A HAZY SHADE OF WINTER

by Simon Bestwick

  It was a two-day wonder; the deaths of the workmen, of Christine and Stephen, and now of the priest, but there were no more killings after this. Within the week, it was forgotten.

  But the story did not end there.

  It came to its end the night after the priest’s death. I’ve lived in its aftermath ever since.

  It was half past eight on that night. I had paperwork to plough through, and Amy had told me that she had work to attend to as well. Engrossed in what I was doing, I was startled by my flatmate’s voice calling me to the phone.

  It was Amy. ‘Can you come over?’

  ‘When? Tonight?’

  ‘Yeah, tonight. Right now.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘When you get here.’ And she hung up. She had sounded tense, on edge. Some of it had seeped down the telephone line and into me; pulling on my coat without a second thought, I found I was unaccountably nervous. No, not nervous; let me be precise. I was terrified. It was not what she said, but what she hadn’t; in the absences, the spaces, the gaps in what we say and what we do, live the monsters. And yet I went.

  The willows. I run my fingers through them as I once ran them through Amy Madison’s hair, thick and lush on this unseasonably cold day. Leaves and supple twigs stroke and scratch my fingers; others, rising in the wind, scourge my face.

  I plunge my hands into the foliage; it is so lush it reaches almost to my elbows. I part and open the willow fronds like curtains, and step through. The willows fall shut behind me. As I step forward, the wind is muted. Trees surround me; the willows behind me and to the side, the elms and yews at the far end. Dappled light dances on the surface of the ornamental pond. Something too large to be a frog moves in there. I go forward.

  Amy shared the house with two others, including her landlord, all of whom seemed to be out for the night. There were no cars there, and only one light burned, in the window of Amy’s room.

  My foot slipped in something as I started up the drive, and I fell to my hands and knees, feeling wetness on my right palm as I did so. Looking down, I saw blood shining blackly on the surface of the drive. I recoiled, struggling to regain my feet. As I followed the slick of blood to its source, I found myself looking upon the body of a large dog, an Alsatian. The poor creature was barely recognisable; it had been eviscerated and dismembered by its killer, and that was the least of the damage; at a guess it had been partially eaten.

  As I stared and shook my head, wiping my bloody hand convulsively on my trousers, I observed more blood on the path, not smeared across it but daubed in small, regular markings. Looking on them more closely, I finally realised that they were tracks. They were not those of the dog, however; in fact, I found myself hard put to identify them as belonging to any creature I recognised. And yet they seemed strangely familiar. It took several moments for the resemblance to fully impress itself on me, but when it did, and I had followed the tracks, with mounting horror, to the front door of Amy’s house, which was ajar, then I began to run frantically for the door.

  Throwing it wide, I called Amy’s name, but received no reply, other than a high-pitched, unpleasant tittering noise whose origin I could not pinpoint. The hallway was dark, the door at its far end slightly open, the space beyond it an ink-black smudge. Some light trickled down from upstairs. I made my way towards it, teeth gritted against the prospect of the stair-boards creaking.

  Climbing higher, I called Amy’s name a second time, and again the skin-crawling titter answered me. This time its location was clearer; it seemed to come from the landing, which lay a few feet from me, where the stairs bent round. The panelling on the banisters hid the source of the sound from me.

  I wished I’d brought some kind of weapon with me, but I knew that if I went back, panic would very likely overwhelm me entirely, and I would be unable to return. I drew in a deep breath, and stepped around the bend in the stairs.

  Ahead of me was the hazy darkness of the landing, broken only by the light shining through the half-open bedroom door. I could not see Amy, nor anyone else, but then I saw the shadows on the bedroom wall, writhing and flailing as though in some dreadful combat. I also perceived an irregular sequence of bumps and thumps, consistent with the impression of a struggle. And yet there were no voices, no cries, not one sound uttered by mouth as one might expect at such a scene.

  I took another step forward, and a stair-board creaked underneath me. Just ahead, behind the newel-post, I became aware of movement, and tensed.

  A small hand, the bright livid red of raw flesh, but with a dull sheen like that of plastic, had crept into view around the post. It was small, the same size and proportion as that of a baby’s, but its fingers were webbed and it had no nails; in their place, a tiny spine, like a needle, protruded from the centre of each finger- and thumb-tip. It was swiftly followed by the rest of its owner: the arm, the shoulder, the spread, flexing wing, and then the grinning, plate-like head.

  It was a smaller version of the salvaged gargoyle, but all the more unpleasant for the fact that this specimen was cast, not in stone, but in flesh. Its razor-sharp teeth glistened with saliva, and its sly, squinting eyes were tiny, bright specks of light, like the sparks from a bonfire. A long, pointed tongue flickered from the wide mouth and it crouched there before me, its long tail swishing to and fro over the threadbare stair carpet. The bare patches on the carpet caught my attention, and the pattern; I often think that it was this detail that kept me sane, when insanity seemed rampant in the crouching, impossible figure before me.

  And then, unbelievably, it began to scuttle backwards, all the time beckoning and gesturing for me to follow it.

  I hesitated, unwilling to go anywhere with the thing, certainly not into a room possibly crawling with its fellows, but then I saw again the shadows that thrashed, in such eerie silence, upon the bedroom wall. The arm, the head—they were indisputably human, and, I realised with a fresh surge of horror, that the silhouette was unmistakably that of Amy Madison, whose room it was.

  I had no choice. Swallowing hard, I walked up to the bedroom door.

  The pond is still again now. I walk past it, up the path of stepping stones sunk into the rich black of the soil. The wind grows loud again; it is rising to gale force. A gust slashes across my eyes like a knife, blinding me with stinging tears. They spill down my cheeks as I press on, the wind drying them before they can run more than an inch or two. But I press on. I’m nearly there now.

  The creature kept backing away as I approached the door, bobbing and bowing, grinning and nodding, somehow mocking and servile all at once.

  Reaching the door at last, I pushed it wide.

  At first, seeing what was happening in Amy’s room, I was unable to speak, or even cry out. I could not react in any way; the reality of the event simply did not register. It was, and that was all; an image completely insane and impossible, entirely disconnected from reality.

  Then I finally connected with it somehow, and cried out in revulsion and disbelief.

  Amy was on the bedroom floor, some half a dozen of the gargoyle-creatures clinging to her whilst the largest of them, the one Black had given us, crouched astride her back, gripping her shoulders. She was partly raised off the ground, her left arm clawing at the sheets of her bed, pulling her up. There were no obvious marks of violence, no blood, but her right arm dangled down from her shoulder uselessly, and her legs trailed motionless on the floor. Her hair flew to and fro as her head thrashed wildly about.

  The creature that had guided me in scuttled towards Amy and jumped onto her, clinging to her upper body like a baby to its mother.

  Another of the things crouched on the carpet. At first I thought this one was either dead or had never been revived in the first place, but as I looked more closely, I saw that its body was not uniformly either the grey of stone nor the red of the creatures crawling over Amy. As I watched, there was a grinding, splintering noise, and a crack appeared around the circumference of its neck, allowing its head to turn. The raw r
edness of its flesh was exposed beneath. As I watched, its body strained and shifted, the stone splintering and flaking away like the shed skin of a snake. It crawled back towards Amy. The one clinging to her breast, I observed, had patches of stone on the backs of its wings, which likewise flaked off as I watched.

  Through my paralysis, I became aware that these things were harming Amy, and that I had to get them off her. I took a step forward.

  Only the one. The tittering of the obnoxious things rang out again, and as it did, my eyes alighted on Amy’s unmoving right hand. I think that it was then that I started to understand.

  But it was not until Amy looked up, the last light in her dimming, beseeching eyes fixed on me, and I saw why she had not cried out, that I knew for sure.

  The wind has fallen again, blessedly. I’m nearly there.

  Amy had not been idle. Afterwards, on her desk, I discovered the papers she had found, and on account of which she had called me. Papers pertaining to the church and its design.

  Normally, medieval artisans tended to remain anonymous regarding their work on churches, but, searching long and hard, Amy had found material alluding to the gargoyles on the church roof. It was in a parish document, a photocopy of which lay on her desk, written by some monk or priest, I forget which. New to the village, he wrote with admiration of the church and, in particular, of its fine stonemasonry, ‘in which daemons and divells so dreadfull and loathly of Aspect are presented that Satan Himself might recoil from them. Master Holliday, the stonemason, has doubtlesse caused many a sleeplesse night to many a parishioner.’

  Master Holliday. The man who had either carved the monsters out of stone . . . or who had locked them inside it.

  None of which makes the matter remotely clearer, without knowing one extra piece of information.

  I’ve reached the foot of the garden now. I hear something slither nearby, sliding wetly into the pond, but not before it lets out its high, hateful titter. Even now, freed for so long, they won’t leave me alone. But, I suppose they’ve all eternity to look forward to now; what are my few remaining years out of that, as a playtime for them to torment me?

  Tears are rolling down my face again, and not from the wind.

  ‘Amy,’ I whisper.

  I should have released her, even if it was with a hammer or spade. But would even that have been a release?

  Amy, whose mother’s maiden name was Holliday.

  Amy, on whom they had their revenge.

  Amy, whose stone hand I clasp in mine, whose stone face I touch, whose stone lips I kiss.

  And behind me, something titters once again and sends water slopping out over the banks of the pond; while further off, the willows flap and flail in the rising wind.

  Running Ragged

  ‘I’M GONNA KILL YOU. Hear me? I'm gonna kill you.’

  Charlie kept walking and tried to ignore the Ragged Man, but it wasn't easy. Threats of death and GBH are somehow never very easy to shrug off.

  ‘I'm gonna kill you,’ the Man said, walking backward, keeping pace with him, eyes fixed on Charlie's face. Charlie had no idea of his name; this was the total extent of their acquaintance, and he hated this much of it. He made his way to the office in the mornings and home from it in the evenings, and on some of them—not all, but too many for his liking—the Ragged Man would seek to waylay him, and trot backward alongside him, jabbering out a stream of death threats in between outbreaks of manic, mocking chuckles.

  All the Man did was talk. Now and again the mittened right hand—mittened in all weathers, hot and cold, rain and shine—would move suggestively in a pocket of the old army jacket. He always managed to fade out whenever anyone else—a policeman or any of Charlie's friends from the workplace—was in the vicinity. At times Charlie wondered—especially if it had been a week or two since the Man had last appeared—if the bugger actually existed or not. When not seen, he soon began to seem a little unreal. But he'd usually manage to stage a comeback whenever Charlie began entertaining serious doubts about his existence.

  Still, he hadn't done anything, and the way Charlie was starting to see it, it sort of came with the territory if you worked in Salford.

  The Ragged Man kept talking as he made his way up Barrow Lane, the road behind the office. On his left there was a primary school, then a cobbled alley, the school's brick wall on one side and the rails of the office's carpark on the other. On the right, a patch of bare waste ground, a vacant lot. It had been deserted for as long as he could remember; when he'd joined the firm, it had been a small thick jungle of weeds and gnarled shrub and sapling. They'd burned it one summer and turned it to a wouldbe desert of sand and gravel. Wouldbe because the bleak northern weather soaked it every week or two. It seemed to be a rule with vacant lots; let it grow a little, then raze it, burn it back so it has to start growing again. It was as if they feared something that would come up from down there, God knew what.

  ‘Gonna kill you,’ promised the Ragged Man as they neared the office's backyard. Just a couple more steps and all the smokers out there would see the bastard. But the Ragged Man bared his jagged yellow teeth through his wirebrush mess of a beard, and darted away down the alley waggling his mittened fingers.

  In an instant he was gone, and Charlie, bathed in a cold sweat, walked the last few yards to work alone.

  Really, the old madman shouldn't scare him, Charlie thought. He kept threatening violence, but never did anything. Charlie knew, intellectually, that he was just an old man who was mentally ill; no more, no less. For all that, he frightened and repelled.

  Maybe it was the sour, unwashed stench of the man that did it. That would repel, but it wouldn't frighten. Charlie went over and over the gnarled, wirebearded face in his mind, but try as he might couldn't alight on the features that made it so unnerving to him.

  Phobia: an unreasoning or irrational fear. Ragged Manophobia, thought Charlie; I have Ragged Manophobia.

  One night, after a few days of being stalked by the Ragged Man, he tried walking home with Jenny, one of the girls from the office. As they went, the Ragged Man appeared at the mouth of the alley, smiled and waved.

  ‘Piss off!’ shouted Charlie, his frazzled nerves snapping. The Ragged Man only grinned and sniggered. Charlie realised in that moment that the old bastard knew, knew, just what he did. It was too much. ‘Piss off!’ he screamed again, ‘Go on, fuck off, you sick old . . .’

  ‘Charlie!’ Jenny caught his arm. ‘What the hell are you——’

  ‘He's always following me around,’ Charlie gasped at her, ‘bastard won't leave me alone, he——’

  ‘Who, Charlie? Who?’

  ‘Him!’ But even as he pointed, he saw. He saw that there was nobody there.

  Although they usually walked most of the way together, Jenny found a pretext to part company from him before they'd gone only a little further. A sense of loss and abandonment gnawed at him. He thought he heard a bitter, mocking laugh, mocking him, but when he turned around to look there was nobody in sight.

  That was the only time Charlie attempted a direct challenge to the Ragged Man's authority, if he could call it that. He knew now that any attempt to stop the Ragged Man by outside intervention was foredoomed. He'd never be there for anyone else; only Charlie would see him. Whether it was the supernatural or sleight of hand, he couldn't say, only that he seemed to be lumbered with the phenomenon and would have to learn to live with it.

  If he told anyone else about it, he'd be accounted mad. Was he? The sense of unreality would keep returning to him whenever he thought too deeply about it, the uncertainty as to whether or not the Ragged Man existed for anyone but himself or not.

  If a tree falls in a forest and there is no one to hear it, does it make a sound?

  If a raggedy, smelly, crazy old tramp keeps hounding you and there's never anyone else to witness it, is he really there? Does he really exist?

  There was only one way to deal with the Ragged Man's sometime intrusions, and that was to accept them a
s a matter of course, a hazard of the journey to work, like getting stuck on one side of the main road while the traffic whistled by, or treading in dog's mess when your eyes were turned elsewhere.

  Ghost, cunning madman or a recurrent psychotic episode—Charlie decided he could live with whichever it was, as long as he kept it to himself.

  And so he acclimatised himself, and for a while things between him and the Ragged Man settled into an odd kind of equilibrium. Perhaps, he dared to hope, the appearances would peter out of their own accord.

  But then . . .

  One night, he'd been working late at the office, and he was hurrying home in the dark. He cut across a stretch of benighted waste ground to reach the main road. Behind it, the nearest row of council houses seemed a long way away, too far to help, split off by another road anyway; to one side, the dark dripping stonework of the railway bridge reared above the road, while on the other was a longabandoned building, windows boarded and broken, walls graffitispattered.

  At the end of the waste ground stood a billboard, facing out onto the swishing road. Charlie cut towards it. The road was a river of lights that he crossed to over a dark shore of gravel and sharp sand.

  He glanced behind him and felt a small start of fear. A hunched, shuffling figure was advancing over the waste ground. Its face was still lost, shadowclaimed.

  He isn't following you, he told himself. You're being paranoid.

  But he walked faster, because the faceless figure wasn't that far behind him.

  Under the billboard and onto the road, on the pavement. He turned right. Under the railway bridge. He'd never thought of it as particularly menacing before. Light from passing cars glanced off the inside of the roadspanning arch. They glistened wetly; water seeped down through the bricks, dissolving the limestone mortar, so that stalactites hung from the ceiling as though in a cave.