed him in the thigh? Oh God, Con… no.’

Manolis felt pinned to his chair, restrained by the chains of history. When he finally tried to speak, his voice became a dry whisper in his throat.

‘Rex? The hell are you saying?’

The old proprietor swallowed painfully, his mind apparently disappearing into hazy, grey thought. After a moment, a slow, gradual headshake emerged that filled Manolis with dread.

‘No, mate, no. I don’t understand and don’t think I ever will. Even if your sister was pregnant, even if that’s what they do in your bloody village. You didn’t have to kill the poor bastard.’

Manolis stared at the floor in stunned silence. Over the past few days, Con had visited his son in increasingly more detailed dreams, appearing as a young chef, a dying invalid, a gaunt spectre. Manolis wanted them to end.

The nurse had told him that Rex remembered nothing of the moments after the accident, the memories having already atomised inside his mind. He’d hit his head hard and would be experiencing the effects of delayed concussion for some time. But Manolis had also heard of people who’d lost their short-term memory and yet regained incredible long-term.

Rex coughed, his lungs rattling. Manolis wanted to dismiss his words as gibberish, the output of a damaged brain. But terrible suspicions bloomed in his mind. And then the old man said something that Manolis couldn’t ignore.

‘Go, Con, go before first light. Take your family and go. Leave the knife. I’ll bury it where we said.’

‘Where? Rex, where?’

Rex didn’t respond. Manolis looked at him a long time, at pupils like drill bits.

What was he supposed to do now? He was haunted by people either dead or dying. Should he challenge his mum? It was futile; she would stay silent, out of respect for the dead. Was this the ‘other stoning’ from a long time ago that Ida had been referring to? It had to be. Could he still save this godforsaken town? How…?