Lanterns And Shades - Part 6: The Long Walk Home

"Sinner - I have never learned. Beginner - I cannot return. Forever I must walk this earth, like some forgotten soldier."

I sit with my back resting against the trunk of a gnarled old oak tree, staring up through its twisted branches at a small and impossibly distant sun that bathes Witches Path in weak, watery light. I see it, but I cannot feel it. My skin is wet and cold, my limbs numb. The only thing that seems real is Judy Nicholls’s shoe. I have been turning it over in my hands for some time now, feeling the light, furry texture of suede and the barely perceptible lashings of frayed and broken laces where they fall over and between my trembling fingers. The left side of my face throbs without obvious rhythm. It feels swollen and bruised. When I close my right eye, I see that the vision from its twin is narrowed and distorted. My shirt is torn and dirtied, the skin beneath scraped and penetrated in too many places to count.

Everything is different now. I have seen the Shades in all their capering glory. I have seen how they flock to light and warmth, how they smother it and make it their own, how they steal away what they can no longer have. Any naïvety I once possessed is gone, dragged to the ground and claimed as Shelley was, buried beneath those warped and reaching forms until no trace remained. At least Judy left a shoe. It is a ridiculous memento, incongruous and meaningless without its partner, but it’s something. It is a memory of a girl that once walked here. Perhaps not a statue or a diary or some grand memorial to recall a life taken well before time, but something her parents might hold or keep and know where and how their daughter was claimed. With that knowledge, they might at least begin to come to terms with tragedy. If I can ever find the strength to pick myself up, I will take it to them. This much I promise.

I am no longer afraid of the dark or the ghosts that call it home. On the floor of the Curfew Bar, beneath the death-dance of the Shades, I lay screaming and weeping, curled into the tightest of foetal balls. Even then, their glamour was such that I could not bring myself to close my eyes. It wasn’t that we were wrong about their insubstantial nature or their comparative lack of strength. We were mathematically fooled, stupid enough to never really understand that every missing person was likely a new Shade, and that their numbers had swelled beyond our worst nightmares. The doors were broken and the windows shattered not by some surprising and hidden power, but by the sheer weight of the crowds that had been drawn by the light to gather at every entrance. There were hundreds. Outside, perhaps thousands. Beyond the Lanternmen, nobody has ever mentioned anybody being a refugee from the Dead Quarters, and if that is the case then perhaps the entire population of those doomed communities now drifts in shadow, irresistibly pulled to those places where there is still light and life.

Yet I was not Touched. With Shelley gone, her murderers span and flew in the light like dervishes, ricocheting from the walls and the ceiling and each other. They turned over tables and sent chairs spinning across the room. They raced in and out through the windows, sometimes catching on the broken, jagged glass and leaving streaks of themselves behind like material caught on barbed wire where – separated from whatever force gave it motion and life – it was reduced to liquid that streamed to the floor and melted away into vapour. Whatever sense they use to ‘see’, though, was useless when it came to the cowering boy who lay terrified and paralysed beneath them.

I do not know for certain, but the memory that comes is of the Shades I saw when Dennis and I drove into the town centre. They were gathered as I often see them gathered, an image that has always made me think of them as creatures that roamed and hunted in packs. But they seemed blind to each other, callously colliding as though unaware that their own kind were so close at hand. If what they see is light and warmth, then perhaps darkness and cold don’t register at all, except as a respite from the Lanterns, the one thing they seem to avoid. I have been thinking about this ever since the reality of dawn made the lights of the bar impotent and the Shades began to thin in number as individuals and then groups slipped back out into the growing day. They come to light, but that which emanates from the Lanterns is too much. It leaves them confused and disoriented, drunk on that which they crave. Beneath the sun, I think, they go to places of relative darkness, hiding perhaps in abandoned buildings or woods like this one. That would explain why Witches Path is so haunted, and why the day is so safe.

They do not have eyes or ears or noses. They do not react to the same things we do. Whatever senses they have strike me as very black and white and restricted. Light and dark, hot and cold; these are the extremes by which they are guided. Somehow, I am now sure, the fact that I have been Touched either dulls those senses or eliminates them altogether. In the Curfew Bar, I was invisible. Had I not been, my fate would have been as assured as Shelley’s. Mine is not a unique affliction, but it is rare. As far as I am aware, though, I am the only one who knows of this potential immunity. I have that knowledge, I have a shoe, and I have a prayer that JD was fast enough last night. Everything else seems vague and distant.

I draw my legs up beneath me, and the scrape of my shoes on the gravel seems too loud. I rest one hand on the tree and haul myself unsteadily to my feet. My body feels cramped and stiff, and it is only now that I think about the time and realise how many hours have passed since I fled the Curfew Bar and plunged headlong into the woods. The bare branches whipped and wounded me, but at the time I was propelled by the adrenaline of terror, and I barely noticed. Now those cuts feel dirty and sore, and I want nothing more than to settle into a hot bath and then sleep. The thought of nightmares no longer bothers me. I have seen worse now. I have felt and heard worse. The fears and insecurities that live in my head have been challenged and surpassed.

It is when I move to set off that I realise there is something wrapped around my ankle. I look down and see red, shiny material. I bend to retrieve it and find myself holding a satin bra. Frowning, I step away from the tree and turn to look back at the broken branches and trampled grass that mark the path of destruction I have wrought. A few feet along it lie a pair of faded jeans. Further away, a striped shirt. Beyond that, what looks like an old brown sandal.

I do not have to follow this bizarre trail very far to discover its source. Away from Witches Path, hidden deep in the trees, there is a small clearing. Piled in its centre are clothes of every style and description. For my tired mind, it is a moment both of understanding and incomprehension. I must have run straight through the huge mound of clothing, kicking the sandal and dragging the other items with me. I had noticed this no more than I had noticed the injuries I was inflicting on myself. But the very presence of this bizarre sight goes against every belief I have come to hold about the Shades. They have no intelligence, and they've certainly never bothered with ritualistic behaviour like this before. What is the pile of clothes if not a graveyard of a sort? These are the jumbled remains of all those Shaded on Witches Path. If you had the time and were of a suitably macabre leaning, you could sort them by size and taste and get some idea of just how many had died to create this mountain of damp and faded colours.

So many dead. This is clothing no longer required because the former owners now live in darkness. I feel breathless and dizzy. I let myself fall back against a tree and rest there a while, almost grateful for the release of tears. I will remember this, but I will not think of it now. I haven’t the energy. All I want is to fall into blissful oblivion. Summoning what little strength I have left, I turn away from the graveyard and pick my way back to the path.

I walk slowly up the hill feeling leaden and exhausted. I will never run here again. On the far side, I pause to stare at the main road, to remember all those frantic nights when the last leg of our frantic sprint took us to the safety of the Lantern Truck. In hindsight it seems a foolish and hollow activity, something we did because our lives had no real meaning and because we needed to feel alive and afraid. At the time, though, it all made sense. There is no handheld equivalent of a Lantern that we could have carried through the woods, and there is no way that Dennis’s truck could ever have traversed the disused and broken road that passes the front of the Curfew Bar. We could have run the roads, but in the end, there was just as strong a likelihood of being attacked by Shades there as on Witches Path. The Path was more dangerous, but it was also the fastest route to a place where we could be picked up. If I look hard enough, then maybe there are holes in the logic that led us to take those jobs at the Curfew Bar. But in the end, we needed the money and we needed something that removed us from the Daylight World. It may be that all close friends think themselves different from the rest, special in some indefinable way. JD and I have always felt that way, I think. It’s unspoken, but it’s there. There is us, and then there is everyone else.

Shelley’s God is a cruel one. If he was to exist, then his past record indicates that there is a price I would have to pay for gaining knowledge that may help us in what are starting to feel like our final days, for holding onto my life while so many others are losing theirs. In a biblical tale, I would lead the victims of the Daylight World against the Shades, but the price God would exact would be terrible. In a biblical tale, JD’s revelation that a world filled only with Shades was inevitable could lead only to her own death. Those are the rules when every story has a moral and every action must be answered for. I refuse to believe that. In a way, Witches Path belongs to JD. It is here that she shines the brightest, drawing the ire and pursuit of shadowy enemies that just never seem to be fast enough. She can’t be gone. If she is, then I suppose I will deliver the shoe and the information and then walk away. Being close to Lanterns isn’t the necessity it once was.

The eyes of Community B are wide and stunned. They watch me as they might watch a Shade drifting aimlessly through the neighbourhood in broad daylight. It’s funny, but not so as you’d laugh. I am aware of the way they freeze, of the way their heads turn, whispered conversations carrying on the soft breeze. I am aware of the picture I must present; a young man they have seen around before, battered and bedraggled and walking with the slow, awkward shuffle of a Romero zombie; face bruised and misshapen, shirt torn and bloody, a girl’s shoe dangling limply from his right hand.

I turn the corner of Abbot Street and begin what seems like an endless walk home. Curtains twitch, activity ceases, sound falls away. My neighbours watch me like the scattered audience to some nightmare parade.

“My God,” someone says. “Are you…are you okay?”

The voice is not familiar, but something in the part of my memory that now seems so dislocated and far away makes me stop and turn. I am standing outside number thirty-eight, and a brunette from a boy’s fantasies is staring at me, concern creasing her brow and glistening in her bright blue eyes.

“I’m…alive,” I hear a thin, harsh voice reply. I have screamed my vocal chords raw.

“What happened to you? It’s Ken, isn’t it? You live up the road.”

A derisive little snort of amusement comes from my nostrils. I feel my lungs hitch, and for a moment, I am absolutely sure I am going to fall into hysterical laughter that I will be powerless to prevent.

“You know my name,” I say. “I used to watch you sunbathing. I used to dream about you all the time.”

She colours and stares at me, her mouth moving as though trying on different words and finding nothing appropriate. You could imagine kissing her, tasting her lipstick and feeling her soft warmth. She’s beautiful in a way JD can only dream about, but she isn’t real. This is the DW, The Daylight World, Disneyland. It is populated by dolls and puppets and bad actors. If the Shades are the drifting dead of the night, then we are the sunlit equivalent.

“I’m alive,” I tell her, and walk on.