Shadows Fall

by Simon R. Green

  As she walked out of the door she grew suddenly in size, shooting up to adult height with dizzying speed. She put out a hand to steady herself against the passage wall, finding a kind of comfort in its firm, unchanging nature. The change was quickly over, and she breathed deeply as the rush of new blood through new flesh briefly intoxicated her. She was eighteen years old again, back from relatives to live with her mother in her old house. There was something else in the house, but she didn’t know what, then. She was tall, five foot ten and proud of it, with long blonde hair hanging limply round a square, pleasant face. She wasn’t pretty and never would be, but she could have been good-looking if it wasn’t for her eyes. They were a pale, washed-out blue, very cold and always wary. The eyes of someone who thought a lot but said little. She walked down the passage, opened the next door, and entered the Summer room.

  Bright sunshine blazed from a sky so blue it was almost painful to look at. The sunlight splashed across the lawn below like liquid honey, and birds soared on the brilliant sky like drifting specks. Polly looked out into the world of Summer, and it was everything she ever dreamed of, but the house (or something in it) wouldn’t let her go. She turned away from the window. She couldn’t bear to look at the Summer for long. It brought back memories of the last time she’d known anything like happiness. When she’d come back to the house, not knowing what was waiting. She turned her back on Summer and walked out of the room.

  Out in the passage, her shoulders slumped slightly as four years passed in an instant, and she was twenty-two again. Her eyes were lost and confused, and her hair had been cropped institutionally short. They did that at the hospital, the officially bright and cheerful place they took her to after she had her breakdown. She didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything then, except getting away from the house. She’d lived there alone after her mother died, and it was too much for her. After they told her she was cured, she went back to the house anyway, because there was nowhere else to go. She belonged there. She pulled back her shoulders, walked into the room opposite, and looked out of the window into Autumn.

  Tatters of gold and bronze still clung to the oak tree, but most of the leaves were gone, and the branches stood revealed like bones. She liked the Autumn best. It was restful. It demanded less of her. This was the way it had looked when she’d needed the world not to bother her with its presence. At the same time, the passing nature of Autumn had given her confidence that the world could change, without her having to be strong. She stared out into the Autumn and then looked reluctantly away. She never stayed long, for fear it might grow stale and lose its comfort. She walked out of the room and into the passage, and thirteen years fell upon her, bringing her back to her real age, and there was only one window left.

  She walked back up the passage and into the next room, empty as all the others were, and looked out of the window into Winter. It was cold and sharp, under a dark and threatening sky. Frost had patterned the lawn, and glistened on the sidewalk. She liked this scene the least, because this was now, the present, and the world went on without her, with no care for her needs. Winter became Spring became Summer became Autumn, on and on, world without end. She could walk downstairs and out of the house into Winter any time she chose. Except she couldn’t. The house (and what was in it) wouldn’t let her. She shopped by phone and paid by mail and never went outside.

  Polly Cousins, thirty-five years old, looking ten years older. Painfully thin, almost gaunt, carrying a burden too heavy to put down. Not at all what the eight-year-old had expected to grow up to be.

  Movement caught her eye, and she looked with mild surprise at a man walking up the street towards the house. She thought at first he must be lost. No one came this way unless they had to. There was nothing to see but the two houses, and anyone who knew about them knew better than to risk disturbing them. But the man kept coming, not hurrying, but showing no sign of fear or awe. He looked pleasant enough, even handsome in a dark and brooding way. He finally stopped outside the house opposite, and looked at it for a long time. The Hart house.

  Polly felt a brief stab of regret that he hadn’t come to see her after all, and then frowned as she realized the man’s face was vaguely familiar. She scowled at his turned back, trying to grasp the elusive thought, but it evaded her, as so many of her thoughts did. She let it go. It would come back to her if it was important. The man suddenly strode forward, mounted the steps, and unlocked the front door. Polly blinked, taken aback. No one had been in the Hart house for twenty-five years, to her knowledge. Curiosity tugged at her like an unfamiliar friend, and she turned and left the Winter room. She strode down the passage towards the stairs, not letting herself hurry. It meant she had to pass the last room, the one with no window, but the door was securely shut and she passed it by with her head held high. She could hear something breathing, harsh and slow, but she didn’t look into the room. There was nothing in there. Nothing at all. She listened to it breathing all the way down the stairs.

  Downstairs, all the windows showed the same scene and the same Season. The ground floor showed the world as it was, and nothing more. Polly lived on the ground floor, and had made one of the rooms over into a bedroom. She spent as little time as possible upstairs. It held too many memories. But sometimes it called her, and then she had to go up, whether she wanted to or not.

  She went to the front window and stared out at the Hart house opposite. As she did, the strange man looked out of the window opposite, and she saw his face again. She was sure she knew it from somewhere. Or somewhen. Her breathing quickened. Perhaps he was part of her past, from the years that were lost to her. From the time she’d chosen not to remember. The man turned away from the window and disappeared back into the house, but his face remained, dancing almost tauntingly before her mind’s eye. She’d seen it before, when she was very young. It was the face of Jonathon Hart, who used to live with his family in the house opposite, when she was eight years old.

  —

  Do places dream of people till they return?

  James Hart stood in the hall of the house he’d grown up in, and didn’t recognize it at all. He felt disappointed and let down, even though he’d told himself not to expect too much too soon. As far as his memories were concerned he’d never been in this house before, but he hoped actually being here might stir up something. Unless what had happened here had been so awful that some part of him was determined not to remember. He still didn’t know why his family had left in such a hurry. From what Old Father Time had said, the prophecy had been disturbing enough to throw a scare into anyone, but what had made his parents decide to just leave everything and run? Had someone threatened them; someone convinced that the Harts were a threat to the Forever Door and Shadows Fall itself? Or had his parents believed that, and left the town in order to protect it? He shrugged mentally, and moved over to try the first door on his left. It opened easily, without even a creak.

  The room was bright and airy with pleasant, unremarkable furniture and rather bland-looking prints on the walls. A clock ticked slowly, steadily, on a cluttered mantelpiece. Hart frowned. He’d never liked slow-ticking clocks. He’d always thought that was because the dentist he’d been taken to had a slow-ticking clock in his waiting room, but perhaps that had just been the echo of an earlier fear… The room looked peaceful and undisturbed, as though the occupiers had stepped out just a little while before, and might be back at any moment. The thought disturbed him vaguely, and he looked over his shoulder, half expecting someone, some ghost, to be there watching him. There was no one there. He left the room and closed the door carefully behind him.

  He made his way through the house, room by room, and none of it looked in the least familiar. Everywhere looked neat and tidy, as though a cleaning lady had just been through. And yet according to Old Father Time, no one had been in the Hart house since his family left it, though Time had been puzzlingly vague as to why that should be. There wasn’t even any dust… nothing to suggest that anything had changed
here in twenty-five years. He stood at the top of the stairs, and wondered what to do next. He’d looked in every room, picked things up and put them down, and still not a trace of memory had come back to him. It might have been a stranger’s house for all it did for him. But he had spent the first ten years of his life here; he must have left some mark somewhere. He stood scowling for a long moment, tapping his fist angrily against his hip. There was nowhere else to look… and then a sudden inspiration hit him, and he looked up to see the attic trapdoor in the ceiling right above him.

  It didn’t take him long to figure out how to open it and pull down the folding ladder, and he scrambled quickly up into the attic. It was dark and cramped and smelled decidedly musty, but something in the place called to him. He could feel it. He reached out and turned on the single bare light bulb, and it was only after he’d done it that he realized he’d known where the light switch was without having to look for it. He took his time looking around him. The narrow space under the eaves was filled with old packing crates and dozens of paper parcels tied up with string. He bent over the nearest crate and pulled away the single layer of cloth that protected what lay beneath. It turned out to be more papers, bundled together and packed into paper bags with dates on. Hart pulled out a handful of papers and riffled quickly through them. Tax returns, financial records, hoarded receipts. Hart put them back. They meant nothing to him. He moved over to the next crate and jerked the cloth away. It was full to the brim with toys.

  Hart stayed where he was, half crouching by the crate. All the toys you ever had and lost end up in Shadows Fall. The ones you broke and the ones your mother threw away, the stuffed toy that was loved till it fell apart, and the trike you outgrew. Nothing is ever really lost. It all ends up in Shadows Fall, sooner or later. It’s that kind of place. Hart knelt down beside the crate, not taking his eyes off the toys for a moment, as though afraid they might vanish if he looked away. He reached into the crate and brought out the first thing his fingers found. It was a clockwork Batman figure, square and ugly and functional in garish heavy-duty plastic. He turned the over-sized key in its side, and the flat feet stomped up and down. Hart smiled slowly. He remembered it. He remembered sitting in front of the television, watching the old Batman show, with Adam West and Burt Ward. Same Bat time, same Bat channel. (Don’t sit so close, Jimmy. It’s bad for your eyes.) The memories were short and sharp, like stills taken from a film. He put the figure down on the attic floor and it stomped officiously off, whirring loudly and rocking from side to side. Hart wondered briefly if the Batman himself lived in Shadows Fall, but he thought not. The Batman was still popular. People still believed in him.

  The next thing to come out of the crate was an old hardback Daleks annual. A spin-off from the Doctor Who series, back in the black and white days, when it was still scary. Hart leafed slowly through the book, and as he did memories surfaced in sudden little rushes; of sitting up in bed far too early on Christmas morning, reading his new annual when he should have been sleeping. The stories seemed instantly familiar as he discovered them, but the memories were complete in themselves. They didn’t tell him anything of the boy who’d read them.

  Thunderbirds vehicles. James Bond’s Aston Martin, with the ejector seat. The Batmobile that fired rockets and had a chainsaw concealed in the bonnet. A box full of assorted model soldiers, all of them looking as though they’d led long and active lives. A gun shaped like a jet plane that fired sucker-tipped darts. Farm and zoo animals mixed carelessly together. Model trains, still in their boxes. Aurora monster kits.

  Memories came and went, bringing back vague but strengthening images of a small boy, short for his age, shy and retiring, who played with his toys because there were few children his own age he could play with. And because, even then, there had been something odd about him… Hart sat beside the crate, letting Lego bricks trickle through his fingers like sands in an hourglass. Memories were surfacing slowly, brief and disjointed, giving him a vague feeling of the child he’d once been. It wasn’t a comfortable image. The young James Hart had been cared for and loved, but spent much of his time on his own. He couldn’t remember why, but he had a cold feeling he wouldn’t like the answer when he found it. There had been something strange about his childhood. Something strange about him.

  Something too strange, even for Shadows Fall.

  A sudden shudder went through him, as though something had stirred briefly deep within him. He held his breath, waiting to see if it would return and take a more definite shape, but there was nothing more. He sifted indifferently through the layers of toys, but no other memories surfaced. He looked at the toys scattered around him on the attic floor, and all he could think was that there were collectors in the outside world who’d pay a small fortune for junk like this. Some of the Aurora monster kits weren’t even assembled, still complete in their boxes. He studied the garish art on the box covers, the familiar images of Frankenstein and Dracula and the Wolfman, and smiled suddenly as it occurred to him that the original counterparts might well be at large somewhere in Shadows Fall, living in comfortable retirement. Maybe he could get them to autograph a few boxes…

  He picked up the toys and put them carefully away again. He glanced at the other crates and packages, but felt no inclination to check them. Some inner voice told him they held nothing useful for him. The toys had brought him up to the attic, and he’d got all he was going to get from them. He clambered down the loft ladder, went back up again to switch off the light, descended again, and put the folding ladder back. He walked down the stairs, and then paused at the bottom. He had a strong feeling he wasn’t finished here yet. There was still something waiting for him, something important. He looked around him and the hall looked back, open-faced and innocent. He moved slowly forward, drawn to a mirror hanging on the wall. His own face looked back at him, frowning and puzzled. And then, as he watched, the face changed in subtle ways, and his father was looking out of the mirror at him. His father, looking younger and more intense, and perhaps just a little scared.

  “Hello, Jimmy,” said his father. “I’m sorry I have to rush this, but time isn’t on our side. You understand. I’m leaving this message for you just before we leave, programmed to respond only to your presence. There are so many things I want to say to you. If you’re back here, it means your mother and I are probably dead. I hope we had a good life together, wherever we end up. You’re still a little boy to me, but I suppose you’re a man now. Whatever happens, always remember that your mother and I loved you very much.

  “We’re leaving here because of the prophecy. I hope you’ll never have to come back, and this message will never be activated, but your grandfather, my father, is very insistent that you have the option to come back, if you choose. So, the prophecy; it’s very vague. Basically, it just says that your fate is linked to that of the Forever Door, and that you are destined at some future time to bring Shadows Fall to an end. That will scare a lot of people, and people get violent while they’re frightened. News of the prophecy hasn’t had time to travel far yet, so we’re leaving now, before someone decides to try and stop us. I don’t know what kind of welcome you’ll get if you do choose to return, but whatever happens, your grandfather will still be here to protect you.” Jonathon Hart stopped, glanced back over his shoulder, and then looked back at his son. “Jimmy; we have to go now. Be happy.”

  The face in the mirror was suddenly his own again. He looked pale and shocked. He’d never known his father as a young man; there were no photos or reminders from that period, and now Hart knew why. Tears stung his eyes as he turned away from the mirror. He never got a chance to say goodbye to his father and his mother. They drove off in the car like any other day, and the first he knew anything was wrong was when the police came to tell him they’d both been killed in a car crash. He wouldn’t believe them at first; kept saying his father was too good a driver to have had an accident. He kept on saying that right up until he had to identify the bodies at the morgue. After that
he didn’t say much about anything for a long time.

  “Goodbye, Dad. Goodbye.”

  He sniffed hard, and blinked his eyes rapidly. He didn’t have time for this. It wouldn’t be long before the same people who ran his family out of Shadows Fall would learn of his return, and then all hell would break loose. He had to find out the truth about his family and the prophecy, and that meant looking for his grandfather. His father’s father; the one who’d left him the map and instructions that had brought him back to Shadows Fall. The message in the mirror had seemed to imply that not only was his grandfather still living here, in the town, but he was actually powerful enough in his own right to be able to protect his grandson. Hart frowned. His parents had never talked much about family matters. He’d grown up without grandparents, uncles or aunts, brothers or sisters, and never thought it strange until his schoolfriends pointed it out. He’d asked questions then, but got no answers. His parents simply wouldn’t talk about it. He had all kinds of fantasies after that. He dreamed he was adopted, or kidnapped, or that his father had been witness to a crime and put some big Mob boss behind bars, and had to stay hidden to keep safe. Finally he decided he’d been watching too much television, and let the matter drop. He always supposed that some day his parents would get around to telling him. And then they were gone.

  A thought struck him. If his grandfather was still here, perhaps others of his family were too. Cousins, maybe, remote enough to have been overlooked by his enemies. That word stopped him short. Enemies. People who would hurt or even kill him, because of what he might some day do. He supposed he ought to feel threatened, even scared, but it was all too new, too strange. He couldn’t take it seriously. Just as well, or he’d end up jumping at shadows.