The Shadow Author. 2

Please find the prologue and ensuing chapters here!

Chapter Two

THE SHADOW AUTHOR opens his front door and steps out onto the grime-strewn stone step that marked the border between his indoor sanctuary and the cracked pathway that led to the real world, the grotesquely fat, pitifully scrawny one beyond his mind. A shadow, cast from the house’s rotting storm porch, was waiting to obscure his image from those roaming the morning world. He closed his eyes, knowing that he had just a few seconds with which to compose himself before the world’s elements swarmed his body. Polluted his thoughts. He spent these seconds feeding off the buzz of anticipation that was pulsating throughout his body. Letting this fraught and dangerous energy empower his muscles, his bones.

His blood.

The Shadow Author’s eyes shoot open as the energy swarmed around his head, illuminating the electrical highways of his brain, his mind seeing this as the rebirth of a dead star, far across the universe.

His eyes blankly scan the world, picks up the usual shapes; the row of terraced houses on the far side of a long, helpless road, dotted with its usual husks: ageing, haphazardly parked cars that outnumbered the houses. A moped wedged next to a pair of recycling bins on a rectangle of concrete outside the house immediately opposite his. An overflowing skip.

A stooped form struggling to push a pram up the road’s slight incline.

A part of his mind imagines the toneless muscles that sagged within the form’s limbs and back. Its spinal discs, desiccating and awaiting the inevitable spasming that will eventually require surgical intervention so that the poor form can continue its struggle up minute hills. This poor form’s minute and wretched life.

The screeching of the mass inside the pram pierces the shadow author’s defences, he feels his eardrums swell with the cacophony, entombing the baby’s despairing scream forever. So much pain is entombed in his mind.

He blinks and feels his power and focus diminish, although, happily, this proves to be a momentary lapse. He clenches his fists and cracks his knuckles and feels the power seep from his pores and mineralises upon his outer skin.

Good. Equilibrium. He could walk among the others now. He scanned along the road again, seeing outside objects blinking into focus like the way strip lighting throughout a vast warehouse would shine light upon its goods, one section at a time. The houses. The pedestrians. The skip, he sees, has a pair of mangled and mouldy deckchairs crowning its squalid kingdom of unloved clutter and waste.

The low growling of a car engine catches the shadow author’s attention. From the same direction as the stooping, pram-pushing figure, a black saloon car is crawling towards his sanctuary. The driver has his head stuck out of his window and he is peering intently at the houses. His car reaches the shadow author’s house, and the driver slows his car, seeming not to notice the figure on the doorstep. His intent is solely focused on scrutinising the door numbers drilled and hammered onto the walls and porches of the road.

And he has found the shadow author’s home.

The black saloon has MAINLINE TAXIS 556688 festooned inside a turmeric-coloured ellipse on its flank in characters as purely red as fresh arterial blood. Purring and humming, it vibrates billions of molecules of organic and inorganic matter, the dusts and dirts of life and death, on the patch of the road it has slowed onto.

Chaos rumbled beneath the mid-range saloon.

He stands, momentarily transfixed with the way that the logo contrasts starkly with the grim array of houses and people and rusting cars along the road, then comes to and arms his face with a smile and reaches behind him for the suitcase he has spent the last few hours painstakingly packing and arranging. Repacking and rearranging.

He holds an arm aloft to acknowledge the car’s driver, who has finally realised that there is a person – what looks like a person – standing under the protective shadows thrust by the storm porch.

The shadow author opens his mouth and is set to dispense a manufactured, inane greeting to the driver when he is interrupted by two long, deep blares of the taxi’s horn. The blares penetrate his skull and make his ears thump. He manages to retain a neutral façade but feels the protective layer of energy cracking.

The shadow author shakes with an exorbitant rage, knowing that whilst the energy will presently regather and bind around his skin once more, it is likely that a few particles will be forever lost to this world.

He is strong, but he is not a planet. Despite whatever he will eventually become he is, he regularly reminds himself, human.

But he is the only human who is the shadow author.

“Are you coming, buddy?” Once more the taxi driver has rattled him, but he attempts to be strong and retain his composure.

“Yup, yeah, can you just give me a second, please?” splutters the shadow author. He has not spoken aloud for some time and the words clag in his throat like thick wet soot.

He turns and, with shaking hands, works through the task of slotting his door key into the lock.

His rage intensifies as he repeatedly fails to place the key in the lock, his mind still on the delivery of his retort to the driver. It had been weak, craven even, nowhere near the foreboding, collected way which was intended. This man—this imbecile—with his impatience and his horn have severely rattled the shadow author, and this just can’t do.

He closes his eyes, pauses his task, and weighs up his options. He only ever gives himself two choices and they are always the two extremities of the situation. One thing he has learnt since he became the shadow author is that the two extremes are the only things that matter. Everything else is bullshit. A lie.

Just like the world around him.

The options present themselves in his mind.

He can lash out and kill the imbecile.

Or…

He can detach his mind and plug his remaining humanity into the world and get through the situation.

A pulse of the energy courses through his right arm. The killing would be brutal, pleasurable and deserved.

But it would almost certainly mean the end of his adventure before it had had the chance to begin.

He must be patient.

The shadow author feels the energy bouncing around his body and gather into a pulsing, powerful orb inside his mind. The energy is not yet his to control – that will come later – but he has developed a measure of influence over its direction. And sensing that it is content to rest, he feels the energy seep from him and coagulates into an orb that tethers itself to the back of his neck and buzzes on a frequency to which he is solely attuned. The energy’s exit weakens the fortification of his skin, and a misstep forces him to stumble as he drags his suitcase to the taxi.

The driver guffaws, saying “Eh up, watch yourself, lad!” to the shadow author, who, temporarily absent of the energy breaks into a grin, and holds up a hand in salute to his stumble.

“Ha! I’ve always been a clumsy oaf,” he replies to the man whose violent death he had considered only seconds earlier.

The driver opens his door and embarks on a wheezing shuffle of his short, round frame to the rear of the taxi and opens up the boot. As the shadow author lifts his suitcase he is impeded by the taxi driver who, making a sudden attempt to take over the task, grabs the suitcase’s handle.

He feels a wave of revulsion wash over him as the man’s jerking, clammy hands envelop his, a sick feeling plugs at the back of his throat when a ragged fingernail scratches against his knuckle.

“Oop, sorry bud, did I catch you there? Blimey, don’t know which of the two of us is the clumsiest, eh fella!” the driver says, as their intertwined hands get the suitcase into the boot. They break off, and the shadow author closes his eyes again, hoping that the energy can show the restraint of his own, absent mind.

“Ah no worries,” he beams, looking his dishevelled driver directly in his greying irises. Forelocks of the man’s lank hair are splayed upon his brow, held in position by the film of sweat which seems to cover his entire body. He pats the driver on the back, almost amused to find that the man’s shirt is also slick with his sweat.

He keeps his grin in place as the driver slams the boot shut and the two of them take their seats in the car. He opts to sit in the back seat. His composure is regaining but further provocation could have the energy bubbling once again. This was certainly a time for calmness.

“Station, I believe then buddy?” enquires the driver, as the car noses along the road, past the skip and the cars and the people.

“Please.”

“What time’s yer train?”

“Erm . . . quarter past eight?” the Shadow Author makes his answer sound as casual as possible. As if the next 72 hours have not been prepared to the minutest degree.

“Jetting off somewhere, are we?” the driver shrugs his head back, presumably to the boot and his passenger’s cargo.

The shadow author smiles to himself: the classic enquiry about where someone and their luggage are headed. He has expected this, and prepared a lie; “Yeah. Spain. Malaga. My parents have a villa for the summer there so I’m having a bit of a freebie holiday.”

“Very nice too. Reckon I could do with a couple of weeks over there lapping up the sunshine me'sen . . . if I could ever get the bleeding time off, y’know what I mean?”

The Shadow Author smirks, trying not to think of the portly driver, sweat dripping from every pore whilst padding around the overrun tourist town that he has selected in the south of Spain; Nerja, a typical sprawl of glibly lit seafood eateries and mock British pubs lined along its promenade, buffered between scores of unfinished apartment blocks and thin, coarsely-sanded beaches.

Were the driver to ask for further insight as to the shadow author's Spanish travels, he would tell them that his dad would pick him up from the Malaga Airport and take him to Nerja, which was situated an hour’s drive east.

Certainly easier and a hell of a lot less mundane than reciting a line about toll booths, rental cars and driving on the wrong side of the road.

For completeness, he has memorised a few details germane to Nerja, which he knows is set to be immersed in temperatures around 16 Celsius over the next week or two, somewhat more refreshing from the late thirties it reaches in the summer. Truly hellish in the heat.

The little town, perched between the Mediterranean and the mountainous natural park of Sierras de Tejeda, Almijara Y Alhama was known for its caves, a system that homes a natural amphitheatre and also features ancient Neanderthal paintings daubed upon its walls. He doubted that anyone would press him for too many details about his Spanish holiday; however the shadow author had always been drawn to places where secrets could hide and you never knew what was further along the trail of a mountain path or the dingy corner of a dark and musty cave.

The shadow author had purposefully concluded his research at this point; knowing too much about a generic del Sol destination would perhaps make him more memorable to any potential busybody with nothing better to do than interrogate a fellow train passenger or lone traveller waiting in an airport.

Although he believes that his tactic of looking mild mannered yet disinterested in striking up a temporary rapport whilst wearing a pair of ear buds would work well as a preventative measure to be left in peace.

He felt a twinge of sorrow that his research was curtailed; the caves of Nerja had sparked a genuine flicker of interest in the shadow author… caves full of ancient language – paintings are language, everything is language, he knew - and the idea that these underground caverns riddled with dark corners and alcoves where shadows of the past and the present lurked was thrilling to him.

But the journey he was on was one of higher purpose than mere self-indulgence. To attain his desire, he must maintain discipline. And all would end well.

For him.

“Y’alright back there, buddy?”

Damn. He hadn’t responded to the man’s bemoaning his lack of opportunity to be away on his own holiday. Idiot, he chastised himself: one of his concrete rules was that he must also keep his focus and appear not to be lost in his own world.

He emits a small chuckle and raises his brow, “Sorry mate. Miles away . . . yeah it’s good to get away anywhere really, I suppose.”

He then slaps his coat pocket, as if responding to a buzz coming from within. He pulls out his phone and holds it to his ear in the pretence that a call or voicemail has arrived. He is seeking to steer the conversation’s direction away from his travel plans; as thorough as his research and planning have been, he knows the best tactic in trying to avoid a verbal slip-up is: don’t talk at all as you are bound to end up talking about whatever it is you’re desperately trying not to talk about.

He looks up at the driver and keeps up the charade that he is taking a call.

“Sorry mate . . . hello? Hello?”

The driver grunts at this and switches his interest to a moderately faster moving lane next to his, where an attractive brunette driver is inching past his cab in a silver Polo as they crawl towards a set of traffic lights.

The shadow author, keeping his head low and his eyes shut, nuzzles against the orb of energy and waits to see if it can feed him with some impetus to help him with this first leg of his journey.

It answers. He loses all feeling for a split second whilst a telling, empowering link of warmth builds between the orb and his mind. It feels like heated syrup in pouring painlessly through his ears into his brain, lighting up the parts that gave him control and command and removed all the obstacles in his way, leaving a blotless and tranquil path devoid of pitfalls and traps.

He is, after all, the shadow author.

He feels a coathanger-wide smile tear across his face and knows that he has regained his composure. All is well and he can hear himself muttering into his phone, anodyne words and phrases are spilling out. He had trusted his instincts to keep his phone conversation vague, non-committal and dull and it appeared that they have done just that.

He ends the call and looks up and ahead, apologising to the driver for the call.

“No bother, bud!” answers the driver. The traffic lights change and the brunette takes a different direction to the briefly lovelorn driver, who needs an impatient beep from the car behind in order to get his cab moving towards the station.

“Alright, keep yer hair on . . .Tell you what, bud, I wouldn’t have minded flying to Spain with her . . .”

Sensing that he is about to be on the receiving end of the driver’s romantic woes and possibly questions concerning his own love life, the shadow author harnesses the kick of power that the energy had infused him with, and, his self-discipline and focus gleaming, steers the chat back to safer territory.

“What time you on to then?” he asks the driver.

The safer conversational ground is easily found within the bleakly familiar questions and answers regarding self-employment and hours worked that have batted back and forth between taxi drivers and passenger since time immemorial.

A pleasing silence has resulted from the anodyne exchange of words, leading the driver to turn on the radio. He drums the steering wheel to the rolling drums of Money for Nothing as his taxi rounds the overfamiliar curl of road that leads to the taxi rank outside Leeds station, drawing to a halt with an abrupt shank of his handbrake.

The shadow author thanks the driver and rummages in his coat pockets once more, giving him a head start in getting to the boot. His knuckle still has a lick of orangey-red blood on it from the last scraping the man’s unkempt nails had dealt it and he has no desire to risk incurring further, minor loss of blood.

Or to risk unnecessarily leaving yet more trace of his DNA upon the digits of the first person that he has encountered on day one of this adventure,

Exiting the cab, he observes the swell of humanity rushing in and out of the station, all heading on journeys of their own. All blankly resigned to the fact that their destinations, wherever they may be, are little more than brick walls to bounce against before they return to their origin and waited to repeat the process.

Over and over.

The driver has wheeled his suitcase to him, and is shuffling on the spot, awaiting payment.

“Call it eight quid,” the driver says, wiping a fresh layer of sweat away from his forehead.

The shadow author smiles his mindless smile and pulls out his wallet. He flicks past the envelope full of foreign currency and extracts a ten-pound note.

“There you go, keep the change!” he says, cheerily, handing the driver his fare.

The driver regards the money and flashes a grin. “Ah, thanks very much buddy. Have fun in Spain. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

He forces a chuckle and waves at the driver as he pulls back into the morning traffic, Mark Knopfler’s knowing vocals disappearing with him, back towards the city.

He grips hold of his suitcase and his orb of energy bobbing along behind him as he crosses the road and passes, like he has done a thousand times before, over the station threshold.

WELCOME TO LEEDS