The city slumbered, its windows like dead eyes and its roads like drained veins; the only life to be seen that of the rodents and scavengers that would scamper through patches of undergrowth and raid the over filled bins of the city’s inhabitants.
Even the late-night entertainment the city provided had shut up shop and the near nocturnal staff who ran them was finding their way home. The silence and stillness were unearthly and even the lonely man considered the probability of the impossible when he looked into the night sky.
The lonely man passed the closed high-street stores and darkened restaurants and walked across the usually bonnet to bumper filled a-road that bisected the city. On the far side he cupped his hands and peered into a store that sold hi-fi equipment. He surveyed the wares through the thick wire that covered the glass for a minute or two before moving on. He passed a de-consecrated church on the corner of the street that had been converted into a nightclub, now as quiet as the religion it once served, passed it, and made his way out of the city centre.
The road he followed wound uphill on a slight grade and the wall that contained the public park on his left grew higher. The lonely man wrapped his scarf more tightly around his throat and dug his hands deeper into his jacket pockets. He then hung his head as he walked; his mind buried in those secret night-time thoughts we all sometimes share.
This was why, when she called to him the first time, he was unaware.
“Excuse me…” She called; her voice like a stage whisper, a faux shout that didn’t know if it wanted to attract attention or remain unnoticed.
He paused and looked around, unsure if anyone had spoken at all.
“Excuse me…” She repeated and his gaze snapped to the voice’s origin.
Still, it took him a moment.
In an oval gap in the wall was a wrought iron gate, long since rusted in an open position, and through this, framed in a cascade of foliage and darkness was the sad woman.
The lonely man could only describe the way she stood as apologetic, and he could only describe the way she looked at him as hopeful, and he could only describe his own reaction to her as…
No… No; he would not think of such things…
He took a step closer and so did she, stepping into the orange streetlight that stood on the threshold of the park. Her long skirt hung just above her ankle and her gypsy top hung off one shoulder in a way the might have been provocative for a different woman.
“Hi…” the lonely man said and took another step forward.
This time she took a step back into the darkness behind her. Her brow furrowed slightly, a strange complex mass of emotions flickering across her face in an instant. She looked over her shoulder, into the darkness of the park behind her and then back at the lonely man.
“I’m not sure how to say this…” She began and then laughed a tiny self-depreciating laugh; the lonely man did not answer, instead he just waited.
“…I need to get home, and…” She glanced into the darkness of the park again. He followed her gaze, the darkness a pit into nothingness.
The lonely man took a step forward, looking into the darkness rather than at the sad woman, who stood her ground this time and followed his gaze.
“It’s kinda scary in there…” He said and then stole a glance at the sad woman’s profile as she nodded in response.
“Would you like me to walk with you?” He asked and for a moment that hung in the air around him and time took a stuttering step; strange fear striking him like a hammer.
The sad woman looked undecided from the darkness to the lonely man and back again as if weighing up her chances. The air around the lonely man grew thicker, time stuttered again, and his heart was beating too fast in his chest.
The sad woman cupped her elbows in her hands as if cold.
“Would you prefer to use my phone?” The lonely man asked as he looked through his pockets and located his mobile, its screen lit up as he held it out to her, but she made no attempt to take it.
“I just live the other side; it wouldn’t take long.” She said, perhaps she was speaking to the lonely man but perhaps she was speaking to something inside herself. She looked at him. “Would you mind?”
“How could I mind?” He replied and smiled.
She stepped away from the gate, her dark clothes merging with the darkness, and he stepped through after her. Immediately the lonely man was truck with a sense of dislocation, as if he had walked through a portal to another realm rather than a simple entrance to a walled off park. The darkness was so complete, and the silence was so overwhelming that for a moment he wanted to turn and flee but then she stepped back into view; walking a few steps ahead of him and his momentary panic faded.
“It is so dark in here…” He said and he wanted to laugh at his own sudden fright. “Do you know the way?”
As his eyes adjusted, he began to see the blur of nearby trees while in the distance they are of a slightly darker black than the sky behind them.
“We follow the path…” She replied simply and began to walk.
He had walked through this park in daylight many times and as he walked, he thought he saw a tree here or a park bench there that seemed familiar; but the darkness robbed the landscape of anything he could be certain of, and the silence took his sense of direction and mocked it.
He liked the night but tonight it didn’t like him.
“Are you walking home from work?” He asked as much to spit in the eye of silence as it was to know the response; the sad woman shook her head. “A party…?”
“No, I… It’s later than I realised…”
He checked the time, the back lit screen of his phone casting his face in pale blue.
“It’s almost three.”
Her eyes darted to him, alarmed and he felt her step closer.
“I live close by,” she said, “you hear strange things in here sometimes.”
“It’s just animals,” he replied, unsure whether he’s speaking for her benefit or his own, “squirrels or something going through the dustbins.”
“I once I heard a baby cry.”
“Probably a bird,” this time he felt himself shudder and without knowing it took a step closer to her, “they can sound just like that sometimes… Creepy…”
“Probably…” She replied but seems unconvinced.
“They’re just stories…”
Her eyes move to him then back to the darkness surrounding them.
“Stories…?” She said, was it a question, or a statement?
“The things people say, they’re just stories.”
“What do they say?”
“This isn’t the time… Its creepy enough here.”
“Tell me.”
“Perhaps…” His heart caught in his throat, and he cleared it with a tiny cough. “I could meet you sometime, lunch or something… To tell you what they say I mean.”
“No, tell me…” Her tone was matter of fact, and he wasn’t sure if she’d understood the implications of his words. For a moment or two they walk in silence, the sad woman watching the lonely man; his gaze lowered.
“People do hear things here, see things sometimes too…” He began. “The story goes that a long time ago there was an attack, up there at the top of the hill…”
He pointed and her gaze followed, taking another step closer and looking down the length of his arm her own arms crossed across her chest. Silently the lonely man slipped his scarf from around his neck.
“A girl died and there was a search for her killer.” He said as they walked. Around them the trees leaned in, the branches almost meeting over their heads.
“Someone was found but…” He continued. “But there were those who didn’t believe they got the right person.”
“Had they?” She asked.
The lonely man dropped the scarf across her shoulders; it spread out like a shawl. Without thinking she drew it around her, as automatic a reaction as moving closer to a fire for warmth; as automatic a reaction as grasping a lover’s hand.
“It’s just a story.” He said. “There’s probably no facts in there at all. An overweight Star Trek fan probably fell off the swings and by morning the story had him as a pretty co-ed attacked by a crazed killer.”
The sad woman smiled; for the moment not looking quite so sad.
“These things do happen though.” She replied.
“Sure, they do, but not as often as people think. I mean; puppies and kittens get born every day, but people don’t focus on them, do they?”
“I don’t like kittens.”
“Everyone likes kittens, what kind of monster are you?”
“A thin one I hope…” She smiled and pointed into the darkness. “You could see my house from here, if it were brighter.”
Abruptly she stopped and her hand fell back to her side slowly, as if she had forgotten it was there. The lonely man stopped a few feet ahead of her, silently he watched as her attention seemed drawn to something on the very edge of their vision.
“What was that?” She asked in a whisper.
“Nothing, there’s nothing there.” He replied.
“What do people see?”
“They see the girl mostly, though some see a shadow man.”
“The killer…?”
“I’d assume so.”
The sad woman walked again, stealing glances into the darkness behind them. As she passed the lonely man she took his arm, clutching at his bicep with both hands. His eyes moved from her hands to her profile once more, her wide eyes still trying to discern something in the darkness.
“What’s your name?” He asked her.
“Joan.” The sad woman replied
“I’m Edward.” The lonely man offered back.
“Your names old fashioned.”
“So is yours…”
Edward smiled and put his hand over hers, Joan looked down at their hands touching: then up into his eyes.
“Would you like to meet up sometime?” Edward asked her; his chest fluttering madly.
“We could; it’d be a good idea to see you in daylight I suppose.” She answered, the slightest of smiles playing across her lips.
“Moonlight has its benefits.”
“Not certain how I should take that.”
“I meant with it being romantic…”
“I know what you meant.”
In front of them they can make out the darker smudges of the parks far wall against the lighter smear of the grass and the steps leading down away from it to the main gate at the foot of semi-circular stone steps. Beyond this the streetlamps shine on an empty street, illuminating the swing-set and slides through the gate’s black bars.
“Almost there.” Edward said.
“Yes.”
“So, which is your house?”
“It’s there, it has a blue door and ornaments in the window.”
“Is there a garden?”
“With a rose bush, the house is filled with the perfume all summer.”
Joan slowed her pace as they neared the steps, stopping; Edward took a few steps ahead of her before he realised. He stopped and turned. Joan’s face was filled with sadness once more; her eyes filled with something secret that weighed so heavily upon her.
He reached toward her, but she pulled away from him and stepped back.
“What’s wrong?”
“Many, many things…”
She took another step back and for Edward, the distance between them too great, moves to traverse it.
“Joan?”
“How does the story end Edward?”
“The murder…? They caught the guy.”
“No, this one…”
“What do you mean? This one…? This one has only just begun…”
She looked at him silently, the sadness crumbling inward until her lips began to tremble and her eyes began to fill. She slid the scarf from around her neck and held it out to him like an offering. Somewhere in the darkness a baby cried out. In the bushes nearby something moves and the undergrowth shakes. The world around them seems suddenly filled with eyes and ears, like the earth itself had stopped to listen.
Edward reached for the scarf; their hands inches apart and the air around Joan grows dense as ink. Her face falls into darkness, as if a spotlight on her had been turned away. She slipped from the light, sidestepping reality, her hand suddenly as insubstantial as love itself; and the scarf fluttered to the ground at Edwards’s feet.
Two words breathe through the night air.
“Thank you…”
Edward stared into the darkness around him, through the space that seconds ago was filled with the only thing that would make him the lonely man no more. A world that had grown small, complete, and perfect had shattered and become shards far too far away to ever reach.
He sank to his knees, his hands groping for the scarf, bringing it to his face. It smelt of roses and cinnamon, smells that would forever remind him of lost opportunity.
The lonely man sat alone in the empty park.
Outside the park the black metal gates were never locked but if they ever were they would make an imposing obstacle. Either side of them the streetlamps lit the houses that lined the road on either side. From the darkness between them stepped a figure, something clutched in his hands.
The scarf the lonely man clutches would never be far from his touch, as he grew old people would smile about it and mock him, but it would not matter.
His eyes searched the houses as he carelessly walked down the centre of the abandoned street.
In one garden is crooked sign, its edges worn by time and the words on it all but illegible. Once the sign had read: FOR SALE…
The lonely man stood and looked at it, his eyes moving over the dead rose bushes sitting in long neglected for flower beds then to the blue door streaked with dirt and wear. The lonely man’s gaze moved to the black gates opposite and the park beyond them.
His eyes moved to the scarf in his hands, he arranges it and wraps it around his neck.
Sparing the park one more glance he walked away.
Inside the park is silence. Nothing scampers in the bushy undergrowth, nor does any bird flutter in its tall trees. The moon denies the ground the romance of its light and, tomorrow, when people walk its pathways, they’ll feel the weight of something incomprehensible in their hearts.
The winding paths curve into the darkness.
A child’s slide stands unused; near it are swings.
One particular swing moves; and then swings back and forth in time with a beating heart.