In The Shadows

The woman stands in the corner of the room, a shadow within the shadows of the night and stares at me with accusing eyes, as she had done for the past year. Never once in all that time had she spoken. She simply stands there with the blood from her shattered skull running down in rivulets, to drip from her chin and add to the growing stain that soaks into her parka. She might not speak but I know what she wants and there was nothing I can do about it. I have tried; God knows I have tried so hard.

It all began when I changed my car for a twin cab pickup, you know the sort of thing. A great beast of a machine, with gleaming black bodywork and chunky chrome cow bars on the front. I don’t know what came over me, one minute I was happily driving my Nissan Micra and the next I was in the showroom buying a four-wheel drive, three litre monster that would cost both of my arms and at least one of my legs, just to fill the tank.

What a bummer for Bob my next-door neighbour, when I pulled up outside. Talk about sick as a pig, he was green with envy and I rubbed it in, strutting about pointing out all the extras, leather seats, sat nav, tracker, quadraphonic speakers and the rest, the list was endless. Mind you he nearly had a fit laughing, when I tried to put the truck in the garage and it wouldn’t fit. My wife however didn’t laugh, she hit the roof because I had got rid of Nelly – she loved that little car – and besides not speaking to me, she refused to ride in the beast.

On a Sunday rain or shine, we normally took a run along the coast. But like I say she wouldn’t entertain going out in the beast, so I decided to go off to the lakes on my own, It was March, the weather was crap, so I knew it would be quiet on the roads and I could spend the day blasting about. The beast took every gradient, chicane and z bend I threw at her and when I opened her up on the straight she flew, and she was flying when I hit the woman.

It was four o’clock the light was fading and I was racing along the B5289 in the rain, with Crummock Water on my right, when she appeared out of nowhere, I hit the brakes and swerved to the left, but it was too late, there was a sickening thud, she disappeared and I was two hundred yards down the road before I managed to stop. I ran back but there was no sign of her anywhere. It was dark by now and the rain was getting heavier so I dashed back to the car, rang the police on the mobile and after giving them directions, got the torch out of the glove box and went back to search again.

I was still searching when the police arrived half an hour later. I explained what had happened and while one of them took down the details and checked the beast out – there was only a small dent in one of the cross members of the cow bars, no sign of blood or anything like that – the other called out the search and rescue. They searched until midnight, but with the weather worsening they gave up for the night and I followed them back to the station to make a statement. I had called my wife earlier, explained about the accident and told her I would be late. I called her again at 1am when we’d finished, to say that I had to stay over until the next day.

Being too late to go anywhere else, they made me a pot of tea, a corned beef sandwich, gave me some blankets and let me have the use of a cell for night. I drank the tea, nibbled a little of the sandwich and lay awake all night think of that poor woman.

At first light we were back at the accident site and while one team searched the bushes along one side of the road, another in a boat trolled the lake, but the woman had vanished. By the end of the day with no sign of her, the police seemed convinced that she was a figment of my imagination.  The skid marks and the dented cow bar confirmed that I had hit something, but they thought it more likely that it had been a deer and it had run off into the woods. It would have been nice to think that it had been a deer, but I was in no doubt that it had been a woman and I told them so. The upshot was that they brought in more men and divers. The search continued for a week before it was abandoned, not only because they found nothing, but also because no one matching the description I had given, had been reported missing. The police weren’t best pleased, I think they thought I had wasted their time and I was told to go home to my wife.

Despite a week of chewing her nails, my wife was pleased I was back and she made a fuss of me. But after six months of me sitting up every night muttering that the woman was in the corner, refusing to go to work and taking off every weekend to search for the body, she eventually left.

So now I am alone in an empty house, unable to sleep and going slowly out of my mind, because I know that come what may, I will never be free of the woman standing in the shadows. She will remain with me until the day that I die.

Make A Website