by Clark, Simon
I looked back down the precinct which sloped clean and wide down to the road at the bottom. A green and white bus trundled by.
There was nothing to make the shadow. It was just there.
A forty metre long by ten metres wide shadow. Moving my way.
A mysterious shadow? Following me?
Big deal.
At that moment, I was more interested in the mystery of Anne Roebuck’s silk panties.
I got my money and headed down by C&A towards the railway station, where my five-year-old Vauxhall Astra patiently waited.
I reminded myself to get the travelling blanket from home. Over the last twelve months since I’d had the car I’d stained the back seat to hell.
Girls find that kind of thing distasteful.
Of course by then it’s too late.
Still, Anne Roebuck might be good for a few weeks.
The shadow, as black as shadows are on a sunny day, lay against the grimy brick railway bridge that runs over the road down there.
It had moved quickly to get there before me. Perhaps some poncey scientist ought to write a book about this one. How Shadows Become Detached From Their Creators or somesuch crap.
I unlocked the car, got in, wound down the windows (it was frying in there) and turned over the engine.
Once, twice, three times. It didn’t fire.
The high tension cable had cracked inside the casing again. I was sure of it. If it worked itself into a certain position it broke the circuit. All I needed to do was mess with it until it reconnected, then I could get the show on the road: In Time to Meet the Meat.
I opened the bonnet and straightened the cable.
I tried the engine again. No joy. So I went back to the damn cable and twisted it impatiently. The bastard couldn’t let me down now.
Then I heard the pop. A loud one.
Pop doesn’t really describe the sound. Because this pop was so loud it stung my ears. I twisted round expecting to see an explosion.
There had been of sorts.
Or implosion.
The car at the station end of the car park was a mashed wreck. Twenty seconds ago it had been fine. Just your ordinary red family saloon waiting for its owner. Now no part of it was more than ten centimetres high.
Something had flattened the bastard.
But what?
There was only the same old buildings: Unity Hall across the street, the old theatre over the main road, the dumpy red brick station. A few cars in the car park.
No people.
And certainly no celestial hammer that had beaten the car into a flat metal pancake with a single blow.
The shadow.
I found myself frantically twisting and bending the cable, trying to get the metal core to reconnect inside its rubber sheath.
Come on … Come on …
The shadow. That’s what did it.
I hadn’t seen it. But by hell I knew it.
I tried the car again. A click. Then nothing.
Bastard!
I flung myself at the cable again, swearing under my breath, because I had seen the shadow coming.
Huge. Now standing like a tower. A tower forty metres high by ten metres wide.
It still stood at the far side of the car park. But a bit closer. A little bit darker.
The next time, I saw it happen. A black Fiat Uno, with a gawping Garfield cat stuck in the back window, came under the hammer.
It was just like watching a huge, invisible weight settle on the car. It dipped as far the suspension would allow. A tyre deflated with a crack, the windscreen exploded into crystals then …
Bang!
It was mashed.
A second. That’s all it took.
By now I could smell the petrol leaking from the ruptured tanks. And I knew the shadow was drifting my way. Slowly but surely.
Shit.
I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t care what was happening.
I just didn’t want it happening to me.
I gave the wire one last tug, then leaning through the door into the car, I twisted the key.
It fired and ran as sweet as a nut.
In three seconds I’d slammed down the bonnet, swung myself into the car and was accelerating, yelling and shouting, out of the car park in a blue haze of scorched rubber.
That was it. The chase had begun.
* * *
You can rest the shadow of a cathedral on the palm of your hand. Because shadows don’t weigh as much as a hair from a baby’s head.
This one did.
It flattened cars like they were made out of polystyrene.
So, the fact of it is, I drove like I’d left my marbles behind in that car park.
As I scorched across the Calder bridge out along the Doncaster Road a little voice asked me why I was still shouting and screaming myself hoarse.
I chewed my knuckle until the world looked less crazy. Where shadows were only shadows – patterns of light and shade.
The speedo needle flickered at ninety and cars were flashing and sounding their horns. Traffic lights? Red? Amber? Green? Jesus, I never noticed any of them.
As I drove out over Heath Common in the direction of Ackworth – that’s where I live … lived – I eased off.
The shadow moved as quick as my grandad with broken braces. It could never catch me now.
But why did it want to catch me? It was as if I credited it with a mind – and a motive. Why?
What had I done?
And why did I picture the shadow as cast by a gigantic human being? Or at least something in the shape of a human being.
As you head away from Wakefield across Heath Common, the road rises. Looking backwards and to your left you see the King’s Head pub, that’s never been connected to the electric main and the beer is hand pulled; and you can see a rounded hill that seems to stand out by itself. The hill was covered by corn stubble.
And as I looked back the shadow trod on the hillside.
I knew it – I sodding well knew it! – it was following me. And what’s more, that bastard was really travelling.
Sometimes it seemed to hop over trees or hedgerows. Other times it ran through them in a green explosion: leaves, twigs, branches flying everywhere. A running giant, as high as the cathedral steeple.
Gripping the steering wheel so tight my arms and shoulders ached like buggery I flattened the accelerator until I near as dammit flew that bloody motor.
The shadow chased me. The truth was that simple.
Why? Search me. But I had no trouble imagining what would happen if it caught me.
What does a man look like after he’s been mashed by a ten ton weight? You’ve seen war photographs of some poor bugger who’s not got out of the way of a tank fast enough. Just a caterpillar track pattern of meat as thick as your living room carpet.
Ackworth only lay two minutes away. I lived there in a flat over a video shop. My family live in the next street.
What would the shadow do to a village the size of Ackworth? I didn’t even want to think about it. The thing was a vicious bastard.
On impulse I made a left turn off the main road onto one leading towards Featherstone. But I didn’t stop there. Three minutes later I was through Featherstone, another minute and Pontefract blurred by, then Knottingley.
I headed south down the A1.
At that time I had no plan. I didn’t even realize that I couldn’t keep running.
A burst tyre. That cracked high tension cable. Or just an empty petrol tank, and then I would stop running. Maybe forever.
* * *
By the time I reached Sheffield my hopes were creeping up. I’d not seen the shadow since Featherstone. There it had cracked through fences like they were made from balsa. Now Sheffield’s maze of one-way streets and precincts and bus-only lanes kept me busy. I headed up as far the University, the Octagon Centre on my left, then the Children’s Hospital. I looped round into the backstreets with their trees and posh stone-built hous
es.
It looked good there.
The shadow was slowly becoming a thing of the past. Like the time three coppers beat the crap out of me for pissing through the window of their patrol car. Or that silly bitch from Leeds who slashed her wrists when I told her I was leaving.
Bad memories alright. But memories don’t break bones.
I slowed down as waves of relief rushed through me. It had gone. I was safe.
I was safe.
I was actually safe. I shook. My teeth clattered like the engine on an old Lada.
Dazed, I stopped the car, climbed out, dropped my jeans and filled the gutter with two good shovelfulls of steaming you-know-what.
Time for a smoke and a breather. So I thought.
Some old bag with a po face thought different. She was looking through her living room window and tapping the glass. So she didn’t like people using her road as a bog? Big deal. If Royalty had been airing the corgis I’d have done the same.
And after what I’d just gone through, so would you.
I dropped back into the car and drove away. I didn’t speed, just cruising. Just settling my nerves.
And my nerves would have settled down nicely too if I hadn’t chosen to drive back down past the Octagon Centre.
It had gone.
It didn’t register at first. There was something wrong that’s all. I had to drive by three times before I could swallow the truth.
The Octagon’s one of those poxy places Prince Chas describes as ‘massive carbuncles’. They hold rock concerts and stuff there. Well … It was one of those ‘carbuncles.’
Something …
Come off it, Joe Slatter, not something: it was the shadow – the shadow – had ‘visited’ the place.
There wasn’t even a mound.
Christ. The place was flat.
If there had been anyone inside, any of those poxy students who wouldn’t know hard graft if it came and chewed off their bum, well … Any man or woman inside would be reduced to a dollop of tomato ketchup.
I was driving down that road just dripping with sweat, hands shaking, heart thumping, wanting another crap. Jesus.
What happened now?
Where did I run?
‘Come on you stupid chuff!’ I remember shouting that, at my reflection in the rearview. And I went on something like, ‘You’ve got your brains, enough to get into more than five hundred bints. So you’ve got more than enough of that grey shit in your skull to get away from that thing.’
But how, Joe? How?
This was something that no-one, but no-one, had come across before. I mean how would you escape from something that can outrun a car, crack buildings like eggs, flatten cars and – to put the lid on it – you can’t even see the bastard!
Okay, okay. So you’ve got a problem, Joe. Solve it.
Or you’ll be a name on a gravestone.
Death.
I’d not given it much thought before. Something that happened to others. Yeah, that old saying. Listen. I’d never been to a funeral. Chance was, the first one I’d go to would be my own.
I hammered through Sheffield like a bat out of hell, weaving round buses, ignoring traffic lights.
‘Come on, come on,’ I was whispering over and over. ‘The bastard might be right behind you.’
No, it wasn’t.
It was right in front of me.
I found myself on the road heading down between the bus station and the Poly. It would bring me out by the train station, there I’d planned –
Planned?
Come on, Joe, come on. Planned what, for Chrissakes?
No. I had no plan. None other than drive, drive, drive until I couldn’t drive anymore. Then maybe just run until my heart blew a tube or something.
Or until whatever was following me dropped on me like a piece of the sky.
I hauled the car round the roundabout at the bottom of the road there, until the car’s nose pointed in the direction of the railway station.
Above the station, high, indistinct, was a kind of haziness.
You wouldn’t think of it exactly like gas, but for some reason I imagined some old steam loco had pulled into the station bringing with it a billowing cloud that cast, well …
– that cast a massive shadow.
I braked.
The car stopped, juddering, tyres grating across a patch of grit.
Other cars weaved by sounding their horns, a couple of drivers slapped up forked fingers.
The bastard.
It knew where I’d be before I knew myself.
I just sat and watched.
It was going to do something. I knew that absolutely.
There was a long, long pause.
Me? I sat in the road seeing … Seeing what?
A couple of pedestrians stood and watched me. A kid with an ice lolly, I still remember what kind, an orange one shaped like a foot. He had a camera slung around his neck. It bounced against his stomach as he crossed the road in front of me and walked in the direction of the station.
Extending from the front of the station is a large glass canopy supported by pillars built of a mucky yellow stone. It’s easily big enough for a dozen taxis to dump people at the station and collect new fares and still be protected from the rain.
The boy with the camera, still sucking the lolly, paused at the entrance under the canopy and looked back. He seemed to be looking at me, his face lit by the light falling through the glass panes above his head.
My eyes left the boy’s face; they were drawn by the boiling, swirling mist shape above.
Time to look away, Joe. Look away … Look away …
Look away.
There was no time.
It stamped.
The boy’s face jerked up as the glass roof exploded into crystal and the stone pillars burst under the impact.
One blow.
The front of the station was in ruins. The glass canopy, pillars, station signs lay twisted and smashed on the ground, spilling into the adjoining car park to splatter against parked cars and taxis.
The boy had gone.
Instantly I felt a savagery, a fury. I kicked open the car door and yelled at that smudge in the sky. At that moment, I wanted to run across the road throwing stones, bottles. Anything!
And I wanted that bastard alive and breathing.
I wanted to peel the skin from its face and hear how it screamed. I wanted to stamp its skull into the dirt.
But the thing was cloud. A shadow man.
It sort of stepped over the ruined station and into the road.
Now.
Something was happening. It was changing. It looked more solid. A shape was coming through that mistiness.
I’ll be lying if I say I recognized a definite shape. All I can say is that as I got back in the car and drove up the Parkway my mind was full of that boiling mess of mists and darkness. Standing four times as high as a streetlamp, that mess suggested shapes: arms, a torso the size of a petrol tanker stood on end, and at the top, a huge head. Tilted downward.
Not looking at me. No. Not just looking. But watching. Fixing all of its attention on me. Me. My car. Something about me fascinated it.
My scrambled mind picked out a road sign. It read: Doncaster. I followed it.
* * *
Last Christmas three lads were waiting for me outside my local at chucking out time.
‘Some bastard’s nicked the fairy off the top of our frigging Christmas tree,’ said one with a face full of scabs and spots.
The second chipped in, ‘And someone said you weren’t doing anything special over Christmas.’
The third rounded it off, ‘So the job’s yours … Sweetie.’
I don’t know what you’d do, but in a situation like that I didn’t have to think twice. I beat seven balls of shit out of the three of them.
When I was fourteen I tried to nick a sixth-former’s football. He took a swing at me. I fought back. Then he kicked the crap out of me.
When it boils down to it I’m saying I’m no coward. If I know I’ll lose I’ll still stand and take a crack at them. I never run.
Except this time. This time I was running for my life.
* * *
It was late afternoon by the time I reached Doncaster.
Sunday, the roads were quiet.
I cut in through the suburbs: Warmsworth, middle class and semis; Balby, working class and rows of terrace houses that remind you of Coronation Street. Then Doncaster itself.
I knew I was travelling too fast.
The accelerator might as well have been spot-welded to the floor. Engine howling, shaking the car right down to the wheelhubs. But you, God, Christ and all his cronies can bless the name of Vauxhall. The car never let me down. That machine had the heart of a lion.
No, in the end it was me that let it down.
I’d swung round the roundabout and powered on down the dual carriageway, a big church and multistorey car park on my left, the town centre shops and open-air market on my right. All the stalls deserted; a wilderness of timber trestle tables and corrugated iron roofs. No people. No cars. Nothing.
Then I looked in front of me.
And I was looking into the guts of the shadow man.
A hazy mass of light and shade, it reared out of the tarmac now God knows how tall.
I hit the brakes, wrenched at the steering wheel and, believe it or not, that car left the Earth. For a second the central reservation, the opposite lanes, and then the pavement, seemed to slip smoothly under me then
Crack!
It came down so hard the axle snapped and I was sliding backward, metal grating on stone, sparks hosing into the sky, and everything hammering and battering me senseless. Still sliding arse-wards, the car rammed into the deserted market stalls with a sound like a lorry shedding a load of scaffolding. In one second flat I was buried in timber and shattered planking.
I lay there, half panting, half choking, feeling as if every yob in the Elland Road cop had taken a boot at me.
Eventually I came to hearing the Beatles’ Long and Winding Road; somehow the jolt had knocked on the radio. Pieces of wood jutted in at me like a magician’s spears through the rear window, the car’s ceiling dipped in to press against the head restraints. Bits of wood and crap slid slowly off the bonnet as the front offside tyre deflated, ever so gently, with a low whispering sound.