The Shadow Man

Nora still remembered the first time she had seen him. She was eight, riding in the back seat of her mother’s car. They stopped at a red light. Her mother was irritated, as usual. Nora could hear her muttering quiet curses under her breath – against the city traffic, against her boss, against Nora’s dad – but she had long since learned to tune it out. Instead, her attention was fully on the pedestrians.

She loved the drive between her mother’s cottage and her dad’s flat for just this reason. The countryside was empty, and everyone there was the same anyway. Once she was actually at her father’s she would have to stay put and keep out of trouble and her view would be limited to peering through the window at heads moving far below on the pavement. In the car, though, she could see everyone.

In school they had told her the city was a melting pot. She didn’t really like the metaphor. Melting implied that people mushed together, and that just wasn’t the case. They were different, each a little bit. Clothes, hair, build, skin, face shape… it was like someone had rolled dice and pieced together a whole city from boxes and boxes of parts. She liked picking out folks with similar features to her an imagining they had come from the same box. The tall man on the corner had frizzy red hair like she did, and she imagined a box full of red hair that the person-maker had dipped in to for both of them.

At first glance, she didn’t even notice him. He was a common jigsaw puzzle in the city – a bland businessman in a well-fitting suit, hurrying to get from one appointment to a next. Perhaps she wouldn’t have noticed him at all if her eyes hadn’t caught on a man playing guitar behind him.

Then he walked right through a tree.

She blinked and stared at him more closely. He looked normal, but if she peered just right, she could see the building behind him. She turned to share her finding with her mother. “Mama, I just saw a ghost man!”

Her mother didn’t look back, but she did pause her string of muttering to say, “Hush Nora and stop making up stories,” before continuing tearing into the school board with her sharp words. Nora sighed and looked back out the window. The man was already gone, and soon he was forgotten as well as the next interesting stranger filled her window.

***

She was twelve. Her parents had just had a huge fight over the phone, loud enough to hear it from her room upstairs. Mama was mad that she always had do drive Nora because Dad didn’t have a car. She didn’t pay attention to the rest of the fight. It was never that interesting. Instead she popped on her headphones and hummed along to the music to drown out the noise.

Now she stood at the train station waiting. Apparently they had decided that at twelve, she was old enough to ride into the city herself. She was nervous. After all, she had only even been out of the apartment with her dad. Even walking to school, he would be there holding her hand. He was supposed to pick her up at the station, but what if he wasn’t there? Could she even find his apartment by herself? Her knees trembled and she leaned on the brick station wall to steady herself.

Then she saw him again. She had spotted him occasionally over the years, always as they drove into the city. Never before had she seen him in the countryside though. Did he commute? She tilted her head to the side to confirm and sure enough, the tracks came into view through his chest. She bit her lip. It was probably just a trick of her stupid mind. Curiosity was strong though, and she found her feet taking her over to him anyway as she lowered her headphones.

He didn’t seem to notice her presence. She cleared her throat and still he didn’t look her way. Finally she said, “Uhm. Hi. Can you see me?”

He started and looked down at her, puzzlement wrinkling his brow. Sweat broke out on her hands. Talking to a random stranger had been a bad idea, what if… Hurriedly she back pedaled, “Sorry, I shouldn’t be bothering you I’ll just-” Thankfully the train interrupted, whistling loudly as it hissed into the station.

The stranger frowned, looking between it and the clock showing the next incoming, face indecisive and agitated. Finally he signed something to her. She shook her head. “Sorry, I don’t sign, I should-” He held out a hand and shook his head vehemently and pointed at the clock before holding his hands together pleadingly. She frowned. “You… want me to take the next one?” He nodded.

She looked up at the clock. It would be another twenty minutes. Waiting would be annoying, but then again she was beginning to think she didn’t want to be on the same train as this man anyway. She nodded agreement. Relief flooded his expression and he bowed before hopping on the train right as it began to move away. Her eyes followed it until it was out of sight.

The next train eventually came after she had become far more familiar with the posters hung sporadically on the station wall than she had wanted to. She stepped aboard and showed her ticket to a bored man in uniform who barely glanced at it before waving her through. It was her first time on a train and she wasn’t sure what she had been expecting. Something like Harry Potter was of course silly, but it should at least be more glamorous than… this.

Basically the train was nothing but a longer bus. It even had the same psychedelic upholstery, designed more to hide suspicious stains than to look appealing. Disappointment filled her as she slid into a window seat with a sigh. At least it might have more interesting scenery than the city buses, though there would be fewer people so perhaps not. She slid her headphones back on and left her book in her bag, for now, as she watched the trees begin to speed up and blur beside her.

It was supposed to be a three hour journey, and the first two were uneventful. Rolling farmland dominated the view, dotted here and there by horses and cows which, while not quite as interesting as people, were still worth following with her eyes as they raced by. Slowly she relaxed and began to enjoy this new mode of transit. It had been a bit nerve wracking starting it for the first time, but the soothing beat of the train tracks made a nice bass beat to her music and the occasional whistle was far more pleasant than the burst of honking and cursing when someone cut off mama in traffic.

Two hours in, suburbs began to pop up, and a short bit later, flashing lights. The announcer said something but she pulled down her headphones too late to catch it. She craned her neck to see. The lights were close to the tracks, and there were a lot of them. Were they on the track? As they got closer, her train shunted suddenly to the side and she couldn’t help but gasp in alarm. It steadied though and kept drifting along with a quiet click, click, click.

As her train pulled to the side, she figured out what had happened. They had pulled onto a side rail. The main one was blocked by firetrucks, ambulances, police, and a train laying on its side like a beached whale. Her eyes widened and she covered her mouth in shock. Were the people okay? No, they must be, there were so many professionals helping them. Yes, that was right. She forced herself to look away and tried hard to make herself believe it.

Again the announcer came, and this time she understood him as he said, “Again, we apologize for the delay folks. We should be arriving at Central Station only twenty minutes late. For those of you booked on connecting trains, we are holding all long-distance journeys for an hour and of course any local connections are automatically transferable to the next scheduled train.”

She stared up at the speaker incredulously. That was it? No explanation what had happened, no assurances of safety? She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered.

The rest of the ride dragged on. They were going too quickly to really see people as they raced through the suburbs and into the city, but she wasn’t looking anymore. She just wanted to be home. Finally, they arrived.

She stepped out onto the platform and then stopped in shock. The passenger behind her bumped into her back sharply and she stumbled forward, weaving her way through the crowd before pressing her back firmly to a pillar and looking around wildly. There were people everywhere. Police too. How was she supposed to find her father in this mess? They hadn’t set a meeting point. He had just said he would be there for her and now… Her heart sank. He didn’t know she had switched trains. What if he had gotten bored and left?

Her hands trembled and she squeezed them together firmly. Should she try getting home alone? No, that was stupid, she had no idea what buses would get her even to the right neighborhood. She wished she had a cellphone but mama was convinced they rotted teenagers minds and refused to let her have anything but the ipod. Even that had been a bitter fight. Maybe she could borrow a phone? Again she scanned desperately for a familiar face and found none.

The police looked… well, scary really. Tall, uniformed, intimidating. They were more likely to help than a random stranger though. She took a deep breath and dove back into the crowd, jostling against more strangers than she ever wanted to touch again before finally making it to the patch of space that the press of people had left clear around the policewoman. The officer looked down at her and asked, “Can I help you, miss?”

Tears filled Nora’s eyes and she dashed them away quickly as she answered, “Yes, please. I was supposed to be on the noon train from Benton but I missed it and now I can’t find my dad and I don’t have a phone so he doesn’t know I was on the wrong train and-” She paused and forced herself to breath, furious at the tears that had come crawling back.

The officer stared at her a moment as she took it all in and then smiled kindly and asked, “Do you know his number? Or his address?”

Nora nodded and pulled out her wallet. Her mother had laminated a piece of stockcard with the names and addresses of the whole family for just such an emergency. She gave it to the officer. “Peter is my dad.”

The officer read it and handed it back before pulling out her radio and reporting, “This is Officer Langley. I need someone to get in touch with Peter Connell, phone 372-858-3822, and let him know we’ve found his little girl. She was supposed to be on 433 but missed the train and just got off 435. I’m going to drive her home, we should be there in twenty.” The radio crackled out an affirmative and the officer looked down to Nora again and offered a hand. “Come on, let’s get you home shall we?”

Nora rode in silence in the officer’s back seat, but the inside of her head was turmoil. What had she been thinking getting the police involved? Her dad would be furious that she had caused such a fuss, and furious that she had missed her train. How would she explain that anyway? She could hardly say a creepy see-through man had told her to miss it. He would think she was crazy.

She still hadn’t come up with an answer by the time the car rolled to a stop in front of the tall apartment block. Her father was waiting outside and began to walk over as soon as they arrived. The officer got out to greet him, but Nora stayed put staring down at her feet. Suddenly the door slammed open and he wrapped her in a hug, muttering quietly, “Oh thank goodness Nora. Thank goodness. You’re alright.”

She wiggled loose to look at him in surprise. There were tears running down his face. He never cried, at least not that she had seen. He reached past her and slung her backpack over his shoulder before unbuckling her and scooping her into his arms like he last did when she was just a tiny child. She just stared at him in confusion. He and the officer talked a bit longer and finally enough pieces made their way into her tired brain for her to put it together.

The train on its side was the one she was suppose to have been on originally. She thought of the stranger and the relief on his face when she obeyed and stayed behind. Had he known? Was he okay? She shivered and thought of all the ambulances. But then again, if no one could see him, no one could help him. Or maybe he couldn’t be hurt? What was he anyway?

Her father bid farewell to the officer and carried her up to their apartment. She was so tired that the rest of the day barely registered: the surprisingly calm call between him and her mother, showering, supper, putting her things away, brushing her teeth, and finally bed.

When she joined him at the breakfast table in the morning, he slid her a shiny new phone.

***

For two years she didn’t see the ghost man. At first she hunted for him constantly, trying desperately to find out if he had perished in the crash. She took up sign language lessons in school so she could understand him the next time they met, though she had no way of knowing if the signs he had used were even the same. When her father gave her her own bus pass on her thirteenth birthday along with a route map and stern instructions to stay out of the areas marked in red, she used it to spend the afternoons riding around the city to no avail. There were plenty of interesting people, but not him. As time went by, he faded into memory until she wasn’t sure he had ever existed at all.

Then she saw him walking down the sidewalk. He looked different than she remembered. Gone was the suit, replaced by a pair of jeans and a grey t-shirt. His face and arms were… well not scarred, exactly, but more cracked. Jagged lines cut across his dark skin and a dull red glow emanated from within. He was carrying a bunch of flowers and headed the same way as the bus. Nora sprang to her feet and pressed the stop button hastily. She had no idea when the next stop was. This was the part of town her father had warned her about, so she only ever rode through and did not have the stops memorized like in the rest of town.

Luckily it was not far until the bus pulled to the side. She dashed out the door and ran back up the street. Ramshackle houses loomed over the sidewalk and the occasional dog barked at her from a leaning balcony but she ignored them and ran, praying he was still there. Two blocks later, she found him, still walking her way. For a moment she hesitated nervously. What should she say? Then she shook herself and walked forward, raising a hand in greeting as she said cheerfully, “Hello!”

At first he ignored her, just like last time. Then he seemed to realize she was talking to him and paused, tilting his head in confusion. Belatedly she realized he might not recognize her. Teenagerhood had changed her appearance quite a bit – her hair was straightened and died purple, she had piercings on one ear, and her clothes were stuck somewhere between goth and punk. Quickly she added, “I used to be shorter. And with orange hair. We met on a train station? You saved my life and I… I just wanted to thank you for that.”

His face twisted into something like a grimace and she flinched back. Did he regret saving her? Was that how he had gotten hurt? He noticed her discomfort and waved a hand reassuringly as his face melted back into a quiet smile. A quick rummage through his pockets turned up a receipt and the nub of a pen and he began to write before she interrupted, “I can sign now. Sort of. I am better at understanding than actually talking. My friend Mina always laughs at me when I mess things up but even she says I have gotten a lot better.”

He tilted his head to regard her again and then slipped away the paper. His signs were slower than last time, like Mina’s when Nora was having trouble following and needed to piece things together bit by bit. Nora was grateful for it though. His fingers were long and graceful and curled through forms in a way that made them all just a bit foreign and strange. She bit her lip and concentrated, piecing together, “You are welcome. It is not safe here. You should leave.”

She glanced around and nodded reluctantly before saying, “You – it’s okay if I just talk back, right? It’ll be faster.” When he nodded, she continued, “You are right. I just hadn’t seen you since then and got so excited that you were okay. I… If you don’t mind, I do kind of want to talk to you, now that I can. If I give you my neighborhood, would you drop by sometimes?”

Again a faint grimace and a quick glance at the sky, followed by a slow nod. She glanced up as well but saw nothing but the distant clouds drifting past the city’s skyscrapers. “I’ll uh. I’ll go back and wait on the next bus then. I. Hope I’ll see you later?”

He nodded distractedly, eyes still searching the sky. She stared at him for just a moment later before turning and slouching back towards the streets. After two years, it was nice just to see that he wasn’t dead. Somehow though, perhaps naively, she had expected more. If not answers to the many questions she had asked herself over and over, at least a real conversation. She kicked a can irritably and watched as it bounced and rolled ahead of her before coming to a stop in the gutter. Perfect, even cans didn’t want to cooperate today.

The bus stop was empty except for her and a young man. He looked relatively harmless – clean shaven, dressed in a shirt and jeans but neat and without rips, book in his lap – but she still kept to the far side of the little shelter. Glancing at the map would give away the fact that she was well out of her neighborhood. Probably he could tell anyway just based on the look of her, but no sense making it even more obvious. A bus would come eventually, and she would get on it, and then she could just ride until she found a place she knew.

Minutes dragged by. The neighborhood really wasn’t all that scary. At least, that was what she tried to convince herself. It was run-down and old, and the people living in it did a lot more glaring at each other than smiling, but that just meant it was an unhappy place not a dangerous one. Maybe not even that. Maybe this was normal and she was too u.m.c. to realize it. Regardless, the hairs on the back of her neck prickled and she couldn’t help shake the feeling of being watched even though her companion’s nose was deep between the pages of his novel.

Finally the bus came. She climbed aboard hastily and showed her card. The guy behind her did the same and for a moment she was scared he would follow her to a seat but thankfully he split off and went to stand in the back. She breathed a sigh of relief. Busses were safe. They had surveillance cameras watching for anything going wrong, and the driver was there to keep an eye on things. A route map hung from the wall and she glanced at it surreptitiously before turning to stare out the window as the bus trundled into motion. Four stops until the route took them into a neighborhood she knew and felt comfortable in. Then she could switch lines and get on the one that would take her back home.

Two stops came and went. She watched the flow of passengers on and off, half from curiosity and half from nerves, and then turned back to the streets around them. Everything here just looked old. It probably hadn’t been built much before the rest of the city’s residential districts. The architecture was fairly similar, stark apartment buildings with little decoration except in the windows of the stores on their bottom floor. Here boards covered many of the windows, and grime darkened what visible glass there was. Disuse had led to disrepair, and some of the buildings looked little more than empty shells. Even the people looked old and dusty.

A third stop and she turned back towards the front. The first two passengers boarding were similar to those she had seen before. The third… at first she thought he was going to a costume party. He wore a long maroon robe with the hood up, like a cultist from the movies. Covering his face was a white mask with no features other than two holes cut for the eyes. The bus driver ignored him even as he stepped to the side to stand in the space between the driver’s seat and the divider. Nora squinted at the robed figure and then realized she could see the back of the driver’s cap through his torso. He was a ghost-person.

She had only ever seen the one ghost-person. This was clearly someone distinct though; he was shorter and less skinny, and carried himself in more of a slouch. Part of her wanted to go say hi, but something about him stopped her. He seemed… dangerous. She wasn’t sure why. He carried no visible weapons, and had done nothing untoward. Something about his presence made her nervous though and she resolved to get off the bus at the first stop which was in friendlier territory. For now, she watched him closely, streets outside forgotten.

The driver put the bus in gear and pulled back out onto the street. It must be rather a distance to the next stop; instead of slowly easing his way along he brought the bus fully up to speed. Nora glanced up at the map. One more stop to avoid, then she could leave. The ghost-person was just standing there, staring out the front window. Her eyes fixated on him and she squeezed her hands together tensely as she waited.

Left on a street she didn’t know, then right, then left again. Were they getting close? Suddenly the ghost-person leaned forward and put his hand through the drivers head. He slumped forward. His head smacked heavily into the steering wheel, sending the horn blaring. Nora leapt to her feet instinctively. A moment later the bus stopped, sharply. She remembered pain, and the feeling of motion, and then nothing.

She woke to the sound of an argument. The voices were soft and quiet, hissed whispers that carried as much anger as the loudest yell. Their words bounces around the inside of her skull like ping-pong balls, smacking into her bruised brain over and over and adding to what was undoubtedly already a raging headache.

“She’s mine. Leave her alone.”

“Really Vilnus? It says here she was supposed to die years ago in a train crash. She’s way past her time. Nothing good will come of keeping her longer.” A cold hand closed on Nora’s shoulder. She struggled to move, or at least force her eyes open, but found she could not get her body to obey at all.

“Yes, really. I’ve already heard it from the King, save your breath.”

“Hmpf and you’ll hear it from him again I would wager. Fine. Take her. She’ll die sooner or later though, whatever you try.” The hand released its grip but still she found she couldn’t move. Darkness swirled at the bottom of her mind and clawed its way across her consciousness until it swallowed her once more.

***

Despite his promise, her ghost-person hadn’t come by her neighborhood. At first she had expected him to visit the hospital where she lay while the gash cut into her chest by a twisted part of the bus healed and the doctors monitored her brain for any after effects of the concussion. When they asked routinely if she was seeing things, she didn’t mention him.

After she got out, she watched the streets closely for any sign of him. Busses gave her anxiety since the crash – the only time she tried riding one, she had a massive panic attack and had to leave at the soonest available stop. Now she walked everywhere. It was nice to be part of the flow of the crowd and see people a bit closer, but she couldn’t cover as much ground. School was within walking distance, and some shops, but the rest of the city with its museums and shows was out of reach.

Time passed and her hopes of seeing him faded with the scar. She ran a finger along the while line as she stood in front of the mirror. The cold voice’s words echoed in her head. She’ll die sooner or later. She sighed and pulled her dress over her head. Plain black. It had lace edging once, but she had picked the stitches loose and torn it off. Black leggings, carefully polished Mary Janes. She looked in the mirror again. The end of the scar was just barely visible above the v of her neckline.

It was her mother’s funeral. Overdose of the meds she took to keep her mind under control. Accident, officially. Nora had her doubts but she didn’t voice them. No sense hurting the few people who had gathered here to mourn even more than they already were. Neighbors, distant relatives, old friends, and of course her and her father. Funerals and weddings bring people together, even those who in normal circumstances would refuse to be in the same room as each other. At least her father’s new girlfriend hadn’t come.

The day felt pieced together, like a movie sewn together from separate shots. Now they were by the grave but she didn’t really remember the car ride that had brought them there. A priest was droning on. Something about innocence and blameless lives – a load of nonsense of course, but nobody ever mentioned the bad things about the dead. She wouldn’t either. All the things she was mad about, everything that had hurt her; instead she just focused on the good and kept her mouth shut.

There had been some nice times. Rainy days were always the best, when they would sit together on the old sofa in the sunroom and sip hot hibiscus tea while playing endless games of chess. Summertime was nice too, when they spent the evenings outside eating supper with the fireflies.

Memories blurred her vision of the raw dirt at her feet. Her eyes were dry. She knew she should cry, but she just felt… nothing. No anger, no sadness, no loss, just a hole threatening to swallow her whole like the grave had swallowed her mother’s casket. Were the others judging her for not crying? Were they mad at her? Even the self-conscious fear didn’t truly reach her heart today. What did it matter, it wasn’t like she would see these folks again, or even this town. Maybe years from now she would come back to visit the grave, but without her mother there was no point leaving the city.

The after party was worse. Her mother had loved parties, but it still felt wrong seeing all these people who had just wept in the cemetery now laughing and smiling. It reminded her of one of the fey parties from her old fairy tale books, where the court danced their sorrow away after sacrificing one of their own to the devil. Just keep dancing, move and laugh and smile so you don’t dwell on the sadness, bury it deep and move on. She left the hall and sat on the back porch instead. How was she supposed to bury what she didn’t feel?

Suburbs slowly grew across the landscape like some strange otherworldly crop as they drove in silence back home. Her eyes stared at them but her gaze was inwards, searching for something to care about. Three weeks until her seventeenth birthday, but her past excitement felt dull and empty. The cute girl at school had smiled at her the other day, and she was thinking maybe about asking her out on a date. What was the point though? What was the point to anything?

Finally the tears came, gushing like a waterfall down her face. Sooner or later. There was no point trying. It would all end, no matter what she did. Anything she tried would vanish just like her mother did, whether she tried to hold on to it or not.

She turned away from the window and all the pointless things people had built, thinking they were leaving their mark on the world when in reality it would all be gone in a century at most. The back seat of the car was dark, with only the faintest glow from the cassette player and the occasional headlights from another car piercing the gloom. Her eyes adjusted slowly. Suddenly she picked out a figure sitting next to her. Her ghost-person, barely visible as the beam of a headlight cut through his translucent form.

His face was even more broken than when the had last spoke. The dullest of red glows shone from the bare patches underneath the missing shell of skin. Tears hovered in the corners of her eyes and he whispered in a voice that stabbed painfully into her ears, “I’m sorry.”

Her breath caught and her head snapped forward to look at her father. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel, gaze fixed forward. The road in front of them was brightly lit, glare shimmering off the damp pavement. For a moment she couldn’t figure out what she was looking at but then it drew closer and the glow resolved into distinct points. A semi truck. It’s horn blared. They were in the wrong lane but her father didn’t flinch away. She lunged for the steering wheel but the sudden movement locked her seat belt and yanked her back down. She screamed for him to stop, but it was too late.

***

The world moved around her in a fog. Nurses came and went, changing bandages and checking in on her iv. Flowers covered the small table by her bed, then wilted, then died and were taken away. All of it felt distant. Disconnected.

Her mind played the scene over and over. There were no images, just the sensations and the sounds. The roaring heat of the fire. Cold arms wrapping around her and the burn of the night air, the cool breeze somehow more painful on her damaged skin than the flames had been. Hard pavement against her back as she was set down gently. Voices soft yet so, so loud in her ears.

“How many more Vilnus? The universe knows she should be dead. Hell, you know it to. How many more are going to die before you accept it and stop trying to save her?”

“I can’t let her die.”

“Why! Why the hell not! She’s going to die eventually. You need to get over it and let her before she wrecks more lives.”

The memory looped. Voices faded, the crackle of fire returned. Over and over. People moved around her. A woman, hardly more than thirty, introduced herself as the social worker who would help her settle into her new home. The couple was the same age as her parents and kind, too kind. She couldn’t find the words to talk to any of them. The chasm between her world and theirs was too big, and every sentence she tried to say fell apart as the loop came back to the start.

They cared. The husband stayed up with her when she couldn’t sleep, dried her tears as she sat motionless. She wanted to care back, to thank them for their kindness, but she had no words. Not for them, not for the therapists they brought her to.

Finally he came, one night late. Her ghost-person. His skin was gone, nothing left but the gently glow of the strange red form underneath. He walked slowly and heavily. A sigh rushed out of his lungs he sat on the end of the bed, wrinkling the hand-knit blanket with which the wife had so gently tucked her in.

His was the world she was stuck in and she reached out to him, taking his hand as she whispered, “Is it true? They’re dead because I’m not?”

His hand closed over hers and he nodded, reluctantly. She looked away out the window. Nobody walked the streets this late at night, at least not out in the lazy suburbs where her new home was located. If she was in the city, it would be loud with the sound of people. In the country it would have its own noise, of crickets and mice and bugs. Here it was silent, and still, and empty. The loop in her mind slowly ground to a halt and she finally sank back into contact with the world, joining it in its stillness.

Her voice was stronger now, though it still cracked from disuse. “I want to go. Before others die.”

He looked away and for a moment she thought he would argue. Instead he just nodded one more and offered her a silent embrace. She took a deep breath and sank into the hug, slipping into sleep for the last time.