The Shadow Man

by Helen Fields

  ‘How would you know?’ he yelled, stepping towards her and jabbing a finger angrily in her direction. ‘Just how the fuck would you know what I need?’

  ‘Do you remember Harris?’ Connie asked standing her ground. ‘I’m not saying you’re him. You’re Fergus, I accept that. But do you recall what happened to Harris?’

  He frowned at her and shook his head.

  ‘I know some things about Fergus’ life. I think it might help you to hear them. I’m going to share a secret with you about that, then you have to share a secret with me.’ She didn’t wait for him to negotiate before continuing. Every second mattered. ‘Harris’ mother died a few weeks after he was born. He was one of twins, in fact. There was a brother. Their mother was suffering from post-natal depression. She couldn’t help feeling sad, and she obviously didn’t get the treatment and help she needed. The hormones in her body were messed up. It happens to lots of women, but if a doctor doesn’t realise what’s happening and intervene, it can become very serious.’

  Fergus jabbed the shovel in the rivulets of muddy water at his feet.

  ‘Harris’ mother took her own life. It’s hard to imagine how desperate she must have felt to have done that. In her confusion and bleakness, she also took the life of Harris’ twin brother. There’s no doubt at all that she wasn’t in her right mind when she did it. Sometimes these tragedies just happen. I wish they didn’t, but they do. It’s an aspect of humanity we don’t talk about often enough. Sometimes the machinery of our brain breaks.’

  He attempted a shrug, but his hands were grenades of tension gripping the handle of the shovel.

  ‘So?’ he muttered.

  ‘So, poor Harris,’ Connie replied. ‘That’s a lot for a baby to grow up with in his past. He lost his mom and his twin brother. The only person left for him was his grandmother, who must have been devastated by her own grief. It would be too much for most people. Harris did nothing wrong, and there he was left without a mother, maybe feeling like it was all down to him. Harris needed an awful lot of love to get through that, and I don’t believe he got it.’

  ‘Okay,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Your turn,’ she said before the conversation could continue. ‘I want a secret in return, like we agreed. I need you to show me where Elspeth and Meggy are.’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, fair’s fair. It’s not as if I can do anything to change your decision. You’ve already proved how powerful you are. Look what you did to Baarda.’ Connie glanced across at his prone body, hoping for the smallest sign of life, but Baarda was unmoving in the mud. ‘I just want to see them so I can understand everything better. You deserve that.’

  ‘You’re tricking me,’ he said, but he met her eyes.

  ‘I’m a psychologist. If you want to think of this as me being selfish then you can. Yes, I’m here to learn. Yes, this is my job. I’m curious about you. I’m also aware that you’re the one holding the shovel, so tricking you is likely to prove futile at this stage, right?’

  He jerked his head left and right. Connie was reminded of a bird, beady eyes, sharp beak, ready to swoop down and crack the shell of an unsuspecting snail.

  ‘Then you’ll tell me something else?’ he asked.

  ‘Absolutely,’ she promised.

  He turned and led her towards the treeline at the far edge of the cemetery, past an old brick building that looked long since deserted and more than a little haunted.

  ‘It’s the old watch house,’ he told her.

  ‘In a cemetery?’

  ‘To guard against bodysnatchers,’ he grinned. ‘A long time ago. You don’t need to be scared now.’

  The irony of the statement made Connie shiver.

  He led on into a deep corner of the plot and to his car, parked where the trees had provided shelter to cover it. She did her best to stop herself from shaking. Baarda needed emergency help, she was likely about to see two more dead bodies, and what would Fergus do with her when he got bored of their conversation? Letting her peacefully go on her way seemed unlikely.

  ‘Here.’ He pointed with the shovel at a recently dug grave.

  Connie pressed the back of her right hand against her mouth and tried to swallow her nausea. The ground was awash – mud, ripped sod, footprints – a fresh mound of earth.

  ‘Elspeth and Meggy are … they’re down there? Underground?’ Her voice was thin and raspy. It was proving hard to breathe, and harder to speak.

  ‘They’re waiting for me,’ he explained. ‘When I pass, which will be very soon now, I’ll be with them again.’

  ‘Fergus, did you hurt them? I mean, were they alive when …’ She wanted to finish the sentence but couldn’t.

  ‘They’re comfortable. It’s a nice big coffin. And they’re together, mother and child. Children should be with their mother.’

  Connie dug her fingernails hard into the flesh of her thighs to keep from screaming.

  ‘I don’t think it works like that. Fergus, have you tried this before?’ She kept her voice as light as the tension in her throat would manage, aiming for inquisitive rather than horrified.

  ‘Why would I have tried it before? This just seemed the right thing to do.’

  ‘Where did you get the coffin, then?’ Connie asked.

  ‘I … I think I found it. It was here. Waiting for me. Like I was meant to come here today.’

  Connie looked at the weathered mossy gravestone, walking forward to brush off decades of dirt and read the writing, itching instead to reach the woman and girl beneath.

  ‘There are several names on this grave. The last is Delia Povey. Before that is Arthur Povey, buried with Amanda Povey. It’s a family grave plot. The coffins can be stacked on top of one another. I guess you knew that,’ she said.

  ‘I guess.’ He turned his head away from her as he replied.

  He was lying. Fergus Ariss might not remember everything, but his memory wasn’t the complete blank he was pretending. Connie swallowed hard. He was neither just mentally ill nor entirely evil. Bad or mad was the question psychiatrists asked themselves when assessing offenders who had committed awful acts when either prison or a mental institution awaited. Connie had wanted Fergus/Harris to be one or the other. Madness was out of his hands. If he was entirely bad, incarceration was simple and clean. But he was a fusion of the two. He wasn’t going to stop killing. She decided on a strategy among her limited choices.

  ‘Harris’ surname was Povey, too. I think Amanda was his mother. Certainly Delia was his grandmother. She raised him after his mother died. Do you think Harris wants his wife and daughter to be near his mum so she can see that he had a proper family?’

  ‘But that’s my wife and daughter down there. That’s Angela and Emily …’

  She breathed deeply. ‘Is it, though? I’m not sure now. I thought it was Elspeth and Meggy.’

  ‘No, no, I chose others. Elspeth was bad. I remember her, and she was bad.’

  ‘She was,’ Connie said. ‘I agree. Not right to be your wife at all. But is that who’s down there? It could be someone entirely different.’

  He pulled at his sparse tufts of hair and began shifting from foot to foot. Connie stared at the strands that had come away between his fingers.

  ‘My mother wouldn’t like Elspeth. She wasn’t faithful. It has to be Angela down there. Otherwise …’

  ‘Give me the shovel,’ Connie said. ‘You’re tired. I’ll dig. Let’s see who it is, then we’ll know if this is going to work out the way you wanted or not.’

  ‘No!’ he said, shaking his head violently. ‘Not giving you the shovel; it’s my special shovel. You might do something. You might take it, or—’

  ‘Then you dig. Only quickly. If the wrong woman dies down there, Harris’ mother might not be pleased. She might not let Harris be with her. She might just want to stay there with Harris’ brother, Arthur. Maybe that’s why she chose him in the first place.’

  ‘She should have chosen me,’ he muttered. ‘I was a good boy. G
ood boy …’

  He began to weep, tears rolling down his muddy cheeks. Frantic digging followed, with mud flying everywhere. It was all Connie could do to stop herself from leaping into the rapidly growing hole and scooping out earth with her bare hands.

  It felt like hours, but the coffin wasn’t as deep underground as she’d feared. The family plot must have been nearly full when Harris began his pattern of putting his victims in a coffin to see if their deaths would facilitate his. The shovel struck wood just a couple of feet down, and he looked triumphant.

  ‘Found them,’ he said, scraping mud off the coffin lid.

  ‘We have to get the lid off, Fergus. Use the shovel. Come on.’

  But the shovel wouldn’t fit into the edge beneath the lid, where there was too much earth to allow leverage.

  ‘Keep digging, free up the sides,’ she demanded.

  ‘You sound like my grandma,’ he whined as he dug. ‘She was bossy, too.’

  Connie stared at him. Bringing Harris back to the surface of his psyche was a risk, but coming back he was.

  ‘Let’s try again … please,’ she asked.

  ‘That’s nicer,’ he said, stepping back and shoving the cutting edge of the shovel into the ill-fitting lid.

  The coffin had been opened and resealed a number of times. That meant air could get in, but also water and earth.

  The lid creaked open, the few poorly hammered nails popping out. Throwing herself to her knees, Connie helped to pull the lid off the coffin.

  ‘Oh, God, no,’ she panted.

  The woman and the girl lay with their arms wrapped around one another, covered in stray dirt, their faces so pale their skin looked unreal. Reaching in, Connie grabbed for Meggy, dashing the dirt off her face and pulling her into a sitting position. The girl flopped in her arms, no more than a rag doll, and Connie could see the bloody stumps of the girl’s fingers where her nails had scratched and torn at the wood.

  ‘Meggy!’ she shouted. ‘Wake up. Wake up!’

  She dragged the girl out onto the grass, laid her on her back, lifted her chin, checked her airways and knelt to her side, one hand on the child’s wrist. There was a pulse, thready. But there. No rise and fall in her chest, though. She took the deepest breath she could and blew hard into her mouth, pinching the girl’s nose shut.

  ‘Which girl’s that? I don’t recognise her,’ Fergus said.

  Connie knew she should answer. Losing the progress she’d made with him was likely to put them all at the sharp end of the shovel, but she had to breathe, both for herself and for Meggy, and that made speech impossible.

  She’d been at it for half a minute, maybe more. The pulse was weakening.

  ‘Come on, sweetheart,’ she muttered, sitting up to get a deeper breath. ‘Come back to me.’

  ‘Why is she your sweetheart?’ he demanded. ‘I’m no one’s sweetheart. They all let me die.’

  ‘Harris, your mother loved you,’ Connie said, leaning back down to breathe into Meggy’s mouth again. ‘I promise you she did. That’s why you’re still alive.’ Another breath into Meggy’s mouth. ‘You haven’t died. Your brain is telling you lies.’ A further breath. Connie was dizzy.

  ‘That’s not true. It’s you who’s lying to me. Stop doing that. Stop helping her. I need you.’

  He pulled at Connie’s shoulder, and she slapped his hand away.

  ‘No! You hurt this girl, now you need to let me try to save her.’ More breaths.

  ‘I didn’t hurt her! Say that’s not true. I just wanted to take her with me. Why don’t I deserve a family? Why not me?’

  Meggy choked suddenly, the noise echoing from deep within her chest, a hollow rattle.

  Connie jumped, then grabbed the girl and pulled her onto her side. She vomited watery mucus and black granules of earth in a grim stream.

  ‘You’re okay.’ Connie stroked her hair. ‘Meggy, you’re okay. You’re out now.’

  The girl’s eyes opened and rolled crazily in their sockets. She tried to scream, but only a hoarse whisper came out. Connie wanted to hold her, to protect her from seeing Fergus, the coffin, and the hole she’d just come out of, but she had more to do.

  Rushing back to the grave, she took hold of Elspeth’s shirt and hauled her upwards. So much harder with an adult, and Elspeth’s right arm was bent back behind her, so it was difficult to get a good grip.

  ‘That’s not Angela,’ Fergus said. ‘You told me it would be Angela.’

  ‘No, I told you we had to check it wasn’t Elspeth. Your mother doesn’t want Elspeth in there with her. Help me get her out.’

  ‘I’m Harris,’ he said. His speech was slurred, different. He yawned. ‘Not Fergus. I don’t care about Elspeth. She deserved to die.’

  Harris Povey was awake.

  ‘It doesn’t matter who this woman is. If you help me, you’ll have done a good deed, and then you can die in peace. Isn’t that what you want? No more pain, no more heartache. Don’t you long for sleep without nightmares?’

  Connie gave one last monumental effort, heaving Elspeth upwards and into the open.

  She collapsed onto the floor, Elspeth on top of her. Connie tried to get out from under the dead weight, and saw lights circling before her eyes. Catching her breath was becoming increasingly difficult. Freezing cold, exhausted, shock creeping in, she needed to calm down and maintain control of the situation.

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’ Harris/Fergus asked.

  ‘You suffocated her in a coffin. There’s blood around her mouth.’

  Connie managed to push Elspeth off, grabbing her wrist as she knelt next to her. No pulse. She dropped her head onto the woman’s chest. No sound of a heartbeat, although the rain was doing a good impression of the pitter-patter Connie longed to hear.

  She knew what she had to do, but exhaustion was threatening to overwhelm her. Pulling unconscious bodies from a grave and performing mouth to mouth while a deranged killer tried to hold a conversation with you was … she hadn’t the hyperbole for it.

  ‘Elspeth,’ Meggy croaked, reaching for the woman. ‘Her lung’s hurt.’

  ‘Oh, shit,’ Connie muttered.

  That explained the blood around the mouth. It also meant that resuscitating her was going to be even harder.

  Connie shifted Elspeth so she was flat on her back, moved her arm into the best position she could manage and began chest compressions, thirty rapid pushes down on her central chest, head back, airway open, faster than one per second. Then two breaths. She would have to repeat that until either she collapsed, unable to do any more, or until Elspeth came back to life.

  ‘Tell me about Harris’ grandma?’ he demanded.

  Connie steeled herself. She was freezing cold, and her muscles were starting to seize. She needed to concentrate on compressions, and Meggy was dragging herself slowly across the ground to huddle against her back. Out-thinking Fergus was too complex for that particular moment.

  ‘Delia Povey had Harris’ bedroom window bricked up.’ Chest compressions. Clear more mud from Elspeth’s mouth. Breathe hard into her lips. ‘Someone painted real windows over them, as if they could still see out. Who do you think did that?’ Sit up. Try to catch her own breath before she passed out.

  Fergus thought about it. ‘Someone sad. Someone who didn’t want to go back to the hospital. He probably didn’t want the electric shock treatment any more.’

  Connie put two more breaths into Elspeth’s lungs and could taste the blood on the woman’s teeth. Blood and dirt. If that wasn’t death’s own recipe, she didn’t know what was.

  ‘Did the electricity make Harris feel bad?’ Connie asked.

  Compressions again. Her arms felt weak, and there were tears in her eyes. She didn’t know why she was bothering. Harris Povey could kill any of them at a moment’s notice, and she had no strength left for either fight or flight.

  ‘They said it wouldn’t hurt. Should have been more anaesthetic. But sometimes it wore off when the electricity got turned on. I … Harri
s was scared, and sometimes he fought and then they gave him even more.’

  Struggling to breathe, to speak, Connie looked at the child in the man’s body standing before her, and allowed her eyes to fill with tears for them all. For Meggy and the trauma from which she would never fully recover, for Elspeth who would likely not regain consciousness, for Baarda who might not be alive, for herself, survival seeming an unlikely conclusion. Even for Harris Povey, who had suffered depression, needed help, and instead got a negligent anaesthetist and treatment that had left him no less depressed but changed in other much worse ways, forever.

  ‘Poor Harris,’ she said. ‘None of it’s his fault.’ She gave up chest compressions and prepared to give mouth to mouth again. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘Are you crying for me?’ he asked, his voice childlike and high. ‘Tears for me? Do you really care?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ she said, one breath down, one to go. ‘You’re owed some tears, Harris. These tears and thousands more. And hugs and love and tenderness. Whatever you did, you never felt you had a choice. I know that.’

  ‘Tears for me,’ he whispered. ‘That’s it. That’s what I was waiting for. All these years. Tears for Harris. Now I can pass. It was you I was meant to be with, not them. You’re all I ever needed. You really love me.’

  He took a step towards her.

  ‘Harris,’ she said. ‘You have to let me finish helping Elspeth. She’ll die if I stop.’

  ‘She’s dead already,’ he said. ‘I need you now. It’s my turn. We should get in the coffin together, you and me. We can hold each other. I like it when you cry. Other women look ugly when they cry. You’re beautiful.’

  He knelt in the dirt opposite her, the other side of Elspeth’s unresponsive body, and framed her face with his hands. Behind her, Meggy gripped her harder than ever, crushing her face into Connie’s back and trembling.

  Connie’s skin crawled at his touch, slimy and icy, his putrid breath was fiery decay.

  ‘I need to help Elspeth …’ she told him, pulling away.

  ‘I just want to hold you forever,’ he said. ‘I want—’