Part I - Part II
”I beg your pardon?” I responded.
The 5:26pm train home from Manchester is usually brimming with commuters. On this evening, however, it was oddly empty. I know it wasn’t a particularly late train, but the sun sets unnaturally early on dark, frosty, wintery nights. Plus, I was already a little frightened. I hate the dark, and the world outside the train window was nothing but an endless abyss. To ensure I stayed awake and didn’t miss our stop, I pressed my face against the ice-cold window beside me. But when a voice disrupted the silent carriage on which I found myself, I slowly peeled my frozen cheek from the window and twisted to face the figure sitting across the aisle from me.
“How much for Milo?” The man repeated.
He was wearing a black trench coat that encased his body from his neck to his feet. He also had an entirely unremarkable face. Brown hair and brown eyes. There was nothing particularly frightening about him, and yet everything about him frightened me.
He was the only other person in my section of the train, and that realisation paralysed me. Every woman dreads such an encounter. Still, this was not the first time I had felt threatened by a strange man in a public place. I fought hard to swallow the monstrous lump in my throat, and I made an effort to deliver my words confidently.
“How do you know the name of my child?” I asked.
The man responded by nodding at my boy’s fluffy, blue beanie. It had his name stitched across the front. A handmade present from my mum. The explanation seemed rational, so my heart slowed a little, but the man’s gaze still filled me with an overwhelming sense of impending doom.
“Please leave me alone,” I said, setting a firm boundary.
I gazed down at the small bundle of joy in my lap. Milo was wriggling around with a contented look on his face. I remember thinking that I was ready to die for my boy. I envisioned myself lunging for the man’s throat, tearing a chunk out of it with my teeth. I was not going to let any harm come to my baby. I would do anything to protect him.
“How much would it take?” The man gently enquired.
“I have pepper spray in my pocket,” I instantly retorted.
He smiled. And it was, without a doubt, the most horrific smile I have ever seen. It was not even particularly malicious or threatening. It was simply wrong. The curvature of his grin was lopsided, and his lips twitched almost imperceptibly for the briefest moment, but I noticed it. It looked as if the man had never smiled before. It was as if he were simply attempting what he had assumed to be a smile.
“I can see this isn’t the right time,” He conceded, standing up.
I clenched, clutching Milo in my arms. My eyes had not blinked during our entire conversation. I had not dared to close them, even for a millisecond.
“The next stop is Mill Hill,” Came a voice over the tannoy.
“This is me,” The man declared.
Milo started to cry, and I looked down at him. It was an instinctive reflex. Obviously, I immediately panicked, realising I had taken my eyes away from the real and present danger before me. But when I returned my gaze to the aisle, the man had disappeared. I wasn’t sure how he fled so quickly, but I was just relieved to be alone. Suddenly, the swaying trees and the endless darkness outside my train window did not seem quite so terrifying.
I chalked the experience up to an over-reaction on my part. I decided the man was frightening, but he was just that: a man. I berated myself for painting the stranger as some formidable foe. In my anxiety-riddled mind, I have always had a tendency to find danger at every turn, and that only became worse when I was introduced to the hormones and stress of motherhood. Nonetheless, I was powerful, I told myself. I would not be intimidated. I was not a target.
“You all right?” AJ asked.
Sweet, beautiful AJ. A woman with the power to wrench me free from my feverish daydreams. She was my ‘work crush’. That was what I told myself. Just a silly crush. Someone to help me endure the crippling boredom of working at an inner-city bank. In truth, I’d been in love with her for the whole year that we had worked together.
“I’m… You know…” I stammered, awkwardly.
“Oh, yeah, totally,” AJ nodded. “I always enjoy our little chats, Lucy.”
I blushed, plopping down in my chair and internally screaming at myself for yet another failed interaction with the woman I adored. But what was the point? She knew I had a baby, and I was sure that she wouldn’t be interested. She probably thought I was interested in men. Oh, there I go. A healthy slice of internalised bigotry. A woman can’t be interested in women if she has a baby, eh? Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
Anyway, I’m getting side-tracked. The reason I’m talking about work is that something happened on the morning after my horrible encounter with the man on the train.
He found me.
“Hello.”
I froze, refusing to tear my eyes away from my computer. I immediately recognised his voice, which led me to realise that my encounter with the off-putting gentleman had probably affected me more severely than I previously admitted to myself. I lifted my head to see the charming man standing before my desk. He was not grinning today. Perhaps he realised that his charming, gentle smile had not been entirely convincing.
“Are you following me?” I asked. “I will call security.”
“There is absolutely no need for that,” The man assured me. “Finley Gaskell. That’s my account. Take a look.”
I wanted to call security, but I knew that would only result in a scene. In turn, my entire day would be derailed. I didn’t want the headache. It would be easier to simply shoo the creep away on my own, I told myself. Perhaps I was being pigheaded. I think I just wanted to prove my strength and independence.
When I pulled up the man’s account, my eyes watered a little. He had fifty-million pounds in there. I had never seen an account with even a tenth of that monetary sum before.
“Ten-million pounds,” The man said.
“Is that the amount you’d like to withdraw?” I asked.
“That is the amount I’d like to offer for your baby,” He replied.
There was that gruesome grin. The man’s ability to appear human seemed to worsen with each attempt. As he stood before me in the bank, his smile seemed even more unnerving than the one he had worn on the train. Again, it was a smile that intended to be sweet and charming. There was no intended malice, but it wasn’t quite right. He wasn’t quite right.
I reached for the security button. But I found, to my horror, that it wasn’t there. I ducked my head beneath the desk and reached around. Nothing.
“No need for that,” The man assured me.
I lifted my head up and prepared to unleash a thunderous stream of expletives at my stalker. What stopped me was the silence. Every last person in the bank had simultaneously stopped talking. As I looked around, I realised none of them were moving. They were frozen in a form of suspended stasis.
That was when the room darkened. Blackness swallowed everybody. Within seconds, it was just the unsettling man and me. The desk between us disappeared. I felt my hair stand on end and my body turn to stone as I prepared, in utter horror, for what I believed to be my final moments.
The man leant forwards, stopping only when his face was an inch in front of mine. He spoke in a barely-audible whisper, and yet the words seemed to erupt at a tremendous volume.
“You won’t like my next offer,” The man warned.
I squished my eyelids together, but it wasn’t enough to prevent a solitary tear from trickling down my cheek. I trembled in my chair, waiting for the blackness to consume me.
The end never came.
I opened my eyes, and the world resumed. The darkness lifted. The man walked out of the bank. Everybody continued with their day, apparently having not experienced what I experienced. I remained glued to my sweat-drenched chair.
“Do you need me to fetch David?” AJ asked.
“Huh?” I replied, barely present.
“Dave. Security. Do you want him to run after that guy? He was harassing you,” AJ said.
“Oh,” I gulped. “Thanks, AJ, but I’m okay. I just…”
“Are you okay?” AJ asked, placing a hand on my shoulder and smiling at me.
That’s a human smile, I remember thinking to myself.
“I don’t know him, but he scared me on the train home last night,” I explained. “I’m sorry for being vacant with you earlier. I guess I was still a little shaken up about that.”
“Sorry… Rewind,” AJ said. “A man scared you on the train, and he found you at your place of work? Yeah, I think we need to call the police.”
“No, I can’t do that,” I said, shaking my head. “I can’t let him have that power over me.”
“Power over you?” AJ exasperatedly replied. “Lucy, the creep knows where you work. He might know where you live. Nah, fuck that. What’s your address?”
“Huh?” I responded, dumbfounded.
“I know my shift ends an hour later than you, but I’m not leaving you on your own tonight,” AJ insisted.
“Oh, you don’t need to do that,” I said.
“Either I come over or you call the police. Which is it?” AJ asked.
“Okay… You can come over…” I sighed.
“Aw, Lucy. Thank you. You really know how to make a girl feel special,” AJ chuckled, playfully pinching my cheek. “Please tell me you’ve at least renovated the kitchen since your last party?”
“You know what I earn, AJ. What do you think?” I replied.
AJ snorted with laughter, squeezing my shoulder before returning back to work. She had a way of calming me. She had a way of assuring me that everything was going to be okay. The logical cogs in my brain were already whirring. I was frantically trying to rationalise what I’d experienced. Perhaps I’d simply been so overcome by fear that I’d imagined the world around me freezing? Perhaps I’d imagined the darkness? That seemed convincing.
Yet, I still felt such a pit of foreboding dread in my gut.
After work, I drove to my brother’s house. Patrick works from home, and he knows that I’m broke. I can’t afford childcare, so he loves to look after Milo whilst I’m at work. I pick him up at 4:30pm, then we take the train home. On this particular afternoon, I didn’t rush off. I needed to confess to Patrick what had happened. He immediately slipped into the role of big brother.
“Have you called the police? You know Jean has that friend on the force. She could probably pull some strings and make this guy’s life a misery. Finley Gaskell? I’ll make a note of that and tell her when she gets home,” Patrick said, pacing back and forth.
“Please, don’t bring Jean into this,” I implored, trying to calm my fuming brother down. “I put him in his place. I don’t think he’ll be bothering me again.”
That was a lie. The man had threatened me, and I was terrified, but I wasn’t going to tell my brother that. I’m stubborn, as I said. Sometimes, I confuse recklessness for independence.
“Why don’t you wait here? Jean can drive you and Milo home,” Patrick said.
“To Accrington?” I snorted. “You’d be in bed by the time she’d arrive home. I’ll be fine on the train, Patrick.”
“Well, maybe you could just sleep here? It’d be easier for you to commute to work,” Patrick offered.
“Thanks, Patrick, but I’m going home,” I firmly stated.
My brother sighed. “You don’t have to do everything on your own, you know.”
“I know,” I said, leaning in to give my brother a peck on the cheek. “That’s why I hired you as my very own nanny.”
“You know, ‘hired’ usually implies payment,” Patrick laughed, as I scooped up Milo.
“Yeah, yeah… I’ll take a look at that loan over the weekend, okay?” I said, heading towards the door.
“You said that three weekends ago,” Patrick replied, rolling his eyes.
“Come on! I thought you enjoyed babysitting the little bugger?” I said, tickling Milo’s feet and gently rocking him from side to side.
“I do,” Patrick said. “Baby puke on my jeans. My sister’s being stalked. Mortgage payments are drowning me. My heart can’t take it anymore. Ignore me, though. I’m just crabby today.”
“See you tomorrow, Krabby Patty,” I teased, stepping out of the front door.
I felt elated on the train journey home. If my story had ended there, I might’ve dismissed my two horrifying encounters as the result of too many rough nights. Sleep deprivation is part and parcel of motherhood, and it can certainly lead to hallucinations. At this point, Milo was already fourteen months old, but parenthood hadn’t magically become any easier. I was overwhelmed and exhausted. I thought I might be turning a frightening situation with a man into something supernatural and unexplainable.
Fortunately, the train was packed on this particular evening. I told myself that the night before had been a freak event. I couldn’t explain why there had been nobody else on the train carriage, given that it was rush hour.
In any case, it had been a strange twenty-four hours, but I assured myself that it was over. If the man were to return to the bank, I would call security. I would call the police, in fact. I felt confident. I thought I was planning all eventualities in my head. Everybody feels more powerful within the confines of their own mind. That’s where we have control.
The fantasy didn’t last.
The blood drained from my face when I spotted a familiar trench coat in the crowd by the train doors. It was him. Along with the same trench coat, the man still wore that uneven smile. It seemed even more disjointed than it had at the bank.
“The next stop is Mill Hill,” The tannoy announced.
I watched and waited. It was the man’s stop. He did not depart the train, but many others did. I did not want to be left alone on a carriage with him. Acting quickly, and hugging Milo tightly to my chest, I darted for the doors and followed the crowd of people onto the platform.
With bated breath, I watched the man on the train, and he watched me. He did not follow. And when the doors finally closed, I exhaled. I watched the train pull away from the station, almost crying with relief. I still felt my heart pounding furiously against my rib cage, but I did, at the very least, feel I could breathe again. Of course, I now had a much longer walk ahead of me because I’d exited the train two stops early.
“Just a little walk home, Milo,” I promised my boy in a half-convincing attempt to conceal my terror. “It’s good to stretch our legs, eh?”
The problem is that I had to walk along dark, icy roads. There were plenty of people around at that time, as everybody was coming home from work, so the initial part of the journey was not too overwhelming. I did receive some judgemental looks. People were probably wondering why a lone woman with a baby was walking home in the dark. I didn’t blame them. Every ounce of my being wanted to call an Uber or return to the station and wait for a later train, but I stubbornly pressed onwards. I didn’t exactly have the spare funds for any additional transport, anyway.
It was a two-hour walk on a cold night in December. I told myself that was manageable. Milo was wrapped up beneath my thick coat, and he had numerous layers. I wasn’t majorly worried about warmth, but I started to realise that I’d been very foolish. No, perhaps I’m being harsh on myself. After all, with that man’s ghastly smile floating around in my brain, it was hard to think clearly. When protecting a baby, parents can act in irrational ways. Plenty of mothers have made rasher decisions than walking home in the dark, I assured myself.
Still, when I reached the tunnels that pass beneath Accrington, I started to think that it might be time to head to the main road. An Uber was a luxury I could scarcely afford, but it wasn’t worth risking the safety of Milo and me. I looked at the GPS on my phone. On foot, cutting through the terrifying tunnel, I could reach home in ten minutes. And the sheltered passage would provide warmth, I told myself. Perhaps it was worth the risk.
I eyeballed the cavernous chasm before me and plunged into the gaping mouth of Accrington’s gloomy underground tunnel. There were flickering lights lining the walls, but they were covered in mould. Some of them were broken, most of them were faded, and none of them provided sufficient illumination. It was such a long and dark passage that I couldn’t even see a reassuring light at the tunnel’s exit. There was nothing but a pit of blackness before me and behind me.
As I started to regret my decision and prepared to turn on my heel, a sudden clunking sound echoed from the far end the tunnel. Then, as if someone had flicked a switch on a fuse box, all of the lights extinguished in unison. I found myself standing in total darkness. Milo started to wriggle inside my coat.
“Hush, baby,” I tenderly pleaded. “It’s okay. Mummy’s going back the way she came.”
Another loud clunk. That should have been a reassuring sign. I waited for all of the lights to spring back to life, but they didn’t. Only the two lights at the tunnel’s end returned. And they illuminated a haunting sight.
A man.
He raised a hand and waved at me. I did what I should’ve done long before that. I turned and sprinted back to the tunnel’s entrance. I couldn’t see where I was going, and I prayed that I would not stumble over something in the dark. I clutched Milo tightly, but the sudden movement seemed to jolt him from his slumber. He began to wail uncontrollably, and it took all of my bravery not to do the same.
“How much for Milo?”
The whispered words carried down the tunnel in a haunting echo, chasing me all of the way back to the entrance. When I finally emerged, I twisted my head to find that the tunnel’s lights had all returned to life. The man was nowhere to be seen.
I looked at the GPS on my phone, trying to find the fastest way to the main road. Without thinking, I started to cut through the woodland that surrounded me. I know it wasn’t very smart to weave between trees in the dark, especially whilst being stalked by an inhuman madman. But the footpath seemed too long and windy. The shortcut seemed like the best option. I was fixated on the goal at hand. I had to reach civilisation as quickly as possible.
I used the flashlight on the back of my phone to light the way, making sure I didn’t run headfirst into any trees. Milo continued to cry inconsolably.
“I know, baby,” I breathlessly whispered, as I sprinted onwards. “I know.”
There was a sudden whistling sound. It filled me with immense dread. It seemed to have the same effect on everything in my surroundings, as birds suddenly soared from the trees in a frenzied panic. I kept pushing onwards, but I suddenly recognised the tune. How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?
The whistling turned into humming. It was a gentle, wispy sound that hovered in the air like a bitter breeze. Eventually, the man began to sing his own demented version of the song in a fragile whisper.
“How much for that baby in the window?” He delicately sang.
My phone’s flashlight caught a shape for less than a second. Between two of the trees, I am certain I saw the black, featureless shape of something. It looked tall. Far too tall to be the man in the trench coat. His arms stretched to the ground and seemed to be rooted in the earth. And yet, I knew it was still him. The flashlight illuminated his dreadful grin for a fleeting moment before he vanished.
I felt, much as I had felt in the bank, that I was moments from death. It was nothing short of a miracle when I finally stumbled past the edge of the tree line and found myself standing beside a busy main road. I didn’t even think about calling an Uber. I ran into traffic, flailed my arms, and caused two cars from opposite directions to slam on their brakes.
Obviously, the drivers were furious, but their anger quickly subsided when I explained my horrifying predicament. One of them proceeded to call 999, and he waited with me until a police vehicle arrived. The officers escorted Milo and me home. The police collected all of the information that I had on the man, but I had this horrible feeling that it was a fruitless endeavour. They could not help me, and I could no longer lie to myself.
The thing that wanted my baby was not human.