Best New Horror 29 by Stephen Jones

Author:Stephen Jones [Jones, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786362469
Publisher: PS Publishing Ltd
Published: 2019-07-15T06:00:00+00:00

SEVERAL WEEKS FOLLOWING the death of a close friend, I started walking alone at night. I was having trouble sleeping, and I think it was a way of trying to reclaim that time for myself. Instead of lying in the darkness remembering Nigel, feeling regret that we’d let the time between meetings stretch further each year, I took to the streets. There was nothing worse than staring at the ceiling and seeing all the bad parts of my life mapped there in cracks, spider-webs and the trails of a paint brush. I thought perhaps walking in the dark might help me really think.

On the fifth night of wandering the streets, I saw the woman.

I was close to the centre of town. It was raining, and the few working streetlights cast speckled, splashed patterns across the pavement, giving the impression that nothing was still in the silent night. Over the past hour I’d seen several people. One was a night worker—a nurse or fireman, perhaps—hurrying along the street wearing a backpack and with a definite destination in mind. A couple were youths, so drunk that they could barely walk or talk. One was a homeless woman I’d seen before. Two dogs accompanied her like shadows, and she muttered to herself too quietly for me to hear.

They all saw me. The worker veered around me slightly, the youths muttered and giggled, and the homeless woman’s dogs paused and sniffed in my direction.

But the new woman didn’t look or act like everyone else. At three or four in the morning, anyone left out in the streets wanted to be alone. Closeness was avoided, and other than perhaps a curt nod, no contact was made. It was as if darkness brought out mysteries and hidden stories in people and made them solid, and that suited me just fine. I wasn’t out there to speak to anyone else; I was attempting to talk to myself.

There was something about her that immediately caught my attention. Walking in a world of her own, she followed no obvious route through the heavy rain, moving back and forth across the silent main street, sometimes walking on the sidewalk and sometimes the road. The weather did not appear to concern her. Even though it was summer, the rain was cool and the night cooler, but she walked without a coat or jacket of any kind. She wore loose trousers and a vest top, and I really shouldn’t have followed her.

But Nigel told me to. It was his voice I heard in my head saying, Wonder what she’s up to? He had always been curious and interested in other people, the one most likely to get chatting to strangers if we went for a drink. Last time I’d seen him he’d been more garrulous than ever, and I wondered if that was a way of hiding his deeper problems and fears. He could say so much, but still didn’t know how to ask for help.

The woman drifted from the main street to a narrower road between shops, and I followed.

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