Page 77 of The Shadows Beyond
There was no way in hell he was in the mood to spill his guts about one of the worst days of his life to Noir, as friendly as the mentor had been so far. Cinn didn’t have enough energy to face the judgement and pity that would be clear as day on Noir’s face. So he remained silent.
Noir sighed, running a hand through his beard. Hopefully, he’d got the message that Cinn wasn’t in a sharing mood. “If that is too much for today, perhaps we could return to our project of recording your experiences?”
By ‘our’ project, Noir meanthisproject, but fine. At Cinn’s nod, Noir brought out his large leather-bound notebook and his silly fountain penwith the ridiculous feather on it. Apparently, biro was too pedestrian for Noir.
He flipped to the next clean page. “So, we’ve covered your first episode with the newspaper and the gentleman, then we recorded the encounter with the fireman outside the burned-down department store near your house. Yesterday, you mentioned that your third trip was… less than pleasant?”
Noir looked up. It was Cinn’s turn to talk.
“Yes.” He tugged on his beanie. “Although most of them were pretty awful, from that point onwards.”
“Take me back to that day. Paint me a picture.” Noir waved his fountain pen in the air with a flourish and Cinn glared at him.
“It was a couple of months after the first episode on my thirteenth birthday. My mum and I were running late, so we were running for the bus.”
“Where were you going?”
“Is that bit important?” Noir didn’t respond, so Cinn continued, “Anyway, we were sprinting, so my heart was already racing.” He paused to allow Noir to note that down. Adrenaline increase seemed to be part of the trigger, for him at least—Noir rarely discussed any of the shadowslippers that had come before him. “If you must know, we were on our way to one of Mum’s medical appointments, and I remember we were late the last time, then she wasn’t allowed in, so this time she was determined to be on time and she made us run super fast.”
Even from discussing this early part of the memory, Cinn’s heart beat faster in anticipation of reliving what was yet to come. He twisted the golden band around his wrist.
“So, we make it to the corner shop, and Mum looks at her watch, and says that we need to speed up. She’s dragging me by this point, I can barely breathe… and—”And she got cross with me for slowing herdown.“Anyway, at the next crossing, we have to dart out onto the road without pressing the button.”
“The button?”
Cinn frowned. “Yeah, to change the traffic lights to red.”
“Right, right,” said Noir. “Carry on.”
“Anyway. Mum… forgot… to look.” He cringed, but Noir didn’t look up from his notebook. “And then this white car comes speeding round the corner. Genuinely, Mum said he was going way over the limit, and—”
The scrape of metal against paper stopped. Perhaps Noir had realised where this story was going. “Cinn, I didn’t realise quite how traumatic this particular incident could be to retell. Shall we take a break? Skip this one for now?”
Cinn gritted his teeth. There was no point stopping now. “No, it’s fine. So, the white car sees us, but it’s going too fast,wayover the speed limit, and…”
The blaring of a horn, the screeching of tyres.
“It crashed into a lamppost. So hard the lamppost bent. After that, there was lots of screaming. Someone ran into the corner shop to call nine nine nine. I sat down on the pavement, unable to stop looking at the car. I remember my mum shouting at me that we needed to go, but I couldn’t move.”
“Is that when the slip began?”
“Yeah. This one was interesting because it was the first one where I understood I was in a memory, but we didn’t go there straight away. So, I felt myself fade away, and I guess it felt like I wasslippingor whateverinto the pavement. But it didn’t click at first that I’d slipped, because I was still on the main road. Although, everybody had disappeared, and the world went sort of… grey and blue. I kept looking at the white car until the back door opened.”
“And someone got out?”
“A young girl.” He studied Noir’s reaction, but the man schooled his expression. “There was… blood all over her head, and her arms were all bent. I didn’t learn this until later, but she hadn’t put her seatbelt on.”
“And you’re certain this was her spirit form you were seeing at this moment? I only ask because of her appearance. We’ve discussed how usually, the spirits don’t present with the injury that killed them.”
“It depends,” said Cinn, wiping his hand over his face. “You should have more answers than me, anyway.” Noir didn’t take the bait, and waited for Cinn to continue. “So she stumbles up to me, and I stand up to catch her. She’s a couple of years younger, maybe like, ten? She’s wailing, almost screaming. I can touch her, and for some stupid reason, I try to straighten out her arms, like she’s a doll I need to fix.”
“Did you manage to?”
Cinn scowled. “Of course not, it just made her screaming worse. She started howling so loud, I grabbed both of her shoulders to calm her down. And then… I guess you could say I slippedthroughher. I felt myself falling towards her… almost like she was a magnet, sucking me in. The road faded away, and when I woke up, I was in a garden.”
“Ah,” declared Noir. “So, this is thememorypart?”
“I think so? The girl—her name was Emma, I found out after—her injuries were all gone. She was smiling. Emma grabbed my hand and pulled me to her swing set. She wanted me to push her. So I did. I remember her black pigtails flapping in the wind, again and again as she flew up into the air.”
