The Shadows

by North, Alex

  And I knew I couldn’t escape from this place by myself.

  I was in the dark market.

  But it wasn’t just twenty-five-year-old memories that filled the house now. There was also the silence hanging in every room, which seemed heavier and more judgmental by the day. What had my mother meant by what she’d said? What was in the house?

  I tried to tell myself it didn’t matter—that the past was something that could be left alone—but there were moments when it seemed like the house and I were engaged in a war of attrition, and I couldn’t help but feel that on some level it was winning. And that something bad was going to happen when I found out what.

  Red hands everywhere.

  It was on the fourth day that I saw her.

  * * *

  I was sitting in the pub at the time, a half-finished beer on the table in front of me. I reached out to pick up the bottle, running my finger over the cool condensation on the glass, and I saw the door across from me open.

  A woman walked in, framed by a wedge of warm afternoon sunshine. I only caught a sideways glimpse of her face, and the half jolt of recognition was left unfulfilled when she immediately turned her back to me and walked to the bar.

  Is that…?

  She was wearing blue jeans and a smart, black leather jacket, her brown hair hanging halfway down her back. I watched her fumble with her handbag and purse. I waited, telling myself to keep calm, that it couldn’t really be her. The barmaid brought a white wine I hadn’t noticed being ordered, and then the woman clipped her handbag shut and turned around, scanning the pub for somewhere to sit.

  For a few seconds it was hard to believe my eyes.

  Jenny looked different now, of course, and yet somehow the same. I could still see the outline of the fifteen-year-old girl I’d known: forty now, her face sketched over by life, but still immediately recognizable.

  The years fell away.

  Perhaps it would be better if she doesn’t see you.

  But then Jenny’s gaze met mine, and moved briefly over before returning again. She frowned. I could see her having the same thought I had.

  Is that…?

  And then she smiled.

  God, her smile hadn’t changed at all.

  I felt a spread of warmth in my chest at the sight of it, and any fear or reservation about seeing her again disappeared as she walked over, the heels of what looked like expensive boots clicking against the wooden floor.

  “Good God,” she said. “Hello, there, stranger.”

  “Hello. Wow.”

  “Wow indeed. How long has it been?”

  I tried to work it out. She had visited me at college a few times, but it had started to feel awkward, and at some point we’d lost contact.

  “Twenty years?” I said.

  “That’s outright madness.”

  She evaluated me quietly for a moment. I wondered what she saw. My own appearance—shabby clothes; disheveled hair; tired eyes—must surely have provided a stark contrast to her own.

  “Okay to join you?” she said.

  “Of course.”

  She sat down across from me and put her wine on the table.

  “I suppose it isn’t actually a surprise to see you,” she said. “I’d heard you were visiting.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

  “Yeah. Small community, news travels fast—that kind of thing. Always has done, always will. You know what this place is like.”

  “I do.”

  “I would have gotten in touch, but, well … you know.”

  Yes. I remembered how things had ended between us.

  “I know that too,” I said.

  She smiled sadly. There was a moment of silence, and then she looked at her glass and rubbed her fingertip slowly around the rim.

  “Listen, I was very sorry to hear about your mother.”

  “Thank you.”

  The response came automatically, but I realized how unqualified I was to give it. Another thing I’d been suppressing these past few days was the guilt, but with Jenny it felt safe to let a little of it out.

  “I don’t know how I feel,” I said. “I should have been here, but my mother and I hadn’t spoken much recently. I didn’t even know how ill she was. I’ve not been back to Gritten since I left.”

  Jenny sipped her wine.

  “It feels like I’m here all the time,” she said. “I come back to see Mom pretty often. You remember my mom, right?”

  “Of course. How is she?”

  Jenny nodded to herself. “She’s good, yeah. Old, but good.”

  “Better than the alternative.”

  “That’s true. God, you’ve really not been back here?”

  “No,” I said. “I went away to college and that was it.”

  “How come?”

  “Too many bad memories here.”

  “I get that.” She was silent for a moment. “But some good ones too, right?”

  She risked a smile, and despite myself I returned it. It was difficult to think of it like that, but yes, there were good memories here too. Moments that, looking back on them objectively, had been filled with light. The problem was that what happened later cast such a shadow they were hard to see.

  “It turns out I still have your book, by the way,” I said.

  “My book?” It took her a second. “Oh—The Nightmare People?”

  “That’s the one.”

  She had brought it in to school for me the day after we’d met: a worn anthology of classic horror stories. The spine was as weathered as tree bark, and the price—50¢—was written in faded pencil on the top corner of the first page. Not a lot of money, of course, and she gave it to me with the same apparent lack of concern she’d exhibited the day before, but I felt the book was important to her, and I had determined there and then to take care of it. If it was in danger of falling apart, then it wasn’t going to happen on my watch.

  And I supposed I had done that.

  “I think my mother was reading it,” I said.

  “Yeah, but more importantly, have you finished it yet?”

  I smiled. “Many times.”

  “Do you still write?”

  “Nah. You know what they say. Those who can’t, teach.”

  I picked up my beer and told her a little about my work at the college and the classes I taught.

  “What about you?” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I still do all of that. Art and music too. But mostly writing. I’ve had a few books published.”

  “Wow.”

  I was pleased for her; it was good that one of us had kept hold of that particular dream. And as I leaned back in my chair, I realized how good it was to speak to her again, even after all this time. She looked great, and I was amazed by how happy she seemed. I was glad that things had turned out well for her—that she had gotten away from Gritten in the end and was living a good life.

  “Wow,” I said again. “I hadn’t seen. I’ll have to look you up.”

  She tapped her nose secretively. “I publish under a pseudonym.”

  “Which you’re not going to tell me?”

  “No. Anyway, that’s work stuff taken care of. What about family? Wife and kids?”

  I shook my head. I’d had a string of relationships over the years, several serious, but none of them had worked out in the end. It would be too dramatic to say the women involved had sensed some kind of darkness in my past, but the shadow of what had happened did fall over me from time to time. I didn’t let people in; at my worst, I pushed them away. The need to avoid addressing it was always more urgent, more important, than the relationships I found myself in, and I knew deep down that was no basis for anything long-term.

  “Never got around to it,” I said.

  And for some reason, I resisted asking the question in return. Jenny wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. But that didn’t mean anything, and right then I decided I didn’t want to know.

  We sat in silence for a few seconds.
/>   “Is your mother comfortable?” Jenny said.

  “She’s sleeping, mostly. When she’s awake, she doesn’t recognize me.…”

  I frowned. Jenny prompted me.

  “Except?”

  “Except for the first time I saw her.”

  And because, once again, it felt safe to talk to Jenny, I told her what my mother had said on that first visit. How I shouldn’t be here. About there being red hands everywhere. That there was something in the house.

  Jenny shook her head.

  “What was in the house?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Nothing, I guess. There was a box of my old stuff she’d been looking through, so maybe she was just feeling guilty about me seeing that. But she’s confused. It probably doesn’t mean anything at all.”

  “Yeah, but you mentioned it. It’s clearly been bothering you.”

  I hesitated.

  “Because I’ve been doing my best not to think about it. I’ve done some cleaning, some tidying. I’ve sat with her.” I gestured at nothing. “I just want to do whatever I need to and then get out of this place. Go back home. Leave the past where it belongs.”

  Jenny had started shaking her head before I finished.

  “But that’s bullshit, Paul. You don’t have to worry about any of that. I mean, look at the pair of us now. Is it weird to see me again?”

  “No. It’s nice.”

  “Exactly. And I’m the past, aren’t I? The past was a long time ago. It can’t hurt you anymore.”

  “Maybe.”

  She checked her watch, then drained her wine.

  “I need to go.” She stood up. “But if you’re worried about what your mother said, just … do something about it? You might be right—it might be nothing. But there’s nothing to be scared of here.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Listen to you: Captain Maybe.” She hitched her bag onto her shoulder. “Maybe I’ll see you around?”

  “I hope so,” I said.

  And I felt that warm feeling in my chest again as I watched her walk to the door. A small light in the shadows. It was like a candle flame I wanted to cup with my hands, blow on gently, and bring to brighter life. But, of course, there was always a danger when you did that.

  Always a risk you would blow it out instead.

  EIGHT

  Do something about it.

  Jenny’s words remained with me the next morning, and as I showered in the small beige stall in the old bathroom, I decided she was right.

  Oh God, it’s in the house, Paul.

  It’s in the fucking house!

  Whatever my mother meant when she said it was in the house, it was probably nothing. There was nothing to be afraid of here, and I thought that before I finally did leave this place forever, I needed to find out for certain. When I turned the shower off and began drying myself, it felt like the silence in the house was humming.

  Expecting.

  I had been attempting to do some work in my old bedroom, and my laptop was set up on the desk there. After I was dressed, I walked in and moved it to one side. Then I picked up the box of my teenage belongings and emptied the contents methodically onto the desk, one item at a time.

  The notebooks and dream diary.

  The writing magazine.

  The slim hardback book. Young Writers.

  Each item brought a flash of recognition. They felt like magical artifacts that, together, told a kind of story. I picked up the magazine, the old pages coarse and stiff against my fingers, and saw the cover—The Writing Life—then turned it over and read the back, feeling the years slipping away from me. I put it down again. Despite my fresh resolve, the narrative told by these things was not one I was prepared to follow through from beginning to end just yet. And despite what I’d suggested to Jenny, while my mother had clearly been looking through the box, I wasn’t convinced it was this she had been referring to.

  So what was it?

  Until now, I’d spent much of my time in the house tidying: wiping down the surfaces in the kitchen; removing the blankets from the front room and storing them in the wardrobe; sweeping and polishing. But rather than being productive, it had felt like procrastination. Now I steeled myself and set about trying to answer the question my mother’s words had set for me. I opened drawers and cabinets, rattling through the contents. I pulled out clothes and scattered them, and lifted cushions and piled them on the floor. After days of approaching the house with care, I dedicated myself to the opposite now: grabbing it and pulling out its stuffing, searching for anything that might explain what she’d said.

  Nothing.

  Or at least, nothing that helped. But there were memories here, fluttering out of the seams of the house like dust. Working through my mother’s clothes, I recognized items I remembered her wearing: old jeans, worn through over the years and patched at the knees and the side of the hips; the flimsy black coat she’d always managed with in winter; a bag full of shoes, paired upside down and pressed so flat they seemed glued together.

  And alongside the memories were mysteries: artifacts of a life I knew little of. In a small jewelry box I discovered rings and bracelets, and a locket on a chain that, when I clipped it open, revealed an oval black-and-white photo of a woman I didn’t recognize. My grandmother, perhaps, but it was impossible to tell, as even the parts of my past I hadn’t chosen to forget were shrouded in mist. It occurred to me that, when my mother died, I would be all that was left of a family I hadn’t known, and for a moment all my adult confidence evaporated and I was left feeling lost and unmoored.

  But the strangest thing was the photographs, which I found gathered haphazardly in a shoebox, filling it to the brim. I emptied it onto the bed and then spread the photos out, forming an overlapping mosaic on the sheets. There was no order to it. Different points in the past mingled freely, resting above and below each other; people and places from separate ages sat side by side.

  I was there.

  I picked up a photograph of me as a baby, cradled in my mother’s arms. I was crying, but while she looked exhausted, she was smiling. There was one of me on the driveway, maybe about three or four years old, toddling along and grinning happily at someone outside of the frame. Six years old, riding a bike with training wheels. A school photo at eight or nine, my home-cut hair slightly ragged and my cheeks dotted with freckles. My eleventh birthday, with my hands thrust in my pockets, my thin shoulders a coat hanger for my clothes, standing awkwardly beside the cake she had made for me.

  And she was there too.

  It wasn’t the ones with me in them that caught my eye so much as the older photographs: images so faded it was like the paper they were printed on was forgetting them. There was a black-and-white photo of my mother as a little girl, lying down in the grass and smiling shyly at the camera, a book splayed open before her. In another, she was a little older, standing outside a house I didn’t know, shielding her eyes against the sun.

  But it was the shots of her as a teenager that struck me the most. She had been beautiful, and the photographs caught her in unguarded moments, her face unlined, a whole life ahead of her, her eyes sparkling as she laughed. I found a staged group shot of five people sitting on steps. I didn’t recognize three of them, but my mother was on the right, next to a teenage boy I realized with a jolt was a young Carl Dawson—a boy who would eventually grow up to marry Eileen and become James’s stepfather.

  In the photo, he was turned to her. My mother’s hands were on her knees and her face was frozen in an expression of wild delight, halfway between shock and laughter, as though he’d deliberately said something outrageous just as the picture was taken.

  You can do so much better, you know?

  I blinked, then gathered the photographs together and put them back in the box. When I thought of my mother, it was always as a presence—a role, almost—and it was strange to be faced with a truth that should have been obvious: that she had been someone with her own dreams and aspirations, who had felt the
same as I had, and who had once had a life that existed entirely outside of her relationship to me.

  None of which got me any closer to what I needed to know.

  It’s in the house.

  I walked out into the hallway and rubbed my forehead. Perhaps there should have been a sense of relief that I hadn’t found anything, but having committed to the enterprise, I felt frustrated. Absence of evidence was not evidence of absence. The fact that I hadn’t found anything didn’t mean there was nothing to find, only that I would never be sure.

  The silence was still humming.

  Come on, house, I thought. I’m trying here. Meet me halfway.

  But of course the house said nothing.

  The window here faced out onto the backyard and the face of the Shadows. I stared out for a time, looking at the trees that stretched upward, forming a wall of fractured foliage that seemed to go halfway to the sky.

  And then I looked up a little farther. Directly above me, I saw the thin outline of a hatch in the ceiling.

  The attic.

  The humming in the house intensified a little.

  In my mother’s present condition, there was obviously no way she could have gotten up there, but I had no idea when her physical health had started to fail, or how quickly it had deteriorated. And while I didn’t relish the prospect, the attic was the one area of the house I hadn’t searched.

  So I reached up and pressed the edge of the hatch.

  It lifted a little. There was a faint click, and when I moved my hand down, the hatch came with it. I expected to be showered with dust and cobwebs, but there was nothing. The space above was pitch-black, but I could hear a faint rush of air.

  The ladder was built into the edge. I reached up again and rolled it out over the gap, then unfolded it down with a clatter, wedging its feet into the carpet. I’d been up in the attic a few times as a child, but as I climbed now, the metal seemed flimsy and far more insubstantial than I remembered. As I moved up into the darkness by increments, each rung bent precariously beneath my weight.