Just out of the village and after the bungalows whose owners mowed their grass verges like their own lawns, we saw a plume of smoke coming from a farm lane further on up the road.
‘What the hell is that?’ asked Sally, riding on ahead, her bike wobbling along the middle of the road as she accelerated. We moseyed along behind, with little interest in whatever fire some farmer had set the day before. We watched Sally disappear off to the right, presumably down the track, although we weren’t yet close enough to see it, so it just looked like she’d disappeared into the hedge. The thin line of smoke rose straight up as we slowly approached, with no sign of Sal returning. Then we heard her scream, a high-pitched scream of pure terror and we moseyed no longer. We could see the turning now as we got close and got there on the double, racing round onto the road, leaning over like we were in the Tour de France peloton. Just up ahead we could easily make out the back of a sky-blue Ford Capri, parked in the middle of the track.
‘Oh Jesus, get over here you lot, sharpish!’ Sally called back to us, still astride her bike and leaning one hand against the back of the car to steady herself.
Getting closer, the car was less recognisable, with only the rear untouched and the sides looking progressively more charred until we reached the front which was completely black. The frame of the windscreen had buckled and warped, the paint had bubbled and blackened as it boiled during the fire. Sally was off her bike now and walking up to the open driver’s window for a better look. She leaned in, then immediately turned away, coughing and retching.
‘What is it, Sal? Is someone inside?’ I tried to look across, but the acrid smoke and residual heat made my eyes water. I ran around the burnt-out front, aiming for Sal who was puking in the hedgerow.
‘Is there someone in there?’
‘Oh yeah,’ Sally managed between parting with her breakfast in the bushes
‘Is he… dead?’
‘Oh yeah,’ she said, wiping strings of vomit from her face.
Resting my hand on her shoulder I looked across to the car, the smell of burnt plastic and rubber strong in my nostrils. From this side it was very obvious there was a corpse in the driver’s seat. Smoke and steam rose from the body and curled and drifted out of the windows. His chest was a charred skeleton, dripping with stuff, and his entire abdomen was missing. Further down, his blackened pelvis sat ghoulishly in the seat amongst the ashes of his thighs. His lower legs, however, were well preserved.
‘Is it definitely Todd?’ Clara asked, not wanting to even look inside.
‘Oh God yeah.’ I was staring right at his face, which was now a maniacal caricature of Todd Ainsworth as the heat had made his muscles contract and contort into a hideously twisted grin before melting his eyes to leave empty sockets. The skin was darkened and retracted to expose his teeth, but otherwise intact, and his blackened charcoal tongue lolled from one corner of his mouth.
‘Fuck. Off!’ exclaimed Clara.
‘Oh Jesus, and I threatened him the other day.’ A sudden fear gripped me. I’d threatened him with a rock in front of the other girls.
‘But you didn’t kill him, though, right?’ Janey asked, looking at me like Mum would.
‘No, of course not.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I think I would’ve remembered popping out and killing him, don’t you?’
‘Right. So what are you worried about?’
‘The police. If they know I had a go at him and couldn’t stand him…’
‘Nobody could stand him – probably not even his Gran – he was a hideous prick and I’m not sorry he’s dead. None of us are gonna tell the police you threatened him, are we?’ Janey asked, looking around at the others who all nodded their confirmation.
‘Thanks guys. Got a bit scared then,’ I smiled sheepishly. ‘But someone’ll have seen the smoke and called them, won’t they, so we better make ourselves scarce.’
‘That’s the second one, though,’ said Janey.
‘What?’
‘The second person burned to death, Clara, in less than two weeks. Old lady Grimshaw, now Todd.’
‘The press’ll be all over this again.’
‘Yeah, that Professor guy’ll be back,’ Katie added.
‘At least he’ll be the weirdest guy in the village now.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, now Todd’s dead there’s no competition.’
‘Sal!’
Chapter 8 – Now – Janey’s Parents
‘I WAS SORRY to hear about your mum and dad, Janey,’ I said, staring at the dregs of my tea, swirling the sediment around reminded me of the fair when it came to the village and the rides we’d go on – each of us being one of the small particles of tea leaves.
‘Yeah, well, it happens. Yours are gone too, right? No biggy.’
‘I know but you had to deal with it…’
‘By myself? That’s nothing new for me, Flip.’
‘Can’t believe we didn’t hear somehow before though. You know – from my parents, Clara’s,’ Katie added.
‘Well, it’s a lesson isn’t it – staying in touch doesn’t just happen by osmosis. We never did and it just fades, doesn’t it.’
‘What does?’ said Sal absently. ‘I heard some things years later – do you mind if I ask what happened?’ Sal was probing.
‘No, it’s okay. It’s been a long time. Okay, so you remember that they were really heavy smokers?’ We all nodded, it was a standing joke that you didn’t want a lift in the Pullman-mobile or you’d need a gasmask. Even back then, when it was perfectly reasonable to smoke in a car with your kids, it seemed excessive. ‘About five years after you all left for uni, Dad was diagnosed with lung cancer. I don’t suppose it was a big surprise, but it still came as a shock, you know. He was still a relatively young, fit man…’
‘Sorry, Janes,’ I said.
‘No it’s okay, Flip, really. Anyway, he was going through the treatment side of things and they were quite careful to keep a lot of that away from me. I was away with the fairies at that time, I guess. All treatment for my leg had stopped but the pain was still there and I just bummed around the house – I put on so much weight – got really fat. Anyway, Mam was shouldering all this herself – I knew she was upset at times, but I was never very good at that empathy stuff, and like I say, I wasn’t really there.’ Janey sat, wincing, as if talking about the pain in her leg was making it hurt now. ‘They said it was a result of all the years of smoking and passive smoking because Dad was far worse than Mum for the fags, but I reckon it was the stress and worry that brought it on. She got progressively thinner and more frail after Dad was told he was terminal and she was eventually diagnosed with leukaemia.’
‘Oh bloody hell, love.’ I put my hand on hers, feeling the whorls and pits of her scarred and twisted skin. For some reason I expected it to be tight and hard, but the skin was soft and warm – just different to mine. Janey pulled her hand away.
‘By that time, I’d got myself together a bit more. The internet had started and I was doing some writing. I did some online articles – I guess what would now be called blogging, and I was getting paid a little. So my parents could see that I was getting my life together a bit – I still never went outside, but I guess they could understand that to an extent. So anyway, one night they drove to Willoughby Park, which is somewhere where they used to take me when I was little for walks on my bike and stuff. According to the fire people, it looked like they’d planned to kill themselves by using the exhaust fumes piped into the car with a hose. I guess neither could go on with what was happening to them, and the note they wrote to me said they didn’t want me to have a greater burden and be their carer or anything.’
‘Oh Janes. Look you don’t have to go on – I’m really sorry I brought it up,’ Sal looked horrified.
‘It’s okay, really. It’s nice to be able to talk to someone – and I never get the chance to. Not in person, anyway. ’cept the Tesco guy of course. Besides, it has
some relevance to now.’
Katie, Sal and I exchanged a look, wondering what that meant exactly. Clara was staring down at her tea, I could see she was tearing up.
‘You said the fire brigade found them and it looked like they’d been using a hose…?’
‘Yeah, that’s right. Dad used the hose from the garden and taped it onto the exhaust pipe of the car, running it in through his slightly open window. But he’d obviously decided that if he was going to die he might as well go out blazing, so he’d lit up and driven there smoking like a chimney – there were loads of fag butts in the ashtray apparently. I guess he’d wanted a last fag as the hose was running and it looks like they both must’ve been unconscious with it still smouldering.’
‘That’s carbon monoxide poisoning isn’t it?’ Katie asked, seemingly unconcerned about the sensitivity of the subject matter. ‘Wouldn’t that put a cigarette out?’
‘Well you’d think so, wouldn’t you, but they said as there wasn’t an airtight seal around the window – Dad hadn’t taped it up –some oxygen would’ve got in and kept the thing smouldering like an ember, provided that it had fuel. It seems the fuel was Dad’s shirt, and then him.’
‘Oh my god,’ I was feeling pretty numb about this whole thing, and it felt weird just how matter-of-fact Janey was about it. I suppose if you’ve lived with something every day for twenty-odd years it might get like that, but experiencing it for the first time was very strange. Clara got up and left, closing the bathroom door a few seconds later. Janey looked up and watched her go.
‘So the car very gradually caught fire, and they told me it took quite a bit of piecing together what had happened. Like I said before, the funeral was the last time I went out.’
‘Janes, I’ve said it before, but I’m so sorry, lovely. I can’t believe how strong you are, you are amazing.’ I gave her hand a squeeze again, then let go before she could feel uncomfortable and pull away.
‘Janey, you said what happened to your parents has relevance to what’s going on now. What do you mean?’
‘It’s me, it’s us, K. The Shadow Man got to me, doing all this,’ she pointed at her leg. ‘I’d seen too much, I’d found him out – we all had. But he could never get to you guys – you were scattered across the country, and I guess he wasn’t gonna come calling. So he stayed here, tormenting me and everyone else.’
‘Hang on, do you think this is our fault for leaving?’ asked Katie.
‘No, no, God no, I would’ve left if I could – there’s no sense in everyone getting dragged down by this place. By him.’
‘And do you think the Shadow Man killed your parents?’ I asked gently.
‘Yes – of course. Terminal illness or not, there’s no way Mum and Dad would do that – they’d fight.’
‘But what about not being a burden on you?’
‘I believe that, but I think they would’ve set something up – MacMillan nurses or something.’ Janey shrugged.
‘So they didn’t write the note?’
‘Yes, Mum did – it was her writing, so unless he can mimic handwriting… But it was him getting inside their heads that did it.’
‘He’s like the devil.’ Clara had returned from the bathroom, her eyes red.
‘Yes, yes he is, that’s a good shout.’
‘Really?’ asked Katie. ‘As far as that?’
‘Why not? He tortured people and killed them in different ways when he was alive. What if, when he’s dead, as a spirit or whatever, he’s got a lot more freedom to get at people?’
‘So is that what he was doing when he burned the village hall down – trying to get to us?’ I asked.
‘Yes, I think so. Both our mums worked there, didn’t they, I think he was trying to get to them to get at us.’
‘But why us? Why particularly was he gunning for us?’ asked Sal.
‘Because we’d seen him, we were standing up to him – challenging him,’ Janey said, warming to her subject. ‘For two hundred years he’s been a cancer in this village, hiding in the shadows with nobody challenging him. But we found him out. We’ve seen him – he’s shown himself to us, and there are no records of that, there are just little snippets and stories from down the years that people round here have attributed to the Shadow Man, as if he’s the Bogeyman or something.’
‘I still can’t remember seeing him or anything like that,’ said Sal.
‘You will. Give it time, it’ll come back.’
‘And do you think he escalated from when we started to put two and two together?’ I asked.
‘Yes, absolutely. I think from the day we saw old lady Grimshaw, and the authorities had all that hocus pocus stuff about spontaneous human combustion.’
‘You said there are snippets and stories – how have you got old records about him, Janey, after the village hall went up? What was there left after that?’
‘Yeah, wasn’t easy. Some of the old historical records from the village were definitely kept in the hall, and some were lost, some not. If it wasn’t for the internet, and the main historical records being kept on databases, I wouldn’t have had any chance. But, you know, with time on my hands, I could gradually put together a bit of a picture.’
‘I read your blog about him before we came,’ said Katie.
‘Why didn’t you mention that before?’ I asked. ‘Yesterday you said you didn’t even remember the Shadow Man.’
‘I dunno. I didn’t remember. My memory’s really been messing with me.’
‘That’s the point, he does that, that’s why we all forgot.’
‘And that’s what you meant when you said we’d been ‘made to forget’?’ I said.
‘Exactly. That article was from last year – it became a bit like a Masters in the Shadow Man, and I wrote a couple of blogs on how it seemed like his curse, if you like, hung over the place. You’ve gotta be careful when you write that kind of thing. If you write it too explicitly and people take it at face value then they’re gonna think you’re a crazy woman. Real life isn’t a Stephen King novel, right?’
‘So why do you think he’s back now, after being gone for so long?’ I asked.
‘Well, first of all ‘back’ implies that he’s been away – I’m not sure he has. I think what we did – finding him out at a time when he was active – let the genie out of the bottle, and that’s what’s run this place down even more. There used to be more of a community here, but that’s all gone and people are just living for convenience. It’s like a two-dimensional village in a movie that gets dismantled when filming stops. And I think the Shadow Man feeds off it. A solid community could resist something creeping in and getting into people’s heads, but not here.’
‘And now he’s got a taste for it?’ Katie asked.
‘I think so, the death and destruction. He’s out there and he’s watching. I feel like he’s growing, taking over, feeding off people.’
‘How?’
‘I dunno, it’s just the feeling I get. And then there’s us. I think he’s toying with us. Like I said, we’re the first people who ever challenged him, so he’s relishing it – it’s like a game.’
‘There’s a lot of stuff in there Janes. A lot of ideas, and –’
‘Yeah, we can’t corroborate any of it, it’s all ideas, and that’s why you’ve gotta be careful who you tell them to otherwise you’re a nutcase. But we’ve all seen him, and so you are all my fellow nutcases.’
‘Okay so, assuming that all of that is the case,’ said Katie, ‘How do we stop him?’
‘Well, unsurprisingly, I’ve given this more thought than anything else. I think we need to give him what he wants.’
‘Which is?’
‘Us.’
Chapter 9 – Then – Incoming
DID WE GET ‘in bother’ that summer as my mum used to say?
In a word, yes.
Not like kids do these days, of course, and nothing bad. I remember going up to see Kelly Bridgewater one day. She lived up on the hill, in one of the b
ig new houses with views out over the Vale. She wasn’t part of our little gang, so we didn’t often visit her. We played tennis in her cul-de-sac and I smashed a ball over a fence, into the garden of the house opposite. The stomach-sinking sound of breaking glass soon followed, and we legged it pronto. For weeks I was convinced the old guy who lived there would find out who the vandal was and turn up at my house. That’s about the level of the trouble we got into.
We rode down the hill like our lives depended on it, almost expecting to hear a cacophony of sirens approaching, overtaking us and cordoning off the road for our Butch and Sundance moment. The wind was in our hair, and we squinted against the force of the air against our eyes, but still they watered, so we cried and laughed at the same time, at breakneck speed down the hill.
∞ ∞ ∞
That day wasn’t unlike this. We’d been up the hill again, but this time to see our friend Leigh Roach. Fish wasn’t allowed to go to the lake, so we often used to go up to hers instead, and today her mum had put out a paddling pool, the hosepipe and water pistols for us to mess around with. We’d spent the day lazing around punctuated by demented water fights and now we were racing down the hill again. From out of nowhere we had bogeys at three and nine o’clock. Lee Jenkins and Mark Drudge had sped up behind us on their bigger Grifters, outflanking us as we pelted down the narrow lane. They were penning us in like herding sheep, and I looked behind to see Luke Michael Lewis cruising up from behind, almost nudging his way through the others to inch up alongside me at the front, like using wide shoulders to wade through a queue.
‘Well Flip, when are you going to give me that blow job I’ve been asking for?’ he leered, his face just inches from mine – the bike helmet not invented back then.
‘I’d rather do your granddad, Luke Lewis. But then, who the hell calls their kid Luke Lewis?’ I swerved away to avoid a manhole cover, my front wheel wobbling alarmingly as it hit the patched tarmac around it, before I swerved back in line with my tormentor. ‘It’s as bad as William Williams. You’re a reduplicant.’
The Shadow Man Page 7