Here is the (more or less) finished version of the earlier short story I posted back in January under the working title "Shadow Chase". It's changed a fair bit, so you can go back and compare them if you like, but that was 1600 words and this is like 3800 so you have been warned :P
The Outsiders
I've always been able to see them. I
found them frightening, at first. What child isn't afraid of things lurking in
the darkness? One of my earliest memories is peering down at them from my
bedroom, head barely poking over the windowsill. They were perfectly still,
dotted at intervals along the street, illuminated by the moonlight. As I
watched, they raised their heads as one towards my hiding place, as if sensing
my presence. I dropped out of sight and stayed there on the floor until my
heart stopped hammering enough for me to crawl back into my bed and hide under
the covers.
They never appeared
during the day; it wasn't until the sun went down that I'd start to see them
out of the corner of my eye, just within visible range. No one else could see
them; whenever I mentioned them to adults they'd always say that I had an over-active
imagination. I thought that maybe it was something you grew out of, but I came
to realise that other children couldn't see them either. That was the scariest
part - having to deal with them alone.
After a while,
however, I stopped being so scared of them. They only came out when it was
dark, and they seemed to stay away from people; with rules like that, I figured
that it'd be simple to avoid them. I even made a game of it for the playground
- Shadow Chase, I called it. You split a group into three; one team
representing the Shadows, as I had taken to calling them; a blindfolded team
who could tag the Shadows to stop them, and a third team who could direct them
while avoiding getting tagged by the Shadows. Like most kids' games, it usually
ended up devolving into a mess of shouting, scrapes and tears.
That was how I first
got to know Chris. We must have been around seven then; he was a quiet kid in one
of the other classes so I'd never really spoken to him before then. I saw him
watching us one day and asked if he wanted to play, on a whim. He listened as I
explained the rules, eyes widening as I explained the teams. When I was done he
asked, hesitantly,
'That sounds like a
lot of fun... how did you come up with the idea?'
'Oh,' I'd said
flippantly, too young to pick up on the cues, 'it's all real. The Shadows come
out at night, but most people can't see them.' I'd started affecting a nonchalant
tone any time someone asked me that question, as I had tired of giving the same
response dozens of times only for it to get dismissed. Chris's reaction was
anything but typical; his jaw slackened and his eyes widened even further.
'...You can see them
too?'
He soon became my
closest friend after that. More than anything else, we found it comforting to
finally be able to share the burden with another person. It was a secret only
the two of us knew about, and that was intoxicating. What had set us apart from
everyone else brought us closer together; rather than being different, we were
special. The Shadows were
a constant topic of conversation with us, as we had no one else to talk about
them with. We wondered what they were, where they came from, what would
happen if they caught you. Shadow Chase games took on a special significance
for us; it wasn't just play, it was training. We always said that if one of us
got taken by them, the other would come to rescue them. In our minds it was as
simple as that.
Despite being so soft-spoken most of
the time, Chris loved football and could get really rowdy on the field. His dream
was to play in the premier league some day, and he went to practice weekly at a
club near his house to work towards that goal. He had the talent too - he was
small and spry, quick on his feet and great at passing. One night three years after
we first spoke, Chris never made it back home after football practice. The
clocks had gone back an hour the night before so it got darker earlier; I guess
that must have caught him out.
My form teacher told
me that I had been called to the Headmaster's office the moment I stepped into
class the next day. I was nervous, of course, but it didn't dawn on me why I
had been summoned until I got there. When the door opened and I saw Chris's
parents standing there, their faces haggard from lack of sleep and their eyes
red and sore from crying, I realised immediately.
I remember everything
about that office visit in excruciating detail - the broad expanse of his desk
in front of me, the clatter of children filing into the building for
registration, the smell of cut grass wafting in through his open window, the wooden
armrests of my chair gripped tightly in my hands.
'Has Christopher ever
given you any reason to believe that he was unhappy?' the headmaster had asked.
'Perhaps something that hinted he was planning on running away from home?'
'No sir,' I had
squeaked out in reply. Had he shared any plans to that effect? Did I know
anywhere he might be staying if that was the case? Would he ever follow someone
he didn't know if they promised him something? The stream of questions seemed
endless, but I did my best to squeeze
answers out of my increasingly tightening throat while Chris's parents looked
on silently.
Eventually they
decided that I didn't know anything, and the headmaster let me go. I made my
way back to class, but when I arrived I could feel everyone staring and hear
them whispering - word must have already gotten out. After a while it got so
bad that I started to feel physically sick, and asked to be excused - I sat crying
in a toilet stall until my mum was called in from work to pick me up, and
didn't go back to school for some time after.
I couldn't sleep that
night. I tossed and turned for what felt like hours, until I eventually
decided to go down to the kitchen to make myself a hot drink. The house was
quiet - my parents had spent the evening being part of Chris's manhunt and had
gone to bed early. That was probably why the drapes in our living room hadn't been
drawn that night.
I found myself drawn
towards the window, the street lights outside casting long shadows across the
room. I walked right up to the glass and stared at the ghostly figures on the
other side, and they stared right back.
There were dozens of
them, all concentrated around my house. It was the first time I had ever seen
them up close; they were human shaped and clothed in a hooded garment that
obscured their faces, with a strange indistinct quality to them; a blurring
around the edges. It seemed like all colour had been drained from them, and
from what I could make out, their hooded faces were completely featureless.
Given what had just
transpired that day, you might have expected me to be petrified. Normally I
would have been - for all the bravado I displayed during the day and with
Chris, alone at night I still felt as scared as I had been when I was younger.
That night though, I was in a sort of trance. As I gazed at the crowd of blank,
hooded faces, it gradually began to part to allow a single figure
through.
It was Chris. He was expressionless
and dressed the same as the rest of them, but immediately recognisable and
barely looking any worse for wear. I have no idea how long I stood there,
staring, but once the shock wore off I raised a trembling hand and pressed it against
the window. After a brief pause he did the same. I opened my mouth to call his
name, but all that came out was a wordless croak.
I was so relieved to
see him apparently unharmed that I mustn't have been thinking straight. He was right
there, and he was okay! I remember running to the door to let him in, fumbling
with the lock and throwing it open, but that's all. My parents found me there
the next morning, passed out on the floor. By now I knew better than to say
anything about the Shadows, but I still tried to tell them I'd seen him. Obviously
they didn't believe me.
They never found a body, of course. It
really messed up that family. Eventually they moved away; I remember the look his mum gave me as their
car pulled out of the driveway for the last time. The expression on her face
was equal parts resentful, desperate, and pleading; begging me to tell her
something that'd bring him back to her. I never saw her again.
It messed me up too. For
a while I had kept insisting that I saw him every night, kept trying to get anyone
at all to look with me. After the initial grace period where they put it down
to distress, they got tired of hearing me saying it. When my parents cautiously
suggested that maybe I should see a psychiatrist, I shut up about it.
I withdrew into
myself, after that. While I'd been away from school I had fallen out of contact
with my other friends there, and when I returned I didn't bother trying to
salvage the relationships; the solitude suited me just fine, and in my absence
I had decided to go to a different secondary school than the one we had all
planned on attending.
Every night, I'd wait
by a window and watch the figures outside until he appeared. The total number
of Shadows seemed to wax and wane, but he was ever present. Over time, the palm on the other side of the
glass shrank as I grew and he stayed the same. It became something of a nightly
ritual, I guess. Even though I couldn't save him, I wanted him to know that I
hadn't forgotten.
Still, I began to doubt myself -
there's only so much you can take of people assuring you that what you can see
with your own eyes isn't real before you start to think that you might be
crazy. More than ever before, I became obsessed with finding out the secrets of
the Shadows. Understandably, there wasn't a whole lot of literature on them,
and what little existed was usually buried in old, obscure tomes, often written
in other languages. If it wasn't for the internet, I would have been completely
out of luck.
Over the next few years
I slowly, painstakingly, accumulated as much knowledge from various sources as
I could to learn as much as possible. I would head straight home and sit at my
computer for hours on end, sifting through information, accepting the credible
and discounting that which clashed with my own experiences, while the light
outside my bedroom window ebbed away. They didn't show up on film, but I found
a handful of artists renditions that more or less resembled the creatures I was
familiar with.
I learned that the
generally accepted term for them was 'Outsiders', though there was enough material
referring to them as Shadows or Shades that I was grimly amused that so many
scholars apparently had a child's creativity when it came to names. It derived
from the fact that they were unable to enter human-built structures or even
approach those unable to see them, as well as their ethereal appearance and the
commonly held belief that they were the spirits of the dead.
Confusingly, I found
that Outsider was sometimes also applied to those who could see them, as the
ability set them aside from the rest of humanity. There were sightings of them
dated as far back as Ancient Greece, but in all that time there were no
recorded incidents of someone coming in contact with an Outsider and returning
to tell the tale. There were a few fanciful tales from alleged witnesses who
claimed to seeing victims dragged screaming down through the ground as if to
the depths of hell, but I dismissed those outright. For one, being in the
presence of an Outsider induced sleep, as I had found out first-hand; if the
ground really did open up to swallow the hapless, at least they wouldn't be
awake to scream. Telling myself that helped alleviate some of the guilt I felt
over Chris.
At some point during all this, I
stumbled across an internet forum that turned out to be a refuge made up of
people who had suffered at the hands of the mysterious beings. It was a small
community of only three or four hundred members, but very active and
close-knit. Reading through the introductory posts sub-forum was like reliving
my story with Chris but with some details changed each time - the loss of a
child, a lover, a sibling. The one that
affected me the most had been one of the most recent at the time, written by a
girl my age named Kelly. She wrote amazingly candidly about how she had lost
her twin sister to the Outsiders, and how the resulting strife had led to her
parents divorcing. When I registered the next day, she was the first person to
comment on my post.
That community helped
me come to terms with the fact that I wouldn't be able to rescue Chris. It was
made up of people from all over the world, from myriad different backgrounds
and walks of life but all drawn together by a shared experience of loss. It was
like a support group, and we all helped one another. They helped me come back
out of my shell a little, and encouraged me to make some friends at school.
After all, they'd said, having someone to walk home with every once in a while
wasn't a bad idea, especially during winter.
Kelly helped most of
all. It's safe to say that I had a pretty massive crush on her; everyone on the
board knew, and they teased us relentlessly about it. An older couple that had
met on the board, Diane and John, constantly said how much we seemed like younger
versions of themselves. Kelly took it all in her stride though; one of the
things I admired most about her was how she never seemed to let anything faze
her. We talked a lot about everything and nothing, first via private messages,
then email, text messages, phone and video calls. I was cautious at first,
afraid of messing everything up and losing the one safe haven I'd managed to
find, but luckily she liked me back. One day, a few months after we had been
dating like this, she made a suggestion.
'So... I was
thinking,' she'd said suddenly, startling me. We often left our video chat
clients running in the background while we idled on our computers; I had been
focusing on some coursework and not paying attention to the window with her on
it.
'Yeah?'
'I was thinking,' she
said again, 'maybe I could come down to visit you? As a sort of belated
birthday present kind of thing, y'know?'
I was ecstatic, but
tried not to show it over the webcam. Co-ordinating the get-together proved
tricky however; she lived a couple of hours away by train, so if we wanted to
spend any real amount of time together she'd have to go back in the dark. After
thinking it over, I decided to ask my parents if she could stay for the
weekend. The request took them completely by surprise; she was the first person
I'd wanted to have over since Chris had disappeared, and was a girl at that. They
didn't take much convincing though. I hadn't done anything for my sixteenth,
and they always liked it when I behaved 'normally' - though they were quick to
stress that she'd be staying in the guest bedroom.
She came down the
next week. It was incredible finally getting to meet her in person, and my
parents took to her too. The first day she stayed over we stayed up well into
the night talking, planning future trips, and - once my parents had gone to bed
- fooling around. At one point she broke off from me, giggling, only to have
the sound fade from her lips. I twisted to see what she was looking at; there
was a gap in the curtains, and through it I caught a flash of a silver. I
looked back at her, and sharing a look of mutual understanding, we got off the
sofa and walked hand in hand over to the window.
The sight that met
our eyes was stunning, eliciting a gasp from her. the street outside was filled
with more Outsiders than either of us had ever seen - they must have been drawn
in greater numbers because of the two of us together. The street shimmered as
the moonlight reflected off their pale shrouds; it was eerily beautiful. I took
a step forward and, when Kelly hesitated, squeezed her hand reassuringly until
she joined me right next to the glass. The sheer number of featureless faces
directed towards me was disconcerting, but soon enough there was the familiar
ripple of movement as the crowd parted - and this time, two figures emerged
from the throng. The smaller figure next to Chris was just as featureless as
the rest of the crowd to me, but I could tell by the way Kelly was gripping my
hand that it was her little sister.
I placed my hand on
the window, and after another moment's brief hesitation she did the same. When
her little sister mirrored the gesture it proved too much for her - she jerked
her hand away from the glass as if she had been stung, backpedalled away from
the window and collapsed to the ground, sobbing. I jerked the drapes shut and
did my best to soothe her. When she had calmed down we agreed it was best to
call it a night, and went to our - separate - bedrooms. We didn't speak of what
had happened for the rest of her stay.
We continued seeing each other like
that, making trips and spending a few nights each time, alternating between her
place and mine. Save for the first night I spent at hers, I made a point never
to check on Chris while with her. It made me feel weirdly guilty, as he was the
one who'd brought us together in the first place, but Kelly's reaction to
seeing her sister had been so strong that I knew it would be a bad idea. It had
really surprised me, but I could understand; as close as Chris and I had been,
it couldn't compare to losing your identical twin.
We applied to all the same universities, and
when we got our offers we immediately found a place together. Moving in was
every bit as great as we'd hoped. We complemented one another perfectly; her
boundless enthusiasm and spontaneity meant we were always trying out new things
together, while my more reserved attitude reigned in some of her crazier, more
reckless ideas. Those were the happiest days of my life - almost enough to make
me forget about the spectre that had brought us together in the first place, if
it wasn't for the ever present daily reminder of sunset.
Even so we made the
most of it; we'd go out with big groups of friends so we'd always have someone
to ward off the Outsiders on our way home, or, failing that, a place to crash
for the night. I wasn't a big drinker; I worried too much about the logistics
of getting us home, so I just let Kelly cut loose. I loved watching her like
that, completely caught up in the moment and unburdened by worry or fear.
Whenever we got home
on nights like that, I would quietly sidle over to the bedroom window so as not
to wake her, and peer down into the streets below. Gazing down at the sea of
upturned faces, blank as masks save for Chris's boyish features, it seemed
impossibly long ago that they had taken him from me. In all that time, the only
solution I'd found had been to hide from them. How long could it last? Thoughts
like that kept me up well into the small hours, when the figures would begin to
disperse, evanescent as a morning mist.
We kept the flat after graduating and
found jobs nearby. Our social groups grew more disparate as we befriended colleagues,
and even our after work time was affected by it. It was strange, not being with
one another constantly; after so many years together Kelly's presence had
become so familiar that it was almost like missing a limb. We made up for it on
weekends though, reliving the early days of our relationship when everything
was so new and exciting.
One Friday night,
Kelly never made it back home from an after work get-together. It had happened
before so I wasn't unduly worried at first, but after calling up her closest
friends and the other usual suspects, I started to get frantic. I couldn't
sleep that night, and when she still hadn't called home the next day I headed
straight to the police station. There couldn't be a search like there had been
for Chris, the officer had tried to explain, not unkindly. Adults went missing
all the time and for all sorts of reasons; it would be impossible to cover them
all.
'Don't worry,' she'd
said, 'she'll turn up.'
That was a few weeks ago. The worst
part was contacting our parents; my mum had really connected with her, and the
look that Kelly's mother gave me when I told her that she'd lost her remaining
daughter was an order of magnitude more heart-wrenching than the one Chris's
mother had given me, all those years ago.
I decided against
saying anything on the forum. It was supposed to be a place of solace, and I didn't
want to ruin that. In the time that I'd been posting there, a number of
regulars had quit - the fear that something had happened to them was always
there, but went unsaid. In the end, I sent John and Diane a text letting them know
what had happened, and said that they could share the information with anyone
who cared to ask. I wouldn't be back.
I hope with all my
heart that the reason Kelly disappeared is simply that she left me; that she
found someone better, maybe even someone who could protect her from the
Outsiders. Thinking that hurts, but it's better than the alternative. I make
sure every curtain in the flat is tightly drawn before nightfall; I daren't look
out of a window any more, for fear of seeing her looking back at me.
