No-mans hour.1

Tim sat there, drawing shapes in the dry dirt and dropping pebbles. Sometimes out of the corner of his eye he could see old Ken staring out, knowing and watching. He seemed to see an impending doom marching. Whether nearer or further away Tim was unsure. Perhaps one day he would know. He had burst a hole good and proper out of his old life, he had no-one left out there. This was his life now, and his home, the resting place of the dead.

Days and weeks went by and each morning Tim jumped over the back fence and went to sleep in a big hollow log at the park only to return again later that afternoon, just before sunset. That morning he had a premonition that a woman in another part of town was being set upon by some dark and formless shadow. He was compelled to confront it. He didn't know how but that was irrelevant.

He knew from the shape of the moon that it was to be tonight and he knew the place he had to go. He went and sat at Kens grave and waited for the moon to reach the same position.

When the time came he walked through the streets with a forged determination. He sensed the hatred and cowardly stealth it posessed. It stalked him, reached into his mind and paralised his senses using tricks, memories and lies. Cursing him, pointing at him, mocking and jeering. He felt it's cold fingers flick chilling splinters at his spine and his very core. He wanted to hate it but he could not allow himself that luxury, so he feared it instead with every footstep of his journey.

He came to the place. When he stood still, chill and dark though it may have been, he had some control over his fear. He thought maybe in twenty minutes, give or take five, he would find that person. He was not far wrong. In less than fifteen minutes a lady came walking down the other side of the street. She had on the same clothes, but he would not approach her until he had good reason to do so, because if his premonition served him correctly he had more than good reason.

She was now directly opposite him on the other side of the street. She suddenly stopped and looked over to Tim and screamed and that was his cue. Tim ran across the road to help her. Then she let out another scream, a bone chilling scream that sent an ice cold bolt of fear so far into Tims heart that he froze on the spot. He saw her face, she was it. She was that thing he had been avoiding all this time. She didn't wrap him up and drag him home or drag him into the bushes and cut him into little bits. She simply mortified him, left him cold and empty. And walked away.