Flock of Shadows

by Houguez, Claire; Parfitt, Rebecca;

  Pinned to a tree was a sign for a lost dog, the writing spidery, the page half torn. Even the dog seemed just a blur, a shape, an inky smear of fur. Only its yellow eyes looked real.

  And at the bottom? Yes, a phone number. Somebody answered on the second ring.

  ‘Hello?’

  The line clicked and whirred but I could hear no voice.

  ‘Hello? Um, I’m calling about the dog…’

  Nothing. No answer. The winds of time.

  ‘Ah, is there anybody there? Because…’

  More clicking.

  ‘Hello?’

  There was a shuffling sound and all of a sudden I felt embarrassed. If someone were to answer, what should I say? I didn’t have the dog, hadn’t seen it, didn’t have a clue. What was I doing on the phone at all?

  ‘Ah, well, the dog, it…’

  The line clicked again and then went dead.

  When I phoned back there was more clicking, perhaps some breathing too.

  ‘Hello?’

  The last time the thing had gone to answer-phone.

  ‘Fergus! Fergus! O friend, are you there?’

  I don’t know; maybe the number wasn’t the clue. Maybe it was the handwriting or the paper used, or the shape of the animal’s head. Fingers tingling, I settled down on a half-vandalised bench, examining the graffiti, the rust marks, the place where somebody had tried to set fire to the slats. Some hooligan had written ‘Dave Hays Wears His Ma’s Pants’ in permanent marker: heaven knows the reason why.

  Across the way some guy in a business suit marked up a preliminary report on the rain shelter, noting cracks, lines, angles. Two waiters argued over their sketch of the council toilets. A woman dressed all in black studied an enormous clip file as if slowly taking in the rules of the game. Yes, all was a game, a scheme, a text. But how many players and to what end?

  All I knew was that the contestants were everywhere; the guy in the wheelchair, the birdwatcher with his binoculars, the mathematician and her set-square, all of them noting, drafting, setting down. One studied the lines in the flagstones, another the contours of the hill; one counted the number of rubbish bins, his mate grubbing inside them, examining, measuring, recording. And if all this information were laid end to end? Why, such paper would form a pathway, a passage, a ladder from one place to the next…

  Next to such encyclopedic efforts, my own poor investigations seemed awful small. What did I have? The gestures of a squirrel and the ball of a fox. And all the time my fingers angrily throbbed and grew. One nail was loose, another had fallen away entirely; even holding a pen felt increasingly difficult. How then was I supposed to compete? Down by the boating lake some woman ticked off the number of railings in her pad, touching each bar with her glove before staring off into space. For some reason she seemed awfully familiar but for a moment I couldn’t place her. And then it occurred to me: my wife! But why wasn’t she at work – my scrupulous, conscientious, work-driven wife? I watched her checking and rechecking her numbers, comparing the number of railings with the number of ducks on the island. Was it her? Someone in her coat? Then some joker drifted in front of me and she was gone. Eighteen railings, seven ducks, one moor-hen, but wives: none. Swiftly I pulled out my phone and punched in her number.

  ‘Hello?’

  The line clicked, but that was it.

  ‘Hello? Um, I’m calling from the park…’

  Nothing. No answer. The winds of time.

  ‘Um, is there anybody there? Because…’

  More clicking.

  ‘Hello?’

  There was a shuffling sound and all of a sudden I felt embarrassed. If she were to answer, what should I say? I hadn’t solved the puzzle, opened the map, found the answer. I mean, what was I doing on the phone at all?

  ‘Um, you see…’

  The line clicked again and then went dead.

  When I phoned back there was more clicking, perhaps some breathing too.

  ‘Hello?’

  Next time the thing had gone to answer-phone.

  ‘Jo? Jo, are you there?’

  The trees waved their arms in alarm.

  ‘Jo?’

  Come to think of it, the blurred shape on the flyer looked a little like my wife too – the shape of her hair, the angle of her chin, the funny little scar above one eye. But she also looked liked the ring-road around the perimeter, the traffic lights and roundabout, a map of the principality. Upside down one could see roots, trunks, arms, a copse of fist-shaking sycamore. And if one squinted just right the very grains of the paper produced inky pools, dark smears, lost tributaries. But which clue was correct? The last four digits were 2355: half a hair to midnight - or some other code or rune? Whatever it was, I shredded the paper before one of my opponents could discover it.

  vi

  By now it was a little after six but I didn’t feel like going back home. What if my wife were there? What if she had figured things out? I wasn’t hungry but I forced myself to go and eat a pasty and chips, carefully counting each chip, pushing the peas this way and that on my plate. Seventeen chips, thirty one peas. On one side of my plate, the peas formed a river; on the other, the ketchup formed the shape of an owl. O, reader! It was as if the very edge of reality were peeling back like an envelope. I mean, what if everything – the tables, the chairs, the stains on the waitresses’ apron - were a clue? Everything meant something, but anything could also be another thing entirely. Ho, even the tiles on the floor contained sequences, arrangements, paths. On the verge of a great revelation – I had a funny metallic taste in my mouth and my limbs felt oddly brittle – I staggered from my seat and left the joint, running. The world was a newspaper in which I could not read a single word. When I closed my eyes I saw blobs. When I opened them again the blobs formed shapes. But what kind of shapes – and why such tiny print? Fortunately my car wasn’t too far away. Locking the door I gripped the wheel hard. My fingers looked like ten black tubers starting to sprout. Even turning the ignition felt hard. And I was supposed to hold a pen with these?

  Fortunately as soon as I got away from the city centre and coasted along the long, looping dual-carriageways, my mind started to cool down, my thoughts again becoming my own. Slowly the two halves of my brain started to knit, my lips moving to the music, my numb, greenish fingers drumming along to the beat. How long did I drive for? I don’t know. Long enough for the light to slip between the cracks! At 21.19 I stopped at Crossley services. There was a guy filling in a puzzle book, and another finishing a crossword, but as for other players, that was about it. I had a cup of tea. My piss was still a little green. At 22.33 I pulled into a lay-by because my fingers were so awfully sore. How ugly they were! Without print or ring or nail. I felt terribly embarrassed but couldn’t seem to be able to find my gloves anywhere. My fingers were terribly long, the tips strangely old and fermented. At 22.56 I headed back into the city, passing the industrial estate, the out of town shopping centre, the DIY store. I drove round and round the same six streets very slowly. The pavements were empty. The traffic was very light. It was as if a series of black shutters were coming down, one after the other. O, this dark! A dead pigeon lay by the side of the road, its broken body pointing crookedly toward the park.

  The park? When I got there, there wasn’t a parking space anywhere. I’m not kidding! Car-parks, pull-ins, side-roads: all jammed. I ended up parking nearly four blocks away, walking along back alleys past shuttered garages, purposefully avoiding the graffiti and the cats.

  Even the air felt filled in somehow, big blocks of scribbled black. And yet, despite the number of vehicles – four by fours, people carriers, land rovers, saloons, even a mini bus or two – there didn’t seem to be anybody about. The cars were parked half on and half off the pavements, in places two deep, but I couldn’t see a single pedestrian, not so much as a single bum. Where was everybody? Street lights formed fuzzy ci
rcles, iron railings leaned against each other, the post-box licked its lips. Yes, I thought, this must be the place! I picked up a stick and tapped the ground though in truth there was plenty of light, at least if one kept to the path. Elsewhere thick barrels of nothingness oozed out over the grass, the autumn night gulping shadows. Was I scared? No, not really. Only my hands worried me, my long, green fingers itching from the inside.

  Heigh ho! The gates to the park were open, rubbish blowing across from an upturned bin. Take away wrappers, crisp packets, newspapers, plastic bags: so, I thought, more clues! A green mitten was hung on a railing. A puddle formed the letter ‘s’. Somebody had moved the benches so they formed a kind of circle. Yes, yes, this was it; I followed the path between two great banks of darkness, smelling mulch, piss, November. The darkness was a great mouth but I didn’t let it worry me. What I feared was a gravestone marked: He Sought But Did Not Find….

  Cracks formed messages on the path. Stones made full stops. A broken umbrella looked like an exclamation mark. And what of the other readers? Had they turned the page? I thought about the parked cars but still couldn’t understand it. There were shadows, but not the things which cast shadows. Or had I got it the wrong way round? What if it were the shadows which cast things after all?

  At 23.55 the phone rang.

  ‘Nick?’ asked my wife. ‘Nick, where are you?’

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘Listen, I’ve been home. What happened? Are you okay? Nick, what is it?’

  The wind blew and the trees shook.

  ‘Nick?’

  ‘Shh,’ I said. ‘Why cry? No, really, why?’

  I lifted one foot from the path and strode out into the void; the lights behind me faded until they were less than the size of a pea. Were there stars? No, there were no stars. No sky, no up, no down. And yet even here my eyes started to adjust, blurs forming bushes, holes, hands…

  The dog (dog?) was waiting for me at the edge of the trees, panting softly, its yellow eyes dripping.

  ‘Fergus?’ I said. ‘Fergus, is that you?’

  Its mouth clacked open and shut with a snap.

  ‘Fergus?’

  I walked the last part of the way blind, neither caring for mud nor shit nor roots; instead I followed the eyes as I would a lantern, entering into a wood far larger than found on any map.

  In here, the trees looked old and tired. Some of them bent down to tie up their roots, while others pointed uncertainly toward the heavens above. How ancient they seemed! When I touched them it was touching the skin of an old dead animal – an elephant, perhaps. The bark contained valleys, inlets, channels; when I pressed down I felt a kind of hinge, a pivot on which the whole of the world seemed to turn. Ah, such a place! Above me the leaves formed letters, lines, words, a whole alphabet silhouetted against the sky. When I looked down, my feet were covered in mud, two great clods planted in the earth. My torso was a great gnarled trunk, my arms crooked black boughs, my fingers twigs ending in vowels and consonants and commas. What had happened to me? What did it mean? Near the top branch a crow watched me with cruel yellow eyes.

  ‘What does it mean?’ I yelled. ‘Why can’t I read?’

  The crow pecked at my buds and winked. The wind blew the trees. Letters tumbled all around me.

  ‘Read?’ it said.

  And with that its wings snapped shut like a book.

  Contributor’s Notes

  Alan Bilton was born in York in 1969 and teaches literature, film, and creative writing at Swansea University. He is the author of two novels (both part slapstick comedy, part surreal anxiety dream) – The Known and Unknown Sea (Cillian Press, 2014) and The Sleepwalkers’ Ball (2009) – as well as books on silent film, contemporary fiction, and the 1920s.

  Mark Blayney won the Somerset Maugham Prize for Two Kinds of Silence. His story ‘The Murder of Dylan Thomas’ was a Seren Short Story of the Month and he’s published poems and stories in Agenda, Poetry Wales, The Interpreter’s House, The London Magazine and the delinquent. His second book Conversations with Magic Stones was described by John Bayley as ‘remarkable... as good as some of the best of Elizabeth Bowen’s, and praise does not go higher than that.’ Mark performs comedy as well as MCing regularly and his new one-man show Be your own life-coach... with ABBA tours this year. More info at www.markblayney.weebly.com

  Shirley Golden’s stories mostly wing their way back to the recesses of her laptop and await further coffee-fuelled sessions of juggling words. Her short fiction has found homes in the pages of magazines and anthologies, or in various corners of the internet; a few have won prizes. She is door-person and arbitrator to two wannabe tigers, and can sometimes be found on Twitter when she should be writing. Find her at www. shirleygolden.net or @shirl1001.

  Carly Holmes was born on the Channel Island of Jersey and lives on the west coast of Wales. She has an MA in Creative Writing from UOW Trinity Saint David and has just completed her PhD in Creative Writing. A number of her short stories have been published and placed in competitions. Carly is Secretary for the PENfro Book Festival committee and organises The Cellar Bards, a group of writers who meet in Cardigan monthly for a lively evening of spoken word, and she’s also on the editorial board of The Lampeter Review. When not doing any of the above, Carly can usually be found in her garden, talking to her hedge sparrows. Her debut novel The Scrapbook was published by Parthian in 2014.

  Howard David Ingham has written fiction, poetry, theatre and games since 2002. He has been published worldwide, is an accomplished performer, and was artist in residence at Swansea University from 2012–13. He is currently working on comic series Transhuman Resources, a satire dealing with issues of capitalism, race and gender, in collaboration with Ashur Collective, Detroit.

  Amanda Mason lives in York and writes plays, flash fiction and short stories. She’s had work published online by Spontaneity and Flash Gumbo, and short stories included in collections produced by Cracked Eye, Storms, Lies and Wildcards, The Fiction Desk, New Ghost Stories, and in the National Flash Fiction Day Anthology, Eating My Words. She is currently working on her first novel.

  Jo Mazelis’ collection of stories Diving Girls (Parthian, 2002) was short-listed for Commonwealth Best First Book and Welsh Book of the Year. Her second book, Circle Games (Parthian, 2005) was long-listed for Welsh Book of the Year. Her novel Significance was published by Seren in September 2014. She lives in Swansea.

  Kate North writes fiction and poetry. Her novel, Eva Shell, was published in 2008 and her poetry collection, Bistro, in 2012. She lives and teaches in Cardiff. Find her at www.katenorth.co.uk.

  Bethany W. Pope is the author of three poetry collections, A Radiance (Cultured Llama, 2012), Crown of Thorns (Oneiros Books, 2013), and The Gospel of Flies (Writing Knights Press, 2014). She has two forthcoming collections, Undisturbed Circles (Lapwing), and Persephone in the Underworld (Rufus Books). Bethany is an award-winning author of the LBA, and a finalist for the Faulkner-Wisdom Awards. She was a runner-up for the Cinnamon Press Novel Competition. She received her MA in Creative Writing from Trinity College, Carmarthen, and her PhD from Aberystwyth University’s Creative Writing program.

  Paula R. C. Readman lives in a quiet village in Essex, with her hard-working husband, Russell, who allows her to follow her dream. In 2010, she had her first success with writing fiction when English Heritage published her story in Whitby Abbey – Pure Inspiration, since then she has won two writing competitions, including having her story, ‘Roofscapes’ selected as the overall winner by best-selling crime writer Mark Billingham and has had several other short stories published too. Find her at paulareadman1.wordpress.com

  Laura Wilkinson is a writer, reader, wife and mother to ginger boys. As well as writing fiction, she works as an editor for literary consultancy, Cornerstones. Laura has published short stories in magazines, digital media and anthologies, and two novels. Public Battles, Private Wars (Acce
nt Press) is the story of a young miner’s wife in 1984; of friends and rivals; loving and fighting, and being the best you can be. For more information, visit: laura-wilkinson. co.uk or follow her on Facebook, Laura Wilkinson Author, or Twitter @ScorpioScribble.

  Rhys Owain Williams was born and raised in Morriston, Swansea. Having completed an English with Creative Writing degree at Swansea University, he continued to study there for an MA in Creative Writing (2009–10). Rhys has published in various magazines, and was one of forty poets to be featured in Wales’ first ever national anthology of haiku poetry, Another Country (Gomer), in 2011. He is a regular reader at spoken-word events across south Wales.

  Copyright Information

  Parthian

  The Old Surgery

  Napier Street

  Cardigan

  SA43 1ED

  www.parthianbooks.com

  First published by Parthian in 2015

  Ebook edition published in 2015

  © Each contribution remains the copyright of the author

  All Rights Reserved

  Epub ISBN 978-1-910409-72-5

  Mobi ISBN 978-1-910409-73-2

  The publisher acknowledges the financial support of the Welsh Books Council.

  Edited by Claire Houguez and Rebecca Parfitt

  Cover design by Claire Houguez

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.