A HAZY SHADE OF WINTER

by Simon Bestwick

  He's not following you. He's not.

  He glanced behind him. The hunched, shuffling figure crept out onto the pavement from under the billboard. Shadow still clung to its face like a fragment of spiderweb, but its darkenshrouded head turned towards him. A trick of the light, surely—maybe he was wearing glasses—the livid yelloworange of sodium vapour lamps catching its eyes to make them glitter. . . .

  The figure shuffled under the trainbridge. Charlie walked faster, its cavecool shadows suddenly cruelly oppressive. With relief he emerged from under it, the night sky gaping above him, filled with stars like moonlight glittering on teeth.

  He was drawing close to another bridge now, this time one to cross instead of go under, the road bridge over the river. The river sparkled orange and pinkishwhite from the lighting, black glass caught and touched by fire.

  Cross the road. He isn't following you. Cross the road.

  He isn't following you—— But he kept seeing the yellow glint of those eyes. Why was he so sure they'd been looking at him?

  Cross the road.

  The traffic had slackened. Now, now! He jogged across, almost sprinted. Don't run. Don't run. Panic is the trigger. Stay calm and you have a chance.

  He won't follow. He won't.

  Charlie risked a glance back. The figure, not yet out of the shadows of the bridge, was crossing the road too.

  Don't run! Don't run!

  He walked faster. The bridge, the bridge . . . the river, the river . . .

  He glanced back once as he crossed the bridge, and then he was hurrying as fast as he dared; over the river, past the TV studios on the corner, then up, heels clacking desperately towards Deansgate, the bustle of crowds, safety. He didn't look back again until he had reached it, the tram stop at St Peter's Square in plain sight, and then, of course, there was only the crowd, no one specific, not that specific figure, but he know what he'd seen, its face blazing in his mind, the way its yellowglinting eyes did above the stained wirebrush of its beard.

  He caught the tram, and got off at a station near his home. He would have ridden to the bus and train interchange at the end of the line and gone all the way home—a bus went past his house—but he had no money for it. It was a long walk back, down a quiet road hung with shadowing trees and pierced at the sides by long lightless alleys, all but the first few yards choked and clogged in cloaking shadow.

  A hand banged on the window as the tram pulled out and rolled away, and he jumped up. The hand, spread flat against the glass, was clothed in a grimy mitten. Behind it the Ragged Man's face grinned, and through the wreath of its beard the fanged grin mouthed Gonna kill you, gonna kill you, gonna kill you yet. . . .

  It was a long walk home, and he seemed to hear breaths behind him every few steps. Just before he stepped through his front door, he glanced back down the street, and glimpsed a shape step back into shadow with an all too familiar gait. The glint of its eyes stayed printed on his retina long after he'd shut and locked the door, long after he'd turned on every light in the house and looked in every room, long after he'd sat down with a cup of coffee, sweet with a rare spoonful of sugar, and begun to plan the murder he had to commit for the sake of his own sanity.

  Would the old man have a knife too? Possibly. There could be nothing but air in that mangy old pocket of his, but Charlie had no intention of finding out the hard way.

  Whether the old man really did plan to kill him or not, or even if he was just getting a charge out of hounding and frightening him, there was no doubt in Charlie's mind that the Ragged Man was capable of things a normal man wasn't. On top of all that, he had a fixation on Charlie that could only be called unhealthy at the very least, and had contrived to make their interaction a combat solely confined to the two of them; a duel, in fact.

  Niggling in the back of Charlie's mind was the fear that perhaps he might not die, not like a normal man, certainly not as easily. But then, how easily would any man die?

  Charlie went shopping the day after the incident on the tram, and among his other purchases bought a good, sturdy steakknife, honed to a razor sharpness. He improvised a sheath by chopping up (with a mental apology to Oxfam) an old pair of shoes that had been long ready for retirement, (and gluing the leather into the required shape. He hung it on a lace threaded through holes cut into the inside of his trouser waist. Easily hidden, but also easily reached and drawn.

  He was ready. Now he only awaited the Ragged Man.

  Several days passed, and the knife and the use he planned to put it to began to seem almost as unreal as the Ragged Man himself. Except, of course, that the hefty weight of the knife, its bump against his thigh, its touch against his hand, was never far away, and all too real. So easy to confirm by objective study; all he had to do was show it to someone, but he didn't dare. He'd lose his job for a start.

  Still, at least no one else could see the Ragged Man. That was his charm, his protection. Would it wear off once was the Ragged Man was dead?

  He'd find out soon enough. He wasn't sure he cared either way, as long as the Ragged Man was dead and gone.

  But what if he's already dead? He found himself wondering. What if he's a ghost?

  The idea sounded stupid, and yet . . .

  There was only one way to find out. And if there was no escape for him in the death of the Ragged Man, he might find it yet in his own.

  One evening, almost a fortnight after his decision, the Ragged Man had been so long unseen that a doubt niggled in his mind like a maggot feeding. That morning he'd almost left the knife behind, but had known that to do so would be to invite attack by the enemy. Dimly he recognised his thinking as paranoid, but at the same time he had no choice, whether the vortex he was trapped in was a genuine stalking—supernatural or otherwise—or his own madness. It was not as late an evening as that of the followinghome had been, for he'd refused ever to work that late again, but the sun dimming at the broken edge of the west, licking over a horizon of high rises and tower blocks, like crenellated battlements or ragged, jagged teeth.

  Late autumn still, but only just, trembling on the edge of winter's deeper cold. Charlie breathed deep; though near the city, and only a few yards from Salford's main road, he smelt no petrol, but only the fresh scent of damp, mulching leaf matter, the last fall of autumn decaying richly in the gutters. It smelt fresh, cleansing, bright. He smiled. For he knew that tonight it would end.

  Even before he stepped out of the office's backyard and saw the Ragged Man stood at the alley's mouth, one hand raised to beckon him down.

  ‘Gonna kill you,’ he said, his gravel voice harsh in the stillness. ‘Gonna kill you now.’

  He turned and walked slowly back down the alley.

  Taking a deep breath, Charlie looked around. The windows of every building around him glinted blankly, like blind eyes.

  The Ragged Man halted, halfway down the alley, and looked back at him. His hand found the knife hilt. Grasping it tightly, Charlie followed.

  Down the cobbled alley, past a row of houses, windows all blank, not a face to be seen. He'd expected nothing else. Past a dead, decaying factory, boarded up. Down a slip road and under another railway bridge, where flies stirred from a pigeon corpse, its head turned to one side, eyes closed. Past that, past the old Lloyd's Metals building, a shell scavenged empty, then over road and roundabout. Through another tunnel of a bridge. then a flash of faded green on the left. They crossed the road to it.

  A shelf of green land at the edge of the dark, murky Irwell. Over the river he could see Granada studios. He could even hear, from the tour they conducted there, the strains of ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ by The Verve.

  The Ragged Man crossed to a sort of inlet, where signs warned not only of the water's depth, but of its pollution. The Man hawked and spat into the water. It bubbled and steamed, and a fish bobbed up to the surface, pallid and bloated and dead and long rotting.

  The Ragged Man grinned and winked at Charlie, then gestured to the water. ‘Used to dump all sorts he
re,’ he said in his gratinggravelling voice. ‘Ash. Shit. Christ knows what.’ He gestured across the river. ‘Boat overturned in there, ’bout a hundred years ago or more. Most all of 'em died. Not drowned. Poisoned. By all the shit in there. And look at it. Still foul.’

  Without another word he turned and began walking again, down towards the footpath running alongside the Irwell. Charlie followed. His palm was damp with sweat where it gripped the knife.

  The old man stood on the path, just out of the shade of the road bridge; then, as Charlie closed with him, he backed into the shadows.

  His eyes glinted yellow. Charlie wasn't surprised, and didn't believe for one second that it was any trick of the light. He smiled and followed the Ragged Man into the dark. As the shade of the bridge closed over him, he drew the knife.

  The rain had made the mortar run here too; like the railway bridge, this had tiny stalactites hanging down. Pillars grew out of the water to support the bridgework; the evening's dying light washed in rippling patterns across the inside of the stone arch. Sound echoed and rolled. Across the river, an abandoned building of some kind perched on the sheer bank, and a doorway gaped in its flank, beckoning, welcoming.

  The Ragged Man's smile was a glittery yellow crescent beneath eyes of a different glittery yellow. His mittened hand drew clear of his pocket, clutching a sheath knife, its blade spotted with rust.

  ‘Kill you now,’ he said, lapsing back into his old refrain. ‘Gonna kill you now.’

  He ran at Charlie fast, almost flinging himself, and in that moment the Ragged Man almost had him. But he was old, and arthritic from sleeping under bridges and in back alleys, and the stiffened joints slowed him down. Charlie stepped aside and the Ragged Man stumbled; then he stabbed blindly at his aged tormentor's face. The Ragged Man screamed and clutched at pumping blood—So the bastard does bleed after all, thought Charlie, and stabbed again, this time with precision, at the throat.

  That was the easy part—surprisingly easy, in fact. The complications set in as the Ragged Man's dying became a process as protracted as it was inevitable. He lay there gagging noisily, twitching on the path. Charlie had kicked the knife into the water. He would send the Man to follow it, but not like this, to drown slowly.

  Why not? He wondered. You were willing to stab him in the throat in cold blood. . . .

  But no. He’d put him in the water dead, and only dead.

  That was the worst part. Finding the right place to cut and push to finish the job.

  He made it on the third or fourth try. Then he rolled the body into the river and prayed for it to sink as it started drifting. To his relief, it did.

  It was starting to rain; Charlie hoped that would wash the blood away. He dabbled the knife in the water to clean it; he’d dispose of it separately, later.

  Time passed, and Charlie’s workmates began to notice the changes. He looked paler. Normally on the plump side, he’d lost weight. A lot of it, becoming almost gaunt. He seemed nervous, all the time, either talking in a non-stop panic-gabble or locked into withdrawn silence. His eyes darted to and fro in all directions, as though expecting grim-eyed death to come at him from any angle, every corner, down from the sky or up from the ground.

  The Ragged Man was dead, but his spirit lived on. Not a ghost, nothing so obvious, but rather the sense of dread that hadn’t gone away, only shifted in its emphasis. No one noticed that Charlie always seemed to grow more nervous, more on edge, whenever a policeman or a police car went past; at least, not yet.

  Autumn became winter. Nights drew in, noose-tight; cold bit deep and cruel. The last leaves died and tumbled from the bare black branches of denuded trees, rotting into thin fibrous webs in gutters and on pavements.

  Charlie walked home in quick flurries of nervous steps, halting to glance, spasmodically, to and fro, eyes alert for vengeance, menace, the law.

  But time ticked by, and no one came for him; yet the fear never went away.

  And one night, Charlie, walking home, saw a police car parked outside his home, and uniformed men standing at his door.

  He spun, whirling, running. He didn’t know that the call was just routine, relating only to a burglary that had taken place the night before, and perhaps it would have made no difference if he had. The breaking point had come, and now he ran and ran, ran till he lost all track of time and place and speed and distance, ran and ran and ran.

  Charlie’s been running a long time now.

  His clothes are coming apart, tattered and torn, the sole of a shoe flapping.

  Look for replacements in bins and alleys, scavenging. Food is scavenged too, the discards from market stalls, the leavings in bins of hamburger restaurants. Sometimes he grubs in the earth of allotment gardens, or finds sustenance growing wild on moors or waste grounds or barren hillsides.

  Dirt and grease cling to his flesh like a second skin, grub-pallid skin besmudged with grime. Rat-tails of matted hair whip his eyes and cheeks; a growth of beard clings scratchily to his face.

  Grubbing through a bin one day, he finds something that looks vaguely familiar. He stares at it for a long time before he understands.

  Then he draws the rust-spotted sheath knife and grins even though the first arthritic pangs are shooting through his aging limbs. Capering and scuttling, he glimpses his reflection, the crooked yellow grin of his fangs, the sulphurous glimmer of his eyes. In his mind’s eye he sees a face whose destruction will bring him his yearned-for deliverance.

  ‘Gonna kill you,’ he whispers, in the gravelly grate that his voice has become. ‘Kill you yet. Gonna kill you.’

  He runs and capers down the street. ‘Kill you! Kill you! Kill you!’

  He doesn’t understand the rules by which he must abide, but knows it must be a fight, a duel, not a sudden stealthy pounce, not an assassination. The young face must die, gulp, and cough its blood on the canal towpath or the riverbank or the cobbled alley—somewhere! anywhere!—and then they can both rest; but as he runs, even as he gleefully anticipates the final fight, he knows despair. He refuses to acknowledge it, but he knows; knows that his enfeebled, arthritic body will never carry him to victory. Trembling on the brink of his memory are a thousand deaths before, and a thousand more to come. And the unending Mobius loop of his death, his life—punishment, perhaps, for some cruelly unknown sin—will go on and on and never end.

  The crazed, despairing laugh of his realisation struggles for release, but his voice has shrunk to a single pair of words, and the hysteria is trapped, caged behind them.

  ‘Kill you! Kill you! Kill you! Kill you!’

  It becomes a whisper and then a hiss as he scuttles towards the office, crouching in the cobbled alley. He squeezes the handle of the rusty sheath knife, grins tightly, the words beating in his head like the secret mantra of his heart in his own inner ear, and waits for it to begin, all over again.

  Until My Darkness Goes

  PROLOGUE: AFTER THE FLAMES

  ‘THE NEIGHBOURS HEARD HER SCREAMING,’ Taylor said. ‘You’re in very serious trouble, John.’

  ‘It wasn’t me who did that,’ I said harshly. ‘For Christ’s sake. Look at me.’

  Taylor did. He was young and clean-cut, in direct contrast to the bored-looking sergeant who kept on smoking his foul roll-ups throughout the interview.

  I’d been discharged from the remand centre’s hospital that day. DI Andrew Taylor and his sergeant—whose name I never learned—had been on me like hawks the minute my feet touched the ground.

  ‘Come on, John,’ he said. ‘Tell me what happened. Make it easy on yourself.’

  ‘You’d never believe me,’ I told him.

  Taylor leant forward. ‘Try me.’

  Something gold caught the light, in the hollow of Taylor’s throat. I squinted at it. It was a crucifix.

  I weighed my options, and decided I didn’t have any. I leant back in my chair, wincing as my shoulder twinged. ‘Do you believe in God, Inspector?’

  He was good; didn’t even blink, was
n’t even remotely fazed. Did he know something, or guess? ‘Yes. I do. Catholic, born and raised.’

  ‘Well, I don’t,’ I told him. I didn’t believe in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy either, but I didn’t say that. ‘But I do believe in other things. I’ve seen them.’

  The sergeant rolled his eyes. Taylor ignored him. ‘Tell me, John.’

  So I did.

  PART ONE: OLD BONES

  I. The Bookshop

  I can almost bring myself to open a book again now. Almost turn a page without swallowing a heavy stone of fear. Almost.

  Now let me tell you why.

  It started round the time of my cousin’s wedding. I remember that very clearly. I’m a terrible browser. Don’t ever let me loose in a second-hand shop if you want to see me again. I’ll be gone, rooting through stacks of old records—I’ve a heap of them back home, but no record player: one fine day I’ll get round to buying one—piles of CDs, knick-knacks, odds and sods of all kinds. And books, of course.

  I am—or was—an inveterate bookworm. I always had to be reading something. So when I was up in the Lakes for my cousin’s wedding and I finished the book I’d been reading ahead of time, I found myself at a loose end. The wedding wasn’t until the following morning, and it was just after midday. I love that part of the world, so when I’d had the chance to get up there a few days early, I took it. And, despite the time spent wandering on the shores of Lake Windermere, walking on the fells and going up the more accessible mountains, I had underestimated just how many books I could plough through in the remaining time, so now I was stuck without any reading matter.