She saw the sideways man twice. A different place each time. He scuttled along the edge of the road, and always disappeared before she reached him.
“Faye, what’s happening? You haven’t been...”
“You worry too much, Dad. You always have. Both of you.”
“We love you.”
“Then leave me alone.”
Her parents tried to coax her from her mania, using increments of support that were dwarfed by their lack of understanding. They saw her desk buried beneath notes and old newspaper clippings, and files with headings like NON-FATAL and DRUNK DRIVERS stacked in teetering piles. They saw the magnified image of Thornbury Road taped to the wall, with coloured push-pins marking accident locations. They saw her too, of course, having derailed from whatever forward-moving track she’d been riding. Their concern was evident.
“What exactly,” her mother sobbed, “are you hoping to find?”
“Connections. Evidence.” Faye shrugged. “Maybe a motive.”
“But it’s a road.”
“It kills people.”
Her many hours of work were not without reward. She learned that the road claimed its first victim in 1877. Clyde Tummond, forty-three years of age, died of massive internal injuries after being first thrown and then trampled by his horse. Before passing away, he recounted how Dolly, normally so stalwart, had been spooked by a man lurking at the edge of the road – one ‘of frightful countenance’. Faye was willing to accept this as a chilling coincidence... and then she uncovered a photograph from 1928. Its subject was a battered Austin Seven lying on its side, with its deceased driver sprawled nearby, covered by a sheet. The caption read, WEEKEND TRAGEDY. Harold Leggatt, 32, was killed Saturday evening after his vehicle overturned on Thornbury Road. The photograph was as grainy as one would expect of the era, but the crooked figure standing in a field to the left of the frame was unmistakable.
She searched, then – and with a frantically beating heart – every photo hitherto discovered, studying the periphery for anything she may have missed. She spent further weeks unearthing more photographs, and found three instances of the sideways man. Two were, admittedly, inconclusive – faceless smudges that could be anyone, if not for that crippled stance. One was definite. From a May 1957 copy of the West Country Voice (she hadn’t found it before because they’d misspelled ‘Thornbury’), the grim wreckage of a Ford Anglia wrapped around a tree, with the sideways man hovering in the foreground. He was staring at the camera, perhaps caught off-guard. Looking into his eyes, Faye again found herself laid bare to him, the strands of her life unravelled for him to paw among like a cat.
“Who are you?”
She arranged the photographs on the floor. From 1928 until the most recent: a screen grab of the mangled Astra news footage. She studied the sideways man in each. Never changing. Never aging.
“What are you?”
Faye sought reason – an explanation so obvious she would flush with embarrassment. Every lucid argument felt desperate, however... that it wasn’t the same man, how could it be? Or maybe it was a hoax; photography as fake as that of the Loch Ness Monster. Having exhausted logic, she was left with hypotheses that could only be described as paranormal. She pondered them, and found they had substance. They took root in her mind and grew.
Countless nights were lost to nightmarish thoughts. She envisioned this man – this creature – scuttling along Thornbury Road in search of victims. A scourge that spanned generations. She wondered if every road in Britain had its own sideways man. The idea was ludicrous, but it felt right. She couldn’t look at a map of the UK without imagining the motorways as arteries, the A- and B-roads as veins, all teeming with infection. A virus in the blood.
“FAYE, SWEETIE, YOU’VE been under a lot of stress lately.”
“Don’t patronise me, Megan. Just tell me what you see.”
Faye had, delicately, taken her findings to her parents, and received the response she expected: a concern so deep it drowned any vestige of open-mindedness. So she called upon her friend, Megan, who deodorised with alum crystals and practised Reiki – an alternative disposition that would, Faye hoped, make her more accepting.
“Car crashes,” Megan said, flipping through the photographs that Faye had handed her. “On Thornbury Road, no less. Oh, Faye, what is this all about?”
They were in Costa. A quiet Tuesday morning, with few of the tables and chairs occupied, and the occasional sound of the coffee machines grinding and steaming in the background. It was the first time Faye had been anywhere other than the library and Thornbury Road in so long, and she felt self-conscious, decidedly unattractive. She wore a too-big sweater and her hair was greasy. It didn’t help that Megan was so pretty, with her swirl of chestnut hair and green eyes, and just a hint of patchouli on her skin.
“Not the crashes,” Faye said. “The man. Look at the man.”
“Which man?”
Faye pointed out the crooked figure in each photograph, from ’28 to ’09.
“And?”
“It’s the same man,” Faye replied.
There was a pause while Megan went through the photographs again, reading the captions, her brow furrowed as she counted the years. She shook her head, set the photos on the table between them, and sipped her rosehip tea.
“Impossible,” she said.
“The camera never lies.”
“It can’t be the same person,” Megan insisted. “Not with these dates. And honestly, Faye, the pictures are so grainy it’s difficult to tell anything for certain. It may not be the same man at all.”
“It is.”
“Then they’re fakes. It’s the only explanation.”
“I need you to be outside the box on this.” Faye sipped her own tea. Twinings Earl Grey. Very normal. “Shouldn’t be hard for you.”
“I’m listening.”
“I’ve heard you talk about auras and energy signatures. You once said that even inanimate objects have residual energy.”
Megan nodded.
“So is it possible for a road to have energy?”
“Yes, of course. Drive down any road where a fatal accident has occurred and it feels... different.”
Faye took another sip of tea. Her hand trembled. “A person’s energy manifests as an aura. A corona of colour around our bodies. But what if a road’s energy – its evil energy – manifests as a physical presence? A demon.” She tapped the photograph from 1957. The sideways man glared at the camera and his eyes were like probes. “Something cold and hateful. Something that kills.”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“Outside the box, Megan.”
“There is no box.” Her voice was sharp, touched with impatience. She sipped her tea and the expression in her eyes softened. She reached across the table and patted Faye’s hand. “I’m sorry, sweetie, but I can’t get behind this line of thinking. It’s too negative. And damaging.”
Faye tapped the photograph again. “What do you see?”
“It’s eerie, yes, but I’m telling you it’s not the same man.”
“Megan, please.”
“You want help from me?” Megan finished her tea, set her mug down too hard, and stood up. “I can recommend an excellent shiatsu practitioner. Failing that, a bottle of Jacob’s Creek and a night of hot sex. But all of this...” She waved her hand dismissively over the photographs. “You’re still hurting, Faye, and looking for a reason why Timothy died. You’re looking for something that doesn’t exist.”
It did exist, though. Faye had seen it – seen him – with her own eyes. Megan had kissed her goodbye and left, and Faye sat for a long moment, feeling both alone and full of resolve. She flipped through the photographs for perhaps the thousandth time. So much twisted metal and spilled blood. But there were no accidents here. There had never been an accident on Thornbury Road. The sideways man was responsible for it all. He had killed so many people. He had killed Timothy. And one way or another, she was going to stop him.
She waited.
Her rearview and side mirrors were positioned to give her optimum viewing without always having to crane her head. She had 10x42 binoculars with a dandy Mossy Oak camo and the seller on e-Bay said they were the kind used by the SAS. She had 1x26 night vision goggles and sometimes when it got dark she put them on, clambered into a tree where she couldn’t be seen, and perched like an owl. She had an elaborate digital camera that she didn’t really know how to use, but she could zoom in on a bird’s wing from one hundred yards away, and could push the button, which was all she cared about.
She had time.
She waited.
IT OCCURRED TO her after several weeks of being in one of three places that the sideways man knew her routine, such as it was, and was evading her. She thought she saw him on several occasions – a whisper of something dark in the binoculars, or in one of the mirrors – but by the time she positioned herself for a better look, he (or it) was gone. Maybe just dead leaves lifted by a breeze. Or a large crow taking wing from the hedgerow.
She needed to take him by surprise, which meant rethinking her strategy. Sitting in a car eating pizza wasn’t going to get the job done, and she was getting fat, too. No way she could give chase on foot with her stomach bouncing ahead of her, even if he was a cripple. She stopped with the junk food. Switched to raw vegetables and water. She left her aging Mondeo in the Waitrose car park just off the Paisley Wood roundabout, packed a duffel bag with her equipment and supplies, and walked from there. After a few weeks she started to jog. Then run.
She lived in the trees and the long grass, moving stealthily along Thornbury Road, blending in by painting her face and the backs of her hands with green and brown. No one saw her. Not even the deer. She sometimes skulked to within feet of them and they carried on eating leaves, oblivious. During quieter moments she worked on her strength. Sit-ups and push-ups, mainly. At first she could only do three or four of each. By the summer of 2011, eight months after committing to this new way of life, she could do three or four hundred.
She often sat beside the road where Timothy died and talked to him, feeling so desperately alone and with no one else to talk to. She couldn’t go to her so-called friends and family. They had no idea what she was going through. And they didn’t want to know. Not really. Better for them to live in ignorance. Timothy had always been her rock, though. He had always listened, and in doing so could make all the cracks in the world – and there were many – disappear.
“You once told me that I was fragile, like a book is fragile. That it can crumble with age, that its pages can tear and its cover fade. But even so, it remains a thing of beauty and depth. A limitless treasure that should be shared and remembered. Of all the wonderful things you said in our short time together, this was my favourite. It made me feel... alive.”
She wished to hear his voice. Even on the wind. Never did.
“Every breath is a word, and every word has purpose.”
She wished to see him again. Just a glimpse. Never did. But one time all the trees around her came to life, flaunting their leaves, and she looked at them with tears in her eyes and pretended it was him.
THE SIGN READ LAND FOR SALE. Faye saw it within an hour of it being posted. By the end of the day someone had slapped a red sticker on top of it and this one read SOLD.
THERE WAS A moment before building commenced on her new house that she really questioned what she was doing. It wasn’t the money. Timothy had been paying into a corporate pension since he was sixteen years old, and coupled with a sizable life insurance payout, Faye was able to buy the land and pay for the house outright. Nor was it the fact that she’d be so close to where he died. According to the architect’s design, she’d see that strip of Thornbury Road every time she looked out her bedroom window.
It was her parents. Their unending concern. She had told them about the house, showing them the strength in her words and a spine that wasn’t cracked at all, yet before she left her father had slipped that sheet of paper into her pocket and she’d found it when she returned home. Dr. Matthew Claridge, MA, MBBS, MRCPsych. That smiling flower. Tears welled in her eyes and she tried to fight them, and then she gave up. She cried deep into the night. Everything hurt.
She had her reasons, yes, but did she really want to live by herself in such a broken part of the world, chasing a shadow? Or did she want to be a smiling flower?
The next few days were spent in indecision. She kept that sheet of paper crumpled in her hand, and on several occasions reached for the phone – even dialled a few numbers before hanging up. She imagined Dr. Matthew Claridge to have a soft voice and a never-ending box of Kleenex that he’d keep on a table between them, and she ached for those comforts. They seemed enough to sway her, and then a cyclist was killed on Thornbury Road and that made fifty-three dead, assuming Clyde Tummond was the first and she hadn’t missed any. Fifty-three, including Timothy, who’d told her she was fragile, yet deep, and could make all the cracks disappear.
Faye took a flame to that sheet of paper and watched it burn, and she never saw that smiling flower again.
HER HOUSE WAS built seven months later. Set back from the road, stylish and, though modern, designed to blend with the trees. Faye also had the builders construct a twenty-foot tower in her garden. For bird-watching, she said.
THE CROSSBOW SHE bought had 225lbs of draw weight and, despite her new muscle, she could only cock it with a rope cocking aid. She practised in her garden. To begin with, she couldn’t hit a rain barrel from fifty feet away. Within weeks, she could nail an apple from one-eighty.
SHE CAUGHT HIM when the April showers were at their freshest and the evenings had that crisp reminder of the winter passed. She was in her tower, watching the east side of Thornbury Road through the trees. A rustling sound from the blackberry bushes where her land met the edge of Copp Farm. She swept the binoculars in that direction, expecting to see a badger or deer, and there he was, scuttling through the foliage at the side of the road.
She didn’t panic. She lowered the binoculars, cocked the crossbow, and lifted it to her shoulder. One second later and his jerky, awkward body filled the sights. She targeted the middle of his forehead. Held her breath.
Pause.
The crossbow had an arrow speed of three hundred and fifty feet per second. The sideways man was a third of that distance away. He’d be dead in the blink of an eye. Too quick. Faye lowered the sights and targeted his crooked right leg. She curled her finger around the trigger.
“Suffer,” she said.
He dropped quickly, as if someone had yanked the leafy verge out from under him. He tried to get back up but fell again, and then he started screaming. Faye was halfway to him by that point, sprinting between the trees. When she reached him she saw that the arrow had passed through his leg. He clutched the hole it had left behind, blood flowing between his fingers. His endless eyes were filled with confusion. He pleaded for help and reached for her with one red hand.
She kicked him in the mouth and knocked out three of his teeth. He still reached for her, so confused. She kicked him again. Harder. The scream faded on his lips. He fell backwards into the leaves. His body resembled a gnarled branch hit by lightning.
Faye hoisted him onto her shoulder. An uneven weight. A bag of sticks.
She took him to her house.
“YOU CRAZY BITCH. Oh, you crazy fucking bitch!”
Twelve hours later.
Faye had fired one hundred and sixty nails into his left leg. Into his kneecap, his shin, his thigh. Sometimes the nails didn’t go all the way in and she had to drive them home with a hammer. After a while he stopped screaming. He fluttered in and out of consciousness. She recharged the gun and fired another one hundred-plus into his right leg. She thought he’d bleed mo
re than he did.
Every now and then she read out the names of all the people who had lost their lives on Thornbury Road. In chronological order, except for Timothy. She saved his name until last. Vivaldi played in the background. Timothy’s favourite. He also liked Status Quo, but she didn’t think ‘Margarita Time’ quite fit the mood.
“Crazy... fucking...”
Admittedly, Faye was a little surprised to find a wallet in the sideways man’s jacket pocket. There was forty-five pounds in cash inside, some credit and store cards. She didn’t know what a demon would want with such things. They were props, she reasoned, allowing him to better blend with his current environment. The name on all cards and documentation was the same: Michael Cole. A very normal name. And while it all appeared genuine, it didn’t faze her. It didn’t stop her.
She selected the handsaw. He hissed and shook his head when he saw it in her hand. His ruined legs twitched, but of course he couldn’t move them; they were nailed to the floor. Faye crouched and pressed the jagged blade to his right leg, three inches above the ankle. She started to saw. He passed out when she was halfway through the bone. When he came to – ash-pale and close to death – both severed feet were bundled into his lap.
“No more walking for you,” Faye said, setting the saw aside. She was smeared with blood. It was even on her teeth. “Sideways or otherwise.”
End of the Road Page 14
