Ryan's Walk Home.
Do ghosts walk with us?
Ryan wished he hadn’t come this way.
It was just his habit to walk home along the lane, but today it was dark. The clocks had been put back last weekend, so now when he finished his karate class after school, it was properly dark.
He should have gone back into town, along the main street, and over the bridge, but this was the shorter route. There were no people, no houses, no lights. Dead autumn leaves melted into mush on the wet tarmac of the narrow lane. Tall hedges on either side made deep shadows in which he could see nothing. If he kept to the middle, there was enough light seeping down from the hanging mist for him to make out the potholes and puddles, but only just.
Ryan kept his head down, watching where he was putting his feet, trying to ignore the unseen shapes in the overhanging hedges that pressed in from both sides. Trying to ignore what might be there.
He sensed rather than saw a dark form ahead. Was it somebody walking the other way, or somebody standing still? Somebody waiting? Fear washed through him in an instant, but he told himself it would just be somebody else walking home. He just had to keep watching where he was putting his feet and say nothing.
It would have been a year ago when he was walking home past this very spot, when Liam Henderson had been walking the other way. Henderson was only a year above him at school, but big for his age. Stocky, tall, with short-cropped ginger hair. One of the local rough boys, a bully, always in trouble of one sort or another.
He had stopped Ryan, taken his bag, looking for anything worth taking as he threw Ryan’s school books into the hedge. Finding nothing to his liking, he threw the bag over the hedge, into the mud of a ploughed field, then almost as an afterthought, smacked Ryan hard in the face before pushing him into the hedge.
This was the memory that flashed unhelpfully through Ryan’s mind as he neared the dark shadow. It was Halloween night, and while getting changed after karate, some of the older boys had been telling stupid jokes and stories. Now Ryan was seeing shadows that were not there, just because of some scary tales and nonsense.
It had been Halloween last year too when he had walked home, and Henderson had been waiting for him. That’s all it was, his mind dredging up memories to unnerve him. On that day it hadn’t been this late, hadn’t been dark. His fear was just his mind trying to scare him in the darkness.
Except the shadow was definitely there now, and it was moving. Ryan couldn’t turn back just because of a shadow. He was thirteen, not a kid anymore, but even as he thought that to himself, he knew that if he did turn and run, the shadow would follow him anyway.
It was stupid to have walked this way. He should have gone the long way through town, along roads and paths with streetlights and other people. His heart jumped as he heard a noise, but it was just a creature in the hedge, an animal more scared of him than he was of a noise. Then the shadow moved again. There was somebody there.
Waiting.
Ryan kept walking. It was just his mind playing stupid tricks, trying to frighten him. Being afraid of the dark was stupid, afraid of nothing, just because of some silly Halloween stories.
The mist was getting heavier, reflecting the glow of the streetlights from the town on the other side of the river, making the shadows darker. The shape moved again, something almost familiar, but not in a good way. Even though Ryan told himself again that it wasn’t, he saw the stocky shape of Liam Henderson. Now his mind really was just trying to frighten him in the dark, except this was no mere imagining. The eerie glow from above and around them picked out the stubby nose in the wide face, and the short-cropped ginger hair.
‘Well, if it isn’t skinny Devlin.’
The voice moved out of the darkness and blocked Ryan’s way. Ryan told himself to keep walking. His legs felt weak as he tried stepping to the left, but Henderson moved across to close him off. Ryan stopped, his heart already racing. He had been learning karate for nearly a year. His father had made him do so after the last time, but what he learned was just moves, routines. That would do him no good, not against Henderson. Ryan was still small for his age and slightly built, he wouldn’t stand a chance. Something scrabbled about in the undergrowth, the small sounds emphasising the silence in the mist, and how far he was from town, and other people.
‘What have you got for me in there, skinny Devlin?’ He reached out to take the bag.
‘Leave him.’
Ryan hadn’t heard anybody approaching, but a voice came from behind him. Out of the almost darkness, a figure emerged.
Ryan gripped his school bag harder. The handle felt cold and clammy from the mist that was getting thicker, now almost like drizzle.
‘Leave him alone, Henderson,’ the voice repeated calmly. It was a young voice like his own, one Ryan thought he recognised. He turned to see who it was and saw Mark Pearce, now visible in the faint misty light from the distant town. Fear washed through him again, but he could not say why. Perhaps because even though Mark was in the year above him at school, he too was slightly built, and no match for a hulking thug like Liam Henderson.
Maybe he wasn’t safe yet.
Then Ryan’s nerves ran cold. His skin turned to ice in an instant. This could not be Mark Pearce, even though it clearly was. Mark had been killed in a skiing accident not long after Christmas. He remembered the news being broken to the school during morning assembly.
Mark was the first person Ryan had ever known who had died.
So who was this figure who had emerged silently out of the mist? He sounded and looked exactly like Mark Pearce, and he obviously knew Liam Henderson. He was brave too, confidently challenging somebody much bigger than himself. Ryan had too many thoughts rushing for attention at once. He looked back to Henderson, wondering what he should do, and to his surprise saw that Henderson looked terrified.
‘Just keep on walking Ryan,’ the voice said. ‘You’ll be fine.’
Ryan hesitated. This had to be Mark Pearce. He knew who Ryan was. It had to be, yet it couldn’t be. Mark Pearce was dead.
‘It’s okay,’ Mark reassured him in a friendly voice. ‘Henderson won’t bother you, so just walk home, and you’ll be fine.’
Ryan was now thoroughly confused, and still frightened, cold with sweat, and shaking. ‘Thank you,’ he said quietly, and keeping his head down, he started to walk onwards into the dark lane, his legs unsteady, heart beating fast, desperate to get home. He felt guilty, walking away like a coward. Mark wasn’t big enough to take on Henderson on his own. He stopped and looked back. Henderson was watching him with something like pleading in his terrified eyes.
‘It’s okay,’ Mark said again. He looked completely at ease, almost but not quite smiling, next to the visibly frightened form of Henderson. ‘Just get yourself home. Don’t worry about Henderson. He won’t ever trouble you again.’
Ryan looked from Mark Pearce to Liam Henderson, but only silence looked back at him. He knew he had no choice. He turned and started walking again, towards home.
‘Don’t look back,’ he heard Mark say to him through the mist. ‘No matter what you hear, don’t look back, and just keep on walking.’
Ryan’s feet felt heavy as he took one step and then another into the shadows of the lane as it turned the next corner towards home. The mist was now something he could feel, brushing against his face like an icy breath. He could hear it dripping from the leaves that remained on the almost bare hedges on either side. From behind he heard a noise, like an animal in pain. There was a dull thud, then only silence, and the dripping of autumn wetness from dead leaves.
Ryan quickened his steps and did not look back.
As the lane straightened out, he could see the lights of his street ahead. Behind him was only the darkness of the empty lane. As he stepped through his front door, the warmth made his face feel clammy and wet.
‘How was karate?’ his mother asked as she came down the stairs. ‘What’s wrong love?’
She could always tell his moods and thoughts, a mother’s instinct. He wanted to break down and cry, as he would have done when he was younger, as he had done exactly a year ago when he arrived home with a bleeding face, trying to explain that half his schoolbooks were missing.
He wasn’t going to cry this time so took a deep breath, and then as calmly as he could he told his mother about Liam Henderson waiting for him in the dark lane, then about Mark Pearce appearing, who must have been following, except it couldn’t have been Mark Pearce. His mother said that would just be shock. It can make your mind imagine all sorts of strange things, and it was dark.
He felt better for having told his mother, then went upstairs to change out of his school uniform and put his karate whites away. While still upstairs, he heard his father come home. When he went downstairs, his father had already called the police. Ryan didn’t want any fuss, but his father explained that after last year, Liam Henderson was under some sort of restraint order not to go near or speak to Ryan, so the police had to be told.
He was told not to mention Mark Pearce when the police called round later. It obviously couldn’t have been him, so when he told his story to the police, he could describe the person who had arrived and had challenged Liam Henderson, but not to say it was anybody he knew, never mind saying it had been Mark Pearce. The police would find out who it really was if they had to.
The matter was not discussed over dinner or afterwards, and Ryan had almost stopped thinking about it constantly by the time the doorbell rang. Ryan had been in his bedroom, so he went to the top of the stairs to see who it was at the door. It was nearly eight o’clock, so all trick or treating had stopped by then, not that they got many on the outskirts of town, anyway. Two policewomen were being shown into the house. Ryan’s father saw him at the top of the stairs and asked him to come down.
Everybody gathered in their small living room, one of their visitors sitting, the other standing, as Ryan’s father explained what had happened. The two police officers looked at each other in a way that Ryan knew wasn’t good.
‘Are you sure it was Liam Henderson?’ the older one, who was sitting down, asked Ryan.
‘Yes, it was definitely him,’ Ryan said, confused, wondering why they didn’t want to believe him?
They looked at each other in that way again.
‘And you are certain about the time?’
Ryan couldn’t see what the problem was. ‘Well, karate finished at quarter to five, and I know that because I looked at the clock while I was getting changed. By the time I got dressed and walked up the lane, it must have been nearly five.’
The two policewomen looked at each other again, then the one standing up checked her notebook while silence filled the room. The door brushed open as the cat entered the room and watched. Both policewomen looked at the cat as if it might have answers to unasked questions, then the one sitting down addressed Ryan in a calm but questioning voice.
‘We aren’t saying you are not telling us what you think you saw Ryan, but that couldn’t have been Liam Henderson, because he was in a car accident more than a mile away at the time you say you saw him in the lane.’
‘But it was him,’ insisted Ryan.
‘It can’t have been Liam Henderson,’ the younger policewoman said. ‘Everybody on duty was called to that RTA, including us, and we got the call at 16:57.’
‘Are you sure it was Liam Henderson in the car?’ Ryan’s father asked.
‘It was definitely Liam,’ the older policewoman said, ‘and he wasn’t in the car.’
She looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘You’re going to hear about it in a small town like this anyway, but Liam was involved in some sort of argument by the shops on Morden Road at the time you say he was in the lane. It seems that something terrified him, and he ran out into the road where he was hit by a passing car.’
‘Oh God,’ Ryan’s mother said. ‘Was he hurt?’
‘Unfortunately, Liam died at the scene, Mrs Devlin.’
Ryan remembered the cry of pain, and the calm voice of Mark Pearce.
‘He won’t ever trouble you again.’
You may like to read my David Hammond stories.
You can find out more about David and what I write at nigelcode.co.uk
Literally couldn't stop reading this! I could see and feel that fog too. Great writing
Absolutely brilliant. Thank you for this experience :)