Shadow Light Chapter 18 again.

Chapter 18

I had been dreading the anniversary of the accident since the moment I had been told Alex was gone, but once November arrived and the days seemed so much shorter, the date hastened mercilessly towards me. The nights rapidly drew in, the days were endless grey, lifeless and all too swift to disappear. A year had vanished and from the moment I woke from my nightmare, which had returned with added darkness since Sam had left, I felt sick.

To the rest of the world it was just another Tuesday morning, well except for Alex's family, but I couldn’t share this day with them, deep down I still felt they may have blamed me for what happened. Maybe they thought I was playing around in the car distracting Alex or I had done something to upset him, I didn’t know, I just knew that one year ago to the day Alex died.

I didn’t feel like going anywhere and Mum had taken pity on me, releasing me from school, just this once, so I sat in my room listening to music. It was a pretty grim selection of depressing tunes and a play list which would not be saved. My heart was as heavy as the thick dark clouds which flowed relentlessly across the sky and I couldn’t summon a smile, smiling felt inappropriate.

When Mum came in, she didn’t say a word. She just walked over and sat next to me. I needed a hug and that is what she gave. I sat up and her arms were there, just as they had been every time I hurt myself as a small child, when I got picked on the local street bully and when the accident had happened.

Today it almost felt a blessing as the small amount of light, which had permeated the clouds, faded into the early evening. The day would soon be over, just not soon enough. As the last few dregs of light vanished I needed to escape and I knew where I had to go. Mum wasn’t keen on the idea. She offered to drive me, but I needed to go alone.

I caught the bus across town and walked the short distance to the industrial estate. Turning the final corner I walked down the road where it happened. Each footstep heavier than the last, I trudged past the planters full of dead summer flowers.

The cold evening filled the air with a wisp of fog, dampened my lungs, my breath seemed more laboured than necessary. The restored street lights cast sharp circles of light as if each was the main spot light on a stage. They were only missing the vital characters for the performance. I wondered who they would be?

I stopped. A year ago, right here, Alex died. Salty tears trickle down my face combining with the biting air to create stinging streams down my cheeks. Only my own arms held me together as I crouched and ran my finger along a line which had been scraped into the tarmac from the skidding GTO.

I closed my eyes and was confronted with an image in my mind as strong as a photograph, Alex’s face. His energetic, blue eyes full of life and fun, his wide cheeky smile sending my heart into a flutter, his brown hair tickled his neck and wisping around his masculine jaw bone. Then the image withdrew. Now he sat on the corner of his car under a street light, a bright, protective circle. I smiled and he smiled back, but the serenity was quickly broken. The edges of the light began to fray. Finger like shadows were clawing towards Alex. I opened my eyes unable to keep them closed.

A chill rattled through my body. Starting at my fingertips it coursed along my arms, into my torso, then simultaneously up to my head to down my toes. Then from out of nowhere an overwhelming yet familiar pain drove straight into my heart. I fell forward clutching my chest, then instinctively I tucked myself into a protective ball.

I lay for a few seconds, pinned by an invisible weight, had the Earth’s gravity just changed? Nothing felt right, nothing felt real. Was danger all around me? I opened my eyes as fog fell rapidly like a curtain on a stage, the previously warm bright spotlights cast by the streets lights dampened and became hazy.

I unfolded my body enough to look around. With my eyes wide I saw I was surrounded, the ground was alive with the shadows creatures from my dreams. I flinched and tensed trying to move out of the bleakness of their touch, but my body felt so damn heavy. Every direction I looked shadows twisted and swirled as if they were a shiver of sharks circling a bikini clad lunch in a small dingy. I franticly scanned around to identify their source, maybe a tree, but there was nothing to cast them, nothing blowing in the wind beneath the street lights. I gasped for breath, crushed. Did I have the strength left to re-inflate my lungs? The world was spinning.

I had to move, now, before all the strength was sucked clean from my body. I concentrated on every muscle I possessed, which felt like not many at that moment and willed myself to uncurl. I stared to my side. There was the GTO now on its roof, its wheels still spinning, its lights piercing the ghost like fog. I peered inside the open door, there was Alex.

“Alex?” I stretched out my fingers, he was so close, yet still too far. His body was lifeless, unlike the interior of the car which shimmered and wriggled as one of the creatures slinked and inched towards his body. Then it changed becoming more than a shadow, more than smoke flowing across the floor. Was its new form more human or beast like? I couldn’t decide. It shapeless form now had edges, limbs, a hollow, featureless face and sharp jagged claws. With ferocious anger it pounced.

Alex's body began to writhe, still pinned upside down by his seatbelt, he struggled to fight it off, but its powerful claws slashed relentlessly towards his heart. With each stab, each slice, it clawed its way in. His tee shirt turned to tatters then his flesh.

“Alex.” I tried to scream, but I had so little air left that he couldn’t have heard, he didn’t reply. I closed my eyes and sobbed.

The shadows I had seen in my dreams were real. The same shadows I had seen when I touched Sam, that surrounded him when he stood in the light. Was Sam connected with Alex’s death? Did he command them to do this?

I heard a voice whisper through the fog, had I heard it before? It seemed sort of familiar. I opened my eyes as a figure moved across the foggy road towards the car.

“Hey.! I shouted. They ignored me and leaned into the car over Alex. I strained to see what he was doing when I heard Alex’s final scream. Tears slid down my cheek as I lay pinned and helpless.

“Leave him alone! Don’t you touch him!” I whispered with my last breath, my body contorted, pain rang through my soul. The stranger stared straight at me. His face was masked by his hood and the shadows of the night. Only his eyes were clear, so bright he could have been radioactive, shinning like the cats eyes in the road, like Sam’s. Then he was gone. Everything was gone.

I woke with a glowing warmth surrounding me, maybe I was dead or I had been radiated by the radioactive stare of the stranger... Rubbish, that would suck.

As my memory came flooding back I remembering where I was, but it felt wrong. I was expecting to be having any heat I had left in my body draining away into the hard, wet floor, but instead I was supported by something comfy, with a familiar smell of deodorant and sweat. I had smelt this person before. Agg my mind screamed as once again I was being cradled in Sam's arms. My eyes adjusted to see his concerned face staring down at me. My head screamed IDIOT! I was so annoyed at myself to be here in this situation. He felt so comfy and warm and well perfect.... except I hated him.

“What happened?” My voice a whisper. “And why the hell are you here? I thought you had left! Now you just arrive back, typically when I’m panned out on the floor, again.” There was the angry voice I loved and knew so well.

Then as my eyes met his and the green sparkle shone in the shadow of his face I yelled “You!” I tried to shove him away, but his grip as tight as a rusted screw. Was he the person who hurt Alex? I tried hard to think of any other details which could give me the answer, but it was all too foggy just like the street I lay in.

“Let me go!” I screamed like a wild banshee. He let go.

“Wow you must have banged your head... again. You crazy lady, I knew you needed a crash helmet. What have I done now?” he asked.

I used all of my strength to scoot away from him. Only stopping as my back slammed against a muddy planter. My heart pounded. I had heard once that people have an average amount of heart beats in a life time and at this rate I was going to wear mine out in super time, note to self-less exercise to preserve heart beats.

“You, just you! You’re driving me mad.” I scowled, he stayed back.

“Well you kind of looked like you were in need.... again.” he smiled as if pleased with himself.

“I wouldn’t be in need, well most of the time if it wasn’t for you and your... craziness. Oh well, job done I suppose, time for you to disappear.” I looked away, crossed my arms across my chest and for the final childish effect I pushed my lips together into a tight line. Feeling like a complete Muppet I sat there and thought oh well at least I didn’t mime sealing them with a key and then tossing it away. He didn’t move, damn him.

I needed to get out of there, preferably gracefully. I stood, wobbled, brushed the mud and bits of dead plant, which had fallen off the planter when I hit it, off my ruined clothes and without a look towards him I began to march down the street and turned the corner.

His eyes, his eyes why did I keep seeing his eyes? I heard the car crawl around the corner before I saw it. As it drew to my side Sam slid down the window.

“Look, at least let me give you a lift home.” he pleaded. “It really isn’t that safe out here.” I kept walking. The rain began, bouncing off the pavement making large splat with each bead of liquid. Then the liquid stopped and then came the solids. “Oh fantastic. This is probably your fault as well.” I shouted at him as the large hailstones painfully pelted my body in windy waves.

Defeated I turned. It was only a lift, not forgiveness, not an invite back into my life or even for polite conversation. I walked around the car and reached for the handle half expecting him to laugh and speed off the second my fingers touched the metal, but to my surprise he stopped and smiled.

The warmth of the car flooded invitingly towards me as I opened the door and climbed inside. I sat in silence the whole journey home, staring out of the window with tears rolling down my face and dripping down onto my coat. He just drove, giving me the space I needed.

As we pulled up outside my house I had to ask. He would probably think me insane, but I had to ask. “Sam do you know anything about how Alex died?”

He hesitated and silence filled the car like a frozen mist. “No. How could I?”

“Because I keep seeing these things in my… mind, in my dreams and I when we touched, when you were in the wood I saw them again.”

“Lucy I know you’ve been through a lot. You just have to trust me.”

“Trust you? How could I trust you? You tell me nothing. You drag me into the woods where you disappear, then you leave. How can I trust you Sam? Then tonight you turn up. How did you know where I was? Are you following me?”

“Maybe it’s just my sixth sense kicking in, extending to you because I care about you.”

He cared about me? My breath vanish as I bit hard on my lip. I had to get away from him. Thrusting open the door I stepped out of the car and slammed the door behind me. With a screech of tyres he was gone.