A Man of Shadows

by Jeff Noon

  Nyquist walked on. His torch illuminated some items of clothing stuck on a wooden cross in a garden, making a crude effigy. It was a sign of more recent activity, perhaps of one of the weird religious cults that venerated the edges of Dusk as their sacred ground. The mist, which had been a dirty grey to start with, now took on a more crepuscular hue, silvery, and seemingly lit from within; tendrils of it wrapped around Nyquist as he walked along. The temperature dropped a few degrees. He turned a corner and there it was, the boundary of Dusk itself. A town called Fade Away.

  In this city Dusk was a place, not a time: a wall of fog that the light of Dayzone faded into. A place of ghosts, of dead roads, unknown lives. Nyquist had been to most areas of the city, following leads on cases both in daylight and dark, but these twilit areas were personal no-go zones for him. He was fearful. Strange oblations had been found along these borders – at first the carefully prepared corpses of pets and other animals; later, tales of human beings, barely alive, their bodies staked out on the ground, left here to appease whatever gods or demons might rule these parts. Other victims had not been so lucky. Or so the stories told. The truth was difficult to find, but the reasons given for these ceremonies came down to one simple statement, often repeated: The dusk will take its share of human life. Nyquist shivered. The twilight beckoned. Directly ahead the moon was seen, hanging above the mist. Somebody or something was waiting for him out there, in the shrouded landscape, he was certain of this. He could sense it as he moved forward cautiously, the torch in his hand. He followed a railway track for a short distance and then cut to the left, over to where several bizarre metal objects were planted in the ground like pagan sculptures. Close up, these devices revealed themselves as the remains of a long abandoned weather station: thermometer, barometer, anemometer, rain gauge, sunlight recorder and the like. The torchlight sparkled on bits of broken mirror or strings of beads tied around the instruments. Again, evidence of a more recent human interference. A crow was perched on the arm of one device. It made a dreadful cawing sound as Nyquist approached. There was another noise, metal scraping against metal. Nyquist spun round, trying to locate the source. He glimpsed a figure dressed entirely in white. Even the face was masked. This person, male or female, slipped through the shadows and then disappeared. A door banged shut.

  “Eleanor? Are you there? Eleanor!”

  The crow screeched again. The weather instruments creaked in the gloom. Nyquist pulled the map from his pocket and consulted it with the torch. He felt certain that the exact location was not far away now, if only he could orientate himself. The mist was affecting his vision. He walked on, trusting his instincts, and the very next turning in the road revealed a row of terraced houses, pitch black against the silvery mist. All looked to be empty of life. A few more abandoned cars were seen.

  The last time he had been this close to the fogline was as a child of eight, when his poor addled father had dragged him along on various “scientific missions”, as they were called. The city was not quite as brightly lit as it was nowadays, and the dusk didn’t extend quite so far into daylight, but still the young Nyquist stood there scared out of his wits as his father set the recording device going. The large brass horn facing the mist, the sharp needle on its end scratching a spiral groove into a cylinder of wax, following and mapping the vibrations of sound. The boy’s job was to keep the campfire next to the equipment going, so the wax would remain soft enough. By the light of the flames he watched the cylinder revolve. The needle almost jumped from the wax as a screech owl called out. The boy tried to hide his fright as his father spoke with wonder in his voice of Ghost Vapour Time, where the dead walk to strange rhythms, and the hours can never be counted. A faraway look came to his eyes as the moon shone through the fogbanks. He talked of his wife, Nyquist’s mother, waiting for them in the fog. “She’s out there, son.” A whisper. “She’ll speak to us one day, just you wait.” Johnny could never reply. He lived in fear of something or someone coming out of the mist towards him. And he knew it would not be his mother. Rather, it would be some monster or a maddened beast, or a witch. It would drag him screaming to his doom.

  And a few months later his father had walked alone into the grey zone, the fog of dusk pulling at his body. He’d never been seen or heard of again. “She’s calling to me from the shadows.” A father’s final words to his son.

  Nyquist heard a distant sound. The mist was cold against his face, like a mask pulled too tight. He shivered fiercely. He tried to subdue the memories of his childhood, to stay on track. Something was happening. The sound was getting louder, he was sure of it. Which direction was it coming from? He could not tell. The noise grew louder still. It sounded like some wounded beast crying out in the lost realms. His body could not move, not at all. The torch fell from his grip. And then he saw it, coming in fast from the heavy fogbanks of Dusk, its yellow eyes flashing in the mist and the sound screaming at him as it burst forth blazing with heat and colour and a shrieking rush of wind.

  The express train thundered past Nyquist, just a few feet away, dense black smoke billowing from its funnel, the light from its windows pulsing across his fear-stricken face, its banshee whistle shrieking as it crossed the borderline, and then disappeared as fast as it came, heading for the lights of Dayzone. The sound of it was still present for a few moments, until that too faded. Silence. And barely heard: the Hiss. And there, deep within the mist itself, over the border of Dusk, a dark shape moved. He could not tell if it was human or animal but it was definitely alive, and standing on two legs, upright. For a moment it stood there, perfectly still, as though watching him. And then the mist covered it again. Nyquist was cold with sweat. His heart juddered. It took a good while to get himself steadied. Finally he bent down to retrieve the torch and then turned again toward the row of houses, concentrating on the task ahead to restore his nerves.

  He saw the street sign: Angelcroft Lane.

  This was it. A light glowed ahead, pale and flickering: the only visible illumination apart from the moon. The glow was coming from a window, the lower window of a house on the street. Nyquist moved towards it. The gate hung loose from its frame and he stepped through the gap into the garden. Immediately he was aware of the smell, the rank stench of rotting vegetation. He felt his stomach churn. The whole ground beneath his feet was wet and mulchy with fallen leaves and other dead or dying plant life. A stunted elm tree leaned its bare branches over the fence. Only a single type of flower had managed to find a hold in the muddy soil; its petals had a luminous quality as though designed by nature for these regions. Nyquist took another step and saw a torch lying in the weeds, its beam faintly stretching away into the grey air. A number of moths flitted back and forth in what little light it provided. Now he knew: someone else had been here recently, searching as he was.

  There were many legends told of the dusklands, and Nyquist knew most of them by heart: how people were lost to this fog and never again found; that once breathed in, the mist infected the lungs, indeed the entire body, with a pestilence; that the dusk held secrets beyond what should really be known, a place of ghosts, of wandering spirits.

  Stories. Just stories. He had to believe that. Despite everything he knew, despite his father’s words, his father’s disappearance.

  The house beckoned. The light yellowed the window, and he saw that a wire led down from the nearest telephone pole to enter the house at the partially open casement. Nyquist took a few deep breaths to calm himself for the task. As he did so a noise called out from inside the house, a voice perhaps, a woman’s voice. He couldn’t be sure. Somebody crying in the half-light. The sound of it affected Nyquist deeply. It was a cry of despair. But muffled, drawn out, as though a cloth had been placed over a mouth as it spoke. The front door creaked on its hinges in answer, banging against the frame.

  Nyquist tried to steady himself.

  The dead tree whispered its branches together in the shadows.

  He walked over towards the house.

 
A Room on the Edge of Twilight

  A cold silence settled as soon as Nyquist entered the hallway. Nothing moved within except for a few lines of mist crawling along the walls like ribbons of lace. The woman’s voice could no longer be heard. The torch beam was considerably weaker now, the near presence of dusk stealing its power. The glow he had seen from the outside came from a room to the side where a standard lamp was placed in the centre of an otherwise bare space. The naked bulb burned brightly for a second and then dimmed once more, setting itself into a slow irregular pattern like the work of a drowsy Morse code operator. Nyquist entered the room. A little camping stove stood on a patch of mildewed carpet with some cups and a few tins of food set out around it. The only other object in the room was a telephone, the apparatus taken apart, the workings exposed. Thin strands of mist coiled snakelike around the telephone’s flex as it stretched upwards towards the half-opened casement window. It reminded him of stories he’d read in the Beacon Fire of people who lived on the edge of Dusk making their own gadgets and devices: a whole other way of doing things, rather as certain drug addicts like to take apart and reassemble household appliances. Obviously, the man had set up some kind of home here.

  Nyquist moved on along a short corridor. The whole place stank of damp, of things long abandoned. A dark green fungus was growing on the far wall. He stood near the foot of the stairs. From here he could see the kitchen. The views through both the kitchen window and the glass panelling of the back door were entirely obscured by fog. He was hypnotised by the sight of this strange vapour, which seemed to be the very colour of moonlight and was constantly shifting into newly formed shapes, while darker patches weaved about in their own patterns. The backdoor was partway open, allowing curls of mist to squeeze through. He turned to look up the staircase. Once again he seemed to hear the woman’s cry, coming from the floor above. He dared to call out, “Who’s there? Who is it?” There was no reply. Only echo. He climbed the stairs up to a landing. The voice was clear now, very low, but definitely that of a woman in anguish. Another sound joined it, that of the cuckoo clock he had heard over the telephone. He saw this object a few feet away, attached to the wall. It called to him once again, softly, eerily, the tiny yellow bird appearing from its hideaway. Nyquist walked up to it. The woman’s voice had faded once more; he could imagine it seeping back into the patches of damp on the walls. After a pause the clock struck another three times. The wooden hands on the dial were in agreement with the cuckoo bird. It was still five o’clock, the same as it was during the telephone call. Time had not yet moved on here, in this household.

  Nyquist looked at his wristwatch. The dial was misted over.

  And then he heard Eleanor’s voice clearly.

  It was her. He was sure of it.

  He followed the sound down the corridor and peered through an open doorway into a large bedroom at the rear of the house. The window here was fully ajar and the fog and the moonlight lingered at the opening. It gave an eerie silver glow to the scene.

  Eleanor was standing to one side, perfectly still, with her back to him.

  Another person, a man, sat upright on an ill-kempt single bed in the corner of the room nearest the window. His face was lost in the shadows. Eleanor was saying, “I don’t believe you.” Her voice was quiet. All the emotion had drained from the words. The man offered no reply, but he shifted slightly on the bed and Nyquist saw a glint of metal in the fog. The man was holding a knife. Its long thin blade shone dully as though touched by the moon.

  Nyquist felt that he was watching a scene from a theatre play, with himself as the sole audience member. He had not yet been noticed.

  He could not move, not a single step.

  Time waited, for whatever the next moment might bring.

  Eleanor breathed in deeply. Her mood shifted as her body seemed to weaken. “Please,” she said. “Tell me it isn’t true. Tell me!”

  The man on the bed raised himself a little in response, and his face was revealed. It was the man seen in the photograph Nyquist had found in Eleanor’s bag. But in that image, taken at a much earlier date, he had been young, in his early twenties; whereas the man that now confronted Eleanor was easily into his late thirties. The hair was still long, past shoulder length, but greying now with a slight recede at the temples. And the lined, pallid face was stricken, fear trapped in the features. He pleaded with her, his voice rising. “You have to understand, I acted out of love. Nothing more. Yet it bears too much cost, too much pain and loss.” He moved the knife forward. It didn’t seem a threatening gesture, yet the blade was pointed towards her. He spoke with yearning. “Please… Eleanor… You have to stay away from me, stay away from Dusk.”

  Nyquist raised his torch so that the beam fell directly on the man’s face. The eyes did not flicker in the light, nor did they shift their focus from Eleanor. The girl herself made no attempt to look towards the torch beam. Because of this, Nyquist felt he was hardly present at the scene. He was a silent, seemingly invisible watcher.

  The mist was now entering the room through the window. It wreathed around Eleanor’s body. Nyquist could feel his heart pounding. Damp heat prickled his skin. Droplets of sweat formed on his brow like dew, wetting his eyes. The fog billowed and thickened in the room, summoned here by some unknown atmospheric or magical process. It formed a moon-silvered curtain through which he could only stare in helpless wonder. Here and there darker elements took on a more deliberate form, creating shapes that suggested other shapes, with these in turn bringing their own suggestions. One of them seemed almost human, before it too dissolved into another pattern. Eleanor and the man on the bed remained in their fixed positions. The knife glinted. Nyquist tried to break free of the spell, but it was no good, the fog held him in its power. And he thought instantly and briefly of his own father standing on the dusk’s edge, staring ahead with eyes that were already lost to daylight, and then stepping forward to meet whatever waited for him there.

  The cuckoo clock called again from the corridor. Again: five times. The noise brought Nyquist to his senses, causing him to concentrate on the strange scene before him. The three people in the room stood as they had before: Eleanor, the man on the bed, Nyquist himself. Tendrils of mist were now reaching out for him like so many skeletal human arms seeking comfort or entreaty. They caressed him. He felt one of them curling itself around his wrist. He was possessed. He took a single step into the room. A moth batted at his face, its yellow wings fluttering. He raised his hand to shoo it away and suddenly felt faint. His vision blurred. The fog filled the room entirely. He could hardly see in front of his eyes. A noise lit his skull with a fierce white radiance; there was no other way to describe it. He was held in a trance. And then darkness. His eyes closed.

  One moment passing. Another moment…

  Eleanor was screaming.

  Nyquist almost stumbled as though suddenly released from sleep.

  He was now standing close to the bed, Eleanor next to him.

  He couldn’t remember moving.

  The fog had cleared a little.

  Nyquist stared ahead at the terrible sight before him.

  The man on the bed had fallen back, his body collapsing against the pillow. Blood gurgled from the wound that had opened in the side of his neck. His poor eyes blinked as he reached out vainly toward the girl. “Eleanor, my child,” he whispered. Again: “Eleanor, you have to get away, please, leave the city. They’re looking for you!”

  Nyquist realised with a shock that she was now holding the knife, the blade stained with red.

  The man cried out: “Eleanor, run! Run! Get away!”

  Nyquist’s thoughts misted over. He could not make sense of the time, or the moments that had led to this. Only images. The knife in her hands, the blood, the wound in the man’s neck. His mind reeled. And then the cuckoo clock chimed again, clearly this time, giving the signal for a quarter past the hour. Time rushed back into the room like breath into a drowning person’s body after they’ve been dragged
from the ocean.

  Fifteen minutes past five.

  Nyquist moved quickly, putting his hands on the man’s wound, pressing down tightly to stop the blood from flowing. It was no good.

  Eleanor came to his side. The dying man responded to her presence as to a last chance at life, a branch to hold onto before the final fall began. He called her name again softly: Eleanor. And then he fell, he fell sheer away in an instant.

  The world had left his eyes.

  Eleanor remained where she was. “Has he gone?” Her voice was hushed, almost in wonder. Her dress was red-spattered, and torn. She was still holding the knife.

  He nodded. “He’s dead. Did you… did you see what happened?”

  She looked confused for a moment and then answered, “I think he killed himself.”

  Nyquist was suddenly fearful of what she might do, not to him, but to herself, that she might turn the knife on her own flesh. Her eyes stared ahead, almost sightless, and he remembered the jagged light bulb she had pressed against her chest, drawing blood. One bad thought might tip her over. He reached out and gently pulled the knife from her hold. He let it fall onto the bed. And by this simple act Eleanor’s body was relieved of its power. She surrendered and stated simply, “This man. He was my father. My real father.” Her eyes closed at the utterance. Nyquist took hold of her, held her back from whatever it was she planned to do. But she pushed him away. For a moment he thought she was going to break down, to scream in pain and grief. It never came. Instead they stood apart, far apart, and she spoke in a voice so quiet he could hardly hear the words.

  “This is my fault. It’s all my fault.”

  She spoke not to him, not to herself, but to the man lying motionless on the bed.

  There was no answer beyond the wound, the blood.