I See You

** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only **

I Can See You

As I left the Black Bull, withered leaves were being torn in thousands from twisted branches and strewn across the car park by turbulent damp air. A nasty October night. I fumbled badly getting my car keys into the lock. I’d better leave it and walk. The moon’s light was suffocating behind soaring banks of black cloud and managing to silver the edges of only some shadows but I knew the way well enough. I walked as quickly as I dared. It had rained all day and the lane was a morass of slippery mud. The elms towering darkly overhead shifted noisily in the wind. I slipped and fell heavily several times, cursing loudly and knowing that I’d feel the pain the next day. By the time I reached the edge of Brackley Woods I could feel that the cold was draining my strength and I decided to take the shortcut home through the wood and down by the old lock. It would be quicker, but I’d have to be careful by the river. I remember I caught the inside of my knee, quite painfully, on the wooden top bar as I climbed the stile from the lane into the wood but my recollection of walking the path through the woods is very vague. Tiredness threatened to overwhelm me and I walked in a stupor of alcohol and exhaustion hardly noticing the branches lashing at my face as the wind whipped the trees to and fro in violent gusts. My soaked and freezing feet trudged automatically on as my mind drifted forward to the promise the soft dry warmth of my bed.

Quite cruelly, time seems to elongate when you are in such situations, tired, cold alone and a little frightened by the harshness of the elements and the shifting shadows. I found myself feeling that I must soon round the gentle bend where the path’s gradient led down to the rivers edge but the path did not bend, nor descend, instead it began to rise. It was at this point that I knew I was lost. I stopped at once to get my bearings. There was little to discern in the darkness. The humped black silhouettes of the wooded hills around me were not only unfamiliar but quite strange. It was as if I had not merely taken a wrong turn but was in the wrong landscape altogether. As I stood looking round for some sign of my location a large white shape swooped swiftly and silently over my head through the dim moonlight, shocking my heart into palpitations. A barn owl, I thought then realised that in following the path of its flight I had lost all sense of the direction from which I had come.

Now my apprehension had swollen to something near desperation. In the distance the bellies of black clouds were being under-lit by flashes of lightning, muffled rolls of thunder followed on close behind. The wind was gusting colder and harder. I had no choice but to move on though I had no Idea where I was heading.

Fear fuelled my legs now as the alcohol’s effects were suppressed by the adrenaline coursing through my veins. I ran blindly, unthinkingly, blundering through the darkness, stumbling and crashing my way through the unknown woods. If I ran far enough, I would find a road, a river, a house or something by which I could get my bearings. The rising wind began to pelt me with freezing rain and the extra energy bought with adrenaline was soon sapped by the chill of my soaked clothes which were not only freezing but heavy and restricted the movement of my aching cold muscles.

Through the long lonely hours of that interminable night I fumbled my way through the darkness and driving rain. The howling wind The creaking rustling trees the rapid fluttering of bats overhead until eventually the rain and wind subsided and a pallid grey light stained the edge of the sky.

I had made it, morning was creeping up on the horizon. I was surrounded by an avenue of tall fir trees which led away down into a shallow valley and up the other side. As the light grew I could see through the thin mist, a pool at the bottom of the rise and standing on a huge overturned tree stump in the centre of the pool appeared to be the figure of a boy standing atop it casually leaning against the torn upward thrusting roots.

I confess that in my desperation my first thoughts were not of his welfare I did not consider that if he like me had spent the night in the open he might be in need of help. No my first thought was to ask him where I was. As I staggered down the hill I became aware of a stillness, the wind had suddenly ceased and the air between the tall firs was eerily silent. No bird sang the dawn chorus. My tired eyes were straining open to let in the weak pre-dawn light and the figure seemed to disappear as I approached the stump. Perhaps my sight was playing tricks on me, my tiredness affecting my perception. By the time I got to the edge of the stagnant pool the figure was not to be seen.

Reluctantly I decided that I had been mistaken and began to trudge up the other side of the valley. Before I had gone twenty feet a sound behind me made me stop and look round. I thought I heard a plopping sound as if an object had been dropped into the water but there was no ripple or sign of movement in the pond. I turned again and resumed my climb but felt unsettled by both the vision of the boy and the sound from the pool. The walk to the top of the rise was long and exhausting but I pushed on as hard as I could because unaccountably I felt that I had witnessed something secret in that place and that I should not have been there. In all my horrors of the night before, nothing had placed such a chill on my heart as that stagnant place. As I reached the top of the rise I looked back down on the pool and to my horror I saw the boy atop the stump. I ran from the sight. Over the rise the avenue of trees continued and was crossed at right angles some five hundred yards further on by another avenue.

As I stood where the avenues crossed, to my left the grassy avenue turned into a dirt road which gently curved out of sight but before it did, something protruded from the line of dense trees. At first I took it for a wooden building but it was actually a boat. The other two avenues led endlessly on in unpromising straight green lines so I headed toward the boat. I was keen to see what lay round the corner and where the muddy dirt road led. As I passed the boat a pheasant shot noisily out from underneath it causing me to jump and swear. When I realised what it was I chuckled to myself but when a high version of my chuckle was echoed from the cabin of the boat I stopped immediately and froze in fear.

“I can see you!” I shouted. The words rang out harshly through the air between the still trees.

Silence.

I decided that I should investigate and started toward the rotting boat but the thing had such a sinister broken-down decaying appearance that my nerve failed me and I backed away. I turned my back on it with some reluctance as I had a powerful feeling that the vessel was not empty, yet I could not bring myself to go near and felt an overwhelming desire to be as far away from it as I could get. I marched away as quickly as I could with my words still ringing in my ears. I didn’t look back until I had rounded the bend and I knew that the boat would be out of sight, but look back I did for some reason and as I did I heard a high thin taunting voice, very faint but audible, from beyond the curve of firs.

“You can’t see me!”

My blood ran cold. I could not understand why the voice chilled me so but again the fear lent energy to my legs and I ran. The dirt road soon led to a wider road with tire-marks evidence of recent use and this I followed until it led to the edge of the wood between two small fields and onto a public highway.

To my amazement I realised that I knew where I was and that I was only a mile or so from the Black Bull where my car waited. My spirits were raised enormously by this and by the time I reached my trusty car I was relieved beyond description.

By now the sun had risen sufficiently to see quite clearly. I turned out of the Black Bull car park thinking only of how soon I would be home, out of my wet clothes and into my warm bed. I didn’t notice the paper boy who’d been delivering the Sunday Papers to the Pub. His bicycle scraped horribly between the underside of the car and the road. I stopped and got out. His skinny body was smashed against a wall and as bent as his bicycle.

“Oh my God! Sorry. Sorry I just didn’t see you!” I was saying as I got out of the car. I tried to feel for a pulse in his neck but it was slippery with blood. His eyes were half closed with only the whites showing. I lifted one of his eyelids to take a look at his pupils and as I did so he looked me in the face, smiled and whispered triumphantly with his dying breath, “You said you could see me.”

I don’t truthfully know what I saw in the woods that October morning before I killed Brandon Childs but I have learned since that while I was walking the woods he was at home with his family. Only leaving the house after I had found my way back onto the road.