Hiding in the Half-Light

My name is Julia Mills.

 

The events I’m about to relay to you began shortly after I started working as an evening secretarial assistant. Up until more recently, I’d worked through the day. One of the many struggling to get through traffic to work then home again.

 

My life was a quiet but fulfilling one. I loved the work I did and the people with and for whom I’d worked. I had the usual problems of paying bills on time and seeing to the thousand little details that one must to properly run one’s life. That was, until this happened, I’d never thought of myself as being anything but average in every sense.

 

The firm went through a busy period and I was asked by our night staff to work a great deal of overtime. Some people hate overtime but as it helped with the afore-mentioned bills, I agreed to pick up as much time as I could.

 

Over the course of a couple of years, I found I preferred working nights and weekends to working days. So, with the permission of the supervisor of our night staff and HR, I made a switch to working the evening shift. It did not take me long to realize that I had made a good change. As much as I loved working days, I found working nights a much better fit for me.

 

It did not take me long upon switching to night to notice that on my way home late at night after working my shift, I saw many people still up and about. This was amazing to me because I had previously thought the city grew quiet at day’s end.

 

Of those who were still about around 1:00 a.m., some were late-night partiers. Some were joggers. Other people appeared to be on private missions.

 

What I have since learned is that there are things too in the darkness. Things that wait in the shadows or prowl dark places on missions of their own.

 

If you doubt me, have you ever feared while walking alone late at night that someone or something is hiding in that recessed doorway? Does the hair on the back of your neck stand on end when you walk by that empty lot on your way home in the dark?

 

Have you ever thought to ask yourself why?

 

You tell yourself you are being childish. Nevertheless, you hasten to the relative safety of your car or to the door to your home.

 

It was just past midnight.

 

I was driving home after what had been a tough shift. Tired and looking forward to a good night’s sleep, as I turned my car onto the street by the park, I noticed something standing on the sidewalk.

 

It was a moment that forever changed my life.

 

To say it looked like a shadow is not precise. It was more like the absence of everything. It was as though the darkness had somehow coalesced into the form of a large man-shaped something.

 

I have come to call it a shadow-creature.

 

The sight of it was as confusing as it was terrifying.

 

At the time, I tried to dismiss what I was seeing as exhaustion. I told myself that, at the speed I’d been driving, I could not be certain exactly what I’d seen. In the back of my mind lingered the thought that perhaps professional advice might be in order. That was until the third time I saw it. That third time, I saw it take a victim.

 

It was my usual time when I was driving home. As I drove down Lakeshore Boulevard, I was dreading going by the place where before I’d seen the shadow-creature.

 

There it was. Lurking in the bushes by the side of the road.

 

My heart sank when I noticed a jogger running down the sidewalk toward it.

 

The jogger did not appear to notice when I tried to warn her by honking my car’s horn.

 

The shadow-creature leaped out of the bushes and dragged her screaming off the sidewalk and into the brush that edged the park.

 

Immediately, I stopped my car and ran to the other side of the road.

 

What I hoped to do, I can’t say. I wasn’t thinking, but reacting.

 

It was too dark to see where I was going, so I followed the sounds of her screaming and of rustling leaves just ahead of me. Suddenly, came the sound I will never forget—her last scream combined with a deep gurgling sound.

 

I called out to her.

 

Nobody answered.

 

There was not a sound. Not even the sound of leaves and bushes being pushed out of the way.

 

Nothing.

 

With no sounds to guide me, I was forced to follow a path of trampled weeds and bent branches. When what I saw was not just broken or trampled flora but also blood, I quickened my pace as much as I could.

 

In my haste, I stumbled over a fallen sapling and fell on top of the poor woman’s corpse. I gained my feet and gazed horrified at the scene before me.

 

It looked like she was lying on her side. In fact, she was lying against a rock. Whether she had been thrown there or had just fallen that way, I never came to know.

 

A torrent of blood ran from the gaping wound in her throat. Her clothes and exposed flesh bore the signs of her failed resistance to the creature’s attack. On her face was an expression of intense fear.

 

I tried to scream but what came out instead, perhaps predictably, was something else.

 

In my headlong dash toward the road, I nearly ran into a young couple apparently out for a late-night stroll.

 

The woman screamed prompting her beau to take a protective stance between us.

 

“Call the police,” I commanded but I needn’t have bothered.

 

“Are you hurt?” the young man asked as he tapped 9-1-1 into his cell phone.

 

“What? Me? No,” was my breathless response. I noticed my blouse was covered in blotches of blood. Swiping the blood from my blouse, I said, “This is not mine.”

 

That was when the young man stopped being solicitous and grabbed his lady’s hand. They ran away leaving me uncertain what to do. The young couple didn’t get far before two police cruisers arrived. One of the constables pulled his cruiser up onto the sidewalk thereby stopping the fleeing couple.

 

The last thing I wanted was to be seen by the police with blood all over my blouse. As quietly as I could, I hurried across the road toward my car.

 

From behind the door of his cruiser the other constable shouted, “Where do you think you are going?”

 

When I heard the click of his pistol, I stopped walking, and smiling turned to say, “I’m so glad you are here.”

 

“Then why were you running to your car?” he asked.

 

“I was going to my car to get my first aid kit,” I lied.

 

“Are you hurt? You look like you are hurt,” the constable said as he closed his cruiser door, holstered his weapon and walked toward me.

 

“It’s not her blood. She killed someone which is why we were running away,” the young man shouted.

 

His lady, cowering at his side, nodded her agreement.

 

“No, I didn’t. The shadow-creature killed her,” I babbled and was immediately sorry. Even I had trouble believing what I was saying, so I could imagine what the constable must be thinking.

 

“Where’s the body?” the constable asked as he placed a plastic zip-tie around my wrists and led me to his cruiser.

 

“In the brush,” I cried pointing with my head in the direction of where the dead jogger lay. I swear I had no idea that what happened next would happen.

 

I knew enough about criminal law to realize that my DNA being all over the crime scene would lead them to suspect me of killing the jogger. Later I would no doubt be exonerated but, in the meantime, my career would be in ruins.

 

I was placed in one of the cruisers and, while one constable was taking a statement from the young man, the other constable walked into the brush in search of the body with a roll of crime scene tape in his hand.

 

Protocol, yes, but the last mistake he ever made.

 

We all heard him warn the shadow-creature to stop. We heard the three shots he fired and subsequently heard him scream with his last breath.

 

It was hard to know how to feel.

 

Justified that someone in authority had seen what I had seen, relieved that the other constable must understand that I was innocent, or terrified that it had killed the constable and would likely kill again.

 

The second constable ran into the brush after the first, gun drawn and calling for back-up.

 

Within moments of his disappearing into the brush, there were more gunshots and more screams.

 

All was silence.

 

When I saw the young couple about to run away, I shouted, “Let me out. Please, don’t leave me here. It will kill me too.”

 

They opened the cruiser door and apologized for not believing me and the young man used a pocket knife to cut my bonds.

 

While running for my car, I shouted my thanks to them but they were already too far up the block to hear me.

 

My instinct was to drive away as fast as possible. I did not and it was a good thing because two more cruisers drove by me in response to the request for back-up.

 

I drove by them unnoticed.

 

When I got home, I realized that I couldn’t stay there. I also realized that I had suffered a kind of death that night. The quiet comfortable life I had known was over. I could not go back to my job. I might last a day or two but eventually the police would find me and that would be the end of my career. It would also mean embarrassing a company and people I cared about a great deal. Something I would not do.

 

I might have stayed in the back of the cruiser but for my fear that the shadow-creature would find me there and that would be the end of me.

 

For the longest time, I was convinced that being put in the police cruiser was the end of my life as I knew it.

 

The truth was, my life was doomed to change the moment I first saw the shadow-creature.

 

Before leaving the comfort of my home for an uncertain future, I removed my cell phone from my purse and left it on my dresser. If the police were looking for me, it was a safe bet they would use my cell phone to track my movements. That was something I could not allow. I had to find a way to capture the shadow-creature if only to prove my innocence.

 

As I was leaving my apartment building I stopped short when, through the lobby doors, I saw a police cruiser coming up the driveway. It was possible that they were there for some other reason but this was a chance I couldn’t take.

 

I turned around and ran to the building’s back door. I made it to my car and was able to drive away. It made sense, however, that I could not keep the car, so I took it to a less than reputable used car dealer and sold it for a fraction of its worth. It also made sense that the cruiser’s dashboard camera picked up my car and my licence plate number. Again, I might be able to get out of the city using my car but would not likely get far before being pulled over and apprehended. Selling my car gave me much-needed capital to begin my hunt for the shadow-creature.

 

After going to the used car dealership, I went to a local ATM and drain my accounts. Some of this money was used to purchase gift cards. I learned the hard way that they cannot be used to rent cars anonymously so I have to rely on cabs and public transit.

 

My life since that day has been a race to see if I can capture the shadow-creature without it killing me.

 

To this day, I don’t know why I can see it. As stated, until this happened I’ve always seen myself as average. Perhaps it is that I always could but it was only just newly arrived in Toronto or my switching to the evening shift put my commute home at a time when it liked to feed. All I know for certain is that I can see it. If I can see it, perhaps I can stop it from killing again.

 

What is also a mystery to me is how I know where to look for it. In the days since the night it killed that poor woman, I have had visions of where it is. Instinct that was previously unknown to me guides my steps now.

 

The first time I caught up to it again, I had to figure out was how I might catch something that appears to be ethereal. What I have learned in my quest is that it is, in fact, a corporeal being. 

 

I have followed it from Toronto to many other cities and have come close to catching it more than a few times. So far, it has managed to elude me.

 

The police have come close to catching me a few times as well. So far, I have managed to elude them. For how much longer, however, I do not know.

 

So, the next time you see a shadow move, if you see a woman chasing it, run.