Chapter 1
A Shadow Emerges
He was a mess and he knew it. Furthermore, he no longer cared.
A strange sight was he. Unshaven, obviously, and haggard in appearance, but his physique was somewhat muscular. This in itself was unusual amongst the homeless of the streets of London. What really drew the stares of the passers by, however, was his attire – black suit and tie and black leather shoes that had seemingly been polished in the not too distant past.
When he had awoken, groggily, propped against the jamb of a side-street fire escape doorway, he had allowed himself to savour the instant during which he was a nobody, a stranger even to himself, without purpose, without a name, without family. Family!
It all came rushing back, flooding into his brain as it did every morning.
He scanned the glistening wet pavement about him. Sometimes, occasionally…yes, there, a polystyrene cup with a plastic lid, deposited there by one of the soup kitchen volunteers during the night. He reached out shakily and wrapped his numb fingers about it, drew it towards him, and flipped off the lid. Tomato. Stone cold, of course, but this was breakfast and it was more than he had been used to of late. He raised the cup to his lips and proceeded to pour the contents down his throat in a single gulp, fighting the reflex that would cause him to gag and vomit the red liquid into the street. It sat like a cold dead weight in his previously empty and aching stomach. He waited for the nausea to pass, his head in his hands, and then took several deep breaths of the cold autumn air before half pulling and half pushing himself to his feet. He checked the street briefly before turning to urinate in the doorway, and then he was once again on his way ……..on his way to nowhere.
“Mr. James,” the doctor said, frowning over his horn-rimmed glasses, “there is no way we’re going to make any progress if you fail to take the medication that I have prescribed for you. It really is in your best interest you know.”
“But it isn’t helping me.” Sleet repeated for the third time since he had sat down opposite the large oak veneered desk.
“These things take time, as I’ve told you before,” the doctor said. “There are no quick fixes for your particular problem, I’m afraid.”
Sleet sighed. This was just going around in circles! “I haven’t got a problem!”
The doctor looked sternly at him. “You’re really going to have to face up to it Mr. James. The type of paranoid delusions that you have been experiencing aren’t all that unusual. And with the loss that you have suffered, especially under such…..inexplicable circumstances, well, it’s hardly surprising really. But I cannot help you if you won’t help yourself.”
“I am not delusional!” Sleet raised his voice.
“I thought we had moved forward Mr. James, I really did, but perhaps you need some dedicated therapy. There are plenty of local institutions, you know. I could recommend somewhere to you. All very discreet of course.”
“Look….” Sleet began. But perhaps they were right. Perhaps he did need a padded cell. He should never have told them anything in the first place, should have just kept his mouth shut, because, of course, the whole thing was entirely preposterous.
Without another word he stood and left.
The doctor reached across the desk for his telephone.
The funeral had been hard on everyone. Especially hard upon their Mother. And Moira….he could barely bring himself to speak to her. A month it had taken, enquiry and autopsy, all inconclusive. And now this hole in the ground, everyone dressed in black.
Closure, that’s what the doctor had said to him. It would provide him with closure.
Afterwards they all went back to their mother’s house, the old family home. There was some food, but it went untouched. Sleet couldn’t face any of them. Instead he went through the kitchen and then the back door, into the clay paved yard where his father had spent so much time tending to his precious pigeons. The old coop still stood there, unused for years now.
“Sleet?” It was Moira. He didn’t turn around, but continued to stare down the small overgrown garden.
He felt her hand touch his and involuntarily flinched, took a step further away from her. “I can’t.”
“Can’t talk about it?” she sounded hurt, “even to me?”
“Especially to you.” He whispered. “I destroyed everything, everything the two of you could have had.”
“But it was nothing to do with you, remember, you were just there is all.”
“That’s right. Just there, helpless, bloody useless.” He felt himself begin to shake and momentarily wished that he hadn’t flushed his medication.
“It wasn’t working between us,” Moira persevered, “you know that better than anybody.”
“We were arguing you know, when it happened,” Sleet continued to speak in a hushed strained tone, “…..over you.”
She reached out to touch his arm this time. “Look, come inside. Things will get better you know.”
He whirled around to face her, his face wet with tears. “Get better?” he shouted in exasperation. “Are you completely mad?” Or am I? he wondered as he swept though the side gate into the alley, launching himself into a desperate run. He would never return here, he vowed.
He turned the corner into the road in which he lived in time to see the police patrol car pull up in front of his house. He ducked back behind the privet hedgerow and breathed deeply before carefully peering around once more. A PC had left the car and mounted the steps to his front door where another constable was already stationed. They exchanged words briefly and then the officer who had been on guard returned to the car and executed a three point turn before driving it away in the direction from which it had come.
They were watching for him! They had his house under police guard!
Either he had been reported as an unstable (dangerous?) character or else further suspicions had arisen in connection with his brother’s death.
No opportunity to change into more inconspicuous clothes then - what he was wearing would have to suffice. He turned and fled back down the street, to lose himself in the sprawling environs of the capital.
Some three weeks he had now spent as a vagrant, in a vain attempt to escape from his own memories that refused to cease the haunting of his mind.
Yes. He had convinced himself of his insanity. The doctor had been correct. But he did not require their cure, he was sure of that. He would find his own solution to this madness, somehow. Just had to keep on moving, find somewhere new to spend the next night and, if he was lucky, beg enough coppers along the way to purchase something to eat, a burger or a sandwich maybe.
He shambled along, keeping mainly to the back streets of the city, making his way towards the Thames where he intended to cross into the North side of London, for no other reason than to be somewhere different.
During the afternoon he spent a number of hours sat at a busy street corner, shamelessly asking the passing denizens of the city for what little coin they could spare him. His fortunes in this regard were decidedly mixed, surely due to the suit that he was clothed in, even though it was now in somewhat dishevelled condition. He did, however, manage to successfully garner a couple of pounds with which he purchased a cheeseburger and fries from a nearby McDonald’s. Not what he would have ever normally considered consuming, but he was now past caring about his healthy diet. Food was food – something to see him through to the following day.
As the evening drew in he found himself upon the banks of the river near to Blackfriars Bridge, the shadows of The Globe and the Tate Modern looming over him. He ambled along the riverside walk until he found a likely looking vacant bench upon which to spend the night beneath the handful of newspapers that he had gathered up from the pavements and bins throughout the day.
The river called to him in a way which he was sure it had called to countless others before him. It would be so easy, he thought, to make my way up onto the bridge and then to just let go, let it all go away.
He cursed and turned his attentions to arranging his makeshift bedding upon the wooden seat. He would see what the morning brought. With a little luck a different variety of soup, he thought grimly. He stretched himself out on the bench pulling the papers up over his nose and mouth. Before too long he drifted into an uneasy slumber.
His dreams were troubling. There was some indescribable noise inside his skull, a harsh screech, almost a cackle. Something that, rather worryingly, rang a very loud alarm bell within him. It was something he remembered. Remembered with a horrifying chill.
He shot bolt upright on the seat, searching left and right along the embankment. There! A little way further down the path, in the vicinity of another bench, a figure, hunched over.
It had begun to drizzle during the night and a thin mist was rising up from the river, making visibility difficult. Sleet rubbed his eyes and stared into the darkness. Again, that animal scream, followed by a disturbing slavering sound. He raised himself and slowly began to make his way towards the noise, keeping to the shadows amongst the shrubbery and out of the pools of light cast by the riverside lamps.
The figure became clearer as he approached, but his mind became more and more confused. It couldn’t be! Oh, God help him, he had completely lost the plot! It was one of them. It was one of those hellish ghouls that had appeared before his brother and him almost two months ago. One of those shadow demons! They had killed his brother, Sky, literally sucked the life right out of him, leaving nothing more than a dried grey husk where moments before his very much alive sibling had been standing.
And now the same thing was happening again. Either that or his mind had finally tipped over the edge into a spiralling insanity. The creature, which appeared to closely resemble a medieval church gargoyle, only some seven feet tall, was leaning forward over another figure that Sleet had not previously perceived. A tramp, obviously having made the same sleeping arrangements as he had himself, lay prone and apparently spellbound as the horror leered over him.
He could not resist creeping even closer. He had to find out what this was. Madness, or reality?
The shadow creature’s eyes were a glowing red, seemingly as hot as coals. For a second time in his life Sleet was frozen, powerless to intervene. The pitiful victim was obviously transfixed and he could feel the effect himself. His feet refused to move in either direction.
Sleet stared, horrified, as he watched the tramp’s body curl up. He thought (maybe just imagined) that he heard a crackling sound as all the life was drawn from it and it was left as nothing but a hollow shell. He managed a gulp.
It was then that the beast raised its hideous visage to the night sky and let out its blood curdling cackle, in seeming celebration.
Sleet was released to move at this point and fell forwards, collapsing against a steel litter bin with a resounding thud. He gained his feet quickly and looked to where the monster stood, only to find its piercing crimson gaze pointed in his precise direction. He turned and ran for all that he was worth, but his ears picked up the whoosh of the beast’s wings as it glided down the embankment at his back.
He dodged right onto a side path and headed uphill away from the river and soon found himself amongst buildings again. He risked a glance over his shoulder and to his dismay saw that the creature, although back on the ground, was now stalking rapidly in his direction.
Sleet backed up against the nearest brick built building. A door, he needed a door. But surely every one would be locked. He worked his way along the wall, keeping his eyes on this shadow creature that appeared to be taking some sort of perverse pleasure in hunting him down, each of its breaths accompanied by a dry throaty rattle.
He suddenly fell backwards into a doorway and felt the door itself give a little against his back. Wooden, and perhaps not too secure. Sleet turned quickly and flung his shoulder against what he hoped was its leading edge. The door splintered in all directions sending him crashing through into the room beyond. A five inch long wooden needle was left protruding from the back of his hand but he did not even feel it.
He sprawled on a sticky carpeted floor before rolling himself over to face the jagged outline of the doorway, his legs pushing him further back into the room.
Silence!
And then a hulking shadow blocked out the moonlight. A shadow with fiery eyes, that reached through the broken remnant of the door and pulled itself through the opening. It appeared to have perfect night vision, seeming to focus on his position straight away, and began to make its way across the room to where he lay.
“Shit!” Sleet’s head impacted with a wall behind him. He put his back into it and pushed himself to his feet. “I’m not going to cower down for you, you evil bastard,” he shouted at it. His hands roved along the wall to either side of him and one of them found what was, perhaps, a light switch. God! Did he really want to see the thing that clearly? Gaze on this monster that was going to suck the life out of him?
“Come on then you ugly bastard!” he hollered, “lets have a look at you!”
He flicked the switch.
Ultraviolet lights snapped on from all sides, illuminating what was a fairly grotty nightclub bar-room. The lights in the shadow creature’s eyes went out at exactly the same moment and it let out an awful shrieking cacophony as it began to thrash one way and then the other, apparently blinded and in complete agony.
Surprised, Sleet circled it warily, collecting a bar stool as he made his way back to the broken doorway. He was about to drop the stool and bolt for it when he realised that this was his opportunity to hit back, to obtain what little revenge for his brother’s death he could, and to prove to himself that he was, perhaps, not a total fruitcake.
He strode into the centre of the room, the stool held high above his head, before bringing it down swiftly onto the demons back with a satisfying crack which had, maybe, broken at least one of its wings.
It fell to its knees, then gathered its feet again and made a lunge for the door and freedom, but Sleet was ready for it. This time the metal feet of the stool were propelled into the beast’s face, causing it to shriek out at what surely was the very top of its horrible voice.
It fell once more to the floor and lay there panting and clawing at its eyes. Sleet brought the stool down upon its back again, driving the creature flat against the floor. The thing did not move and Sleet, breathing heavily stood back to examine it in the purple ultraviolet glow.
Its leathery hide was bubbling, disintegrating before his eyes! Whether this was as a result of the light or the damage that he had inflicted upon it he did not know.
He watched and waited as the thing continued to burn itself into an ugly stain on the carpet, totally unrecognisable as the horror that had stood in the room only moments before. He let the stool fall to the floor and leant back against the bar, trying to come to terms with what had transpired.
“It was real!” he told himself repeatedly, “it was bloody real!”
When he felt that his legs had stopped shaking enough for him to walk and after he had helped himself to a very large scotch, he made his way back to the exit, sparing one last glance for the mess on the floor that had come so close to ending his existence.
He knew there were others out there. He would need to be careful. And just maybe, he thought to himself, they would have to be a little careful now too.
A strange sight was he. Unshaven, obviously, and haggard in appearance, but his physique was somewhat muscular. This in itself was unusual amongst the homeless of the streets of London. What really drew the stares of the passers by, however, was his attire – black suit and tie and black leather shoes that had seemingly been polished in the not too distant past.
When he had awoken, groggily, propped against the jamb of a side-street fire escape doorway, he had allowed himself to savour the instant during which he was a nobody, a stranger even to himself, without purpose, without a name, without family. Family!
It all came rushing back, flooding into his brain as it did every morning.
He scanned the glistening wet pavement about him. Sometimes, occasionally…yes, there, a polystyrene cup with a plastic lid, deposited there by one of the soup kitchen volunteers during the night. He reached out shakily and wrapped his numb fingers about it, drew it towards him, and flipped off the lid. Tomato. Stone cold, of course, but this was breakfast and it was more than he had been used to of late. He raised the cup to his lips and proceeded to pour the contents down his throat in a single gulp, fighting the reflex that would cause him to gag and vomit the red liquid into the street. It sat like a cold dead weight in his previously empty and aching stomach. He waited for the nausea to pass, his head in his hands, and then took several deep breaths of the cold autumn air before half pulling and half pushing himself to his feet. He checked the street briefly before turning to urinate in the doorway, and then he was once again on his way ……..on his way to nowhere.
“Mr. James,” the doctor said, frowning over his horn-rimmed glasses, “there is no way we’re going to make any progress if you fail to take the medication that I have prescribed for you. It really is in your best interest you know.”
“But it isn’t helping me.” Sleet repeated for the third time since he had sat down opposite the large oak veneered desk.
“These things take time, as I’ve told you before,” the doctor said. “There are no quick fixes for your particular problem, I’m afraid.”
Sleet sighed. This was just going around in circles! “I haven’t got a problem!”
The doctor looked sternly at him. “You’re really going to have to face up to it Mr. James. The type of paranoid delusions that you have been experiencing aren’t all that unusual. And with the loss that you have suffered, especially under such…..inexplicable circumstances, well, it’s hardly surprising really. But I cannot help you if you won’t help yourself.”
“I am not delusional!” Sleet raised his voice.
“I thought we had moved forward Mr. James, I really did, but perhaps you need some dedicated therapy. There are plenty of local institutions, you know. I could recommend somewhere to you. All very discreet of course.”
“Look….” Sleet began. But perhaps they were right. Perhaps he did need a padded cell. He should never have told them anything in the first place, should have just kept his mouth shut, because, of course, the whole thing was entirely preposterous.
Without another word he stood and left.
The doctor reached across the desk for his telephone.
The funeral had been hard on everyone. Especially hard upon their Mother. And Moira….he could barely bring himself to speak to her. A month it had taken, enquiry and autopsy, all inconclusive. And now this hole in the ground, everyone dressed in black.
Closure, that’s what the doctor had said to him. It would provide him with closure.
Afterwards they all went back to their mother’s house, the old family home. There was some food, but it went untouched. Sleet couldn’t face any of them. Instead he went through the kitchen and then the back door, into the clay paved yard where his father had spent so much time tending to his precious pigeons. The old coop still stood there, unused for years now.
“Sleet?” It was Moira. He didn’t turn around, but continued to stare down the small overgrown garden.
He felt her hand touch his and involuntarily flinched, took a step further away from her. “I can’t.”
“Can’t talk about it?” she sounded hurt, “even to me?”
“Especially to you.” He whispered. “I destroyed everything, everything the two of you could have had.”
“But it was nothing to do with you, remember, you were just there is all.”
“That’s right. Just there, helpless, bloody useless.” He felt himself begin to shake and momentarily wished that he hadn’t flushed his medication.
“It wasn’t working between us,” Moira persevered, “you know that better than anybody.”
“We were arguing you know, when it happened,” Sleet continued to speak in a hushed strained tone, “…..over you.”
She reached out to touch his arm this time. “Look, come inside. Things will get better you know.”
He whirled around to face her, his face wet with tears. “Get better?” he shouted in exasperation. “Are you completely mad?” Or am I? he wondered as he swept though the side gate into the alley, launching himself into a desperate run. He would never return here, he vowed.
He turned the corner into the road in which he lived in time to see the police patrol car pull up in front of his house. He ducked back behind the privet hedgerow and breathed deeply before carefully peering around once more. A PC had left the car and mounted the steps to his front door where another constable was already stationed. They exchanged words briefly and then the officer who had been on guard returned to the car and executed a three point turn before driving it away in the direction from which it had come.
They were watching for him! They had his house under police guard!
Either he had been reported as an unstable (dangerous?) character or else further suspicions had arisen in connection with his brother’s death.
No opportunity to change into more inconspicuous clothes then - what he was wearing would have to suffice. He turned and fled back down the street, to lose himself in the sprawling environs of the capital.
Some three weeks he had now spent as a vagrant, in a vain attempt to escape from his own memories that refused to cease the haunting of his mind.
Yes. He had convinced himself of his insanity. The doctor had been correct. But he did not require their cure, he was sure of that. He would find his own solution to this madness, somehow. Just had to keep on moving, find somewhere new to spend the next night and, if he was lucky, beg enough coppers along the way to purchase something to eat, a burger or a sandwich maybe.
He shambled along, keeping mainly to the back streets of the city, making his way towards the Thames where he intended to cross into the North side of London, for no other reason than to be somewhere different.
During the afternoon he spent a number of hours sat at a busy street corner, shamelessly asking the passing denizens of the city for what little coin they could spare him. His fortunes in this regard were decidedly mixed, surely due to the suit that he was clothed in, even though it was now in somewhat dishevelled condition. He did, however, manage to successfully garner a couple of pounds with which he purchased a cheeseburger and fries from a nearby McDonald’s. Not what he would have ever normally considered consuming, but he was now past caring about his healthy diet. Food was food – something to see him through to the following day.
As the evening drew in he found himself upon the banks of the river near to Blackfriars Bridge, the shadows of The Globe and the Tate Modern looming over him. He ambled along the riverside walk until he found a likely looking vacant bench upon which to spend the night beneath the handful of newspapers that he had gathered up from the pavements and bins throughout the day.
The river called to him in a way which he was sure it had called to countless others before him. It would be so easy, he thought, to make my way up onto the bridge and then to just let go, let it all go away.
He cursed and turned his attentions to arranging his makeshift bedding upon the wooden seat. He would see what the morning brought. With a little luck a different variety of soup, he thought grimly. He stretched himself out on the bench pulling the papers up over his nose and mouth. Before too long he drifted into an uneasy slumber.
His dreams were troubling. There was some indescribable noise inside his skull, a harsh screech, almost a cackle. Something that, rather worryingly, rang a very loud alarm bell within him. It was something he remembered. Remembered with a horrifying chill.
He shot bolt upright on the seat, searching left and right along the embankment. There! A little way further down the path, in the vicinity of another bench, a figure, hunched over.
It had begun to drizzle during the night and a thin mist was rising up from the river, making visibility difficult. Sleet rubbed his eyes and stared into the darkness. Again, that animal scream, followed by a disturbing slavering sound. He raised himself and slowly began to make his way towards the noise, keeping to the shadows amongst the shrubbery and out of the pools of light cast by the riverside lamps.
The figure became clearer as he approached, but his mind became more and more confused. It couldn’t be! Oh, God help him, he had completely lost the plot! It was one of them. It was one of those hellish ghouls that had appeared before his brother and him almost two months ago. One of those shadow demons! They had killed his brother, Sky, literally sucked the life right out of him, leaving nothing more than a dried grey husk where moments before his very much alive sibling had been standing.
And now the same thing was happening again. Either that or his mind had finally tipped over the edge into a spiralling insanity. The creature, which appeared to closely resemble a medieval church gargoyle, only some seven feet tall, was leaning forward over another figure that Sleet had not previously perceived. A tramp, obviously having made the same sleeping arrangements as he had himself, lay prone and apparently spellbound as the horror leered over him.
He could not resist creeping even closer. He had to find out what this was. Madness, or reality?
The shadow creature’s eyes were a glowing red, seemingly as hot as coals. For a second time in his life Sleet was frozen, powerless to intervene. The pitiful victim was obviously transfixed and he could feel the effect himself. His feet refused to move in either direction.
Sleet stared, horrified, as he watched the tramp’s body curl up. He thought (maybe just imagined) that he heard a crackling sound as all the life was drawn from it and it was left as nothing but a hollow shell. He managed a gulp.
It was then that the beast raised its hideous visage to the night sky and let out its blood curdling cackle, in seeming celebration.
Sleet was released to move at this point and fell forwards, collapsing against a steel litter bin with a resounding thud. He gained his feet quickly and looked to where the monster stood, only to find its piercing crimson gaze pointed in his precise direction. He turned and ran for all that he was worth, but his ears picked up the whoosh of the beast’s wings as it glided down the embankment at his back.
He dodged right onto a side path and headed uphill away from the river and soon found himself amongst buildings again. He risked a glance over his shoulder and to his dismay saw that the creature, although back on the ground, was now stalking rapidly in his direction.
Sleet backed up against the nearest brick built building. A door, he needed a door. But surely every one would be locked. He worked his way along the wall, keeping his eyes on this shadow creature that appeared to be taking some sort of perverse pleasure in hunting him down, each of its breaths accompanied by a dry throaty rattle.
He suddenly fell backwards into a doorway and felt the door itself give a little against his back. Wooden, and perhaps not too secure. Sleet turned quickly and flung his shoulder against what he hoped was its leading edge. The door splintered in all directions sending him crashing through into the room beyond. A five inch long wooden needle was left protruding from the back of his hand but he did not even feel it.
He sprawled on a sticky carpeted floor before rolling himself over to face the jagged outline of the doorway, his legs pushing him further back into the room.
Silence!
And then a hulking shadow blocked out the moonlight. A shadow with fiery eyes, that reached through the broken remnant of the door and pulled itself through the opening. It appeared to have perfect night vision, seeming to focus on his position straight away, and began to make its way across the room to where he lay.
“Shit!” Sleet’s head impacted with a wall behind him. He put his back into it and pushed himself to his feet. “I’m not going to cower down for you, you evil bastard,” he shouted at it. His hands roved along the wall to either side of him and one of them found what was, perhaps, a light switch. God! Did he really want to see the thing that clearly? Gaze on this monster that was going to suck the life out of him?
“Come on then you ugly bastard!” he hollered, “lets have a look at you!”
He flicked the switch.
Ultraviolet lights snapped on from all sides, illuminating what was a fairly grotty nightclub bar-room. The lights in the shadow creature’s eyes went out at exactly the same moment and it let out an awful shrieking cacophony as it began to thrash one way and then the other, apparently blinded and in complete agony.
Surprised, Sleet circled it warily, collecting a bar stool as he made his way back to the broken doorway. He was about to drop the stool and bolt for it when he realised that this was his opportunity to hit back, to obtain what little revenge for his brother’s death he could, and to prove to himself that he was, perhaps, not a total fruitcake.
He strode into the centre of the room, the stool held high above his head, before bringing it down swiftly onto the demons back with a satisfying crack which had, maybe, broken at least one of its wings.
It fell to its knees, then gathered its feet again and made a lunge for the door and freedom, but Sleet was ready for it. This time the metal feet of the stool were propelled into the beast’s face, causing it to shriek out at what surely was the very top of its horrible voice.
It fell once more to the floor and lay there panting and clawing at its eyes. Sleet brought the stool down upon its back again, driving the creature flat against the floor. The thing did not move and Sleet, breathing heavily stood back to examine it in the purple ultraviolet glow.
Its leathery hide was bubbling, disintegrating before his eyes! Whether this was as a result of the light or the damage that he had inflicted upon it he did not know.
He watched and waited as the thing continued to burn itself into an ugly stain on the carpet, totally unrecognisable as the horror that had stood in the room only moments before. He let the stool fall to the floor and leant back against the bar, trying to come to terms with what had transpired.
“It was real!” he told himself repeatedly, “it was bloody real!”
When he felt that his legs had stopped shaking enough for him to walk and after he had helped himself to a very large scotch, he made his way back to the exit, sparing one last glance for the mess on the floor that had come so close to ending his existence.
He knew there were others out there. He would need to be careful. And just maybe, he thought to himself, they would have to be a little careful now too.