The Shadow Friend

by Alex North

  She stared down, her gaze moving here and there.

  ‘What is it?’ Dyson said.

  Again, she didn’t reply, but this time it was because she didn’t quite know how. Dyson walked across to join her. She was expecting another exclamation, more bluster, but he remained silent and she could tell he was just as disturbed as she was.

  She counted the stains as best she could, but it was hard to keep track of them. They were a storm on the ground.

  Hundreds of blood-red handprints pressed carefully against the stone.

  2

  The hospice in which my mother was dying was in the grounds of Gritten Hospital.

  It seemed a slightly melancholy arrangement to me. On the long drive cross-country, I had wondered why they didn’t go for the hat-trick and install a cemetery and a conveyer belt while they were at it. But the grounds turned out to be pleasant. Once past the hospital, the driveway curled leisurely between carefully trimmed lawns dotted with brightly coloured flower beds and apple trees, and then over a small bridge with a stream burbling underneath. It was a hot day, and I’d wound the car window down. The air outside was saturated with the rich smell of freshly cut grass, and the sound of the water on the rocks below seemed threaded through with children’s laughter.

  Tranquil surroundings for the end of a life.

  After a minute, I reached a two-storey building with lush swathes of ivy covering its blackened walls. The car tyres crackled over a sea of neatly turned pebbles. When I killed the engine, the only noise was the gentle trill of birdsong, the silence behind it heavy and profound.

  I lit a cigarette and sat for a moment.

  Even now, it wasn’t too late to go back.

  It had taken four hours to drive here, and I’d felt the presence of Gritten growing closer the whole time, and the dread inside me had increased with every passing mile. The sky might have been bright and clear, but it had felt as though I was driving towards a thunderstorm, and I had half expected to hear rumbling in the distance and see crackles of lightning at the horizon. By the time I was driving through the ramshackle streets and flat industrial estates, past the rows of weathered shops and factories and the forecourts scattered with litter and broken glass, I was feeling so sick that it had been an effort not to turn the car around.

  I smoked now, my hand shaking.

  Twenty-five years since I’d been here in Gritten.

  It’s going to be okay, I told myself.

  I stubbed out the cigarette, then got out and walked across to the hospice. The glass doors at the entrance slid open to reveal a clean and minimalist reception area, with a polished black and white floor. I gave my name at the desk and waited, smelling polish and disinfectant. Aside from the sound of cutlery clinking somewhere away to one side, the building was as quiet as a library, and I felt an urge to cough, simply because it felt like I shouldn’t.

  ‘Mr Adams? Daphne’s son?’

  I looked up. A woman was approaching me. She was in her mid-twenties, short, with pale blue hair, numerous ear piercings, and she was dressed in casual clothes. Not an orderly here.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Sally, right?’

  ‘That’s me.’

  I shook her hand. ‘Call me Paul.’

  ‘Will do.’

  Sally led me up a set of stairs, and then down a warren of quiet corridors, making small talk along the way.

  ‘How was your journey?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘How long has it been since you’ve been back to Gritten?’

  I told her. She looked shocked.

  ‘Actual wow. Do you still have friends locally?’

  The question made me think of Jenny, and my heart leapt slightly. I wondered what it would be like to see her again after all these years.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  ‘I guess the distance makes it difficult?’ Sally said.

  ‘Yeah, it does.’

  She meant geography, but distance worked in other ways too. The car journey today might have taken four hours, but this short walk inside the hospice seemed longer. And while a quarter of a century should be a span of history with heft and weight, I was shivering inside. It felt like the years had dropped dangerously away, and that what had happened here in Gritten all those years ago might as well have occurred yesterday.

  It’s going to be okay.

  ‘Well, I’m glad you could come,’ Sally said.

  ‘Work’s always quiet over the summer.’

  ‘You’re a professor, right?’

  ‘God, no. I teach English, but I’m not that high up.’

  ‘Creative writing?’

  ‘That’s one of the modules.’

  ‘Daphne was proud of you, you know? She always told me you’d be a great writer one day.’

  ‘I don’t write.’ I hesitated. ‘She actually said that?’

  ‘Yeah, totally.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  But then, there was a lot about my mother’s life I hadn’t known. We might have spoken on the phone every month or so, but they were always short, casual conversations in which she had asked after me, and I had lied, and I had not asked after her, so she hadn’t needed to. She had never given me a hint that anything was wrong.

  And then, three days ago, I had received a phone call from Sally, my mother’s care worker. I hadn’t known about Sally. I also hadn’t known that my mother had been suffering from steadily advancing dementia for years now, and that over the last six months her cancer had become untreatable. That in recent weeks my mother had become so frail that the stairs were difficult for her to climb, and so she had been living almost entirely on the ground floor of the house. That she had refused to be moved. That one evening earlier in the week, Sally had entered the house to find her unconscious at the bottom of the stairs.

  Because either out of frustration or confusion, it seemed my mother had made an attempt to reach the landing above and her body had betrayed her. The head injury she suffered was serious rather than fatal, but the fall had goaded the rest of her afflictions into attacking more swiftly.

  There was so much I hadn’t known.

  Time was short, Sally had told me. Could I come?

  ‘Daphne’s mostly sleeping,’ she said now. ‘She’s receiving palliative care and pain relief, and she’s doing as well as she can. But what will happen over the next few days is that she’ll sleep more often, for more prolonged periods of time. And then eventually, she’ll …’

  ‘Not wake up?’

  ‘That’s right. Just pass away peacefully.’

  I nodded. That sounded like a good death. Given there has to be an end, maybe that’s all any of us can hope for – to drift steadily off. Some people believed there were dreams or nightmares to come afterwards, but I’ve never really understood why. As I know better than most, those things happen in the shallow stages of sleep, and I’ve always hoped that death would be a much deeper state than that.

  We stopped outside a door.

  ‘Is she lucid?’ I said.

  ‘It varies. Sometimes she recognizes people and seems to understand vaguely where she is. But more often, it’s like she’s in a different place and time.’ She pushed open the door and spoke more softly. ‘Ah – here’s our girl.’

  I followed her into the room, bracing myself for what I was about to see. But the sight was still a shock. A hospital bed rested against the nearest wall, with wheels on the legs and controls to elevate and change its position. To the side of it, there was more machinery than I’d been expecting: a trolley with a bank of monitors, and a stand of clear bags, with tubes looping out, connected to the figure lying beneath the bed covers.

  My mother.

  I faltered. I had not seen her in twenty-five years, and standing in the doorway now, it looked like someone had made a model of her from wax, but one far smaller and frailer than the old memories I had. My heart fluttered. Her head was bandaged on one side, and what I could see of her face was yellow and motionle
ss, her lips slightly parted. The thin covers were barely disturbed enough to suggest a body beneath, and for a moment I wasn’t sure she was even alive.

  Sally seemed unperturbed. She walked across and then bent over slightly, checking the monitors. I caught the faint scent of the flowers in a vase on the table beside the machinery, but the smell was corrupted by a hint of something sweeter and more sickly.

  ‘You’re free to sit with her, of course.’ Sally finished her examination and straightened up. ‘But it’s probably best not to disturb her.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘There’s water on the table if she wakes and wants it.’ She pointed to the bed rail. ‘And if there are any problems, there’s a call button there.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  She closed the door behind her as she left.

  And then silence.

  Except not quite. The window nearest the bed was half open, and I could hear the peaceful, soporific buzz of a lawnmower coming from somewhere in the distance. And then, beneath that, the slow, shallow breaths my mother was taking. There were long stretches of empty seconds between them. Looking down at her, I noticed the pink floral pattern of the bed sheets for the first time, and the sight of them delivered a ghost of memory. They weren’t identical to the ones I recalled from childhood, but close enough. Sally must have brought them from the house to make my mother feel more at home here.

  I looked around. The room reminded me of the one in the halls of residence during my first year at university: small but comfortable, with an en-suite bathroom built into one corner, and a desk and cabinets along the wall opposite the bed. There were a handful of objects spread out on the desk. Some of them were clearly medical – empty bottles, popped pill cases, and torn strips of cotton wool – but others looked more ordinary, more familiar. There was a pile of carefully folded clothes. Spectacles in an open case. The old photograph of my parents’ wedding – I remembered it sitting on the mantelpiece when I was a child – here now, and angled so my mother could see it from the bed if she woke.

  I walked over to the desk. The photo should have been a record of a happy occasion, but while my mother was smiling and hopeful, my father’s face looked as stern as always. It was the only expression of his I could remember from childhood, whether illuminated by the constant fires he would build in the back garden or shadowed in the hallway as we passed each other without speaking. He had always been serious and sour – a man let down by everything in his life – and we had both been glad to be rid of each other when I left home. None of the phone calls from my mother over the years had featured him. And when he died, six years ago, I had not returned to Gritten for the funeral.

  I glanced along the desk and saw something I hadn’t noticed before. A thick book, placed with the cover down. It was old and weathered, and the spine was slightly twisted, as though it had been soaked in water at some point and left to dry crooked. My mother had never been much of a reader; my father had always been sneeringly dismissive of fiction, and of me and my love for it. Perhaps my mother had discovered a passion for it after his death, and this was what she had been reading before the accident. A nice gesture on Sally’s part, although it seemed fairly optimistic to imagine my mother was going to finish it now.

  I turned the book over, and saw the red, leering devil’s face on the cover – and then pulled my hand away quickly, my fingertips tingling as if they’d been burned.

  The Nightmare People.

  ‘Paul?’

  I jumped and turned around. My mother was awake. She had moved on to her side and was propped up on one elbow, staring at me almost suspiciously with the one eye I could see, her hair hanging down to the pillow in a thin grey stream.

  My heart was beating too quickly.

  ‘Yes.’ I spoke quietly, trying to calm myself. ‘It’s me, Mum.’

  She frowned.

  ‘You … shouldn’t be here.’

  There was a chair by the bed. I walked slowly across and sat down. Her gaze followed me, as wary as an animal primed to flee.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ she said again.

  ‘I kind of had to be. You had a fall. Do you remember?’

  She continued staring at me for a moment. Then her expression softened and she leaned towards me and whispered conspiratorially.

  ‘I hope Eileen’s not here.’

  I looked around the room helplessly. ‘She isn’t, Mum.’

  ‘I shouldn’t say that really. But we both know what a bitch that woman is. Poor Carl.’ She looked sad. ‘And poor little James too. We’re only doing this for him, aren’t we? You know that, I think. We don’t need to say so, but you understand.’

  It’s like she’s in a different place, a different time.

  This was a place and time I recognized.

  ‘Yes, Mum,’ I said. ‘I did understand.’

  She lay down carefully again and closed her eyes, whispering.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘Do you want some water?’ I said.

  For a moment, my mother did nothing. She just lay there breathing steadily, as though the question was taking time to work its way through the confusing labyrinth of her mind. I had no faith that it would reach its destination, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say right now. And then, suddenly, my mother lurched awake again, jolting upright at the waist, and reached out and grabbed my wrist so fast there was no time for me to recoil.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here!’ she shouted.

  ‘Mum –’

  ‘Red hands, Paul! There are red hands everywhere.’

  Her eyes were wide and unblinking, staring at me in absolute horror.

  ‘Mum –’

  ‘Red hands, Paul.’

  She let go of me and collapsed back on the bed. I stood up and staggered backwards a little, the white imprint of her grip visible on my skin. I pictured a climbing frame and a ground patterned in crimson, and her words repeated over and over in my head in time with my heartbeat.

  Red hands, red hands, red hands everywhere –

  ‘Oh God, it’s in the house, Paul!’

  And then my mother’s face contorted in anguish, and she screamed at the ceiling, or perhaps at something out of sight above her.

  ‘It’s in the fucking house!’

  And with panic lighting up my whole body, I scrabbled for the alarm button.

  3

  In the summer holidays when I was fourteen, my mother took me and my friend James to see Gritten Park, our new school. We arrived at James’s house first thing that morning, and I remember my mother whispering to me as we walked up the path.

  ‘I hope Eileen’s not here.’

  I nodded. I hoped that too. Eileen was James’s mother, but you wouldn’t have known that from the way she treated him. James could never do anything right in her eyes, assuming she noticed him at all. I’d always found her frightening. She smelled of sherry, and seemed to smoke constantly, with one hand cupping her elbow, watching you suspiciously, as though she thought you might have stolen something from her.

  But it was Carl who answered the door that morning.

  Carl was James’s stepfather, and I liked him a great deal. James’s natural father had abandoned Eileen when she was pregnant. Carl had raised him as though he was his own son. He was a humble man, quiet and kind, but while I was glad he was good to James, it also baffled me how he’d ended up with a woman like Eileen. Carl and my mother had been close friends since childhood, and I suspected it was a mystery to her too. Years earlier, I’d overheard a conversation between the two of them. You can do so much better, you know, my mother had told him. And there had been a long silence before Carl replied. I really don’t think I can.

  Carl looked tired that day, but he smiled warmly at us both before calling back into the house for James, who then emerged a few moments later. James was wearing old tracksuit bottoms, a grubby T-shirt, and an awkward smile. He was a timid boy: shy and sweet and defenceless; always despe
rate to please the whole world, but never sure what it wanted.

  And my best friend.

  ‘Come on then, urchins,’ my mother said.

  The three of us walked away from the house towards the dual carriageway that connected our village to the rest of Gritten. It was a warm morning, and the air was close and full of dust and midges. The metal of the overpass clanked beneath our feet as we made our way across to the dirty bus shelter on the far side. Below us, a steady stream of vans and articulated lorries shot past indifferently. Our village saw little traffic, and while it was technically a suburb of Gritten, it barely existed on maps. Even its name – Gritten Wood – gave more prominence to the enormous nearby forest than the idea that anybody still lived here.

  Eventually, a bus appeared in the distance.

  ‘Have you got your fares?’ my mother said.

  We both nodded, but I rolled my eyes at James and he smiled back. We were both fine on buses, and had visited Gritten Park the previous term, after learning the small secondary school we had attended up until now was closing. But while James might not have admitted it, he was scared about starting a new school next term, and so my mother had come up with a way to help without embarrassing him, and I was happy to go along with it.

  It was a half-hour journey. Most of Gritten was saturated with poverty, and the view through the bus window was so drab that it was sometimes difficult to tell the empty premises from the occupied. I wanted nothing more than to escape from here – to move away and never return – but it was hard to imagine it ever happening. The place had a gravity that held whatever was dropped where it fell. That included the people.

  Off the bus, the three of us took the five-minute walk to Gritten Park.

  The school was much bigger and more intimidating than I recalled. The gymnasiums were about a hundred metres back from the main road, their vast windows reflecting the bland sky and trapping it in the glass. Beyond, the main building was visible: four storeys of murky, monotonous corridors, the classroom doors thick and heavy, the way I imagined doors in a prison. The angles of the two buildings were slightly off, so that, from the street, the school looked like something that was pulling itself out of the ground, with one shoulder hunched up behind it, awkward and broken. I looked to the right of the gyms. The area there was being renovated, and I could hear the tapping of a pneumatic drill from somewhere behind the stretched tarpaulins. An intermittent, staccato sound, like distant gunfire.