by Shaun Hume
I got back to my feet and continued to walk. I walked until the sunlight went out and the streetlight lit up. But soon a new thought crept into my mind, a slow tick that built up and up like a tall poppy blossoming in the dark.
Where was I to go now? Should I simply choose another temporary residence, another easy hotel? How was I to know they would not find me there just as quickly as they had done at my previous abode? For all Oxford’s plaudits for being a smaller town, the ease with which one could not so easily become internally lost in it was not one of the positive attributes for me at this juncture.
My brain wracking started in haste and I was fast slowing my physical pace in space, for no reason other than my immediate needs had turned from movement to thought. My first internal suggestions turned to Bertie, but I doubt that even he could have kept the secrecy of my question and answer session for as long as this. I would not be safe there, others would know that we had met.
The night was a warm one, so I lifted my heels with rapidity once more and headed for Holywell Cemetery. I knew the place well, having adopted the headstones and long grass for an outdoor study many a time during a midsummers eve past. The feeble old gate was shut when I arrived but it was never a chore to leap its crumbling timber and peeling steel in order to gain passage into the land of the dead behind it.
The Cemetery was deathly black on all sides, the faint amber hue of the street lights the only illumination present, falling onto the surrounding overhanging leaves like ochre dust. I dared not take my phone from my pocket and operate its torch beam, a single pale light in the midst of this world of darkness would have been a shining beacon. A target for those who may still be on my tail.
It mattered not, though, as I had been here enough times to know the place by heart.
As my eyes gradually adjusted to the gloom, I slowly navigated large crooked headstones and tall solid crosses as they stuck out of the ground like many rows of sharks teeth, the further deeper I ventured the denser the lines of graves.
I took care not to step on the top of any poor soul’s resting place, and stuck to the path as I knew it. There was a keen smell in the air of freshly clipped grass, a sign that the way had recently been reshaped and moulded, stray strands of green weeds trimmed right back to the bases of their concrete and moulded stone fellows.
The whole way I heard not a sound save for the outer bustle of the town and my own quick breaths, as they ran around my lungs and leaped out of my mouth. I was sorely out of shape, and had not done the kind of walking I had completed this week in over a year previous.
I rounded a tidy clump of trees and stepped into the long grass at their base, knowing this was a particularly good spot to be if one not only didn’t want to be seen, but wanted to see whoever might come along to see oneself.
I got comfortability down as quickly as I could have hoped and sleep came even sooner than I had expected.
I was awoken with a damp chill on my skin and a heavy silence in the air, instantly thinking the cold the culprit for my stirring. I lay for a moment before the real cause of my broken sleep made a movement off to my right. I seized everything I had and dared not even to breathe for fear it would give me away.
How had they found me here? Had they followed me again, this time more stealthily and then sat in wait nearby? All the while biding their own time until I moved no more and they could sense my guard was down? I was convinced it was so.
I chanced to search the immediate area around myself for anything that would aid in my self defence, should the time be proved to call for it. I carefully grasped my hand over a rough stone that sat near my leg. The bottom of the stone was damp with slimy soil and I did my best to grasp it well, ready to strike.
I heard the noise again and knew it was that of another soul, a living being slowly moving down the same path as I had taken only hours before. I did not, and would not, as may be the fancy taken by some others, believe it to be instead the walking dead. A spirit of the resting place I had in truth intruded upon. No. This was flesh and bone upon me now. I was certain of that too.
9.
The air was so still. Even under my thin canopy of branches that served as temporary roof, I could feel the very atoms being shoved into one another and pushed out of the way by the approaching figure. Those invisible building blocks of life then colliding with my face, the effect like a stirring breeze that was man-made.
My blood cells felt like tendrils of steel, twisted tight and ready to explode. My heart was in danger of giving me away before my shallow breath, no longer able to hold it as I was now issuing small shallow wisps of oxygen through pursed lips. My skin began to tingle and my stomach pitch and boil, bubble and froth, a cauldron of every slight of anxiety and adrenalin swilled around like a great witch’s brew.
The creature in the night came closer still, and I was now ready to jump out at all costs and strike the first deadly blow. No incidence would be entered into about sex or creed of whoever it was that did stalk me, the cruel thing in just deserts of whatever I could dish out, however powerful a strike could I reign down upon its soul.
I was at my tips of electricity, my mind keen to give the all clear and signal all out attack, when another sense took over my ideas, and a further dreg of information was suddenly thrown onto the heap.
A smell.
Mingled with the minuscule droplets of water in the growing cool mist was the rough, almost rotting texture of alcohol. Whoever it was creeping closer to me ever still had either been doused in copious amounts of the substance, or else was leeching it from their pores, a drunkard so endowed with the toxin that his or her very skin spoke of it.
The odour became more pungent, riding the shadowy air like a black bird and piercing my nostrils with a fevered kind of jab that wouldn’t rest until it had me intoxicated in its clutches too. Then a grumble, a grunt, and subjectless mutterings threw their way into my ears and I was doubly tensed, but now irrecoverably confident.
The figure was indeed a man.
And as the shift of the darkness dim threw clarity onto his person, the dowdy outfit and rumpled expression I could now see. I was permitted this view through a spyhole in the leaves of my covering, this being enough to confirm my summations and lager my pulse. He stumbled along, as if being wound up and set loose by a third party, merrily oblivious to the forces of gravity, let alone my silent presence in the leafy hiding place. I waited further moments for the drunkard to pass by, seemingly on his own well worn journey, towards safe ground and a settled sleep.
No more unexpected noises felt their way through the eve from then on, but little sleep did I manage for the duration of the night-time hours. After some form of slumber I stirred more resolutely to bright sunlight, a blue and gold arc of colour doming over my leafy roof, the hidey hole looking like an upturned bowl of polished jade.
I gathered as much composure as I could, for someone still pumping blood around their extremities and who had just spent the night in an overgrown graveyard, dusting off my clothes before getting to my feet and slipping away, the picture of conspicuous.
Despite the washing and surging light it was still fairly early, a gentle amount of human and mechanical traffic present on the small streets of Oxford. The small sun warmed my skin, and I removed my jacket, wanting to present more cool flesh to be heated.
It was hunger that hit me then, although mixing with the mingling tang of thoughts about what I would do next. I would be doing nothing if I didn’t get some food into my stomach, so I let my way be determined by gaining sustenance and cut a swiftly stepped path towards the nearest Tesco’s supermarket.
With a shrill of surprise I discovered I had plenty of money gracing my pockets, so got what I wanted, then taking the haul to the edge of the Meadow and sat in the morning pearl. There I was amid the joggers and bike riders and walkers and eager students and determined elders. Here I set about as they – to recharge my energy and regain my composure.
The butter-less hot cros
s buns and full cream milk that served as my hasty breakfast revived me well enough and I felt better in body, but my mind still had some ways to go. Or that it seemed. For now that my physical strength was restored, it left my mind to jumble back up, the physical tiredness alleviated only to be replaced by that raking feeling in my head, the thoughts back on track and back on what was next to do.
I was being followed, this much was clear, but maybe not as astutely as I had first imagined. They knew my whereabouts, but not it seemed in real time, for I would be pounced upon where I sat for sure. A blip on the radar before a swift and surely chilling end. These people were out to stop me. And not to only fend me off, but cast me away and crush me to the ground.
As I peered around at the steadily growing public ramble before me, any of which could be agents of my enemy, I started to suppose that they could in fact be my greatest allies. Although these wolves were at my heels, there was something greater that they wanted to maintain besides my silence, and that was the silence of anyone else. Any attention drawn back to their sinister deeds was attention they could ill afford. This I would use against them. This I would have to. As long as I was amongst others I was safe. But in the company of the public, I feared, I would also be clueless, and clueless was something I had no intentions to remain.
I made a rounding circuit of the small but well filled Oxford High Street and surroundings, eating up time, and as afternoon fast approached its retirement age, I again dove down Rose Lane and made for the paths towards the Meadow once more.
It felt as if the sky was trying to encase me, acting on who knows who’s orders to envelope me in its mighty veil. The forces were gathering, something was being made ready. The trees were shifting in their roots, their hands quivering and waving about with a slighted agitation. The wind was hurrying me along, and for a strangeness seemed the only thing on my side, more like a watchful and cautious friend instead of another worldly foe.
I rounded the edge of the Trinity Wall, the ancient and impressive structure lining the manicured playing fields that border the Meadow itself, when suddenly I found myself completely alone.
The path ahead of me was devoid of anyone. The playing fields and the Meadow beyond were similarly desolate, a stray walker or two as specks in the distance, much too far away to hear a call of distress from afar. I doubled my step and the gripping urge to seek shelter rose up in me like putrid smoke, a withering unease infesting my lungs and clouding my head.
Possessed by some urge to blend as best as I could into my surrounds of society, somehow my pulse caused thoughts to slow. A mushy slop were my instincts right then, and insight had left me. However, my physical still held its rapid pace, as a drop or two of moisture from above sounded the warning call.
Despite everything, I rushed along the rest of the way, no fresh soul meeting me before I had left the tightened and claustrophobic confines of the path.
I crunched my way along the Meadow’s edge proper and passed the Meadow facing walls of Christ Church once again. My old academic home had been looming dreary in the background ever since I had returned to the fold, even before I first lay eyes on The Girl in the Blue Shoes. I felt a strange magnetically supernatural pull from its thick honeyed blocks, as I passed its regal frontage and carried on into St Aldate’s once more.
Now I stood stock on the wide street side path of St. Aldate’s. Through the shifting walls of glass and metal made by the countless lines of buses and cars which flew by my eyes, I gazed across the street at Alice’s Shop and thought how much had I followed in her footsteps.
From somewhere so familiar it had turned into a new land of hidden wonders and frightening shadows. Shadows that were chasing me still, leaning to the sides and waiting their turn, silent watchers as they made their plans to strike again.
Alice had fallen into a hole and indeed also had I, still tumbling through the abyss, anticipating the firm and uncomfortable thud at the end of my journey.
10.
A clock tower chimed, near or far I couldn’t tell, and jumped my nerves.
A massive tree lorded over the brick wall to my back like a hulking nosy neighbour, peering at any who passed and flexing its branches accordingly. The hissing of buses as they clambered for their breaks sounded like snakes all around me, cunning creatures hiding just out of view, slithering into place, making ready to strike.
A shutter, from the tallest window in the building on the opposite side of the street, gave a shudder; someone was watching. A sickly pair of eyes, while too far away and too swathed in shadow to decipher, still made their intentions clearly felt.
There was enough human and otherwise traffic in the street to disguise my gazes as mere people watching, so I did my best to give nothing away. The figure in the window belonging to the wan eyes seemed to be shifting weight lightly from one foot to the other like a nervous crow. But those eyes held unblinking attention on only one particle in the whole street. Me.
At one point I believe I was staring, my eyes now ravenous and keen onto my watcher, right back in the eye. It was only for a fraction of time at best, but still holding true. I fancy then the watcher knew it for sure, his game all but up, his cover of dark and shade blown to the four winds and beyond.
But still he looked further, even when I had finally averted my own gaze, with the pure intention of not wanting my comprehension to be shown. I was playing the game now, one will holding with another, and I chanced another look above me, with all intentions of holding my view until his was broken, forced to fly away from his perch and move along his way.
The foolishness of this apparent game of chicken only dawned on me as I set my eyes again to see no sickly counterparts. The window was blank, the shadow it cast complete, and the deep-eyed man, the blackened spying crow, was no longer on his perch. I had been so caught up in my spirited challenge that I had not felt the ever present heat from his gaze leave my skin.
The light reflecting off a passing car window sparkled in my face and I looked down at my watch. It was not even six in the early evening and already the darkness of the coming night was dripping down the the sides of the surrounding buildings like black tar, the colours all round beginning to blur, like a painters water pot, dark and mottled.
The shadows closed in and began to topple over my path. The light was draining away with the dribbling rain that had increased by increments, but steady ones. It served my purpose and hid me well enough, cloaking my frame so that by the time anyone had bothered to notice my presence, I had already passed their view. The artificial light that cut out of the shop front windows and cafes in golden slices was beginning to take the supremacy, each one now a new second of exposure and anxiety.
It was then, as looking left, towards the very same Tesco’s I had procured my breakfast from, and then at the police station opposite, that I first thought about what role the constabulary might play in all of this.
Could they help me? Was it a wise thing to venture their involvement in the whole affair? But how could they believe my tales and be convinced of the danger of my quarry, when I was not at all certain of their magnitude myself? Was there chance enough that the whole thing would be turned around on me? I labelled the dangerous one and locked away for fear of what my ideas would bring to others, and what actions those ideas might facilitate if left to wander unchecked?
Right then I turned on heel and had only thoughts for safety. Ahead of me was an almost traffic free street, to the left the dully lit police station. To the right was another turning devoid of much bustle, human or otherwise, and behind me the shadows moving quickly, steaming at my back like a stealthy creature stalking prey.
I can not remember having the occasion to be inside a police station before, and I can’t tell what I was expecting. Quiet, clean and with clinical lines a little like a hospital dominated the space before me as I walked through the doorway. I could only imagine what stage of people’s lives they had to be at in order to enter such a place. In turmoil or need? Both
could be fair as measured accurate to me reasoning for finding myself there and then.
I stumbled into the strangely cold white empty box, as it seemed to me then, and was confronted with the alert eyes of a young woman. Not what I would have first expected on the front lines of Oxford’s law enforcement finest, until I noticed her crisp uniform and steady shoulders.
She was busily scribbling information onto a form at the desk in front of her, but had hit me with her sharpened glance, I fancied even before I had entered the building, something in her manner telling me she had seen me coming before I myself had known where I would end up.
‘Is there something I can help you with, sir?’ Once again I was surprised, her voice not matching her hardened eyes, but did her gentle looks. A moment more observing the constable and it was clear how pretty she was.
‘Ah, yes,’ I said, or rather more stammered, the words dropping carelessly out of my mouth like discarded layers of clothing on the warm summers day, as it had been. ‘I was wondering if you could help me?’
I do not fully know what it was that made me lose my tongue so, the ability to string a coherent sentence together suddenly far beyond me. The cause was neither defined as being the product of my raising agitation at my pursuers proximity to me, or the fact that I myself was so close to someone of such a pure but austere beauty. Threatening but not so. In an instant I thought again of The Girl in the Blue Shoes.
‘Can I help you, sir?’ the comely constable said again, now looking at me with a preparatory look, the cogs of training turning in her mind. It was all too apparent to me my title in her mind was rapidly morphing from citizen in need to suspect to be apprehended.
‘Yes, sorry, could – could you tell me the way from here to the Radcliffe Camera?’
This was a complete and utter farce. I knew quite well the way to the Radcliffe Camera. I could find my way from the ground underneath my feet to the Camera blindfolded and in a snow storm.