The Shadow Man

by Mark Brownless

  ‘To be with you guys. And because I’m fed up with watching Why Don’t You? on the telly.’

  ‘We’re gonna have to try and talk to it aren’t we,’ I said. ‘See if it can be reasoned with, to find out what it wants.’

  ‘We don’t know if we can communicate with it – we don’t even know if it’ll speak,’ said Katie.

  ‘We don’t even know that it’ll recognise us in the same sort of plane to be able to communicate,’ said Clara.

  ‘Jesus Christ. I don’t understand a word of this stuff.’ Sally shrugged.

  ‘It did respond when I said thank you, though. It might understand us, or it might understand that we are trying to communicate with it, even if it doesn’t understand or communicate back.’

  ‘It certainly responded to the stupidest thing anyone has ever said to it,’ said Katie.

  ‘But it didn’t piss itself laughing, so maybe it doesn’t understand us,’ added Clara.

  ‘You don’t think this thing could be... alien do you?’ asked Sally.

  ‘Really? Jesus, Sal, we’re not hunting for a spaceship you know. You’re reading too many trashy books,’ said Katie.

  ‘Oh, because that’s such a crazy fucking notion and the idea of a two-hundred-year-old ghost or evil spirit or whatever, is so much more believable. At least if it wasn’t from Earth it might explain how long it lives and maybe resists fire...? Oh fuck – this is going so far away from what I can understand it’s crazy.’

  We turned off the road just before the first lake, going through the tiny gap in the trees at a much more sensible pace than I had yesterday. I half expected to see Luke floating face down in the lake, the Shadow Man doing his ‘spinning around’ dance on the far bank.

  The lake was empty and still. A kingfisher skimmed the top of the water making small ripples, looking for fish beneath the surface. Moorhens and coots floated serenely in the shallows whilst a mallard loudly admonished them as only a big-mouthed duck can, thoroughly spoiling the tranquillity of the scene. Our arrival caused a flurry of avian activity on the near bank, with waterfowl flapping across the surface to put some distance between themselves and the bizarre interlopers. We circled around the lake on the path, not climbing up the banking as I had done, cycling slowly and keeping our wits about us. We were all shit-scared then. Partly because of what we might find – like parts of Luke hanging from the trees or a pile of ashes with his shoes by the side of them or something, and partly because at any moment, going past any tree, we expected it to jump out at us. But that fear gave us an edge, it made us feel alive. I looked at the others and saw a maturity beyond their years, a seriousness – a drive to get to the bottom of this, and to do it together.

  ‘I can’t believe we’re fucking doing this,’ said Clara, succinctly summing up everyone’s feelings.

  ‘There’s nothing here by the lake, let’s go out to the field,’ I said.

  ‘How did you get there?’

  ‘The path up here on the right, Janey.’

  ‘You been to this lake much before then, Flip?’ asked Sal, being the first one to turn onto the narrow, overgrown track.

  ‘Only once I think – we came up here once, didn’t we? Might even have been the first time we came out here, before finding the second lake. When was that, end of the second year, maybe?’

  ‘Yeah I remember, vaguely.’

  ‘I didn’t particularly choose to come this way, I just happened to see the path and I took it out of instinct I suppose. It could’ve been a dead end and I would’ve been in real trouble.’

  We rode at a much more sedate pace than on my last visit. It seemed incredible that I’d managed to stay on my bike when I was going so quickly – no wonder I was so covered in scratches and bruises, regardless of the fight I’d had with Luke. I was continually scanning the trees and bushes and clearings and streams beyond for anything; movement, a shadow or figure, wildlife scattering, anything that might lead us somewhere. We were forced to snake along in single file, up and over the bridge across the stream and back down the other side until we eventually emerged onto the farm road. It was here that I stopped.

  ‘Everything alright, Flip?’ asked Katie, sounding concerned.

  How could I answer that? How could I say, no I don’t think anything’ll be alright ever again. I feel like my guts are being wrenched out of me and that any moment my legs are going to go. How do you say that to your friends when you’re fifteen and full of bravado and balls? ‘Yeah, I’m just a bit… nervous I s’pose. I’m not sure I want to ride my bike along this bit, you know, in case he’s here. Or it’s here. Or both.’

  ‘Okay,’ Katie replied in her best shop-steward tone, and turned to the others. ‘Everybody off.’

  We pushed our bikes along the track, past the first few gateways that I remembered noticing the previous day, and spied the more overgrown opening to ‘my’ field.

  ‘There, just up ahead,’ I nodded. We leant our bikes on the open gate and walked through into the waist high wheat. The edge of the field had only been sporadically seeded, which is why I hadn’t noticed the crop from the track yesterday, at least not until it was too late. After the first few steps, we were surrounded by a sea of undulating wheat heads, flowing in the breeze, moving and sounding like waves. The wind whispering unintelligible secrets as it raced around and between us. I trailed both hands through the crop, feeling the hard, dry husks scratching at my skin, grounding this surreal experience to a degree. I turned to my left and just five yards away was the place where all the straw had been flattened down, the size of two bathtubs side-by-side. It was where Luke and I originally fought. I waded through the field and into the flattened area, looking for anything that might have been left behind. The others stood around the perimeter. A further five yards or so on again was another impression, where Luke and the Shadow Man had come to rest, leaving a strange pattern of broken and partially flattened straw where they’d tumbled over and over. But there was nothing else of note in the field.

  ‘Nothing here then,’ said Sal.

  ‘I can’t see any blood,’ said Katie.

  ‘Oh fuck off,’ said Clara. ‘This is weird and arse-puckering enough as it is without making like you’re on some cop show, that there’s ‘no blood.’’

  ‘What did we expect though, really? A blood trail saying ‘follow me’? Torn bits of clothing, leading us from this field to that and to God knows where? You only get clues like that in Scooby Doo,’ Janey reasoned.

  ‘You are Velma, though,’ said Clara.

  ‘What now?’ Janey asked me.

  ‘I dunno. Let’s go to the lake.’

  We retraced my route along the farm track to Lake Road. We looked in the hedgerows and the ditches for any evidence of what I’d described, in case anything had been thrown, discarded or left by accident. Just as Janey surmised, however, there were no clues to be found.

  The short bike ride and walk up to our lake was as familiar as it was welcome. Never had two journeys seemed so different. Yet it felt strange. As if our special place had become tainted by the events of yesterday. It should feel like coming home, but it didn’t. Like years later when coming home for the first time after going to university – as though home wasn’t home anymore, like it had moved on. It didn’t have the same sense of comfort for me anymore, it felt colder and I was a stranger. We sat in silence on our bank, staring into the middle distance, like old men in the pub. Janey lay on her back staring at the sky, watching the vapour trails of aeroplanes flying high above. The wildfowl on our lake knew us well. We’d fed them scraps of our packed lunches all summer and they’d got quite tame in the process. We recognised some from previous years – there was a Mandarin duck with very specific red and blue colouring – but others could’ve been one-off visitors that got lucky with the free buffet.

  ‘Fuck! Something just touched me!’ Janey sprang up, shaking her head, her hands running wildly through her hair like she was trying to dislodge some ants. ‘I felt something touch
me, on my head. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. It was him, him, it must’ve been him! He’s in the bushes.’ Janey pointed a finger into the foliage behind where she’d been laying as she continued to dance around.

  ‘Calm down, Janey, I’m sure there’s an explanation – maybe it was an insect, or a branch pressing against you,’ I reasoned.

  ‘It was the flat of someone’s hand, like if they were going to pat you on the head. I think he was going to grab my hair and pull me in, drag me off into the undergrowth. Fuck, I’m itching all over, my skin’s crawling.’

  I peered through the leaves into the shaded clearing, seeing no one. I pushed through the branches, adding more scratches to the list.

  ‘Hey, don’t go in there. Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?’

  ‘Look, I’m not sure what it was, Janey, but we’re all here together, and if it was who you think it was, let’s go take a look, eh?’

  ‘Hang on, Flip, I’m coming too.’ Katie tucked her baggy t-shirt into her shorts as she came towards the tree-line, and I watched her from the other side. She emerged through the branches into the gloom, we looked at each other and the bravado we’d had in front of Janey had evaporated. Katie’s eyes were out on stalks, so I knew she was as scared as me. The temperature was much lower than in the sun, and our fear made us colder again. Shadows from the undergrowth and fallen trees were long and eerie. As far as we were concerned, each one could’ve contained something terrifying. We exchanged glances and slowly made our way across the small wooded area, thinking of how safe it had felt just weeks before when Luke and his gang had come to look for us. I stumbled, my foot catching against something soft and I almost tripped over. I looked down and it was a pile of leaves in front of a small tree trunk. Sighing with relief I resumed my walk across to the far side, moving sideways like a crab in a crouched position, as if this would prevent the enemy from noticing me if they were watching. We combed back and forth across the woods and found nothing. We even went out and up onto the upper path that lead to the top lake, but didn’t go as far as that.

  Janey was disappointed on our return. ‘I didn’t make it up – I know what I felt.’

  ‘You couldn’t have drifted off to sleep and –’

  ‘Dreamt it? Really? Something touched me on the top of my head. It was a hand, but like long fingered, and… cold. Like it was dead or something. There’s only one thing it could’ve been.’

  ‘Fair enough, Janes, but we’ve got nothing for you.’ For a second Janey looked like she might explode at the slightest suggestion that the lack of proof might mean something else entirely, but she relented.

  ‘Thanks for going though, both of you. It was a stupid thing to do!’

  ‘Let’s go home,’ Clara echoed the sentiment that everyone was feeling. The lake might yet feel like our special place again, but it didn’t now, and hanging around was the last thing anyone wanted to do.

  As we cycled away, I thought about Luke Lewis, the would-be rapist who’d had the biggest surprise of all yesterday. I pictured him as the attractive young man that he was, could smell his deodorant and his toothpaste, and tried to block out the picture of his hate-filled face pressed right up against mine as he pinned me down. We’d come down here today to try and find him, or find some clues as to what might have happened to him. And we were returning empty handed.

  The Shadow Man had him now.

  Chapter 18 – Then – The Big Fire

  ‘WHAT TIME WILL you be back, Mum?’ I asked, a corn on the cob obscuring my mouth and covering my face in butter.

  ‘Isn’t it supposed to be the grown-up asking the teenager that and not the other way around?’ My mum had a smile that could light up a town. She’d tied a scarf over her newly permed hair. She looked nice.

  ‘Sor-ry!’ I tried to sound surly and failed miserably. ‘Nah, was just curious if it was going to be a late one.’

  ‘Blimey, Philippa, it’s a meeting about the school and about how to keep people safe after the disappearances this summer.’

  ‘What disappearances?’

  ‘Pardon? Don’t you know?’

  ‘No. Well, Janey did mention something about kids being reported missing after not getting home when they should’ve.’

  ‘Children have gone missing, Philippa. I’m amazed you haven’t heard anything, the amount of riding around you do.’

  Yeah and I know one of them. ‘We don’t really talk to anyone, though – although it makes a bit more sense as we’ve had some quite funny looks from folks in the last week or so.’

  ‘It’s only because there’s such a good number of you that I don’t worry. I don’t want you riding round on your own, and certainly don’t want you out at that lake by yourself. Understand?’

  ‘Yes mum.’ Is it okay that I wasn’t there by myself but I was with a psycho from my year trying to rape me, and a two hundred-year-old dead child killer?

  There was a knock on the door, and Mum answered it to Janey’s mum – smoking a cigarette as usual, something that my mum strongly disapproved of. She’d only agreed to go in the Pullmans’ car because it was just ‘up the road’. Any further would’ve made Mum choke.

  ‘Ready, Eveline?’ Janey’s mum asked.

  ‘Yes, Cynthia.’ Mum grabbed a light jacket from the rack. ‘Be good you, Dad’ll be home soon.’

  ‘Thanks Mum. Have a good time.’

  Dad was watching Tales of the Unexpected having got back from work later than usual. In a dry summer, all the water company’s engineers were under pressure to ensure that leaks were kept to a minimum, but they all knew they were fighting a losing battle. He wasn’t in a foul mood, but you could tell he was tired and was struggling to make small-talk. It was usually better in those situations to leave him alone, and thankfully Ray was out with Lisa, so he wouldn’t wind Dad up. A fire engine raced by on the main road, sirens blazing, immediately followed by another and another. Further away across the village came the sound of more sirens, which we could hear when Dad switched off the telly. We ran outside, down to the front gate and looked down the street toward the village. At the foot of the hill, about a mile away, was a huge plume of thick smoke, illuminated from below by the orange and white street lights.

  ‘Get in the car,’ Dad said quietly. He was already reversing out of the driveway as I lifted my feet in and started to close the door, and in a second we were screeching down the road. Dad threw the car hard to the right over the mini-roundabout and along Park Terrace – the rows of posh new semi-detached houses on one side and older bungalows opposite. Opposite the old school dad span the wheel and the car’s rear-end was thrown out as he turned to the left, his hand lifting heavily on the brake to force the car round, tyres squealing their protest – I’d never seen him drive like that. Quickly into gear again and we roared up the hill to the new school and village hall. We didn’t get very far. Another two hundred yards and there was a barrier across the road and a policeman who stopped us.

  ‘You can’t go any further sir,’ said the copper after we’d climbed out of the car.

  ‘My wife’s in there.’ Dad pleaded. Looking beyond the cordon, the growing crowd of gawking onlookers, the police and the firemen putting on breathing apparatus, I looked at the yellow flames rising high into the air, sparks and embers rising higher still and being enveloped by the billowing clouds of smoke.

  ‘Then she’s in good hands – we’ll have her out in a jiffy.’ The policeman turned to someone else who was trying to walk nearer to the school buildings. Suddenly I found my upper arm being gripped so hard I thought it might break, and Dad pushed me sideways. We went straight into the adjacent garden and deep into the shrub-border where he guided me over the low wall into next door. We ran across the lawn commando style, crouching low and concealed in shadows, then once again climbed over the wall, repeating the same manoeuvre over their wall and continuing into each subsequent garden. The image of Burt Lancaster in The Swimmer came to mind. Here we were garden-hopping to rescue Mum. We cleared the f
inal wall bordering the school lane and immediately ran through the gates and round to the side of the pre-fab classrooms. To our right, two ambulances, three fire engines, an emergency tender and two police cars were blocking the whole street. We rounded the main school building, both of us sprinting flat out, and it occurred to me that I’d never seen Dad running. We emerged onto the main playground, a connecting gate the only thing keeping us from the village hall, but here we ground to a halt. The building was engulfed in flames, rising up from the windows, racing up the wooden fascias to the eaves and up above the roof, reaching some thirty feet into the air.

  The old village hall hadn’t been replaced like the school but been modernised to, over time, 1985 standards. The old wooden sash windows hadn’t been changed, and there was no double glazing throughout the draughty, musty building. The main hall was where we’d done Christmas concerts as kids and they still held public events in there – the kind that usually had a break mid-way through to sell you tea and biscuits in that traditional ‘church hall’ ribbed avocado china teacup and saucer. Behind the hall, where that night’s meeting had been held, was the small library and records room where Mum worked, along with a couple of offices. Despite all the old wood and church tradition, the back offices were more modern with suspended ceilings and strip-lighting. To comply with fire regulations, they’d had to turn a couple of doors into fire exits, but it came out later that there was so much crap stored in the building, that they were treated more like additional cupboards and had blocked everyone’s escape.

  The smoke clouds above were bright orange, lit up by the flames below. Even from fifty yards away, the heat was incredible. A criss-cross of hoses overlapped in the car park of the hall and a dozen or more firemen were either spraying water on the flames or escorting people from the building.

  Thank God, some people are alive.

  ‘Stay close, and never let go of this,’ Dad said, holding up our clasped hands. It was one of the most affectionate things he ever said to me and different to the often distant and aloof parent I knew. Perhaps he just didn’t know how to communicate when not in work. Or perhaps he just didn’t really understand life outside. He worked too much.