The Shadow Man

by Mark Brownless

  Our lake.

  The lake itself was the same. Timeless. Or so it seemed. If I could’ve described it for an artist to draw it would’ve looked like this. Sure, the distance between this side and the little peninsula was shorter than I remembered and the trees had grown up a lot – one massive silver birch almost blocked the path round the shore after the spur.

  ‘Our tree’s gone,’ said Katie. And that’s how we started. The big tree Janey’d attached the swing to had collapsed into the water and was just a rotting partly submerged trunk. It made me sad that such an old tree had succumbed and that our timeless lake wasn’t that at all. Everything succumbs in the end. We did a full loop around the lake, seeing how the clumps of bulrushes had spread and taken over in parts, and how the undergrowth had almost cut off access to a large part of waterfront. Wildfowl still skidded to a halt and took off from the deeper water, unconcerned about us. We quickly walked around the far side, nearest the houses, hoping no one would see us and start asking questions. Finally we reached our bank by our beach on our lake. It was like a homecoming.

  ‘Why are we here?’ I asked, sitting now where I’d always sat – in my spot. ‘What are we doing here?’

  ‘I thought we’d been through this, to support Janey and to try and get to the bottom of all these memories that are coming back,’ Katie replied.

  ‘Yeah but why are we here, right now, at the lake, what are we doing? What’s it going to achieve?’

  ‘It might jog our memories even more, to bring even more of it back to us. This was your idea.’

  ‘Yeah, I know; and it sounds wishy-washy,’ I surprised myself at how harsh I was being. Too much to drink for the second night running or too little good quality sleep. ‘I’m going for a walk.’

  Peering through the dense bushes at the edge of the copse, I could see the entire clearing was now overgrown with fern, bramble and rooted suckers of trees, forming six-foot-tall versions of their parents. Without something to clear out the brush, there was no way anything bigger than a rabbit would be able to get through. This wouldn’t be a good hiding place for us these days, not like back then when we hid from Luke Lewis and his gang.

  Luke Lewis.

  I walked briskly back along the bank, back to the spot where we used to leave our bikes and turned along the track, heading to the upper lake the long way round. The others fell into step behind me, finally coming round to my way of thinking that sitting staring into the middle distance was achieving nothing.

  I turned left off the farm track onto the now overgrown trail that would take us the ‘secret’ way to the top lake, rather than following the road all the way around to the back, where quarry vehicles would’ve gone all those decades ago. The old fencing, which we’d pushed to one side to scramble through, was still present, although rusted and crumbling away, leaving large holes everywhere. A new chain link fence had been erected in front of it, perhaps only a year or so before, with a similarly new ‘keep out’ sign attached with cable ties.

  ‘That’s a new fence,’ said Clara.

  ‘So I see,’ I replied, grateful that someone was stating the bleeding obvious. Immediately in front of our old gap in the fence, the new fence had been cut in a straight line up from the floor to about three feet high.

  ‘Someone’s cut the fence.’

  ‘I can see that too,’ I replied tersely.

  ‘What?’ asked Clara, arms raised horizontally out to her sides.

  I bent down and pulled the two cut halves open as far as I could to squeeze under and through, swearing as I brushed my hand against the nettles that were growing right up to and through the fence. Rubbing my hand I trampled them down in the immediate vicinity, and held the fence apart. Katie muttered that she was getting too old for this, then hitched up her short denim skirt to her waist before squatting down comically like she was about to pee and duck-walking through the gap.

  ‘Ooh, knickers. Things have moved on,’ Clara smiled sweetly, which was answered with a glare as Katie adjusted her clothing. Walking up the slope from the fence, the place seemed almost how we’d left it, the trail banking wide around the lake, the water much shallower than in the other two, the unpleasant smell from the mud or the water itself. I walked over to check there wasn’t something dead and rotting in it. The zinc garage had gone – removed so that no trace of it remained, leaving an even wider stretch of compacted gravel, with clumps of weeds growing up through the stones. We walked over to where a large piece of plywood board lay innocently on the ground. Rotten around the edges and weathered so it had delaminated and curled up, some parts had worn away like mice had been gnawing at it. Clara and Sal lifted one side and flipped it over, uncovering the hole that we’d expected to see, but perhaps hoped had been filled in. Without any preamble I sat on the edge and dropped down, landing on dust as if it were age itself, and being engulfed in a small cloud.

  ‘Come down, it’s okay,’ I said, looking around, ‘Well, as okay as it’s gonna get.’ We’d all come prepared this time, so we’d head-torched up and were carrying varying sizes of hand torches. Katie had a large lantern. It seems we all carried torches in our cars for emergencies, and when I was packing for the trip, I’d decided to pack my families camping headtorches in a ‘just in case moment.’ The drop into the main chamber was familiar but I was startled by what I saw in front of me.

  ‘The walls are covered in blood,’ Clara continued her commentary for the stupid, but I couldn’t say anything this time. It was as if someone had left some cans of red paint around and then gone wild dipping their hands in and drawing on the walls. Large handprints were clearly visible at the end of long smears, like the head of a comet, there were numerous large splatter patches with droplets spraying off them, and bizarre scribbling or ‘almost’ drawings.

  ‘Where’s Dexter when you need him?’ I asked absently.

  ‘Anyone fancy a dip in the lower part?’ asked Katie. I looked at her, then at her clothing, then back to her face again.

  ‘What? I wasn’t planning on going all Bear Grylls today, okay?’

  ‘It’s okay, I’ll go,’ I said, in a tone that clearly said ‘if you want anything done…’

  I was a little thinner the last time I did this – not much, I keep myself in shape, go to the gym, walk the dogs and get into the hills with the family when we can, but you know, approaching middle-age and all that. I sat in the gap and wiggled forward, the unyielding rock squeezing me harder than my husband ever could, my hips painfully sliding through at the last moment when I thought I might get stuck. I tried not to think about how I was going to get back out again. I dropped onto the lower step and into the wide low chamber, lit with the green glow from light filtering through the water or algae or whatever it was. Shame none of us was a biologist. In truth, my memory of the last time I was here wasn’t great, but I put that down to the visibility, something that wasn’t going to be a problem today. Beautiful stalagmites rose from the floor, taller than me, stalactites hanging down towards them, ready to knock the senses from the unwary. I carefully made my way around the slippery stone forms, making sure of my footing on the sloping ground. The all-terrain shoes I used for ‘off-roading’ back home confidently gripped the treacherous wet floor. I slowly made my way over to the darker patch on the right, peering down into the stagnant pool and seeing the same glow I had thirty years before. What was the algae that glowed and got churned up by ships’ propellers that I’d seen on the TV? Bio-something. Would that stuff grow here in this little pool?

  I stepped back, inching carefully around a stalagmite, and my breath caught in my throat as I looked up. I stifled a scream, and both my voice and my vomit caught in the back of my mouth.

  ‘Flip! What is it? Flip are you okay?’ Clara’s voice was edged with worry and fear. Without answering I turned to run, colliding with the stalagmite, my knee crunching horribly against the wet rock, sending a sharp pain through my leg and a sick feeling to my stomach. Then I smashed my head into a stalactite. I saw s
tars, my knee gave way, and I fell, grazing my hands on the rough rock floor. For a second I was groggy, barely able to work out where I was or what was happening. The throbbing in my knee and head brought me round and I remembered what I’d seen.

  ‘Fuck this.’ I sprang to my feet and limped away as fast as I could, periodically turning back, my head torch illuminating the far wall and confirming I hadn’t been seeing things.

  ‘Flip, are you okay? Flip!’ Clara sounded like she was panicking, but I couldn’t speak, tears and blood were pouring down my face making me almost blind and my heart was hammering so hard in my chest that I thought it might come through. I arrived back at the hole and saw Clara’s head poking through the gap, quickly replaced by hands reaching down to help me climb back up. As I was pulled onto the floor of the upper chamber, I had three pairs of eyes staring at me for an explanation.

  ‘Jesus, Flip, what happened?’ asked Katie.

  ‘Did something hit you?’

  I was too upset to speak, but I pointed back to the hole and between wracking sobs managed to get some words out. ‘Go… and see… Please… some…one… go and see.’ I sat with my head between my knees trying to get my breathing under control as Clara immediately wiggled through the gap, a little more easily than I had. There was a pause for what seemed like forever before we heard from her, her voice muffled by the rock, but unmistakeably her.

  ‘You can fuck right off! Fuck me, this isn’t happening. Fuck you, you fucker. Fuck!’ She was next to me within a minute, shivering, her arm around my shoulders.

  ‘Would somebody mind telling me what the fuck is down there?’ asked Katie.

  ‘There’s more blood, King. Someone’s written in blood down there,’ offered Clara.

  ‘Written? What’s it say?’ asked Sal.

  ‘It says, ‘I’m watching, Flip.’’

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Now we’d been there a few days, Janey’s felt like the nerve centre of the operation, even though we weren’t staying there, so on our return we simply burst through the side door into the kitchen. I’d recovered somewhat but was still shaken and was looking forward to some sweet tea.

  ‘Hi,’ Janey’s head popped around the kitchen door from the hallway, ‘Be right there – I’ve made cakes.’ Now that I’d sat down there was indeed the tell-tale smell of baking in the kitchen and a hugely appealing chocolate cake sat cooling on a wire rack.

  ‘Not just a pretty face then,’ said Katie eliciting a wince from the rest of us as, at that moment, Janey bustled in and immediately shooed Sal away from tea-making duties.

  ‘If I’m not out in the field with you, the least I can do is feed and water you,’ she smiled happily, turning to us. ‘What? What’s wrong? What’s happened?’ Janey’s smile slowly became a frown as she looked at each of us, finally dropping her eyes to mine as I’d plopped down at the table.

  ‘Oh my God, Flip, what happened? Are you okay? Let me get the first aid kit.’ I realised I probably looked a mess, covered in blood, dust, cave mud and quite possibly some snot and puke. Sally filled Janey in with the details as I sat staring into space, allowing her to bathe the worst off my face.

  ‘Jesus, Flip. I’m not sure what to say,’ she said uncharacteristically, squeezing out a cotton wool ball in warm water enriched with Milton. No doubt used for cleaning her prosthesis. She dabbed away at the last of the blood on the cut on my head. ‘This could probably do with a stitch.’

  ‘No way,’ I said. ‘Have you got any steristrips?’

  ‘Yeah. Hang on. I can’t believe what was written down there.’

  ‘It’s what it means more than anything else,’ I replied. ‘What does he want?’

  ‘He’s trying to communicate,’ said Sal.

  ‘Or take the piss. Or scare the shit out of us,’ said Clara.

  ‘Mission-fucking-accomplished, I’d say.’ Sal flopped down next to me.

  ‘If he takes notice of us, knows our names, then we aren’t faceless, nameless victims. He either thinks of us as adversaries, or isn’t interested in getting us,’ said Janey.

  ‘That’s a bit of a leap isn’t it?’ said Katie.

  ‘Think about it. How many other people have had their name inscribed anywhere?’

  ‘Who the hell knows? He might have done it for others who went down there over the years.’

  ‘He?’ Are we making him real now?’ asked Clara.

  ‘He, it, whatever. What I’m saying is, this might’ve been a regular occurrence for people who visited that place,’ said Katie.

  ‘Yes, true, but I bet we’re the only people who’ve gone there of their own free will,’ said Janey, missing the irony of being the one who hadn’t gone anywhere.

  ‘And not been taken there for whatever reason,’ said Clara.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘I’ve just remembered about Luke Lewis,’ I said, my still shaky hands now cupping a mug of hot tea and Janey cutting me a slice of warm cake. ‘I’d never have expected you to get into baking.’

  ‘I’m amazed I fit it all in, what with work, the garden, the Rambler’s Association…’ Janey winked her one eye. ‘I’ve been doing it for years – practice makes perfect.’

  ‘Bake Off?’

  ‘Only if Hollywood comes here,’ Janey winked again.

  ‘You could bake in your polytunnel.’

  ‘What about Luke?’ asked Sal, standing by the worktop holding a small plate and spooning a chunk of sponge into her mouth.

  ‘He was taken to that cave.’

  ‘Well, you’re surmising that’s what happened.’

  ‘No, he was, I remember. I remember seeing him there.’

  ‘Fuck off – seeing him, how?’ asked Clara.

  ‘I dunno, I’ve just got one image of him kneeling on the ground outside the cave, it’s at night because it’s dark, but there’s some light coming from somewhere – maybe a fire,’ I said.

  ‘Wow, good knowledge,’ said Janey, topping people up with tea. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Nah, it just came to me after coming out of the cave and smelling the lake and the bank. I nearly puked again and this image came back.’

  ‘So it was worthwhile going there after all?’ asked Katie.

  ‘Yeah, I suppose it was,’ I nodded, standing corrected. ‘Wish I hadn’t gone down into the lower cavern though.’

  Chapter 15 – Then – Laurendon Show

  THE LAURENDON & DISTRICT Agricultural Show was one of the highlights of the year. So little went on in our group of villages that the annual tractor parade generated much excitement. It didn’t have the same magic as when the Fair came to town at the end of the summer – that was always a bit different. The lads who worked the rides always seemed romantically ‘other’ to us, their big, heavily tanned arms tightening the bars of the waltzers just a bit too much on us excitable girls, making us giggle and dream of running off with them and the Fair. The Show was definitely different.

  We’d stand on the corner of Stow Road the evening before, watching the parade of tractors. Some genuine classics – or at least they looked that way to the untrained eye – that were obviously well cared for, painted in bright orange or yellow, with chrome polished until it was shiny, travelling from show to show to give tractor nerds a hard-on. Some years you even got an old traction engine that would rumble along Hadley Road. The rest were old shit-heaps that had been rusting behind a derelict barn for most of the year before being painted in garish shades of blue or green to chug, fart and otherwise pollute the air along the main road to gate-crash the party, before turning into the showground ready for people to wander past the next day. Of course they didn’t actually pollute the air, because pollution hadn’t been invented back then.

  Our parents all knew that we wanted to go to the show, but used to make us do jobs beforehand under the threat of not being allowed to go. So I’d gone shopping to town with mine, Janey had to mow the lawn, Clara had to take their elderly pooch for a walk which she never had to do, but at least it
was before the times when you had to pick up after your dog and you could let it shit wherever it liked.

  I called Janey. The dial on our avocado phone whirred and clicked its way around as I called her number.

  ‘481?’ Janey’s mum always answered with the last three digits of her number, like a lot of older folk. When phones had first come to the village, there were only three numbers, but with growing numbers of people and interlinked telecommunication, a prefix of eight-seven-one was now added to Laurendon numbers, and even a national dialling code, so you could phone places as exotic as Stockport or Margate.

  ‘Hi Mrs Pullman, is Janey there, please?’ I waited while her mum went off to get her, and after an age of my mum looking at me and pointing at the clock on the wall, just to remind me of who was paying for this local call on the cheapest rate at the weekend, Janey came on.

  ‘I’ve just finished cutting the bloody lawn. When do you want to go?’

  ‘I’ve just got back from town, so give me half an hour?’

  ‘Okay. You heard from the others?’

  ‘No. I’ll call them and let you know if there’s anything different. See you at the showground.’ If only we could’ve posted our movements on Facebook so everyone knew, rather than having to make individual phone calls.

  You knew the show was in full swing when you could hear the sound of the PA system echoing out over the village. The words were unintelligible background noise that, in the end, you filtered out like the sound of your washing machine or car engine. The announcer probably worked at a train station, spouting similarly unintelligible information about delayed trains and which platforms they were no longer coming to.