The Shadows

by Alex North

  I felt numb. But in a strange way, the silence in the room was so solemn that it seemed ill-suited to emotion. It would come, I knew. Because despite everything, I had loved my mother.

  Which I had told her yesterday, when she was asleep.

  When she wouldn’t have heard.

  I thought about how different things might have been between us if Charlie and Billy hadn’t done what they did. What altered courses my life might have taken, and where my mother and I could have ended up in place of this moment right now.

  Damn you, I thought.

  The events of the past few days had frightened me, and that fear remained. The sense of threat was still there.

  But there was anger burning beside it now.

  A short time later—I wasn’t sure how long—I became aware of quiet voices outside the room, and then there was a tentative knock at the door. I stood up and made my way over. The nurse was out in the corridor, and Sally had arrived too.

  “I’m so sorry, Mr. Adams.”

  Sally rested her hand gently against my arm, then passed me a tissue. I realized at some point I must have been crying.

  “Yeah, the window’s open,” I said. “My hay fever’s hell at this time of year.”

  Sally smiled gently.

  “Listen,” I said. “Thank you. For everything you’ve done. I suppose I don’t have much of a right to say that, after everything, but my mom would have wanted me to thank you. And I’m sorry about earlier.”

  “You don’t need to apologize. And you’re welcome.”

  She began to talk me through the practicalities of what would happen next, and the arrangements I would need to make. The words washed over me. I knew I should be remembering all of this, but I couldn’t concentrate. All that filtered through was that it was going to take a few days to organize.

  “Are you able to stay?” Sally said.

  I thought about everything that had happened. How scared I had been. How all I really wanted was to get away from here and forget the past. And how—whatever was happening here—that wasn’t what I was going to do.

  Because, alongside the fear, that anger was still burning.

  “Yes,” I said. “I am.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  Night had fallen by the time Amanda arrived back from Brenfield, the town they had traced the CC666 account to, and she drove slowly and carefully along the main road that led to Gritten Wood. The streetlights above bathed the car in intermittent waves of amber: a hypnotic effect that seemed to be pushing her into a kind of dream state. The world outside the car didn’t quite feel real. She was trying to concentrate, but her mind had become slippery and her thoughts were refusing to take hold.

  She took the turn off to the left when it arrived. The town ahead was dark and dead, the streets little more than dirt paths and the houses like hand-built wooden shacks half buried in the gloom on their separate patches of land. As she drove, she spotted a few lit windows here and there—small stamps of brightness in the night—but saw no real signs of life.

  And, looming over it all in the distance, the black wall of the woods.

  A couple of minutes later, she parked outside a house that seemed even more deserted than the rest and got out of the car. The clap of the door closing echoed around the empty streets, and she glanced around a little nervously, as though she might have disturbed someone or something. There was nobody around. But despite the lack of visible activity, she still had the sensation of eyes turning to look at her.

  Of her presence being noticed.

  And after the events of the last two days, that scared her.

  She turned to the house. The front gate was broken and dangling from a single rusted hinge. She pushed past it and headed up the overgrown path to the front door. The cracked windows to either side were gray and misty, the inside of the glass plastered with yellowing newspaper. With a flashlight she might have been able to make out the headlines there—tales from a different age—but the sensation of being watched was so strong that she was reluctant to draw attention to herself.

  She tried the door handle.

  Locked, of course.

  She took a step back and looked up at the blistered wood of the house’s face. The windows above were as smoke-dark as busted light bulbs, and a portion of the guttering was hanging loose. Moss was growing between the beams above the door.

  Fuck it.

  She took out her phone and turned on the flashlight, then stepped carefully into the thicket of grass to one side of the path, shining the light through a window where a patch of newspaper had curled away from the pane. The beam played silently over the empty room inside, pools of light and shadow rolling over bare floorboards and damp-speckled walls.

  Amanda turned off the light.

  There was nobody here; the house was derelict and long since abandoned. But this was where Eileen and Carl Dawson had lived, and where James Dawson had grown up twenty-five years ago. This was where Charlie Crabtree had always insisted on setting out from when he led the boys on their treks into the woods that lay behind.

  Eileen and Carl Dawson had continued living here until around ten years ago, at which point Carl had inherited a small amount of money and the couple had decided to finally move away from Gritten Wood. They hadn’t been able to sell the house, though, because who would want to buy a property in a place like this? But even so. They had packed up their things and gotten away from here, leaving the house and all the bad memories it held sealed up behind them.

  And they had moved a hundred miles away to Brenfield.

  * * *

  Back in the car, Amanda drove a few streets on and parked outside the address registered to Daphne Adams. This was supposed to be where Paul was staying. And yet, while the property had been marginally better maintained than the one she’d just seen, there was the same sense of emptiness to it as she walked up the front path. The house itself was dark and quiet, and her heart sank as she approached. She glanced back at the street. Paul’s car wasn’t here. He wasn’t going to be either.

  She knocked and waited.

  Not expecting a response, and not getting one.

  The frustration rose; she needed to speak to him. Where the fuck was he? She knew he had gone to the Gritten Police Department earlier and reported a doll being pushed through his mail slot, but the officer he’d spoken to—Holder—hadn’t taken the matter seriously. It was one of a litany of errors that had been made, and she supposed some of them were hers. She didn’t even have a contact number for Paul. She’d discovered he was here in Gritten by talking to the college he worked at, but there was nobody there to answer her calls at this time of night. She had a sneaking suspicion that Theo would have been able to help her out there, but she’d already tried the number she had for him, and he’d left work for the day.

  She stepped back.

  The yard wasn’t as overgrown here as at the Dawsons’ old house, and after a moment’s hesitation Amanda flicked on her phone’s flashlight again, then made her way across to the side of the house, and down the tangled path that led toward the back. She listened carefully the whole time, hearing nothing but the slight rush of the night’s breeze. When she reached the backyard, she shone the beam across it. The light didn’t penetrate far, but she could make out the dim line of the wire fence at the bottom, and sense the vast, impenetrable blackness of the woods beyond it.

  The woods where Charlie Crabtree had vanished.

  She shivered.

  Charlie’s dead.

  Amanda was no longer sure that was true. And as she stared at the dark expanse of those endless trees, she wondered who or what might be moving around out there right now.

  Despite heading out to Brenfield earlier, she had never gotten as far as Carl and Eileen Dawson’s house there. She had called ahead to the Brenfield department as a courtesy while en route, and had been told that the police were already at the property. Because that morning a man and a woman had been found butchered there.

 
I’m worried this has something to do with why I’m here.

  She remembered Dwyer rolling his eyes at that, and what she’d then told him. That if he was wrong, it meant the killer was still out there, and she was worried about what he might do next.

  Where are you, Paul?

  Amanda stared at the pitch-black woods before her now. The Shadows, they called them here. She heard nothing beyond the heavy silence there, but she could sense the weight of the history that lay within them. History that seemed to have returned now.

  History that was taking life after life.

  PART THREE

  THIRTY

  BEFORE

  The fourth week of the summer vacation.

  I was at Jenny’s house, up in her bedroom. We were kissing and fooling around. Her mother didn’t seem to mind Jenny spending time alone with a boy in her room, but the door was open and she was constantly up and down the stairs, working tirelessly. At one point, we heard her out in the upstairs hallway and quickly broke apart, Jenny standing up and moving away from the bed, where we’d been half lying. I remember her mother was singing absently to herself as she made her way along the hall, constantly moving from one task to another.

  Jenny and I listened for a moment. When we heard her footsteps on the stairs again, Jenny smiled at me and sat back down on the bed.

  “As nice as this is,” she whispered, “it would be better to have a bit more privacy, wouldn’t it?”

  My heart did one of those surprising new tricks.

  “Yes,” I said. “It really would.”

  It wasn’t like I hadn’t thought about it. And, of course, with my parents both out all day, it had also occurred to me that my own house would offer exactly that. I just hadn’t had the courage to mention it before. And also, after spending time at Jenny’s, I was painfully aware of how threadbare and run-down my house was in comparison. But it was stupid to be ashamed.

  “You could come to mine one day instead.”

  “Yeah?”

  “My parents aren’t home much.”

  She smiled. “That sounds like a good idea, then.”

  “I’m at work tomorrow. Maybe Friday?”

  “Yeah. That would be great.”

  We stared at each other for a moment, and I realized she was just as nervous and excited as I was.

  “Oh.” She stood up suddenly. “I’ve got something to show you.”

  She walked over to a chest of drawers. There was a spread of papers and books beside the television there.

  “Actually, I got it a few days ago, but I wasn’t sure if you’d want to see it or not.”

  “What is it?”

  She picked up a slim hardback book.

  “It’s the anthology. From the competition? They sent me a copy.”

  “Oh wow.” I was embarrassed but also touched that she had been worried about showing it to me. “It’s fine, honestly. I’d love to see it. It looks amazing.”

  She smiled and brought the book over to the bed. It had no sleeve, but was beautifully produced. The cover was pale blue, with the title and the list of contributors—twelve in all. I found her name and ran my fingers over the texture of it.

  “It looks so professional,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “Your first publication.”

  “Actually, I had a story published when I was seven. In Kicks magazine.”

  “Okay—second publication, then. First with your name on the cover, though. First of many, I reckon.”

  “Thank you.” She smiled. “I am really pleased.”

  “It’s awesome.”

  It really was. The disappointment from my own rejection had faded a little now, but it would never have occurred to me to resent Jenny’s success. I looked at the cover and imagined seeing my own name on a book like this, and was determined to redouble my efforts. Maybe one day I’d have something of my own to show her in return.

  The spine gave a quiet but satisfying click as I opened it, and then, holding the book carefully, I flicked through the first couple of pages until I found the contents.

  “You’re meant to read it,” Jenny said. “Not preserve it.”

  “I just want to be careful.”

  “It’s not that big a deal.”

  “It so totally is.”

  I moved my gaze down the list of contributors. It was non-alphabetical, and I found her close to the bottom.

  “Red Hands,” by Jenny Chambers.

  I stared at that title for a few seconds, a chill running down my back. I almost felt the urge to pinch my nose shut, but there was no need—I could tell I wasn’t dreaming right then. The one thing I didn’t know how to do was make sense of what I was seeing.

  “Paul?”

  I was aware of Jenny frowning. And yet I just kept staring at those two impossible words. “Red Hands.” The rest of the text on the page began to crawl before my eyes. For over three weeks, I’d done my best to forget about Charlie and his stupid stories, and this seemed like an ambush he’d somehow managed to plan in advance. Like a trick was being played on me.

  “Paul?”

  “Sorry.” I shook my head, then quickly searched through the book, looking for the start of the story. “Just give me a minute.”

  I found the page, and started to read.

  Red Hands

  By Jenny Chambers

  It was nearly midnight when the man in the woods called for the boy to go to him.…

  I flinched as Jenny touched my arm. She pulled her hand away as though shocked.

  “Jesus—what’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” She attempted a smile. “And you’ve not even read it yet.”

  I looked at her, feeling sick.

  “Is that what this is? A ghost story?”

  “Sort of. It’s the one I told you about.”

  “The sad one.”

  “Yeah.” She rubbed my arm. This time neither of us recoiled. “What’s wrong, Paul?”

  “I don’t know. Can I read it first?”

  “Yes.” She moved away from me slightly. “Of course.”

  * * *

  The story was about a young boy who was drawn out of his house in the dead of night by a man calling to him from the woods. The boy snuck quietly down the upstairs hallway so as not to wake his mother, whom it was clear he resented in some way. Downstairs, he unlocked the back door as silently as he could, then stepped out into the cold and the dark. His backyard was overgrown, full of wavering black grass.

  The man was standing on the edge of the tree line at the bottom. The boy couldn’t see the man’s face, only that he was a large, hulking figure.

  When the man turned and headed off into the woods, the boy followed him.

  There were eloquent paragraphs describing the boy making his way into a forest that became increasingly frightening and fairy-tale-like as he went. But while the boy was scared, he kept going anyway, even when the man was sometimes only a vague presence between the trees ahead. The boy brushed the foliage aside in the darkness. Vines caught his ankles. Sticks and twigs cracked beneath his feet.

  And eventually he found the man.

  Just as it seemed he was too tired to continue, the boy caught sight of a campfire up ahead, the flames dancing and flickering between the trees. He heard something snap and saw sparks of fire rising in the smoke. Stepping forward, he found himself in a clearing where wood gathered from the forest was burning in a pit of soft gray ash, the sticks there like bones glowing in the heat.

  The man was sitting cross-legged, his face somehow in shadow, but the boy could see his hands, resting on the stained knees of his jeans, and they were bright red in the light. They were red from the blood that was still seeping out of the jagged incisions he had made across his wrists. It hurt the boy to see that. The man was still bleeding, even though those wounds were so many years old now.

  The boy sat down in the undergrowth, on the far side of the fire. The man’s expression was unknowable, but the blood wa
s still visible, the cuts there vicious and terrible. The fire was cracking and spitting between them.

  And finally, the boy’s father began to speak.

  When I finished reading, I sat there in silence for a few seconds. I still had no idea what to say, so I found myself reading sentences over and over again, pretending I hadn’t finished while I tried to gather my thoughts.

  “Do you like it?”

  Jenny sounded anxious. Given my reaction so far, I could hardly blame her.

  “I think it’s brilliant,” I said.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, really.”

  And I did. In terms of quality, it was miles ahead of anything I’d ever managed to write. Despite my unease with the subject matter, I’d found myself there with the boy while I read it—scared for him, but also intrigued by the man he was following. Jenny had added enough subtle detail throughout for the ending to seem inevitable when it arrived, and for understanding to flow backward from it. The boy lived alone with his mother, and the man calling for him was the ghost of his father, lost to suicide years earlier. The boy needed to talk to him, to understand what had happened and why. It was a metaphor for grief and loss, and for the damage done to those left behind in the wake of tragedy.

  So, yes, I thought the story was brilliant.

  Did I like it, though?

  Not one bit.

  It was far too close to the dream Charlie had shared with us, and the fantasies he’d spun, to be a coincidence. The four of us searching the woods for something we never found. The stories of a ghost among the trees. A man with bright red hands and a face that could not be seen.

  But how was it possible for Jenny to know about any of that? As far as I knew, she had never spoken to Charlie at all, or to Billy or James. And yet this couldn’t possibly have happened by chance.

  So there had to be some explanation for it.

  “I think it’s amazing,” I told her again. “Where did you get the idea for it?”