And then he hit me, jumping from his bike to grab me around the waist in a rugby tackle, and dragging me to the floor, my foot catching painfully against the pedals as I was pulled clear. He landed on top of me, knocking the wind out of my chest. I struck my head against the hard ground, being given no cushioning by the straw we were flattening around us. For a second I saw stars and as my senses returned I found myself flat on my back, pinned underneath him.
‘I’ve got you now, you bitch,’ he sneered down at me, saliva dribbling from his mouth. He pinned my arms above my head, bringing our faces together. ‘I’m gonna enjoy this.’ He licked my cheek and I could smell him. I wanted him to smell of stale sweat and piss and bad breath, but he smelled of almonds and sandalwood and Aquafresh – why did I think of that? His free hand came up under my t-shirt and squeezed my breasts, trying and failing to get underneath the underwired front of my bra to my flesh beneath. I wanted him to be fat, sweaty and ugly, but he wasn’t. He could’ve been a nice boy in a different life, one that all the girls wanted, as opposed to just the rough ones that hung around him like he was a trophy, keen to be the next one to suck him off. I wriggled as much as I could, trying to bring a knee up to shove into his groin and bucking my hips to try and throw him off.
‘That’s it, you enjoy yourself – I know I will.’ His face was twisted into a leer, his square-jawed good looks now almost monstrous, like he was evil itself. He reached down and fiddled with his clothing until he could shove his jeans down, freeing my hands for a moment. I took the chance to reach up to his face with the intention of taking out his eyeballs or tearing his skin so badly that I could get away. He saw me coming, swinging his big arm round and slapping me hard across the face, making my jaw feel like it had dislocated and knocking my head sideways. My vision fogged over for a second once more and as I came to, he’d taken hold of my hand and brought it down between us, between his legs, to where his erection stood, awaiting orders.
‘Be nice, bitch,’ he ordered, raising his hand again as a threat as to what might happen if I wasn’t. He held my hand against him and started to rub against me. I felt the bile rise in my throat and almost choked on the taste, bucking forward in a retching spasm. Suddenly I was on my front, his strong hands flipping me over, and I knew I was in even more trouble now because I had fewer options to fight back. I tried to prop myself up on my elbows to turn over or to get onto all fours, but he just pushed me back down, his knees either side of my hips, holding me in place. He folded my arms behind me and tucked the bottom of my t-shirt up over them, pinning them as he went to work on the waistband of my shorts, dragging them down, taking my underwear with them and I felt the warm sun on my exposed bottom, as the rough straw scratched my belly underneath. I felt his cock resting against me and knew that I was running both out of ideas and time. I was screaming at him, shouting and swearing, calling him the worst things I could think of, making as much noise as I could to try and put him off or attract someone’s attention. His hands were all over me, roughly poking and prodding at my most intimate parts. I heard him spit on his hand and felt him move his hips, knowing exactly what he was doing. He grabbed hold of my hips and I tensed, holding my breath, terrified, wishing the ground would just open up and swallow me, wishing my heart would just stop, thinking of my parents, my friends, thinking of anything that would take me away from here and now. There was a noise off to my left and movement on top of me, for a split second the weight increased and I tensed even more waiting for something to happen, and then he was gone, his knee digging painfully into my bottom as he rolled off, giving a surprised cry as he did so and almost rolling me over before his hands released. There was a scuffle off to the right and I looked across, through the wheat, which had now been further flattened. Luke had been hit from the side by a figure dressed completely in black, and he was pinned underneath it now, like he was trapped by his own shadow. The figure had no face, it was just a black void, and wore a black-brimmed hat.
‘What the fuck, get off me or I’m gonna fuck you up!’ Luke screamed into the Shadow Man’s void, and in response it screamed back – not a shout or a cry but the wailing screech of metal on metal, or a dentist’s drill. And it was ear-splitting. I saw a fumbling between them and suddenly Luke let out his own cry of surprise and extreme pain as the Shadow Man must’ve twisted his still-exposed manhood or something. I didn’t hang around any longer to watch, I got up and ran, pulling my shorts up as I went. My bike looked okay and it wasn’t in a tangle with Luke’s so I managed to pick it up as I ran. I was almost out of the field when I paused. I’d been brought up with manners, and it didn’t matter what that thing was, it had saved me.
‘Er. Thank you,’ I called back. The Shadow Man looked like he was devouring Luke, his head moving backwards and forwards over his face like some shark rasping away at a whale carcass. The wailing and screeching noises it was making were terrifying. Hearing my voice the creature looked up. Well, no it didn’t.
It? I can’t think of it as a he. The creature? Just what the fuck is it?
It can’t have looked up because it didn’t have a face, but it raised its head anyway and seemed to be looking or sensing in my direction. For a split second I wondered if I’d made a terrible mistake. If the Shadow Man had only intended to separate us to deal with one at a time, and now it had been alerted to my escape.
Jesus how stupid could I have been.
After another second it bent back to whatever unspeakable thing it was doing to Luke.
Now I fled. Jumping on my bike and flying back along the path at a frightening pace, barely able to hold on to the handlebars and trying to block out thoughts of pursuit by faceless, black-clad, two-hundred-year-old wraiths. For the second time that day I almost broad-sided a car as I joined Lake Road – not even looking as I shot from the farm road out onto the tarmac, delighted to have a proper road surface under my rubber grips. The driver sounded his horn angrily and swerved away from me, shaking his fist, but I didn’t care. Better to die under the wheels of a car in Normal-Land than at the hands of a would-be rapist and an apparition in the Hammer Horror film I’d just left. I looked at my watch – how long had I been out there? It felt like a long time and I was shivering with cold even in the heat of the day.
Just over an hour.
Shit, it felt like longer than that – it wouldn’t even be lunchtime yet. I asked my legs for one more effort to get me home, surprising Mum when I walked into the kitchen.
‘Is everything okay, love?’
‘Yeah, why?’
‘You look a bit… rattled.’ She frowned slightly.
I’ll say.
‘You sure nothing’s happened this morning?’
Well, it’s like this…
‘No, fine. Well. We did go up and down the hill a bit and my legs are exhausted – it got a bit competitive. Katie, you know. So I told the others I was heading home. Might just take it easy this afternoon.’ Mum frowned again. ‘That is unless you need me to do anything?’ I realised in trying to be normal I was being the least normal that I’d ever been.
‘No love, you take it easy. Just as long as everything’s fine.’ Mum walked off toward the lounge, throwing me the occasional backwards glance.
∞ ∞ ∞
‘Shit a fucking brick!’ said Clara in surprise.
‘So you saw the Shadow Man?’ It was less of a question from Katie, more a statement. I’d spent the last fifteen minutes giving them the warts-and-all story.
‘Yeah, again.’
‘And he just came out of nowhere? In daylight?’ Janey was fascinated.
‘One minute Luke Lewis was there, on top of me, about to… well, y’know. The next, bam, he’s been knocked off sideways and this figure, all in black, is on top of him.’
We were lazing in my back garden, Mum having delivered squash and biscuits, and a couple of cans of Top Deck lemonade shandy. I’d spent a few hours in my room reliving what had happened at the lake, dissecting every moment, being scared, l
ooking out of the window to see if he might be there. He being the Shadow Man, not Luke Lewis, whom I thought was probably in a whole world of pain by now. Or worse. Time wasn’t making things go away so I called the others, and by mid-afternoon we had Jammy Dodgers on a tartan rug.
‘So when you left, the Shadow Man was all over him?’ Katie asked.
‘Yeah, Christ knows what he was doing.’
‘Was he… hurting him?’
‘I don’t know – the scream he let out, right in Luke’s face, the sound of it. That was just as scary as everything that Luke had done and what I thought he might do.’
‘What did it sound like?’ asked Janey, intrigued.
‘It was like a wail, but it wasn’t how it sounded. It just sounded… old.’
‘What does that mean?’ shrugged Katie.
‘Like there was hundreds of years of anger or badness stored up inside of him and he was letting it out.’
‘So you think he’ll kill him?’ asked Clara.
‘Shady’s not known for his ballroom dancing, is he?’ said Katie.
‘Hang on a minute, if Luke dies, will it be my fault?’
‘What?’ asked Katie, incredulous.
‘Fuck off,’ said Clara.
‘In what bizarre fucked up way is Luke ‘the rapist’ Lewis’ potential death, remotely your fault?’ Katie’s eyebrows were approaching her hairline.
‘I dunno,’ I said, knowing I sounded very confused. ‘I just wonder if I’d have stayed there, maybe I could have got the Shadow Man off him.’
‘Listen to yourself, Flip,’ said Janey. ‘When he appeared, you were worrying that the Shadow Man might go for both of you, that he was just attacking because he came across you, not that he was doing it to protect or defend you.’
‘And he still might have done. I can’t believe you fucking said thank you,’ said Sally.
‘Maybe he really wasn’t trying to protect you. Maybe he took out Luke, and you were going to be next,’ said Katie.
‘So why’d he let me go then?’
‘I dunno but he certainly had his hands full at the time with Luke, didn’t he? If he goes after you he loses Luke. He might as well stay as he is – one kill’s better than nothing.’ Katie shrugged.
‘Don’t say that, ‘one kill’s better than nothing’, bloody hell.’
‘I can’t believe what we’re talking about.’ Sally was shaking her head.
‘Yeah and that kill is better that way round than it being you.’ Katie sounded like she was trying to end the debate.
‘I want you to listen to me, Flip,’ said Janey staring intently at me. ‘Luke was about to force himself on you. And who knows what he might have done afterwards. We might never have seen you again. So I think, in that field, it was you or him. End of. The Shadow Man appearing just meant it went in your favour.’
‘But he could be there, alive. He could be somewhere and someone could still help him.’
‘Haven’t you heard what I’ve just said? That boy could’ve raped and killed you. And you’re thinking of setting up some kind of search party? You reap what you sow.’
‘But he’s only a young lad. What if he could change, what if he’s messed up, what if he just needs help?’
‘Wasn’t him that needed help earlier today, it was you.’ Janey said definitively. ‘And let’s be honest, even if you did phone the police, and say ‘oh by the way, I was being attacked by somebody, and guess what came to my rescue. Think the cops are really going to take that seriously?’
‘So we just leave him to die, or whatever?’
‘Janey’s right,’ said Katie. ‘Not your problem, and not your call – there isn’t anything you or we can do.’
‘We can go looking for him.’
‘Oh yeah, ’cos the few of us are gonna stand a chance against that. Just how do you propose to fight it? Hairspray and zit cream?’ Katie put the brakes on the Mystery Machine.
‘There’s no harm in going back out there – just to have a look – it’d be like going to the lake like we normally do.’
‘I’m creeped out,’ said Sally.
‘Flip, this is crazy. If he doesn’t come home and he does turn out to be missing, then you can tell the police that he chased you because there’s been bad feeling, that you rode round the lakes and lost him then came home and haven’t seen him since. That would work and it’s not technically lying either.’ Janey seemed pleased with the story she’d created.
‘So we never go to the lake again? We never let that happen with Luke’s gang, and I’m not gonna let it happen now. I’m going back tomorrow. Anyone else in?’
‘Oh for fuck’s sake, Flip… Yes I’m in.’ Clara shrugged, looking at Sal.
‘Well of course we’re all in, but I still think it’s a bad idea,’ said Katie, speaking on the record for everyone.
Chapter 17 – Then – Harsh Language
WE MET AT Janey’s the next morning and shared the contents of our backpacks. It was like a collection of tools for a bad DIY show – I had a monkey wrench, Katie a crowbar, Sally a hammer and a Stanley knife, and Janey had nothing.
‘What are you gonna fight him with, harsh language?’ asked Katie.
‘I never thought about taking a weapon.’ Janey looked between us, then seemed to have an epiphany and disappeared into the garage. We could hear muffled sounds of clanking metal, as if tools were being moved around so she could choose one in particular. She re-emerged a few minutes later with a big smile on her face.
‘All sorted?’ asked Sally.
‘All sorted,’ Janey replied enigmatically.
‘Very mysterious,’ Sally smiled as she shouldered her pack and picked up her bike.
Like a sheriff and his posse, we saddled up and rode out in search of bad guys. ‘We need a plan,’ said Janey as she snaked along Lake Road.
‘I think we should retrace Flip’s steps from yesterday,’ said Katie. ‘We should go out by the first lake, around the paths and out to the field where Luke caught her.’
‘Yeah, if we come back the same way Flip did as well,’ said Sally, buying into the thought process, ‘we’ll have covered every bit of ground. Let’s hope we find something.’
‘Agreed then,’ said Janey. ‘But that isn’t quite what I meant. I meant we need a plan in case we see the Shadow Man.’
‘My plan,’ Clara offered, ‘is to shit myself and then run like fuck.’
‘We don’t know what this thing is,’ said Sally. ‘It’s certainly not a man, because the man was burnt at the stake two hundred years ago. So, whether it’s a spirit or some pure evil energy or whatever, a few garden tools aren’t gonna touch it. There’s no way to fight it.’
‘So why did you come then if you didn’t think we could do anything?’ I asked.
The Shadow Man Page 14