The Shadow Friend

by Alex North

  When the call ended, all the questions I had been intending to ask a minute earlier had deserted me. There was only really a handful of words left to speak, and I did so blankly.

  ‘My mother died,’ I said.

  Sally wasn’t at the hospice when I arrived, and a nurse showed me up to the room. She was respectful but professional. I’m so sorry about your mother, she told me in the foyer, and then didn’t speak at all as we walked together. There were, no doubt, countless formalities and procedures to attend to, but it was clear from her manner that those could come later.

  For now, there was simply this.

  We stopped outside the door.

  ‘Take as long as you need,’ she said.

  Twenty-five years, I thought.

  It was quiet and peaceful in the room. I closed the door gently, as though I’d walked in on a person waking slowly rather than someone who never would. My mother was lying on the bed, the same as always. But while her head was propped up on the pillow, it already looked slightly lost in the cushion of it. I sat down beside the bed, struck by the absence in the room. My mother’s skin was yellow and as thin as tracing paper over the contours of the skull beneath. Her eyes were closed and her mouth slightly open. She was impossibly, inhumanly still. Except not she at all, I thought. Because this was not my mother. Her body was here, but she was not.

  There had been occasions during my previous visits when her breath had been so shallow and her body so motionless that I had wondered if she’d passed. Only the soft beep of the machinery by the bedside had convinced me otherwise, and even that had seemed like a trick at times. That machine was silent now, and the difference was profound. I’ve never been a religious man, but some spark of animation had so obviously departed this room that it was difficult not to wonder where it could have gone. It didn’t seem possible for it to have disappeared entirely. That didn’t make any sense.

  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 course 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 mum 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.’

  29

  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 dual carriageway that led to Gritten Wood. The street lights 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 village 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 up 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 back 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 grey and misty, the inside of the glass plastered with yellowing newspaper. With a torch, 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 torch, 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 previously, 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 got 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 up 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.

  N
ot 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 posted through his door, 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 university where he worked, 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 garden wasn’t as overgrown here as at the Dawsons’ old house, and after a moment’s hesitation, Amanda flicked on her phone’s torch again, then made her way across to the side of the house and down the tangled path that led towards the back. She listened carefully the whole time, hearing nothing but the slight rush of the night breeze. When she reached the back garden, 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 now, she wondered who or what might be moving around out there right now.

  Despite heading out to Brenfield earlier, she had never got as far as Carl and Eileen Dawson’s house. She had called ahead to the Brenfield Police Department as a courtesy while en route, and 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, 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

  * * *

  30

  Before

  The fourth week of the summer holidays.

  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 on the landing 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 in 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 landing so as not to wake his mother, who 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 back garden was overgrown, full of wavering black grass.

  The man was standing on the edge of the treeline 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 grey 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 was 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.