by Luca Veste
‘No,’ I said, taking a hand off the steering wheel to rub some life into my face. The road ahead was too dark and I had a sudden fear I would drive off the road after falling asleep for a second. ‘It was Stuart.’
‘What? I don’t understand—’
‘Neither do I, but that’s who he described meeting. He had him down to a tee, but Stuart had given him a false name. He even mentioned an approaching anniversary.’
‘Jesus . . . ’ I heard Alexandra whisper to herself, then silence. I lowered the window to let some fresh air into the car, but quickly closed it when the noise overwhelmed me.
‘What do you think he was doing?’
‘I don’t know,’ I replied, seeing the exit up ahead. I didn’t need the satnav for this part of the journey, thankfully, but wanted to keep driving anyway. To continue north, until I was as far away as possible. I’d always wanted to visit the Highlands. I could picture me living in a tent, growing a long beard and living off the land. For about a second, before I realised I wouldn’t last five minutes without walls around me.
And the silence would be unbearable.
‘I wonder if Stuart was just doing what we are,’ Alexandra said, her voice like a comforting embrace. Bringing me back to reality. ‘A year is significant, you know. That’s probably why it’s so strongly in all our minds. For Stuart, I guess . . . I guess it became too much.’
I began to speak, but stopped myself. I didn’t want to argue with her again – twice on the same day seemed excessive – but I didn’t believe Stuart had killed himself now. Instead, I forgot all about driving north and indicated to come off at the junction to turn around. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow. Michelle has gone to stay at her mum’s house. Just in case.’
‘I’m sure she’ll be fine,’ Alexandra replied, but there was a hint of apprehension in her tone that hadn’t been there before. ‘I’ll speak to you soon.’
She ended the call as I rejoined the motorway and drove home.
All the time thinking about the man I’d just met and the feeling of unease he had given me.
I wondered why Stuart would meet him and not say anything to us. To not try and speak to a single person in the group about what he was doing.
I wondered why Stuart would hide that from us.
Twenty-Nine
An hour’s drive can be done in forty-five minutes at night. That’s like a law of the road or something that I’ve always believed. Still, it was gone midnight by the time I pulled up outside my house and let myself in.
It was quiet but I quickly remedied that. The radio was playing in my kitchen as I cooked some pasta and finally quelled the gnawing hunger that had plagued me on the drive home.
I ate it in front of my computer, scrolling through the online posting history of the man I’d met that night. Peter had a long record of writing about unsolved crimes. I got back as far as six months, but that took me a couple of hours.
I then used every bit of internet knowledge I had to try and find out who he really was, but ran into brick wall after brick wall. That’s the thing about fictional representations of people who work with computers that they never show – it’s difficult to uncover anonymity if the person behind those accounts has even an ounce of computing savvy.
With a little more time and resources, I could have probably discovered who he really was in a few hours. I couldn’t ignore the pain in my head, my eyes. I knew I had to make the trudge upstairs to probably lie awake with my eyes closed until morning.
There was a part of me that wanted to just sit there and forgo the uselessness of trying to sleep, but I was always optimistic before bed.
Some nights, I would fall asleep quickly, exhausted after a few nights of broken, short bouts of sleep. Then, after around thirty minutes, I would wake up with a start and spend hours looking at the back of my eyelids. Counting down the hours I was losing.
Fall asleep now, you’ ll have five hours.
Now, four.
Three should be okay.
It was an endless war of attrition with my own mind.
I had messaged Michelle to check in with her when I got home, but she was probably asleep already. I didn’t blame her – I hoped she was getting some peace away from her house.
After going through the routine, I lay in bed – my phone on the bedside table playing some American podcast I hoped would bore me to sleep. I closed my eyes and my thoughts immediately overran. The man I’d met, the red candle in Michelle’s house. The one I had found in Stuart’s house. The things Alexandra had shown me about the Candle Man, the mythological nature of his story.
I tossed and turned, unable to get comfortable, as a droning voice emanated from my mobile phone. Some political discourse show that thought it was funnier than it actually was.
The last time I checked the time, it was 4.18 a.m. and I was thinking about a lad’s face in the woods.
You never know when you’ve fallen asleep, but I knew instantly that I was dreaming. That eerie quality, when you know what is happening isn’t real, but you can’t do anything to stop it. Your understanding of the unreality of it all is forgotten. The broken images, the blurred scenery, the distorted and warped sounds.
Not that it didn’t feel real though. I was aware of the dream, but I still reacted as if it was actually happening. The anxious feeling inside the dream version of me was impossible to ignore. The beating of my false heart, the sweat forming on my false skin, the false hair raising on my false neck.
All of it felt as if it were genuinely existing in my world at that moment.
I was walking through my house. Silence a constant passenger as I moved. I could hear something over it though – a pulsing beat of bass. Not complete silence then, but that’s what it seemed to be. As if the quiet somehow had a sound now.
There was a different quality to the familiar – all colour had been drained and I was walking in monochrome. The kitchen was empty – all the appliances, the canisters, the bread bin, the full herb rack, all gone. Empty cupboards and bare walls.
I turned back and into the hallway. Walked into my office and found nothing there. A shell. Dust on the floor where my desk should have been. Brick where plaster had once lived. Light streamed through the window from the garden and then blinked out into darkness. I backed out and into the hallway once more.
I stood outside the living room, tried to push open the door. It wouldn’t move. I looked down at my hand but couldn’t see it. I tried to move it, but the door still wouldn’t budge. I could feel my shoulder moving before I’d decided to do it. I used it to push against the door but it refused to acquiesce. I tried again, throwing my weight at it.
It was as if I was moving through water – all my movements were in slow motion and no give was forthcoming. I stepped back and stared at the door, carefully this time, as the light blinked in and out in time with my heartbeat.
It opened inwards, moving inch by inch of its own accord. The room revealed to me in small segments of space.
I saw him as I always did. Lying on the empty floor where my coffee table was supposed to be sitting. His eyes were closed over, his arms folded over his chest, palms flat. They made an X, as if it marked the spot where he had died. Only, it wasn’t here. It was in the woods, and with that I was there again.
Daylight was replaced by the black of night. Words scrawled on the trees surrounding me. White and stark against the black. Every synonym that could be used for the single signifier of what we had become.
Killers.
I know what is different about this dream now. Nothing was the same. The bass beat was a warning – something my mind had concocted to show me that this wasn’t the usual nightmare.
We’re usually alone. Just me and him, in the woods. Him dead, me standing over his body.
Only this time, someone else is there. I couldn’t see who it was yet, but I could feel the presence in the air. He was standing in the shadows, waiting for me to notice him. I could hear his breathing, soundle
ss though it is.
I didn’t want to look up. I was looking at the floor, at the ground, as it bobbled and modulated into a blurry mess.
There was laughter. Cutting through the silence. The bass beat ended and I could feel the mocking tone swirl around me and over my skin. My muscles tightened and my biceps seemed to grow until they were straining at my T-shirt.
I shivered, I think. I felt cold, like someone had walked over my grave, or I was standing outside in January. I wasn’t sure.
I couldn’t think properly.
There were words being spoken, but I couldn’t understand them. They were being vocalised in a language I was unable to comprehend. I screwed my eyes shut, but I could still see everything clearly.
A mist appeared around my feet, clinging to my legs and knocking me off balance. The man is still on the ground, but he’s suddenly alive. Breathing heavily, as if tired from some unseen exertion.
He has never been alive in my dreams before.
I can feel the anger now. Running through my body. The same as it had been when I’d been in those woods before. I want nothing more than to close the space between us in a breath and pick up the man by his little bare neck. Watch the last flicker of life leave his eyes.
I am my own dark side.
Yet I can’t move, even as the mist that has crawled and entwined my legs brings me down to my knees. Still there’s that laughter, mocking me from the darkness.
Then, I’m not me. I’m a stranger. I don’t recognise this version of me. I’m a child – shorter and thinner. A scrawny young boy who hasn’t lived yet. I turned my hands over, staring at the hairless, small things as if they’re someone else’s.
But it is me. More than twenty years in the past.
Now I didn’t feel anger anymore. I feel fear. I’m scared and I’m sweating and I’m shaking. I can’t move my legs and I can’t run away. I’m stuck in a quagmire of terror and dread. This is it.
This is what it feels like to know you’re about to die.
Someone emerges into the light and I can do nothing but watch him. Stare with unblinking eyes as the figure goes about his work, whistling to himself a joyful tune. The man is on the floor, still breathing, but the figure is happy about that.
I can feel the life being sucked out of the man. The figure towering over him, enjoying his last gasps of breath.
I can’t do anything but kneel there and watch, as my heart races and my skin tightens with cold. Shivering and shaking.
The figure moves back and admires its creation.
Then the laughter returns. Quiet at first, then louder, until it builds into a crescendo. It stops and turns towards me.
Whispered. The voice is slurred and almost drunken with glee.
‘You don’t know what’s coming. You can’t do anything about it.’
I scream soundlessly as it comes towards me.
A noise throws me into another place. The dream shifts and I am standing in my kitchen again. The sound of birds singing, then shots being fired and then silenced.
Bang.
I turn as the laughter comes back, coming from an unseen place.
Bang.
I moved from the kitchen, looking down to see a knife dripping with red in my hand.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
*
I woke slowly from the nightmare, as the visions I’d been dreaming followed me into full consciousness. The sound was there too and it took me a few seconds to realise the noise wasn’t coming from inside my head. It was real. And it was coming from downstairs.
I stepped out of bed quietly and found my trousers on the floor. I slipped into them and walked softly to my closed bedroom door. I placed an ear to it and tried to work out what it was I could hear.
It was still dark outside, but I didn’t know what time it was. The calm part of me wondered if it was a milkman or the like, but I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen one of them. Wheelie bin collection was my next guess, but that was still days away.
I moved back to my bed and knelt down, feeling underneath with one hand. It finally gripped hold of the baseball bat I kept there and brought it out. I held it loosely in my right hand and moved back to the door.
The noise was still there.
A soft thump, every few seconds or so.
Is this it? Is this the end?
I opened the door as soundlessly as I could, moving onto the landing and stepping carefully on the carpet. I stopped at the top of the stairs, listening again. The noise was a little louder now and I realised it was coming from the back of the house. I slowly descended the stairs, my back to the wall, carefully stepping on each stair to minimise any creaks. My eyes were focused on the open door that lead to my living room, looking for any light or movement.
I reached the bottom of the stairs and followed the path through. Kept my back towards the wall as I approached the living room. I could see better now, as I became more accustomed to the darkness.
The only noise other than the rhythmic banging was my own breathing. I concentrated on it and took comfort in the sound. I could see the outlines of the furniture in the room as I reached the doorway. The kitchen door was on my right, at the end of the hallway.
I swivelled into the room, holding the bat out to my side, ready to swing. Held my breath as I waited for someone to emerge.
Nothing happened.
I looked around waiting to see what I’d expected.
No candle.
The banging sound came again, from the direction of the kitchen. My breathing quickened, so I swallowed a few times and took a moment to calm myself. I willed my heart rate to slow down, tried to soothe myself with comforting thoughts.
Struggled to think of any.
I moved off slowly, rounding the doorway and into the hall towards the kitchen door. It was closed over, so I placed my palm outwards and rested it on the door. I was standing off to the side as I pushed, in case someone was waiting on the other side.
I’d have a second, a bat in my hand, and that was about it in terms of defence.
No wonder I couldn’t think of anything comforting to think about.
I pushed again and when nothing jumped out at me, I moved gradually towards the entrance, ready to move at speed.
The back door was open.
Cold air breezed through the kitchen, making me shiver as my chest was exposed to the winter wind, protesting. A little light was illuminating the top end, coming from the houses opposite my garden.
I moved quickly, purposefully outside, careful not to expose my back to any possible hidden attack. Saw the back gate still closed and locked. Faced the garden and watched silently for movement that never came.
I tried to remember locking the back door and couldn’t recall it. I was usually mindful of that, but I wasn’t sure I had when I’d arrived back home.
That was it, I thought. I’d left it open when I’d put something out and just forgotten. The wind had picked up overnight and opened it up fully, that was all. Banging against the bin and the kitchen counter. I was relieved suddenly, when I figured it all out.
That didn’t stop me thinking the worst.
Then, a scent in the air that reminded me of someone. A sense memory. An aroma.
I saw Stuart in my mind. Clearly. Laughing at some joke, baring his teeth for the world to see. Bumping me with his shoulder, as his body shook with unbridled laughter. The memory faded, but the smell in the air lingered.
I closed the back door, alert to any noise coming from inside but hearing nothing. I moved towards the light switch, flicking it on and feeling instantly safer for no apparent reason. I bathed myself in a forty-watt glow, looking for anything that had been moved. Everything looked stark now – edges to peripheral items that hadn’t existed in the dark. I calmed myself again, taking deep breaths, the coolness of the room lingering, not warming me up any.
I placed the bat I was still holding on the kitchen counter and then turned
the tap on over the sink. Filled a glass and drank rapidly, soothing my dry and scratchy throat. I placed the glass on the drainer and looked at the bat on the side. I wondered how useful it actually would have been if someone had jumped out of the shadows and gone for me. Hoped the fact I was half-naked and not exactly small in stature would have intimidated any potential burglar.
Only I knew that wouldn’t have been who was in my house at this time of night.
I moved back through to the living room, adrenaline still coursing through my body. I wasn’t going to go back to sleep any time soon. I switched on the floor lamp, picked up the remote control and turned on the TV. Checked the time.
6.42 a.m.
A couple of hours’ sleep before a door woke me up.
Great.
I hadn’t checked the office.
You idiot.
I couldn’t live like this anymore.
I switched on lights as I left the living room and walked into the dining room/office. I was expecting the worst, but it was exactly as I’d left it the previous night.
Above me, I could hear music.
I’d left my phone upstairs.
Someone was calling me.
2002
My last exam was over – three years of my life suddenly at an end. There was something unsettling about the process, I thought as I sat at the bar of the cheap pub on campus, downing the dregs of a pint of Carlsberg.
It was two in the afternoon and I planned on getting steaming drunk.
‘Think of it this way – at least there’s a chance of resits.’
I rolled my eyes at Stuart, who was already three pints in by the time I’d joined him. Not that it showed. He was an annoying drunk, who never seemed to show any effect alcohol had on him. The only difference seemed to be an increase in the volume of his voice.
Chris was the other side of me and slapped a hand on my shoulder. ‘I’m sure you’ll be fine.’
I grunted a non-response and got up to refresh my glass. Chris followed me, as Stuart knelt on the seat in the booth and chatted to the group of women sitting on the one behind us.
‘Isn’t he supposed to be seeing Michelle?’ Chris said to me, waving the barman over and pointing at the Carlsberg pump. ‘Two and a coke.’