Falling into Shadows

By D Reeder

Clarrie England is not your typical heroine. She is not young, beautiful or successful. However, she possesses a rare form of empathy that draws people to her; and thus she becomes a heroine of a different kind: a fifty-one year old woman, more mouse than lion, who finds herself on the very edge of things, and yet still does her best, and what she thinks is right; but best of all she is someone who in this busy world of ours is prepared to listen to others. She has not been blessed with courage, nor can she talk her way out of a tricky situation, but people in her company reveal their hidden secrets. Secrets they have never dared to share with anyone else.

Why are they drawn to her as she begins to make friends and hopes to find love? Will she regain her self-esteem and belief in herself or will she be crushed by the supernatural elements which also seem attracted to her? What has previously happened in that place, in that hospital to cause such ripples in Clarrie's world? And does she by accident change her own life forever?

Clarrie dared to step into this world, dare you step into it too?

• Language: English
• Publisher: D Reeder
• Release date: Jun 3, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476418346

D Reeder

I am a writer living in the heart of England with a fascination for stories which slide between realities. References to ancient pagan mysteries pre-dating Christianity can often be found within my 'Tales of the Supernatural' where out of the everyday ordinary world come extraordinary stories.

Book preview

This story is written under the thin veneer of fiction,

So that much that is true can be told,

And so much more hidden.

My Jim was not the easiest of men to live with.

When we were first married he’d meant well. He’d tried hard to be the man that he’d hoped to be: a good breadwinner, someone who could fix up the house, a decent husband. He’d hoped to be good father too. These were humble aspirations. He wasn’t asking much of the world. But he found himself in a dead-end job, with no money to fix up our ramshackle house, and with me, his ugly wife, who could bear him only dead sons.

I watched as he found himself slipping. away from the man that he’d hoped to be; and how bitterness like a corrosive acid, drop by burning drop, ate away at his once cheerful youthful spirit until only a broken, dulled man remained.

He began to find unending fault with the world, with himself, and with me.

There is nothing more tragic than seeing hope and optimism wear thin in a man; watching his dawning realisation that he would never achieve the simplest of dreams; watching as he discovered that as far as the world was concerned he was a nothing, an irrelevance, a mere creature.

Gradually, Jim changed into the kind of man that he’d never wanted to be: a mean-spirited, crushed and despairing man.

He became violent.

It started slowly, a raised voice here, an angry word there; but it gained momentum as life continued to frustrate his ambitions and luck never smiled his way. He tried at first to hide his annoyance by biting his lip, or by turning away so that I wouldn’t see the look of disappointment that deepened the etched lines on his face.

Finally though, there came the time when he could no longer contain his brooding anger and he lashed out.

The world rarely lets you see a fair and honest view of yourself; but it’s worse when troubles crowd and when we glimpse ourselves in just one broken dirty shard, or in a mosaic mockery of broken glass; and fools as we are, we believe these false reflections to be true.

Had a good and honest mirror been held up to show Jim his true self then perhaps he could have countered life’s impossibilities and frustrations with a casual shrug of his shoulders and a wry laugh. At least then he would have known that had the current of luck and possibility flowed his way then he too could have shone with a perfect light.

I could not find the strength to hold up such a mirror for him, and so I failed him as a wife. I was lost in my own reflective prisms of diminishing self esteem. So instead, my Jim looked into the corrupt, grotesque mirror he found at the bottom of a beer glass that his so called friends held up for him; a mirror which magnified his simple faults and shrank away his goodness to a bitter and twisted husk.

In this way he became a corrupt caricature of the man that I’d once married; and I, his wife, became afraid of him.

It was the occasional unguarded look in my eyes that showed him the man that he’d become; and in me he saw the dark reflection of himself and he hated me all the more for this honesty.

At first, I covered the dark, flowering bruises on my face with scarves; and if their fiery hues were seen then I excused them by claiming that I’d walked into an open cupboard door, or had recently tripped over the pavement.

I got away with my lies.

There are few people who really look at those around them; and there are even fewer who care enough to scrape away at a battered woman’s thin patina of lies. I do not blame them, for what could they have done with such a truth?

I suppose we were ill-suited, Jim and I. Jim needed someone who could raise his spirits and give him quick words of encouragement when he felt himself slipping backwards into despair. Someone who could stand with him to fight the injustices of this world and to give him back his hope and self belief; and I couldn’t do that. Sadly, my ways did nothing to sooth and comfort him; instead I only kindled his anger and inflamed his rage.

I began to turn from him.

Jim didn’t know that I’d taken a small job at the hospital; manning the kiosk where visitors buy flowers, books and a variety of small gifts for the loved ones that they are visiting.

Here I was free from his bullying, and eventually, I realised that I could escape from him. For two weeks I worked at the hospital kiosk without Jim knowing a thing about it, for I no longer shared my thoughts with him; and whenever he came close, inwardly I could feel myself running.

Running and running.

Until one day I left, running with steps that hardly left a sound upon the pavement so fleeting were they.

The day left Jim’s house forever I ran to the hospital, and never returned home.

I didn’t leave a note.

I left because I knew that the violence that was growing within him was like a cancer that could never be cut out; and I left because there was still a part of me that loved him just enough to want to spare him from the worst that a man can do.

I gave him that credit.

****

Chapter 1

Sanctuary

Hospitals are a refuge. I’m sure that there are others like me, homeless people, who live within the cracks and crannies of these old buildings. It wasn’t hard to do. A hospital can be a vast town with its long street-like corridors and its busy bustle of people, and I had learnt the battered woman’s art of walking such paths unseen.

This hospital had grown from need: expanding in a haphazard fashion over the decades. It had been built on the side of a gently sloping hill, and this had resulted in it having many quirks and peculiarities, for example wards that touched the earth at one side of the building found that they had first floor windows facing the river valley at the other. I doubt if there was ever a plan that showed the true layout of this convoluted building with all its different floors, levels and stairs.

My hopes were humble. I just wanted to find within this place a cupboard large enough for me to slip into and where I could sleep. The kiosk itself would have been ideal after it was locked up for the night. However, it was part of the security team’s task to check that the kiosk’s shutters were securely locked, and unluckily the kiosk’s padlock could not be secured from the inside.

At first I found nothing, and had to sit on a hard chair in accident and emergency; closing my eyes and ears against the tidal waste of wrecked humanity that washed up against its doors.

Each evening, like an opportunist rat, I scurried up forbidden stairways, or slunk past offices whenever people had their heads bent low, to scrutinise darker crannies.

I found nothing.

Night after night I returned to my corner in A&E where in the perpetual busyness nobody ever noticed my presence or troubled to ask what I was doing there; and where I never had to use my well rehearsed reply, that I was, Just waiting for a friend.

Then one evening quite by chance, I found the perfect hiding place.

I’d noticed a keyhole clogged with paint. Later when this truncated corridor had emptied and become eerily silent, I’d traced the edge of a paint encrusted door almost hidden in the panelling.

The following evening I returned and broke the brittle paint seal with desperate finger nails, and also a knife borrowed from Barney’s Café from the floor below.

I prayed that this door would be unlocked. And it was! It opened with an alarming crack. Panicking I slid inside, and closed the door behind me.

I stood to listen, certain that someone must have heard me. I expected at any moment that somebody would fling the door suddenly wide open and find me foolishly standing there.

But they didn't.

Eventually, I breathed more easily. There were footsteps, but they faded away.

With the door open a fraction to allow a little light; I discovered I was standing in a forgotten walk-in cupboard, filled with a plethora of out-dated hospital equipment.

With all this clutter I despaired of finding enough space in which I could simply lay down and sleep. I squeezed past broken wheelchairs and cold metal cylinders, gingerly edging my way towards a deepening darkness at the back, all the time frightened that the slightest sound might betray my presence.

It seemed hopeless, but there was a silence here that entranced me. After nights of sleeping fitfully in the A&E waiting room, and waking to the sounds of anguished screams and shouted abuse, the silence that now pressed itself close felt extraordinarily precious.

I fingered the darker shadows for the touch of walls wondering if I could form a heap of some of the cupboard’s contents, to win enough space to claim as my own.

Somewhere near the back was something like a notice board. I touched its chill metal edges, and then my heart leapt, for I discovered a void beyond it. Perhaps behind this board would be enough space into which I could hide.

With difficulty I edged around it. My arms tentatively reaching into the darkness, as if I was some blind, deep-ocean creature craving for the touch of something beyond themselves; but unlike such a creature my trembling fingers ached to feel nothing.

At first there was indeed nothing, but then my heart sank as I felt something flat and metallic rising up from the ground.

I could make no sense of it. I struggled to shift it, but it was firmly fixed to the floor. Then I discovered another flat piece of metal, and then another just above it, and finally, a central column from which they all radiated.

Disappointed I closed my eyes then reopened them to the same blackness, except now I had a clear image of what I had just found: a spiral staircase!

Slowly, in the blind darkness I tested each rising step before trusting it with my weight, holding on tightly to the rail. I feared that at any time the whole structure might suddenly topple and crush me, but luckily I felt no such movement.

I reached out ahead in case the next step might be missing; afraid that I might step out into empty air. I had no expectations of where it might lead, if anywhere.

So I was on my hands and knees when I stumbled upon a platform on which I could stand tremblingly upright.

Slowly, I explored. My fingers found at first empty air which sickened and unnerved me as I imagined falling into the void below.

‘This could be my refuge,’ I thought, as I explored the dimensions of the platform; though I was all the time wondering if I would ever have the courage to sleep in such a place.

After finding one edge I then discovered a rough brick wall. There was indeed enough space here for me to sleep. I would have to find blankets though of course to pad the floor, and also a pillow, all easy enough to find in a hospital. I would also obviously need a torch.

I was imagining such possibilities when my elbow knocked against something. It was a door handle.

There was a door!

Cautiously I tried it.

I’d half expected it to creak open upon a bustling ward, even though no light had been seeping through any of its possible cracks.

But it didn’t. Instead it opened onto an eerily lit empty ward.

A pale, evening light filtered through two large windows. Four unmade metal beds lined the walls. It was empty.

The meagre light of the windows also illuminated the intricate metalwork of the spiral staircase on which I stood.

For long seconds I did not dare to take a step forward. I feared that what I was seeing was just an illusion. A mirage from a time long ago. I feared that if I stepped into it then all would vanish like mist and I would then fall into nothingness.

Could it be real?

I took one cautious step forward, and then another; and feeling a solid floor I then hugged myself with delight; for I, who’d only wanted a rough corner in which to sleep, had found all this!

Quietly, I explored, taking care that my footfalls would not be heard by any below me. On the opposite side from the windows was a nurses’ station with the chairs they had once sat upon. Behind this was a cupboard which to my surprise still held linen and blankets on its shelves. There was even a sink in one corner, with a tap; which later, when I dared to try it, spat out a stream of yellow water before running crystal clear.

There was another door at the furthest end of the ward.

This when I opened it with equal trepidation opened out onto a small private room with a single bed and a bed side table.

I laughed quietly with both astonishment and relief. I who’d been searching for nothing more than a rat’s nest had suddenly found all this!

Silently, I made up the bed in the small private room hugging myself all the time at my unexpected luck.

Slipping between icy sheets that first night; I tried to reason how this place had somehow been lost and forgotten. I knew that wards were often closed, perhaps because of infections or monetary shortfalls. I guessed that long ago the spiral staircase had once been a fire escape which had somehow been subsumed into the growing hospital complex. Perhaps walls were going to be knocked down so that this small area could have been incorporated into the rest of the hospital building, but the plans had been changed, or forgotten, or the money had run out.

A small ward which could only be reached by a spiral staircase could never be used for patients. Perhaps the notice board had been then placed there to bar access, or later to hide the entry. Then space had been filled with useless clutter; and as new staff replaced the old, and the corridor had been repainted, everything had been forgotten.

I reasoned all this which gave me some comfort that I would not be discovered, but those first nights I was so nervous and excited by turns that I barely slept at all. I strained to hear every sound: listening for voices and footfalls, but all I ever heard were the faint sounds of a busy hospital.

I began to learn these sounds, until over time they became as familiar to me as my own breathing as I drifted more easily into sleep.

So it was at the end of every day, after locking up the kiosk, I secretly slipped to the upper floors of the hospital, crept into an old storage cupboard, climbed a spiral staircase and then entered the silence of a forgotten ward where I found refuge.

****

Chapter 2

Mildred

People talk to me.

They are drawn first not to me but to the kiosk’s bright oasis of colour: the flowers in shiny green buckets; the cheeriness of the' Get Well Soon’ cards and the colourful packets of confectionary. Then they see me sitting in the corner dressed like a moth in my nondescript beiges and browns; as if the kiosk’s lights has attracted and held me captive too; then they breathe more easily; and I smile at them, and then they begin to talk.

I was surprised by this, as it wasn’t something I’d observed when Mildred my predecessor had been training me.

Mildred, a sharp-faced woman with a no nonsense haircut, had swiftly eyed me up and down when I’d first stood before her, before peering closely at me, like a sergeant major about to inspecting a rather unpromising raw recruit.

I had wished for invisibility, as she stood akimbo looking at the thin, pale specimen in front of her, taking in my asymmetrical gawky features: my overlarge nose; the wide-set mouth, and my mud-coloured eyes; all framed by wild, frizzy hair. The colour of dust shaken from a clothes moth’s wing was that how Jim had once described it? Was he then being kind?

Mildred studied the ill assorted assemblage in front of her and sniffed in disgust.

‘You? You’ve been chosen to replace me?’

I nodded, clutching painful ribs.

‘She chose you?’

I shuffled awkwardly, feeling small and shambolic in her presence.

Mildred stared at me in disbelief, shaking her head with undisguised disgust.

‘Chloë Spenser chose you!’ she boomed, her words ricocheting off the yellow walls, sending a few passing visitors scurrying for cover.

Even two elderly men who had been deep in conversation at the far end of the corridor turned and looked in our direction as caught in the cross-hairs of Mildred’s sights I dared to reply with, ‘Yes.’

I winced once more as the cannon was fired again.

‘How old are you?’

‘Fifty-one.’

‘Well over the hill. What’s your name?’

‘Clarissa England,’ I replied, ‘though I prefer to be known as Clarrie.’

‘England! Well that’s something, I suppose,’ Mildred conceded.

She called me England from that time on.

I had two weeks of arduous basic training to endure under Mildred's command while at the same time having to rush home to get Jim’s dinner ready for him; frightened I might be late.

‘Are you cold, England?’ Mildred bellowed once with delicious irony after I'd lifted my scarf to hide the latest bruises.

‘Yes.’

This was actually true. The opening and closing of the nearby automatic doors leading to the car park meant that the kiosk was always being chilled by sudden draughts of cold air; but also an icy chill seemed to well up from the floor.

Mildred looked witheringly down at me as I continued to unpack a box. I eased my scarf even higher, and averted my face.

I was puzzled as to how such a tiny place had ever contained such a powerful presence as Mildred's without ever bursting at the seams; especially when I later discovered that her uncompromising military rule had lasted there for well over two years.

With a stern efficiency she had ordered the kiosk into a place where even the greeting cards stood smartly to attention. Rows of soft toys lined the shelves in a disciplined guard of honour, and flowers like the British flag came in only three colours: red, white and blue.

Under her strict command I did my basic training, Mildred barking out whatever I needed to know as if I were about to go to war against some unseen enemy; and all the time, I was aware of her sharp, appraising eyes: eyes that never attempted to disguise her certainty that I had neither the wit nor the stamina to survive the arduous campaign ahead.

‘Have you got that, England?’ she snapped impatiently as I scribbled down the name and telephone number of yet another supplier. She would then lean over my shoulders as my handwriting became even more shaky and illegible.

The name of the supplier which she barked out on the day when I finally left Jim, and was numb and trembling with the shock of it, remains to this day indecipherable.

So I was deeply relieved when Mildred finally left. Quite where she went to I never knew. I’d been so intimidated by her I never had the temerity to ask. But as I watched her tall ramrod figure marching out of the building I could easily imagine her filling up the vacant post of some despised despotic leader in some far-flung hostile country.

It was exciting the next day to unfasten the metal shutters and to send them rolling slowly upwards, creating a sound as if a child was running a harmless stick against metal railings; quite unlike the rapid machinegun rattle with which Mildred had announced her presence every morning.

Then I walked into my own peaceful domain.

But already someone was watching me.

****

Chapter 3

Charlie

‘How do?’

It was Charlie one of the hospital’s security guards.

‘Has the Führer gone?’

I was initially fooled by the deep creases around his mouth and eyes into thinking he had a sense of humour, so I laughed at his words, but then I choked my laughter when I realised I was laughing alone.

He stood in the corridor like a reluctant usher at a wedding. He was a man well past his best, but who remained somewhat assured of his merits. His hair matched grey eyes and afforded him a certain dignity. He seemed unsure about what to do with his hands, and I guessed that he was a man who needed a purpose: a job to do.

‘Can I get you anything?’ he asked, as if reading my mind.

‘Oh, a chair would be nice. Do you know where I could get one from?’

‘I’ll bring you one the next time I’m passing.’

Within the hour he’d returned with two.

‘Thought I might keep you company.’

‘Oh,’ I said.

Only the previous week Jim had been harshly criticising me, picking fault with the way that I spoke, with the way that I dressed, and even with the way I washed the dishes. So being now suddenly free of both him and Mildred I was hungry for some time alone.

‘Perhaps some another time then, eh?’Charlie said after reading my expression.

He turned and walked away.

‘Thank you,’ I called after him, but he didn’t look back.

Conscious-stricken, I placed the two chairs towards the back of the kiosk disrupting Mildred’s finely drawn lines. Then I sank down on one of them, as the euphoria of claiming the place as my own evaporated; and in its place responsibility like a damp woollen cloak weighed down heavily on my shoulders.

Time then passed slowly.

Few people ever bothered to step inside the kiosk.

The next day was the same.

As was the next.

On the third day I rearranged the 'Get Well Soon' cards, reclining them on their display stand.

On the fourth I placed a bucket of more cheerful looking flowers just beyond Mildred’s strict demarcation line.

And eventually over the ensuing weeks, the kiosk became busier; until one day I turned and found someone sitting on one of Charlie’s chairs.

****

Chapter 4

Brady’s Story

Mine for the next time, so kindly I’ll treat them.

She was a small neat stocky woman with grey in her hair.

‘Mind if I sit there awhile?’

‘Course not.’

She settled herself gratefully perfuming the kiosk with a soapy scent of roses as I returned to the complexities of an order form that Chloë Spencer, my line manager, had asked me to complete.

‘My Grandmother died when I was sixteen,’ the woman announced suddenly, breaking my concentration. I glanced at her over the top of my reading glasses.

‘She could tell such stories.’

I set down my pen. Beyond us the corridor became quieter. The sounds indistinct and muffled as if I was hearing through water. I leaned forwards to listen.

‘My Grandmother was Irish Catholic. You know the kind. Very devout. She moved here from Ireland when she was only fifteen. Imagine that! Fifteen years of age and moving to a foreign land. Such spirit! She became a nurse. This is the hospital she trained in.’

The woman waved her hands expansively.

‘I guess it’s changed a lot since then.’

‘Oh yes,’ the woman laughed. ‘My grandmother wouldn’t recognise the place now. She married a fireman and had three sons, you know.’

I smiled. In the short time I’d worked in the kiosk I’d become aware of the many complexities of modern family life; and how patient I had to be as my customers explained and then reaffirmed their family relationships in a myriad of convoluted forms. Irish Catholics were the worst for they carried the burden of the dead on their shoulders; and had to first recite the names of long dead ancestors, as if to clear the air of them, before they could even begin to give the names of the living; and even then I’d be taken on a long meander before they eventually told me about the relative they had just been visiting. So having just learnt of a dead Irish grandmother I steeled myself for a long exposition.

‘They lived in a terraced house not too far from here.’

This came as a jolt, reminding me of the terraced house I had once shared with Jim. The last memory I had of him flashed before my eyes as I listened in a panic wondering if she was about to describe the very same place.

‘I sadly never knew my grandfather. You see, there was this terrible accident. He was rushed to this very hospital, just after my grandmother had gone off duty. It was probably a blessing she was spared the sight of him that day.

I nodded warily observing my companion closely. Even in the short time that I’d worked in the kiosk I’d learnt to watch out for the signs. Nervous eyes meant that something unexpected had just befallen a loved one. Dull expressions meant that the person they had just visited had absolutely no hope of recovery. Whereas light-hearted visitors were the ones who had likely learnt of a good prognosis. Whilst those who laughed with an unusual brightness in their eyes were often the ones who had just held a newborn baby. Then sadly there were the others. The ones I particularly watched for. The ones who walked the length of the corridor with blind eyes. Those were the ones who had witnessed one last breath and now struggled to breathe the air themselves.

So I studied this woman trying to decide into which group she fell. I sensed it was the latter, but there was something else about her, something different.

‘My grandfather sadly died shortly after he was admitted,’ the woman continued. ‘You know, if his accident had happened in this day and age then he would have been saved to be sure.’ She nodded as she reaffirmed this belief. 'And then things would have been so much better. My grandmother wouldn’t have been left alone with three young boys to raise for a start.’

Her words made me suddenly ashamed of my own precarious existence.

‘Do you have any children?’ she asked.

I felt the inevitable pang as I shook my head. The woman then stole a furtive glance at my ringless left hand.

'So you're not married?'

'Well I...'

I had dragged Jim’s cheap wedding ring from off my finger before slinging it to land where it may in the depths of the cellar before I'd left him.

‘So you don't have any children. Neither do I,' the woman continued oblivious of my anguish, 'but like I said my grandmother had three to raise when her husband died. There was Sean. He was eleven. He was always a nervous boy and he was far too young to assume the headship of the house. Then there was Connor, who in time became my dad. He was eight at the time, and then there was Brady. Brady in temperament was Sean’s exact opposite. By all accounts he was a wild, reckless boy with a thick streak of mischief. I’ve have a photograph of the three of them here.

She foraged through her handbag.

'See?’

I then peered at a sepia coloured photograph of three small boys seated crossed-legged in front of an old-fashioned fire engine.

‘That’s Sean, that there’s Connor my dad, and that there’s Brady. Brady was the youngest. Just look at that face. Those eyes. Doesn’t he look wicked?' she asked as she pointed to a boy with a mischievous grin and flyaway hair.

‘He certainly does.’

The woman cupped the photograph gently in her hands.

‘They thought he had the devil in him,’ she said wistfully. ‘But they were wrong.’

‘So he grew up all right then?’

‘Oh no. I'm afraid things didn’t work out like that at all. My grandmother tried her best of course, but it was such hard work trying to cope with three young spirited boys.’

She paused in her narration when a customer interrupted us with a request to buy a bunch of pink roses.

She resumed her narration after I’d sat back down again.

‘There came a day when my grandmother was struggling to do the laundry. The three boys were getting under her feet. So to get a bit of peace she wrapped them up in their coats, hats and scarves popped a hot baked potato into each of their pockets and sent them out to play.

‘In those days there were small lakes in the valley, left from when they removed the gravel. Good wild places for young boys to explore, and it wasn’t long before the three came upon an old excavated hole holding a pool of frozen water.

‘Sean, the eldest, wanted nothing to do with the place except for skimming pebbles across the ice. For a while they all three revelled in the metallic sound they could make as their stones skittered across the ice; but then Connor and Brady began to lose interest in doing this.

‘In the brief seconds whilst Sean searched around for better stones, Brady, who was only six years of age, but already something