The Shadow Man

by Mark Brownless

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  The lake. We’d been cycling up here for years, since we were eleven and first allowed to roam round the local villages on our bikes by ourselves. It was different back then. Mum and Dad would never know where I was from about ten in the morning until six at night when I’d have to be home. Sometimes I’d pop back for lunch, sometimes there were a few of us, sometimes we’d land on someone else’s doorstep. It all seemed to work and everything was safe. Now, with my kids, I need to know where they’re going, how long they’re going to be there, to text if they’re going somewhere else, and I certainly need to know that they aren’t just marauding around on their bikes in the leafy villages of our home in Shropshire.

  We didn’t just go there in the summer, though. We’d crash through the dead undergrowth in the autumn and winter, weaving our way between the naked trees, disturbing pheasants and partridge hiding from the local shoot, to stand at the edge of the inky-black water, watching gentle ripples disturb the mirror-like surface.

  Early one bitingly cold Saturday morning the previous winter, we’d decided to get out and see the frost-scape for ourselves. A week of clear skies and watery sunshine had meant that temperatures had plummeted and we’d gathered at the edge of the park in Parka jackets, Aran jumpers and wellington boots. It was too cold to cycle quickly, taking in the hedgerows that looked like they’d been covered in icing along Lake Road, which was white with road salt instead of frost, but at least it wasn’t slippery. Trees and bushes, denuded of leaves, were brilliant white or silver, the surrounding soil similarly iced over like we’d been transported into some winter wonderland Christmas card, and all we needed now was some jolly fat bloke to come ‘Ho-ho-ho-ing’ across the scene.

  We turned up the track to Newlands and didn’t even try to cycle. Where the verges and brambles had died back, branches and twigs stuck upright from the frozen ground like strange alien hands and fingers. The landscape was almost unrecognisable, as if we hadn’t been here before, the stillness and silence eerie in such a familiar place. Our footsteps were muffled by the frozen grass yet amplified across the fields to scare gamebirds into flight. Emerging by the lake gave us some welcome familiarity. The moorhens and geese had gone for the winter and so all was silent here as well. The softly curving bank that we called our ‘beach’, usually so private with its dense backdrop of foliage, was exposed and open, the skeletons behind unable to hide anything in their nakedness.

  We walked to the edge of the bank where bulrushes were immobilised in the frozen water. Jack Frost had arrived so quickly that he’d even captured the ripples on the lake with his icy fingers. We busied ourselves throwing stones onto the frozen surface, to see if we could make it crack. Fairly quickly deciding that small stones weren’t good enough, we searched for bigger and more impressive rocks to use, culminating in one huge specimen that took both Katie and Janey to heave into the air and onto the ice shelf.

  It held firm.

  Pushing aside the frozen grass and bulrushes, I tentatively stepped out onto the ice.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Katie asked.

  ‘Going for a skate. Anyone wanna join me?’ I slid out unsteadily onto the surface in my wellies, staying close to the water’s edge, confident the ice was thick enough but not brave enough to venture further out. I skidded across the surface, doing my best Torvill and Dean impression, my boots being far more at home wading through mud and cow shit than trekking on the Laurendon glacier. My confidence grew and I slithered further out onto the lake, the rippled surface the only thing to slow me down. I couldn’t see water flowing up onto the ice anywhere, nor was there any open water in the distance, so I was confident it would hold, but I wasn’t prepared to go out to the middle – that would’ve been like setting out for the North Pole – and I was already so far out of my comfort zone that I went a little nearer the bank.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, waving my arms at the others. I jumped up and down a couple of times on the ice to show them how safe and thick it was. ‘See, it’s fine.’ Sally and Clara pushed through the frozen grasses at the edge to take a step onto the ice, but didn’t come any further. I repeated my jump, several times. ‘Come on, guys!’ Enjoying the slight splashing sound I was making, but not thinking any more of it. The others still needed some convincing, so I decided to try once more, jumping in the air and landing hard, I heard an almighty crack from somewhere behind me and the sound of water rushing. I’d already programmed my muscles to take off again and the First Duke of Wellington’s finest propelled me skywards once more, even as I saw the ice open in a yawning gap beneath my feet.

  ‘Oh shit,’ was all I could muster before I landed on ice that was now no more than a wafer, and went straight through with almost no resistance. Blind panic hit me as I sank. In that moment I didn’t know how far out I was, or how deep the water beneath me would be. Instinctively I spread my arms wide to stop myself going straight under the frozen surface, otherwise that could’ve been it. The biting cold gripped my torso like a vice, squeezing all the breath from my body. My legs went numb instantly as I tried to kick to propel me out and onto the ice again. I looked to the shore for help where Katie and Janey were pissing themselves laughing, but Clara and Sally realised straight away that I was actually in a lot of trouble. They carefully ‘bambied’ out to my rescue, swearing and shouting at each other that they were on thinner ice and that they were going to go in like me. Finally they got close enough for Clara to lay on her front and reach out a hand to me, and for Sally to pull her legs and yank us both out. Before long I was back on terra firma, with Katie and Janey still laughing as I shivered uncontrollably. The three-mile cycle home was the longest I’d ever known. My drainpipe jeans squeezing ever tighter, giving no protection from the icy breeze that had got up on that cold, crisp day. My heavy wool jumper dragging me down as it dripped a trail along the road. I got in and dashed upstairs, avoiding my parents, so I could get quickly out of my soaking wet clothes and stash the evidence. I didn’t want to explain to them what had happened. Dad would’ve lost it, and that would be that for my visits to the lake. I ended up sitting in a bath of lukewarm water, which was all my chilblains would tolerate.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Mis-adventure aside, the lake was our place. Of seclusion and escape, from our parents, from homework, from daily chores, from bullies and other idiots, from Clara’s older brother. It was freedom. Actually, Clara’s older brother did have his uses, like my brother Ray, when they used to sneak us alcohol from the shop so we could get a bit pissed prior to the cycle home.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  The hard-baked farm lane stretched away in front of us, meandering to the right then left. The shimmering heat haze creating a blurred curtain in the distance, the dusty track a sharp contrast to the green of the maize growing in the fields. A large irrigation system was at work – like every summer, it seemed – with huge hose reels attached to a water cannon that slowly rotated around a pre-defined arc, or a weird-looking trailer with a huge bar extending either side, watering a strip of land as it slowly moved along. The rhythmical spurt of a water jet some distance away was the only sound to disrupt the birdsong as we walked along.

  ‘Oh, I need a pee,’ said Sally.

  ‘You always need to pee, you’re as bad as my dad – but he’s bloody old,’ Katie replied.

  ‘It’s the sound of that sprinkler thing, making me want to go.’

  ‘Bloody hell. Won’t be long now love and you can make a nice patch of warm water in the lake.’

  ‘Euw, do you mind, I’ve gotta swim in that,’ said Clara.

  ‘What, you’ve never pissed in the lake?’

  ‘No. Have you?’ Clara looked at each of us, seeing the same when in Rome expressions.

  ‘The lake is full of duck shit, Clara, seriously. What are you worried about?’ said Katie.

  ‘Oh fuck off, you lot are disgusting.’ The path rose to a small bridge across a wide dry ditch, then through a copse of huge oak trees – there were a f
ew of these on this stretch of farmland. We were getting close now. The maize field was still on our right, but there was no more farmland after the trees to our left. A wide patch of nettles and scrub had been left alone, surrounding the rusting skeleton of an old collapsed barn, the frame itself the only remnant, and that looked like it was on borrowed time. At the far side was the squat hulk of a long dead farm machine – a baler perhaps or some other such device, now sitting quietly watching like a giant toad. It was impossible to tell its original colour as it was now a rusted red-brown, with holes where the panelling had given up the ghost. Some lettering remained – it might have been made by New Holland if you pieced them together and used your imagination. The track sloped gently upwards now, and a grassy bank appeared on our left rising above the nettles that were the baler jailers. The track itself curved away to the right around the densely planted wood that sheltered the northern side of the lake, and continued on to the top lake.

  I always loved the moment when we walked up that slope and caught our first glimpse of the water, the sun glinting, the gentle ripples disrupting the mirror surface. Clumps of reeds and bullrushes grew out of the margins to form a foliage barrier. Other parts of the bank sloped gently down to the water to create a bog – guaranteed to suck the unwary up to their knees and necessitate panicked crying, much laughter, really terrible language, the temptation to leave them where they were, followed ultimately by human versus mud tug-of-war to get them out.

  Our bikes discarded in their usual place on the edge of the track as it curved away, we hiked around the edge of the water to reach the trees. The lake was kidney shaped and about half a mile in length. Our spot was about a third of the way along, as the bank started to curve back in to the water again. There was a shallow lagoon – a shelf left by the giant quarrying machines of years ago no doubt – before the water went much deeper and colder out in the middle. I had heard of some diving clubs using the lake for practising but we’d never seen any evidence of them. Maybe they were exceptionally good divers and that’s why we hadn’t seen them? The ground rose gently away from the lagoon, and rose to a curved bank in front of the dense foliage of the treeline.

  Our beach.

  The bank curved round toward the waterline and extended out into the water, making the kidney-shape of the lake. Bushes crowded onto this small peninsula and a lone tree stood at the point, reaching up and out over the deeper water. Dragonflies buzzed across the surface searching for tiny insects, then stopped to hover above the reeds. They were incredibly coloured in red or blue, and their wings glinted as they skimmed the water. We dropped our bags by the treeline, unfurling our towels like tourists on sun loungers in the Costa Brava. We stashed our snacks and drinks under the shade of the trees then got ready to get wet. The first few times we’d been swimming at the lake we’d taken costumes, but then one of us – I think it was Katie – had forgotten theirs and just went skinny-dipping. After that nobody wore a costume.

  ‘Our lagoon awaits, ladies,’ I said, not at all self-conscious about my body anymore. I wasn’t a Katie, but my body was developing. I now seemed to attract the attention of the boys at school, which was nice I suppose, but then again, almost all of them were total idiots. We stepped into the water. Shallow lagoon or not, in a baking hot summer, that first step was always bloody cold – an immediate icy chill grabbing your toes. You never withdrew though – once you were committed that was it. Shriek as much as you like, of course, the prerogative of the teenage girl, but never pull back. Nobody ever leapt straight into the deep part off the point by the tree, not until they’d properly ‘got in’ and become acclimatised to the water. We’d spend time bobbing around until it felt really warm before we’d jump off there. Sometimes we’d swim from the lagoon, round the point and feel the sudden change in temperature as the shelf disappeared beneath us. I always envisaged a huge lake monster swimming beneath us, or a freshwater shark coming up from the depths. The shivering wasn’t just the cold. Clara or Katie would be first to the tree, and to unwrap the rope that we’d hung from the large overhanging branch – Janey had climbed the tree at the start of the summer to tie the rope as far along the branch as she dared, but she’d overbalanced and turned a somersault before face-planting in the water. With a shriek and a scream as each of us hit the cold surface, the silly stunts and nonsense would begin.

  When we were borderline hypothermic, and shivering from genuine cold rather than irrational fear, we would flop down on our towels to work on our suntans. Back then no one used sun cream, that was only something you used on holiday – ‘you never burn at home,’ Mum said. It was something to do with sea air, apparently. I wasn’t too familiar with the chemistry and physics of ultraviolet absorption through a salt layer, but Mum was obviously an expert. When we did go on holiday, she always bought the sun cream with a ‘2’ on the tube. Any bigger numbers were irrelevant, and more expensive. Of course, when we still burned to a crisp after spending all day in the sun, she would always explain ‘that I did put sun cream on’, because factor two Ambre Solaire would act as a complete block on the surface of the sun itself. Somehow we’d managed to work a system of gradual exposure at the lake, interspersed by regular dips, and whilst we’d always look a bit pink around the gills at the end of the day, we rarely did burn badly, and always had incredible tans by the time school started again after the summer.

  As we lay dozing in the sun, I remember thinking about a scary Public Information Film that they used to show between adverts on the TV. It had shown kids playing by open water, being watched over by a hooded figure that was obviously Death. As irrational as the fear of the freshwater shark, I would always look around to make sure the grim reaper was elsewhere that day. And not hiding in the trees. There were no monsters – not really – and nothing bad was really going to happen at our lake.

  Chapter 6 – Now –The Idyllic Village

  A WATCHED POT never boils.

  Well, Janey’s kettle certainly never seemed to as we stood over it, desperate for another cup of coffee to push back the hangover. I’m almost fifty with two kids, a husband and a responsible job. I don’t really expect an evening discussing the strange events of a summer thirty years ago to degenerate into drinking competitions and talking about shagging.

  But it had.

  The idea of the ‘full grease’ for breakfast, served in the same room – at the same table in fact – where I’d got so drunk didn’t appeal, so I soaked up last night’s gin and prosecco with three triangles of toast. The others seemed to be faring better than me, although we could all do with a cuppa to get us going. As the kettle didn’t boil, we milled around between the small kitchen and only slightly bigger ‘middle’ room. I never could fathom middle rooms – linking a kitchen to somewhere else, a hallway in this case, they were never big enough to do anything with but took up too much space to completely waste. Janey had an ancient green Dralon sofa in hers, where only patches of the velour remained and, like the suite in the lounge, some of the foam underneath poked out. Janey was clucking around, trying to keep everyone happy. She looked better than yesterday, and I wondered if she’d been nervous – either about seeing us for the first time in decades or just interacting with other humans. It was quite comical, the way she was taking everyone’s exact tea and coffee orders.

  ‘Janey, what’s in the black greenhouse, m’darlin’?’ Katie was looking out of the side kitchen window.

  ‘It’s a polytunnel. I had it fixed to the back of the house so the back door opens into it – means I don’t have to go outside. It’s great to grow your own stuff.’ We could see the curved tunnel sticking out into the garden, thick black polythene stretched across the whole frame. The rest of the garden was a wasteland. Waist-high grass sticking up in tufts or fallen over under its own weight in the morning dew. Huge patches of brambles and nettles grew where there’d been borders and vegetables when we were kids. It looked just as one would’ve expected of a garden that’d gone feral for thirty years.


  ‘What, like tomatoes and cucumbers and stuff?’ Clara asked as she filled some mugs with the now finally boiling water.

  ‘No,’ she did her half smile that no one could get used to. ‘They’d never grow in something blacked-out like that, would they? It’s a mushroom farm – you need a special growing area where you control the light, temperature and humidity, so I had mine blacked out. Quite a few growers do that.’

  ‘Get through a lot of mushrooms, do you?’ asked Sally, between sips of Yorkshire tea. Everyone else smiled.

  ‘Not just your regular mushrooms. I grow Psilocybe cubensis.’

  ‘Course you do, and you’ve become Alan fucking Titchmarsh while we’ve been away. You think you know someone. What are they?’ Clara looked at Janey over the top of her mug.

  ‘Magic mushrooms.’

  ‘Fuck off!’

  ‘Just like the ones we used to find down by the lake.’

  ‘You’re not selling them online to make a living, are you?’ I asked, only half joking, still wondering what she did with her time.

  ‘No,’ Janey smirked. ‘I use them for pain relief for my leg.’

  ‘Oh,’ I replied, and the jovial mood suddenly changed as we all exchanged a glance, thankfully missed by Janey, as she continued to fuss around us. It wasn’t that I’d put my foot in it, it was just the size of the shoe. ‘I’ve been in pain since the accident and the doctors have been bloody useless. I went to pain clinics and acupuncturists – Mum and Dad insisted on trying to take me to anyone that might help.’ I noted that she sounded almost critical of her parents for doing so.

  ‘I’d do the same for my kids.’ was all I could respond with.

  ‘Looking like I did. Like I do. And walking with a limp, I guess I started to withdraw from everywhere – from everyone. So the last thing I wanted was people fussing around me. I think I musta been so rude to some of those people – there were quite a lot that we only ever went to once.’