by Terry Kitto
Escaping her thoughts was another matter. The shadow plagued her mind. She didn’t believe for a second that she’d imagined it. Its fathomless depths of black had absorbed all light in the room, whilst its silhouette could have been the decomposed carcass of an unearthly beast. Her imagination could not conjure such an image.
Not that it mattered. Rasha thought too much, and her lungs welded themselves to her diaphragm in anxiety’s havoc.
Her neck prickled, just as it had when the shadow appeared.
Not here, not now. She circled, but the grassy verges either side of her were empty.
Could it be the shadow? No, the shade around her belonged to trees and power lines. Nothing unordinary in the lane. But in the neighbouring field, there was.
Over the hedge to her left, across the pasture by a dilapidated cow shed, Rasha spotted three figures. Hoods hid their faces. A woman and two men. The shortest man consulted a gadget in his hands. Mr Keats had spoken of strange people who skulked around the area. What’s more, they looked straight her way. What else was there to see in the valley but fields and cattle?
They watched her.
Rasha ran as fast as her legs would carry her and never looked back.
A stampede of students thundered down Gorenn Comprehensive’s poky corridors. Rasha dodged them as she went and glanced thrice at every turn. She couldn’t be sure if the hooded people had followed her to school. What if they were people she already knew? Either way, she’d come to the conclusion that the shadow and the people were more than a coincidence.
Her train of thought was cut off as she thrust herself into dusty workshop 2B where her cohort chanted, ‘Joel Tredethy tripped and broke his neck. Don’t be weird or you’ll be next.’
Rasha took a seat on the far back bench in the workshop, one that rendered her invisible amongst her peers. Mr Cridland, their gentle giant of a woodworks teacher, did all he could do to quell the teenagers’ chorus. The song, as Rasha had learnt days into her start at Gorenn Comprehensive, was about a boy who tripped down a flight of stairs and snapped his neck in the nineties. Since then it had been used to ridicule unpopular classmates – people as strange or meek as Joel Tredethy had been. This day it was aimed at a boy named Gregory Dingle. An overweight and delicate kid, Gregory was hunched in his seat, his shrunken sports kit stretched across his rotund body. Their classmates ridiculed him whilst he looked at his bench, crimson face moments from tears. Girls to Rasha’s right whispered that the class clown, Fred Parsons, had drenched Gregory’s uniform in Lucozade, and he’d no choice but to wear his kit for the rest of the day.
Of course it was Fred Parsons, Rasha thought. Fred, his square face more acne than skin, perched on Gregory’s bench and egged his peers on to guffaw at poor Gregory. He’d bullied Rasha too, in the first week she attended Gorenn. A brown-skinned girl who lived in a caravan with flawed English and an awkward disposition – how could he resist? A series of detentions waned his focus on Rasha, or perhaps he had gotten bored of her. She resisted the urge to retaliate and punch his pickled face, for she dared not bring trouble to her mother’s door. Haya already had enough to contend with, as did Rasha; she had the shadow.
Rasha got out her portfolio and pencil case and pretended to busy herself with her work until Mr Cridland got the class to simmer. A man in his early sixties, he had taught in the school – in that department, in that very workshop – for nearly forty years. It showed. He spoke with a quiet monotone voice and often let an outdated PowerPoint guide the kids through projects with equipment the school no longer owned rather than lead the lesson himself. Rasha couldn’t blame him; aside from her, none of her classmates showed the slightest bit of enthusiasm for design and technology. As Haya often used to recite, you can only lead a horse to water.
With the class settled into a hubbub of fervent gossip, social media, and coursework, Rasha slid from her bench and meandered to Cridland’s desk with his fineliners in hand. He had let her borrow them to add to her portfolio, which according to him was pointless because a quick assessment had her a predicted A* for the module. Nevertheless, Rasha wouldn’t let it go if just one illustration wasn’t rendered perfectly, and he had softened to Rasha because of that.
‘You’ve even organised them by colour,’ he exclaimed with an affectionate smirk. She passed them back to him with profuse thanks.
‘It’s quicker working warm to cool,’ Rasha said.
Rasha was heading to the equipment cupboard right of Cridland’s desk when someone called, ‘Arse licker!’
She forgot herself and turned to the heckler; it was Fred, worst luck. His group of friends cackled, all eyes mean, hungry for a reaction.
She hung her head and hurried on.
‘Joel Tredethy tripped and broke his neck . . .’
Rebel militia shouted from Homs’s streets.
Chairs scraped, an outlandish bang.
The world upturned. Walls crumbled.
Rasha turned back. Gregory had thrown himself off his chair and dove at Fred, and they brawled. Their cohort egged them on whilst Cridland scrambled to get between them. There was no missile and no explosion, but it didn’t matter.
Something was coming.
Breathe. Rasha’s lungs could have been squeezed between a vice. She patted her trouser pockets for her inhaler, but it was in her bag, and a sea of brawling children lay between her and it.
Fluid swamped her lungs and windpipe. She bolted to the vacant store cupboard, doubled over, and retched. The brown sludge from her breakfast bourbons didn’t come.
Clotted blood slopped out onto the floor.
Cobwebby static crawled along her skin, and a pressure rippled through her cranium. She was no longer alone in the cupboard.
In the doorway was a boy – or something that had been once. His body was twisted, he walked on snapped shins, and his dainty arms flopped at right angles. Blood dribbled from his crooked mouth, frozen somewhere between a smile and a grimace. There was no doubt in her mind who he was: the boy whose name was used to taunt kids just like him.
Joel Tredethy.
Breathe.
The shadow, now Joel. It was confirmed: she was plagued by the dead.
Her lungs grew tighter, and the room spun around her.
Rasha fled from the workshop, sprinted across the Key Stage 3 playground, and locked herself in a toilet cubicle in the girls’ bathroom. Her limbs shook, and her heart pounded, and in no time at all the bell chimed for morning break. Two periods had passed. Two hours of time, sat on a toilet seat lid, lost in anxiety’s whirlwind.
Lost in thoughts of Joel Tredethy’s pearly eyes and disjointed limbs.
She traced carvings on the cubicle wall with her hand. Love hearts declared fleeting romances. Petty playground propaganda stirred school gossip. The impermanent history of such little lives that existed between annual redecoration. What she would give to have an ordinary life, where her biggest worries were boys and grades and social media likes. She had all that and the dead too.
Joel Tredethy. The shadow.
The deceased, unresting.
Her mother once said, back when Haya had an optimistic outlook, ‘You can only miss what you once had.’
Rasha couldn’t disagree more. She missed a reality where she wasn’t riddled with PTSD and wished she wasn’t in Cornwall, a place that could never be her home. Rasha longed to not turn to social invisibility as a coping mechanism, to only see those who were alive.
Ghosts, Rasha brought herself to think. Call them by what they are; they are ghosts. She was sure they were not a new symptom of PTSD. With PTSD, she only ever saw her deceased family as they lay in their final moments in the dust and rubble. The shadow and Joel Tredethy filled the space in which they appeared with a sense of being – an aura that they thought and felt independently. One came from her mind, and one did not. But she knew there was a way to confirm it.
In recent years, Gorenn Comprehensive – with its plummeting Ofsted results and poor reputati
on – had attempted to curry favour with the local community. From charity fundraisers to care home Christmas carolling – during all of which Rasha had found herself front and centre at all photo opportunities – their activities also included a public archive of all class photos way back from when the school first opened in the fifties. She was certain she had never seen a photo of Joel Tredethy before, so if she laid eyes on his face, she could determine if the boy was a figment of her imagination or was truly a ghost.
The bell chimed again. What was third period? IT with the stammering Mrs Stevens. Rasha crept from the toilet cubicle and did a round trip to Mr Cridland’s vacant workshop. It wasn’t the first time she’d fled with an anxiety attack, and – as he’d done countless times – Cridland had collected her bag and stowed it safely beneath his desk. She arrived in Mrs Stevens’s computer suite in good time as the class unpacked their things. Rasha took to the corner, sitting behind a flip chart easel where she would go unnoticed. The computer blinked to life.
Logged in, Rasha navigated the school’s website and located the archives, often swapping between windows as Mrs Stevens did her usual rounds of the classroom to confiscate students’ smartphones. Eventually she found a list of each form group from every academic year. Halfway down the class register of 1996, she came across Joel Tredethy’s name.
Front row, fourth from the left, the description read.
Sure enough, there Joel was, sat cross-legged on the gymnasium floor of the sun-washed photograph. Minus the milky eyes and shattered limbs, he was identical to his ghost in the DT workshop that morning: dark cowlicked hair, button nose, smile sucked in from an overbite. He had not been a figment of her imagination.
Unmistakably Joel, undeniably dead.
Anxiety froze her body.
Breathe. Her lungs became taut elastic bands.
Breathe. Fluid rose up her throat.
Breathe. Metallic blood oozed across her tongue.
The room chilled, but no one seemed to notice; her class watched the whiteboard with varied degrees of interest whilst Mrs Stevens marked their homework.
They didn’t see Joel Tredethy’s face amongst the flood of numbers.
He emerged from the wall as if it were a torrent of steam, his bright unblinking eyes fixed solely on Rasha. Blood foamed from his mouth and oozed across the whiteboard.
Bag in hand, Rasha kicked her chair back, stumbled between the rows of the computers, and raced outside.
Rasha trudged the footpath through Ratcliff Farm to shorten her journey home. Lack of sleep and nutrition had finally caught up with her; she may as well have waded through half-set cement. Pins and needles clawed her skin, so she knew the dead were nearby. Returning to the caravan had no appeal if the shadow might plague her again that night; any concept of another day at school was unbearable if Joel Tredethy chased her.
Caught between a ghost and a haunted place, she thought bitterly.
She’d eventually strayed from the footpath, for it ran snugly against the hedge. Instead she kept to the centre of the field so she’d be able to see the hooded people before they found her.
Beyond the wind’s whistle came a motorised whir. An oblong shadow passed overhead – a drone, fifteen feet above ground. Various copper plates were fused across its belly, and multiple camera lenses glinted in the weak afternoon sunlight. One hooded figure from that morning had held a handset.
You’re overthinking it, Rasha thought. The coastline was prone to aerial photographers, with the churning sea and Wheal Gorenn Mine’s engine chimney in the distance. She stood still to wait for the drone to pass on, thumbs squeezed between her fists, breath monitored.
The chuff of military helicopters swooping toward Homs.
The drone didn’t leave. It hovered over Rasha, idling against the wind like a kestrel.
She was tired, oh Allah, was she tired of fending off monsters day and night, from one continent to the next. When would it end?
‘Just leave me alone!’ she roared.
She’d never outrun the drone. Stones were at the base of a crumbled hedge to her left. She darted over, grabbed one, took aim, and lunged. It scuffed the drone’s underside. The machine wobbled. Realigned. She snatched up another rock as the drone turned, steadied her arm, and threw. It smacked a propeller. Sparks and smoke spat from its side. The craft veered into the sludge.
Rasha traipsed closer. Her frantic eyes sought clues as to who the hooded figures were. A serial number was printed on the drone’s shell: I-A-N-2493. Beneath it was a symbol comprised of two interlocking circles.
The hooded people would come for the broken drone – Rasha couldn’t fight off three grown adults. She scarpered through the mud, eyes fixed on the caravan site as it grew near.
She barged into her living area and slammed the door, forehead pressed against the cold glass, relieved to be inside.
‘Rasha?’ Haya called.
Her mother swanned into the kitchen, out of her work tabard and freshly washed.
Blood on her pallet. Joel Tredethy’s twisted neck.
Panic must have shown on Rasha’s face, for Haya squeezed her tightly. Beneath the Dove soap was the tang of bleach. Despite that, Haya’s hugs made her lighter.
‘You’re safe here, home with me,’ Haya whispered.
Rasha wished she could tell her mother but knew it would do no good. With news of the shadow, Haya would charge her to a GP at dawn. The government would be less inclined to keep a refugee if she was declared medically insane. ‘Leave to remain’ only granted them a five-year citizenship, which would then have to be reviewed. They had to be no bother. The country – heck, even the caravan – was Haya’s last chance of security. Rasha couldn’t spoil that.
‘You’re covered in mud,’ Haya mused. ‘Was school too much?’
‘Mm-hmm.’ Rasha could only mumble in response.
‘You’d better change,’ Haya said. ‘Before it gets all over the carpet.’
Rasha nodded, traipsed to her bedroom, and ignored the corner in which the shadow had materialised the night before.
Just in case.
She snatched some clothes from her Red Cross wardrobe and skulked to the utility cupboard. The Abadis couldn’t afford to use the washing machine daily, so as the day transpired into evening, Rasha scrubbed her shoes and uniform with an old Brillo Pad found in Haya’s cleaning basket. Once she’d had dinner and a quick lukewarm shower, it was nine o’ clock.
Bedtime.
Rasha hugged Haya for as long as she could.
‘Stop creeping, Ash,’ her mother teased. ‘I’m not mad. Take care of your things; we can’t afford more. Unconditionally, remember?’
Little did Haya know that Rasha didn’t creep. She took in her fill. She never knew if that night would be her last. It was a goodbye embrace.
‘Unconditionally.’
As they departed the hug, Rasha studied Haya: the leaf-green eyes, just as hers, and the wrinkles that formed grief-stricken canyons around her eyes and mouth, which were the signature of the demons that Haya carried herself. She could barely confront the living, let alone the dead. Rasha would have to face it alone.
Rasha plodded to the bedroom. Her clammy hands grappled with the door handle. She didn’t turn her lights on. What use was it when the shadow was more than the darkness? Her heart kicked inside her chest. She dove under the covers and wrenched the duvet to her chin.
Her exhausted body ached as if her very bones had been whittled from the inside out. Somewhere within her, deeper still, was her very own ghost, was it not? Perhaps that was what the shadow wanted – to strip her spirit away and take her body for itself. The Shaytan were known to possess people. If it was Milana, deep inside the empty void, then perhaps all she wanted was to take Rasha’s place. After all, it was Rasha who should have died.
Silence.
Pure, unadulterated quiet. Rasha propped herself up on her elbows. Ears to the air, she hunted for her mother’s snores, a seagull breaking into a neighbour
’s bin, even Mr Keats’s TV turned to max volume in the caravan over. Not a sound but her rapid breath.
Static drummed on her skin like electric rain. She knew that past her ply wardrobe and the window with the broken curtain rail, the shadow would be in the far corner.
Come on then, she thought. Somewhere deep inside, she knew it heard her. If you’re going to kill me, get it over with.
The impossible shadow unravelled in the corner.
Little Milana’s body pulverised beneath stone.
Rasha buried herself beneath her sheets. Her heart kicked, and the shadow’s chest expanded. Sweat saturated the mattress beneath her. The shadow’s limbs lengthened and refined.
That’s it, she thought. It’s eating my fear. The quicker her pulse and the shakier her limbs, the larger it grew and the darker it became.
So Rasha forced her mind to other places – to happier times. Such memories never came easily for her, and they didn’t that night.
Instead, she recalled her father in their Syrian living room. He’d yelled at her whilst Haya comforted young tearful Milana. Rasha had torn a letter to shreds, one that a neighbour’s boy had given Milana before they’d fled the country. She’d been jealous – not that she’d have cared to admit it – but her father had seen right through that, as he’d had a knack of doing, and lectured her, saying, ‘There’s already a war outside. You’d do better than to bring it into our home.’
The darkness suffocated her. She needed light. Rasha punched her lamp’s switch. The bulb managed a yellow flicker, then blew inside the shade. With stone-cold irony, a tongue of silver lightning licked the window. Rain pelted the roof –
Bullets shredded concrete.
The shadow’s energy – a prickling static – washed over Rasha like the tide swallows the beach.