The Shadows Call Page 10

  ‘What’s the most common theory?’

  ‘Hang on. I’ll get to that. There are even different types of shadow figure, so I think it’s best we separate them, and try to come up with which one you’ve been seeing.’

  The chocolate was silky in my mouth, but flavourless. I popped in another chunk, just going through the motions as I listened to Sarah.

  ‘The sceptics will have it that they’re simply figments of an over-active imagination. We’re seeing things.’ She laughed. ‘But as I said, you can’t photograph or film your dreams. So they say that we are misidentifying natural phenomena, shadow play caused by passing headlights and such.’ The very theory I’d put down my first sightings to. ‘Most ghosts that are witnessed tend to be vaporous, usually white or greyish, and even if they are described as transparent they are often sharp enough to define their features, their clothing etcetera. Some people say that the shadow people are demonic, or other negative spirit entities, and it usually depends on their religion - Catholics see demons, Moslems see Djinn – and base their theories on the dogma they’ve been raised on.

  ‘Have you heard of out of body experiences?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘You’re talking about astral projection?’

  Sarah smiled. I wasn’t as ignorant at this stuff as I’d originally made out. ‘The very thing,’ she said. ‘There’s a theory that we’re witnessing the astral projections of other people who are undergoing an out of the body experience. Some people say they are aliens, extra-terrestrial visitors using some kind of cloaking technology-’ she laughed at that whacky explanation ‘-while others have surmised that they are visitors from our future, time travellers who are observing us going about our day to day business in our timeline. Some people have even hypothesized that they are guardian angels.’

  ‘What do you believe?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s any of those,’ Sarah replied, and offered a conspiratorial wink. ‘But I’ll get to my theory in a minute. First we have to look at what you’ve seen and try to decide what type of shadow figure we’re dealing with.’

  ‘I told you already. They are human-shaped, full black. They look solid, with clearly defined edges. But when they turn side-on they disappear, almost as if they are only two dimensional.’

  ‘They sound very similar to the video we watched of that investigation in the tunnel.’

  I nodded. They shared some characteristics with the others we’d seen in the street view, but were also different. My shadows didn’t move at high speed, except for when they disappeared.

  ‘There are various manifestations that have been recorded. Some look like black smoke, or oily masses, and tend to be without shape, but they can morph into something resembling a human being. They tend to be two dimensional, often to be seen following the contours of a wall or some other feature; when they leave the object they tend to turn three-D then, but are usually seen to take on a spherical formation. Most paranormal investigators believe these to be the manifestation of some form of negative energy. Then you get the flickerers; like in the video, where the entity is shadowy, but seen as if you’re looking through one of those old zoetrope devices – you know that cylinder thing with slits in the side, and a sequence of pictures on the inner surface? When the cylinder spins it gives the illusion that the sequential pictures are moving.’ I had seen them before, so nodded, and Sarah went on. ‘You have Hat Man. Basically, he’s a shadow man that is often seen wearing a hat.’

  ‘Mine wasn’t.’

  ‘No,’ she said, and looked ready to tell me more about this Hat Man, but decided it wasn’t important. ‘You have shadow figures described as having glowing red eyes, but you already said yours were featureless. Can I ask you something?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘When you saw the shadow man, what did you feel?’

  ‘It has been different each time.’ I moved an inch or two closer to her. ‘First time I was surprised, confused. Second time, in here, I was a bit freaked out because of what had just happened with the door.’ I hadn’t told her about that, and I noticed her eyes widening. ‘In the basement I was more frightened for you.’

  ‘You had no sense of foreboding, an uneasiness?’

  ‘Well, yeah. I suppose I did. But it was as much through not knowing what I was looking at as anything else.’

  ‘The reason I ask,’ Sarah said, ‘is because most people who see them describe them as being malignant in nature, they sense that the shadow has evil intent towards them.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘You know what I don’t get?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘My phone being moved by unseen hands. Your story about the dumbwaiter platform going up and down by itself. And now…what’s this about a door?’

  I briefly narrated my escapades with the jammed door, and how it had led to my second sighting of the shadow man. I was even bold enough to suggest that I heard it laughing at me as it held the door shut, denying me exit, though I didn’t mention that it then went for my throat. ‘It was as if it was taking the piss,’ I added.

  ‘That’s what bothers me most.’ Sarah placed a hand on my knee and leaned in. Her breath tickled my cheek. She was trembling, and so was I. ‘As far as I know, that kind of phenomena hasn’t been recorded coinciding with shadow people sightings before. It’s different again…’

  ‘Trust me to have a bloody unique kind of ghost living in my house.’ I said it for a laugh, but Sarah was a little awestruck by the idea. Her mouth hung open, her bottom lip pulsating slightly.

  ‘You said you saw something else, Jack. Earlier. You said you saw a face on the landing. You put it down to matrixing, but there’s more to it than that, isn’t there? You recognised it?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It was just a faint image in the light shining through the window. It was nothing. Nobody.’

  But I was lying.

  13

  Collision

  ‘The house isn’t ready for the kids yet. If you hang on a few more days I should have their bunk beds set up. They can come over then.’

  It was the Thursday following Sarah’s visit, and I was standing on the front step of my marital home, and wasn’t going to get any further inside. Catriona, my estranged wife, stood with her arms tightly crossed beneath her breasts. She wasn’t a big woman, but she somehow managed to fill the entire doorway, barring entrance. She was wearing a bathrobe over pyjamas even though it was after mid-day, and the sour grimace she usually aimed at me these days.

  ‘You promised the kids they could come and stay a few nights, and that was a fortnight ago,’ Catriona reminded me. ‘Now you’re going to let them down?’

  ‘Their beds haven’t arrived yet. You want them to sleep on the bare floorboards?’ I was exaggerating. The carpet fitters had been and decked out the spare room on Monday. Also, I’d had a message to say the bunk beds would be with me by tomorrow. It wasn’t that I didn’t want my children to come over; just that I wasn’t sure it would be the right thing to do. Not with all that had been happening recently.

  ‘You could give them your bed for the weekend.’

  My double bed was also due to be delivered. ‘Where am I meant to sleep?’

  ‘Ha! Are you telling me that you’re uncomfortable on the floor in your sleeping bag? You’ve slept like that the first few weeks you’ve been there, I bet.’ Catriona has a way of being sarcastic that has none of the fun that Sarah manages. ‘I’ll just tell them you aren’t interested, shall I? What’s wrong, Jack? Someone else staying that you don’t want them to see?’

  ‘There’s only me,’ I said, and tried not to sound as bitchy as she did. Maybe my tone sounded more disappointed than intended.

  ‘Doesn’t surprise me, really. I don’t know why I put up with you for as long as I did.’ She lifted her nose and sniffed, as if I was something nasty to be wiped off the sole of her slipper.

  ‘You didn’t though, did you?’ I reminded her, giving in to base instinct. ‘And whi
le we’re on the subject, it’s you who’s probably hiding someone in your bed from them. The way you hid Mark from me.’

  Mark Wilson used to be my best friend. But after I caught him in bed with my wife our friendship had soured. If I’d been a fighter I would have given him a hiding, but I wasn’t. I hadn’t even given him a mouthful; I’d just turned away and walked out of the bedroom, as equally betrayed by them both. Mark had shown enough grace in not trying to apologise for screwing my wife, and had sneaked out. He never called after that, unless it was to Catriona when I was at work. I’d never seen the son of a bitch since then, and didn’t want to now. ‘Is he still sniffing around or have you moved on to another of my old friends?’

  ‘Who I choose to sleep with is my business,’ Catriona said. ‘We’re divorcing, remember, you don’t have a say in it any more.’

  I wanted to respond that who I slept with was my fucking business too, but what was the point? I was attracted to Sarah, and was keen to have her as my lover, attested to by the dream I’d had of her before it turned nasty. But as yet, apart from a little flirting, our relationship hadn’t progressed beyond handholding and the occasional touch of knees. Even then, I was aware that I was possibly reading more into those small intimacies than Sarah was.

  I shook my head. I had no desire to argue and just wanted to get away. ‘Look, I’ll make it up to them. I’ll still come and get them on Saturday and take them out for the day. But I’ll have to bring them home before evening.’

  ‘I was planning on going out on Saturday night. You said you’d have them all weekend.’

  ‘I’ll get them again Sunday morning,’ I said.

  ‘And what am I supposed to do about my plans?’

  ‘It can’t be helped. You’ll have to cancel. Stay in and watch the X-Factor like everyone else.’

  ‘Bastard,’ she snapped. ‘You always were a selfish prick. I should have known what you were like when you first started obsessing about-’

  ‘Don’t fucking start on about that again,’ I growled.

  ‘Fuck off,’ she said and slammed the door in my face.

  Happy families.

  I stamped my way back to my Volvo. Slammed the door, trying to make it louder than her parting shot. I scrabbled to get the key in the ignition and missed. I swore, then commanded myself to get a grip. I exhaled, long and hard, venting my anger. I peeped out of the window and saw my daughter watching from behind the curtains in her bedroom. Forcing a smile on my face, I waved. Gemma offered me the same kind of tight-lipped scowl her mother was good at and disappeared from view. I felt like a piece of shit. Gemma and Jake had both been excited about coming to stay with me at the weekend, and I had promised them a great time. But that was before all the stuff I’d learned about shadow people. I was afraid that an entity capable of moving a phone unseen from one room to another, or indeed locking a grown man in a room, might be capable of hurting a child. No way was I prepared to subject either of my kids to harm – not physical harm at any rate. Gemma was obviously upset – the reason she’d scowled at me – and was likely now curled up on her bed sobbing her heart out. Jake had taken the news that I had to break my promise of a stay with stoic resolve, but that had only been on the surface. He too had quickly scuttled off to hide in his room, and I bet that he too was weeping.

  Jack, you are a bastard.

  Was I was being too cautious? Hell, maybe there was nothing to the strange incidents I’d witnessed, except for a trick of the eyes, a poorly maintained home, and a willingness to please a woman I was attracted to. Should I go back, cap in hand and tell Catriona I’d take the kids for the weekend after all?

  Why? So she could go out on the town with another man? Not fucking likely!

  I started the engine and peeled out at speed.

  Catriona called me selfish. Well, to hell with her. She could stop in and watch TV like I had to. She – I convinced myself – was the one in the wrong, the way she’d been in the wrong when wrapping her legs around Mark’s waist. It wasn’t me being selfish then, was it? If I didn’t like the fact my wife, the mother of my children, was bonking with my best mate, and that made me selfish, then fuck it. I was selfish, and justifiably so.

  You need to get a grip, Jack.

  Fuck, I needed to get a grip of Catriona’s throat and throttle some fucking respect out of her!

  I was driving like something demented. Far too wildly for those streets and the time of day. I spun around one corner, the back end of the Volvo almost hitting a parked car in the opposite lane. It didn’t stop me from putting down my foot and pushing the car harder along the road. I punched the steering wheel. It hurt, so I slapped it instead. That hurt too, my abraded palm not having fully healed yet. I swore again.

  Frigging Catriona would never be pleased. She’d got the house, the kids, everything in our marital home, and more than half our savings. I was going to be paying child maintenance until Gemma and Jake were grown adults. Even though she was the one who’d done wrong, it wasn’t enough for her. Now she wanted me to take the kids so she could go trawling for sex! ‘Who’s the fucking selfish bastard, bitch?’

  Fifty feet ahead of me a woman stepped off the pavement between two parked cars, as if readying to cross. She was a blur of red.

  It hadn’t occurred to me that I was crying.

  I was so angry with Catriona that tears were misting my eyes, and as I batted them away, that was when I saw that the woman had continued out into the road. Hearing the roar of my engine, or maybe my scream of fury aimed at my estranged wife, she’d turned to face the oncoming vehicle. The car’s bonnet was now less than thirty feet from her. If she lunged back the way she’d come, she’d be safe. But she didn’t. She stood there, trapped in indecision.

  And yet, that wasn’t it.

  She lifted her head and looked me dead in the eye.

  I hit the brakes, hollering, and wanted to avert my attention from the inevitable. But I couldn’t. It was as if her accusing gaze held mine in an unrelenting vice. I couldn’t look away, and in that moment I knew that face, and my yell of warning morphed to one of horror.

  The car hit her at the tops of her thighs, rucking up her red dress, and the impact went through the structure of the car as a deep shudder. She was catapulted on to the bonnet, her face slammed the windscreen, and though it couldn’t have been for more than a split second, her gaze still bore into mine. Then she hurtled up and over, her limbs floppy, windmilling wildly as she was pitched over the roof, and onto the road behind me. I fought hard to keep a grip on the wheel, the car slewing, and I felt the collisions as the back end side-swiped a parked vehicle on either side before coming to a screeching, juddering stop.

  I knew that this couldn’t be happening.

  How could it?

  But I still leapt out of my seat, almost falling out the door, as I screamed for her. Begging her to be all right.

  But how could she be?

  I’d already killed my first love Naomi Woodall more than ten years ago.

  14

  Lies and Oxymorons

  ‘Have you drunk any alcohol today, sir?’

  ‘Uh, no. Nothing. I’m on my lunch break from work, just been to see my kids…’

  I was standing on the pavement opposite my parked car. It had been moved out of the carriageway by one of the police officers that’d turned up following my call. It was drizzling with rain, but I wasn’t offered the dry comfort of a seat in their car – but perhaps I should have been thankful for that.

  The officer speaking with me held up a breathalyser device and explained that it was procedure to procure a specimen of my breath because of the damage I’d caused to the other vehicles.

  ‘I swerved to miss a dog,’ I lied. ‘It just ran out without warning.’

  Whether he believed me or not, he didn’t let on. He was a guy in his mid-forties, stocky, looking constricted by his stab-proof vest. He wore a hangdog expression, but his eyes were feral, a pit bull straining at the leash. He made i
t clear to me that it was an offence to fail to give a specimen of my breath, and that I could be arrested if I refused to do so. He rattled out some other procedural statements, but to be honest I was too shaken to take any of it in. He fixed a white tube to the device, and offered me the job of pulling off a plastic coating: for my hygiene, he told me. He explained what an array of lights on the device meant, before warning me that if the lights turned red it would be off to the nick for me.

  ‘Seal the end of the tube with your lips, then blow until I tell you to stop.’

  I sucked in a couple of deep inhalations, then leaned to the tube. I puckered and blew.

  ‘Keep going, keep going, keep going…’ the cop’s words blended one into the next as he watched the flickering lights on the device.

  They didn’t progress past green.

  ‘OK, sir, you can stop now.’ The policeman took the device, pressed a couple of buttons, then gave a little nod. He held out the breathalyser, his eyes still glaring, and I feared the worst. ‘You’ve passed.’

  ‘I haven’t had a drink for days,’ I reiterated, even though it was obvious to the policeman.

  ‘Did you strike the dog, sir?’

  ‘No. I missed it.’

  ‘Must have run off,’ said the cop, sounding disinterested now. Both officers had already checked the front of my car for damage and found none. He looked across at his colleague who was busy noting details of the cars I’d hit on some sort of pad.

  ‘We’ll make an effort to contact the owners of those vehicles and pass on your details,’ the cop explained, ‘so this can be sorted via your respective insurance companies.’

  He then asked me for my name, address, date of birth and a bunch of other things relating to my car. He transferred those details to a pad identical to the one his colleague worked on. He handed me the form, which turned out to be a HO/RT 1. ‘This is a producer, sir. It requires you to produce the documents listed upon it at a police station within seven days of midnight tonight. If you fail to produce those documents, you will be committing an offence. Do you understand?’