The Shadow Man

by Helen Fields

  Elspeth sat up again, contemplating the death of the woman below the floorboards. Multiple bones of different sizes, and a fresh body. Fergus had killed before, definitely more than once, possibly many times. No doubt he’d kill again. Another woman, same dress, she thought. It wasn’t her previous life that flashed before her eyes as she’d expected, but the life she’d carelessly assumed she had left to live. Her children’s graduations. Weddings. Grandchildren. Holidays, Christmases, birthdays …

  ‘Did he do this?’ Meggy asked, weeping. ‘Hurt these people and hide their bones down here? You think he did. You think he’s going to do the same to us.’

  ‘Put the bones back under the floor,’ Elspeth instructed her softly. ‘We should never have seen any of this.’

  ‘No,’ Meggy said. ‘Whoever ended up down there, we should get them out. I don’t want to die here and be put under the floor. Why should they stay there, in the dark?’

  ‘Meggy, be sensible. If he comes back now and finds all this, we’re going to end up under that floor much sooner than we need to. Now put it back!’

  ‘I won’t, and you can’t tell me what to do. When I came in you were under the bed covered in shit, and I had to look after you, so you don’t get to be the grown-up now.’

  Meggy thrust her hand back into the cavity again, circling her arm wildly, reaching in every direction. When she finally surfaced, it was with a handful of tiny bones clutched in her hand.

  ‘Is that … is that fingers, do you think?’

  Elspeth sat looking away, shaking her head.

  ‘It’s bones from a hand, I reckon. Only they’re tiny, really tiny. Like …’ Meggy said.

  ‘Don’t say it,’ Elspeth whispered.

  ‘Like a child’s,’ Meggy finished anyway. ‘There’s lots more down there I couldn’t reach. There’s definitely another skull – I touched the round bit. And loads of—’

  ‘Would you stop?’ Elspeth screeched. ‘Just stop talking. I don’t want to hear this. This can’t happen to us.’ She punctuated each word with a stamp of her foot. ‘Do you hear me, Meggy? Whatever happened to these poor people, it can’t happen to us. It can’t.’

  Meggy started to sway, arms wrapped around her knees on the floor, staring blankly through the fake window on the wall.

  ‘Got to clear up now,’ Elspeth chanted to herself as she swept the bones back into the hole. ‘Got to clear up.’

  She replaced the single floorboard that was in one piece, pulled Meggy up and deposited her in the armchair at the end of the room, then began pulling the carpet to cover the bare boards.

  ‘Better,’ she whispered to herself. ‘Come on, Elspeth, you can do this.’

  She pushed and heaved the sofa so that it pinned the loose carpet to the floor. Picking up the scattered shards of wood and carpet tacks, she surveyed the sitting room. The same but entirely different.

  ‘Meggy.’ She pulled the girl up to a standing position. ‘Honey, we have to wash our hands and faces, and get clean clothes on.’

  ‘No point. We’re going to die here. Like those other people. Do you think their ghosts are in here with us?’

  ‘No,’ Elspeth said. ‘There’s no such thing as ghosts. Those people are dead. They can’t hurt us now, but he can, Meggy, and I don’t want that. So we’re going to sort ourselves out, okay? You can get into bed after that if you like. It might be best, anyway. You’ve had a shock.’

  Meggy nodded, holding out a hand for Elspeth to take. In the bathroom they washed off the dust, and the smell of disintegrating bones.

  ‘Elspeth,’ Meggy whispered, and they went to settle down for the night. ‘I’m so scared.’

  ‘I know, sweetheart,’ Elspeth said, stroking Meggy’s hair and kissing her forehead. ‘I’m scared too. But we’ve got each other, okay? We’re going to take care of each other now.’

  ‘Okay,’ Meggy said. ‘We’ll take care of each other. And there are no ghosts. Promise?’

  ‘No ghosts at all. I swear it.’

  But in her imagination, a dead woman was slowly turning her head towards the light, wanting to be seen. Elspeth squeezed her eyes shut tight. It wasn’t her face on that corpse, she told herself. It wouldn’t ever be her face. Same dress didn’t mean the same fate. They would be smarter and more determined. They didn’t have to die like the others before them.

  ‘No ghosts,’ she said one more time. It wasn’t for Meggy’s benefit.

  ‘Can you see me?’ Fergus croaked from the doorway.

  They screamed.

  Chapter Nineteen

  He’d been dead. It was no illusion. The moment of death had been marked with a blinding flash. There had been a sense of lifting out of his corporeal body and travelling instead with his spirit. Burdens behind him, Fergus Ariss had risen up to take his place in the afterlife.

  He’d steadied himself before opening his eyes. It would undoubtedly be more colourful, more vivid than the earthly world. His mother would be waiting for him. Perhaps there would be a celebration, and an explanation as to how it all worked. He’d felt fleeting concern, but then remembered he was dead. What was the worst thing that could happen now?

  Letting his mind float free, he focused on his breathing. Gone was the tight throat that had made his voice ugly and small when he was scared. There was no discomfort or grief. No restriction in his stomach or bowels. Bodily concerns were washed away. There was only warmth and an anticipation of the love to come.

  Fergus had opened his eyes.

  ‘What the fuck?’

  He’d run his hands over his body. It was intact, his soul still contained within. He’d slid his fingertips over his wrist and felt no pulse. The room around him was the same one he’d died in. The photos were still on the wall, the bed still out of reach. Sitting up, his limbs had strobed through the light, leaving little past images of his movements in the air. Everything was the same and yet a world apart. His heart was still in his chest. The lack of sensation in his body had left him floating, in spite of the fact that he could see his body making contact with the floor.

  ‘What went wrong?’

  He’d walked slowly to the dusty mirror, hardly daring to look. Approaching the image by sliding sideways into view, he’d found he could still see himself. There was a representation of himself still in the world. It moved its eyes when he moved his, yet he saw no breath on the glass when he blew. There was blood on the floor and on his clothes from his fall, but no pain in his body. Fergus had pinched himself, hard. The result was the faintest buzz through his skin, as if someone were shouting to him from a great distance.

  Ripping open a cupboard, he shoved aside box after box until he found what he was after. The sewing box was a biscuit tin from decades ago, paint peeling and faded. Inside were needles that hadn’t seen the light of day in more years than he could recall. He’d plucked one from its pin cushion, wiped it on his sleeve and stuck it firmly into his thigh before letting go, glaring at it, daring it not to hurt him.

  ‘Nothing,’ he whispered. ‘Why am I still here?’

  He’d grabbed the sewing tin and launched it across the room.

  ‘Why? Where’s my mother?’

  Fergus kicked the wardrobe door, his foot smashing through the cheap pine. He’d punched and hit until the upper section was in pieces on the floor before turning his attention to the bed, ripping the covers off and flinging them impotently around. They’d watched him from the floor, nothing more than crumpled bedding waiting to be picked up again.

  ‘What am I?’ he’d demanded of the photos on the wall. ‘If I’m not dead and I’m not alive, how can I still walk and talk and move things?’

  He’d given a cry that turned into a bark, caught between the tides of fury and fear, slapping his own face, one cheek then the other, screwing his eyes tightly shut then opening them again, finally realising the needle was still stuck in his thigh. Wrenching it out, he then dropped it where he stood.

  ‘Did I not do enough yet?’ Fergus had demanded of
the woman immortalised on his wall. ‘I got a wife and a daughter. They’re in my house, living with me. I should be allowed to come to you now. This isn’t fair.’ He’d fallen to his knees. ‘You’re not being fair.’

  Crumpling into a ball, his forehead touching the floor, he’d cried. When he’d sat back up, nothing had changed. The sky had been completely dark, the house silent. There’d been a new feeling inside his body, a liquid softness, as if the tension that had tethered his organs in place while alive had allowed everything to blend. He’d been able to smell his own breath, and it was more animal than human.

  ‘I’m rotting,’ he’d said. ‘I have to make things better before I decompose. How much time do I have? Shit, I’m going to fall apart.’

  In the kitchen, he’d taken a laptop from an old satchel hanging on the back of the door, booting it up with shaking hands. He hated using technology. Being on the grid meant being visible. But he’d needed information fast. A little circle turned round and round as Fergus had stood chewing his nails.

  When the search engine had finally bothered springing into life, he’d typed in ‘stages of decomposition’ and hit return, sitting down at the table to read the pearls of wisdom the ether had to offer.

  ‘Internal organs decompose twenty-four to seventy-two hours after death,’ he’d read. ‘Bloating and bloody foam leakage from facial cavities, three to five days after death. Bloating from decomposition gases will happen after eight to ten days. After a month, body starts to liquefy.’ He’d slammed the lid.

  ‘How long have I been dead?’ Fergus asked himself. The last time he’d come into the house, he’d brought Meggy with him. It was her fault he’d fallen down the stairs. His plans had gone wrong, and she’d behaved badly. He’d been distracted, unwell.

  They were upstairs, he’d realised. He didn’t know how long he’d left them alone, but Elspeth and Meggy could give him the information he needed.

  All had been quiet behind the door. Or perhaps his hearing had been altered as well as his sense of his own existence. He’d placed both palms on the door, trying to get some feeling for what lay beyond. Could he pass directly through the door if he concentrated hard enough? Maybe his whole atomic structure was different now. He’d taken a deep breath and pressed his body into the wood. Nothing shifted. He was firmly tied to his body until either the flesh slipped from his bones, leaving his soul nowhere to call home, presumably damning him to a lifetime of echoing uselessly around the house, or until he found a way to pass into the next world. More hoops to jump through first. Weren’t there always, just as there had been in life? Even his death was a fuck-up.

  He’d had a security procedure before, he’d realised, only suddenly it didn’t seem important. He just needed someone to talk to. The key, miraculously, was still in the door where he’d left it. He turned it in the lock and entered.

  Feet making little impact on the carpet beneath him, he’d shut the door to the world silently behind him and walked into the lounge. There they’d been, on the sofa, curled up together. The screaming had begun as soon as he’d spoken.

  ‘Can you see me?’ he asked again.

  Meggy cried and Elspeth buried her face in the girl’s hair.

  ‘I said, can you see me?’ He strode forward.

  ‘Yes,’ Elspeth shouted. ‘Yes, we can see you. We can!’

  ‘And what am I?’

  Meggy stopped crying and stared at him. Elspeth frowned.

  ‘I … I don’t understand,’ Elspeth stammered.

  He stepped forward, arms held out. ‘What am I? What do you see when you look at me? Come here and touch me. I need to know if I’m real.’

  ‘Don’t,’ Meggy said, clutching Elspeth and trying to hold her down.

  ‘Shh,’ Elspeth said. ‘It’s all right.’

  She stood up, stepping forward slowly, gingerly, as if approaching an injured beast, a single hand held out, fingers bent softly.

  Close enough, she put her hand on his and squeezed it lightly.

  ‘I see you. You’re here with us. Can you feel me touching you?’

  Fergus shrugged.

  ‘You’re real,’ Elspeth said.

  ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘You’re just telling me what I want to hear. I died! That makes me a ghost. I’m trapped in this body, but I know I’m dead. Everything inside me is jelly. It sloshes and floats, and the whole world smells like death. Don’t you smell that?’

  Elspeth gave Meggy a sharp look and a single shake of her head.

  ‘I smell nothing,’ Elspeth told him. ‘Why don’t I make you a warm drink. Perhaps that would help.’

  ‘Why do I need to drink? I just told you I’m dead. Corpses don’t need food or liquid. What would be the point? It’ll run straight through me. This …’ He pushed his own stomach.

  Elspeth took a step away.

  ‘This isn’t mine any more. I’m just inhabiting it before I move on.’

  ‘Okay,’ Elspeth murmured.

  ‘I fell down the stairs because of her.’ He pointed at Meggy. ‘I brought her here for you, then I got hurt and I died too soon. No one was ready for me.’

  He peeled his lips back from his teeth and took a step towards the sofa, where Meggy was trying to disappear into the far corner. Elspeth stepped into his path.

  ‘She heard you fall. We were both worried about you. In fact, we stayed by the door for hours calling, wishing we could get out to help you. What happened was terrible, but we still care about you. We want to help you, don’t we, Meggy?’

  The girl sobbed.

  ‘Were you really worried?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course we were,’ Elspeth confirmed. ‘We’re your family now.’

  ‘It’s not finished,’ he said. ‘There’s still an empty bed. I have to fill it. That must be it.’

  Elspeth froze. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s not done yet. I’m not finished. How long ago did I die?’

  ‘I don’t know …’ Elspeth said.

  Taking her by the shoulders, Fergus shook her.

  ‘Tell me.’

  Her head flew backwards then forwards again.

  ‘When did I die? How long ago?’

  ‘It was only one day!’ Meggy shouted. ‘Leave her alone. Let go. You only died yesterday.’

  Releasing Elspeth, Fergus collapsed backwards against the wall.

  ‘Thank God. I still have time before the foam starts leaking out of me. I’m going to bloat like a balloon, did you know that?’

  His eyes were holes in his face.

  ‘I’m going to liquefy. I’ll have to finish everything before that, or I’ll be useless. You have to help me.’

  ‘What do you need?’ Elspeth asked.

  ‘Tidy up, for a start. You’re going to have someone else to look after. You’ll like that. Mothers like looking after people.’

  ‘Sure,’ Elspeth said. ‘Whatever you want. Meggy and I will help, won’t we, sweetheart?’

  ‘Sure,’ the girl said as she moved to stand in the pool of light where the lamp was plugged in.

  Fergus gave a gaping open-mouthed grin, and Elspeth turned from the stench of his breath. He leaned forward, planting a wet kiss on her cheek.

  ‘I’ll be back soon. Try not to miss me.’

  Meggy ran and ripped the lamp from the wall and blackness fell. In two footsteps, she was at Fergus’ back, throwing the electrical cord over his neck, crossing the ends over and pulling them tight.

  ‘Help me!’ she screeched at Elspeth.

  Elspeth let out a strangled cry as Fergus let his body fall backwards, toppling onto Meggy, who went down beneath him. He grappled with the cord uselessly then went for Meggy’s face instead, behind his back. Elspeth was feeling in the dark for his hands, attempting in the chaos to disable him so Meggy would have the time to cut off his air supply.

  There was a soft whoop as Fergus brought up his knee and smashed it into Elspeth’s stomach. She cried out and flew off him, clutching her body and retching. />
  ‘Elspeth?’ Meggy called out, terror and exhaustion slackening her grip on the cord.

  Fergus seized the moment to lean to the side, the electrical wire tightening for a moment as he hammered a fist back to where the girl was, connecting with her face in a satisfying series of crunches and thuds. Fist – face – head – floor.

  Elspeth was still crying a few feet away, her breath whistling as she gasped for air. Meggy was crawling towards her, when he caught her ankle and dragged her backwards.

  Death, apparently, had made him stronger.

  ‘Teach you a lesson,’ he muttered, pulling his penknife from his pocket. ‘So you don’t forget.’

  ‘No!’ Elspeth found air and a voice from somewhere. ‘Don’t you hurt her!’

  ‘You’re going to stop me?’ he asked.

  ‘Please, I’m begging you,’ Elspeth cried.

  ‘You or her. One of you has to learn. Which?’

  Meggy was crying and clawing at the floor in vain to get away.

  ‘Me,’ Elspeth said. ‘Teach me the lesson. That way we’ll both remember.’

  The chink of light from the miniature bulb in the microwave, crossing the hallway and entering the lounge, shone off the edge of the blade.

  ‘Hand,’ he told Elspeth, letting go of Meggy’s foot.

  Elspeth began to cry. Meggy cried with her, climbing into her lap. The woman reached her hand out in the dark. There was no fight left in her.

  As he pressed the tip of the knife into her little finger above the central knuckle, she called out for her own mother and Meggy howled. The blade pressed home, through the skin and tendons, cracking the bone and severing the digit.

  As Elspeth thumped to the floor, Meggy cradled her head and called her name. Fergus grabbed a thick handful of the girl’s hair.

  ‘Don’t be naughty,’ he said, spittle flying through the dark into her eyes. ‘See what you made me do to your mum.’