Witnesses Read online

  He soon reached Percy Street, turned onto it and walked the fifty or so yards to the pedestrian crossing. Across the road stood the Haymarket Metro Station, overlooked by the bronze statue of an angel, a memorial to the Boer War. “The Mucky Angel” it had been called locally, until the city council had undertaken renovation work on it and the surrounding area.

  Arriving at the crossing, he pressed the button to illuminate the WAIT sign. It was mid-morning but Newcastle was busy; the crowds that moved around him here in this part of town were made up mainly of students. The lights changed, the beeping started, and he stepped out onto the road. Another loud beeping began, a bus was reversing out of its bay in the Haymarket concourse.

  It was as he reached the other side of the road that he spotted the figure at the base of the statue. A man stood there, hands in pockets, looking directly at him. Disconcerted, he stopped in his tracks. The man was some way off, but close enough that he could make out features. He didn’t recognise him.

  Why are you staring at me?

  The man made no movement, not even to raise a hand to wave. He simply stood there. Smiling.

  Pissed, or high, Dave thought, sure now that the man was no-one he knew. Just walk away, don’t engage him…

  Walk away he did, but he couldn’t resist the urge to look back over his shoulder after he’d put some distance between them. The man still stood there, the angel towering above him.

  It wasn’t until he was on the bus home that Dave realised something else about the man that had disturbed him.

  He had had no aura.

  * * *

  The encounter in Newcastle had disconcerted him, and the feelings of unease it had generated stayed with him on the forty-five-minute bus journey home. Normal service had been resumed so far as the auras were concerned; the passengers he shared the bus with glowed with their respective colours, the majority with the pale blue he’d come to realise was the – for want of a better phrase – default setting for everyone. Through this pale blue, flashes of different colours would appear, reflecting the emotional state of the person. Red was most common – a visual display of anger. Green, he’d worked out, was a sign of curiosity. He could tell when someone was really interested in what he was saying. This was not always a good thing.

  Walking through somewhere as busy as Newcastle was a colourful experience. A stroll down Northumberland Street was accompanied always by a rainbow of colours. The first few times had been overwhelming; it was like tripping on acid. Over time, though, he’d become acclimatised to the phenomenon, and it was no longer such a head-rush.

  Perhaps that was why he was so disturbed by the man who’d stared at him. He’d adjusted his whole concept of normality – of reality even – to accommodate the auras and everything they brought with them. It was now the most natural thing in the world to see colours shimmering around people. Why then was that not the case with the man beneath the angel? Was he losing his “ability” or was the stranger somehow different to everyone else on the planet? If he was, what was that difference?

  Maybe he’s just like you…

  The thought, and the implications it carried with it, was the most troubling of all. He had no aura himself, something he had thus far dismissed as inconsequential but which now seemed to have an awful significance. Something that had been personal, something he could internalise and hide away in his subconscious so as not to worry about it, had now become external. Some intangible feeling of being a part of something much bigger began to gnaw away at him and he felt acid fill his stomach, his body’s long-established response to stress.

  “What’s going on?” he said, only realising he’d actually spoken out loud when the old lady sitting in front of him turned to give him a quizzical look, flashes of green amidst the light blue aura surrounding her.

  * * *

  The wind buffeted Dave as he stepped down off the bus. East Lee was perched on the side of a hill, built around the colliery that had long ago mined the seams of coal far below ground. Its altitude afforded panoramic views of the County Durham countryside, and of Newcastle sprawling across the eastern horizon. It also meant that a day without wind was a rare event indeed. Even in the middle of summer.

  He shivered and zipped up the front of his fleece. The bus’s engine roared as it pulled away from the stop, leaving a cloud of diesel fumes in its wake. Hefting his rucksack onto his shoulder, Dave began the short walk to his house, his mind still racing from the morning’s events.

  He’d only walked fifty yards or so when he stopped. Today, it seemed, was to be a day of unsettling encounters. At first, he didn’t recognise the man standing on the other side of the road, in front of the window of a small convenience store. Then, with another lurch of his stomach, it came back to him.

  It was the drunken soldier he’d had the misfortune of encountering last week in Ali’s. He stood there, stock still, hands at his sides as if standing to attention on the parade ground. He was staring directly at Dave, though the expression on his face was not one of aggression or even amusement – there was barely any expression at all. Somehow, this was more unnerving.

  Slowly, Dave began to move on, breaking eye contact with the soldier. The bloke had been pissed when they’d met, he probably didn’t even remember talking to him. He’d taken a dozen or so steps before casting another glance across the road. The man had not moved, had not changed position or posture. He still stared at Dave, though. His eyes, like those of a painting, had followed his progress.

  A man walked past the soldier, gave no acknowledgement of his presence, simply strode past as if he wasn’t even there. Likewise, the soldier appeared not to notice him, just kept staring at Dave.

  Fuck’s sake, Dave thought as he began again to walk away. He’d turned down a narrow alley between terraces of houses just to get off the high street and break contact with the man before he stopped walking. His heart hammered in his chest. What the hell was happening? The second time today he’d been stared at like an exhibit in a zoo, by two men with – and as the realisation hit, his heart actually skipped a beat – no aura around them. Through his panic he searched his memory. The soldier had had an aura the first time he’d seen him, he was sure of it. The other man he’d never seen before today, so he had no point of reference for that particular individual, but if, somehow, he was losing his ability to detect auras then his previous encounter with the soldier would provide evidence of that. Maybe that’s why he was feeling so odd, paranoid even. Maybe whatever had happened in his brain to give him the ability in the first place was reversing itself.Perhaps it was some kind of chemical imbalance restoring equilibrium.

  The soldier had had an aura, he remembered the distinctive, tell-tale flashes of red flaring up through it. It had been there, all right. Not blue, though, no. The thug had been surrounded by – and the memory of it once more inexplicably sent a shiver through him – a deep black.

  Black?

  His mind reeled as he stepped out of the alley back onto the high street. A white transit van, caked in grime, drove past, obscuring the view across the street. When the convenience store came back into view the soldier had gone.

  * * *

  I am in no fit state to write and yet I must. I must record the day’s events before the memory of them begins to fade, before reason and logic dissuade me of their truth. For the second night in succession, it is a battle for me to stop my hand from trembling as I write. Flicking back through the pages of this journal, I see that I used the words “I have seen Hell” only last night. Whilst on that occasion they were fanciful, metaphorical, tonight I must use those same words in the most literal of ways.

  Our retreat continued throughout the day, driven on by the relentless pursuit of the enemy. The flat, open nature of the ground we are fighting over made it impossible for us to establish a defensive line. Instead we endured a forced march, a hateful thing, made all the more so by the knowledge that we were retreating.

  The Germans chased us all day. T
he upper hand was definitely theirs; all the momentum belonged to them. All day long we prepared ourselves for mounting a rear-guard action, but, somehow, we managed to maintain enough distance between ourselves and our pursuers until finally they caught up with us.

  We were caught in the open with nowhere to form a defensive line. In the absence of any natural features to use as defences, we formed rank in lines three deep, prepared to face the Germans where we stood. I was certain my time had come, and I’m sure many of the men standing around me feared the same. We were sitting ducks, waiting to be picked off. Our hearts sank even further when we saw a division of German cavalry preparing for an assault; we would stand no chance under their onslaught.

  And then it happened.

  As the horses began their approach towards us, and I heard the first of many voices alongside me uttering prayers, a huge roar, like the loudest clap of thunder, rent the air around us. We turned as one in the direction the sound had come from – what on earth could have been responsible for such a noise?

  On earth? I think not, even now, after all this time has passed in which to consider the events of the day. No, what we saw, the things we saw were not of this world. A huge, black cloud was moving across the ground as if driven by a gale force wind. The day was calm, though. The cloud was somehow propelling itself. As it drew closer to our lines, movement became visible within it. At first, I imagined it to be the cloud itself (was it made of smoke?) roiling and undulating, but closer inspection revealed figures within the mass of it. It was these creatures – I have no other word for them – that were displacing the substance of the cloud.

  And what a terrible sight they provided. It is difficult to find the words to describe the hideous nature of these beings, for none can adequately convey the horror and revulsion I felt at the mere sight of them. Twisted, malformed bodies, hideous countenances distorted by growths and tumours. Many had horns protruding from their foreheads, many more tusks and fangs that rendered their mouths huge, exposing black tongues that looked like huge slugs. Their movement was sinuous, fluid; at times they seemed to merge into one another so that it was difficult to tell where one ruined body ended and the next began.

  The cloud passed by our lines. As it did, men were already beginning to turn tail and flee. Officers, myself included, did little to prevent this panicked retreat. It was enough to keep ourselves together, to man the line. Pass us by it did, though, and I watched in amazement as the hideous congregation (which now emitted a ghastly noise, an amalgam of shrieking and hissing) made their way directly towards the approaching German cavalry division.

  The horses, no doubt via some more finely attuned animal sense, were terrified, and there was nothing their riders could do to prevent them turning tail and fleeing from the oncoming monstrosity. Cheers rang out from our lines at the sight of our now vanquished foe. More cheers greeted the sight of the infantry joining in the retreat.

  We were saved. God alone knows what it was that had brought about such a turnaround in our fortunes, but whatever it was it had succeeded in allowing us to escape our pursuers. From that moment on there was no sign of the Germans on our tail.

  The rumours and suppositions have begun already. The favourite theory shared amongst the men is that it was a flight of angels that came to our rescue. One particularly fanciful theory has our rescuers down as ghostly bowmen from Agincourt answering a prayer offered to St George! My God, did they not see what lurked within that cloud? How could those creatures be described as angels? Am I the only one to have seen what they really were?

  Or, a more worrying thought, is what I saw wrong? Did some problem within my brain, the same problem that is causing these ‘auras’, confuse my perception to such an extent that I saw nightmare creatures, where in reality a host of angels were there in front of me all the time?

  It is a source of concern to me.

  However, we are safe. For now.

  * * *

  “You overstepped the mark.” The voice sounded as if the speaker’s throat had been scoured with sandpaper, the words forced out over ravaged flesh.

  “I did what I had to do,” Dreschler replied, “all would have been lost had I not… intervened.”

  “It was not your decision to make!” The words this time were shouted though the volume, did little to diminish the roughness of them. “Your impetuosity could have jeopardised everything!” Scraping noises came from the darkness that hid the speaker, the agitated shuffling of feet on the rocks on which the two of them stood.

  “But it didn’t!” It was Dreschler’s turn to shout. “It was a gamble, yes, but it worked. We’re still here, nothing has changed. Everything is still on track.”

  “Pah!” Another scuffle of feet on stone. “You were lucky this time. Maybe not so much next time. Not that there will be a next time.”

  Dreschler sighed theatrically, allowed his head to slump forward on his shoulders. “My apologies.” His voice was subdued, but the anger he was struggling to contain was evident in its tone, “I shall not show initiative again. I shall accept my place as a mere pawn, know my place…”

  “You should know your place!” The darkness rippled in front of the Hauptmann, a figure emerging from it, striding towards Dreschler, screaming the words at him. The soldier took an instinctive step back, reflexes raising his arms as protection. “You are a pawn! Nothing more!”

  The figure, the size and shape of a man, though seemingly made from the darkness from which it had emerged, reached out an arm, grabbed the soldier by the neck. Despite its insubstantial appearance, the grip around his throat convinced Dreschler this was a creature of flesh and blood. Its head leaned towards him, but he could make out no face, no features other than two dimly glowing areas of red where the thing’s eyes should have been. The rank smell that emanated from it — and in particular its breath, which was hissed into his own face — provided further proof.

  “You do not overstep your responsibilities!” the thing shrieked, spittle flying from its mouth. “Your role in all of this, your destiny is set out already, you do our bidding!”

  Dreschler grabbed the creature’s arm, pulled it down and away from his throat. “I am well aware of my responsibilities. I am also well aware that I must take any measures available to ensure that my destiny is fulfilled. My actions today were part of ensuring exactly that!”

  “Pah!” The dark, shadowy thing spun away from him, raising a hand as it did so to wave dismissively at the soldier. “You have tried my patience enough this day, I will discuss this no further.” It once more merged into the darkness.

  Dreschler rubbed his throat and smiled. A good day’s work, all told.

  Very good indeed.

  * * *

  Lines of pennants fluttered in the wind that blew down the high street, creating a rapid, flapping noise. Red, white and blue, patriotic bunting stretched back and forth over the road, the cords swaying to and fro as the wind caught them, like slowly turning skipping ropes.

  Have I missed something? Dave thought. Is this some national holiday I’ve completely forgotten about? He’d had another late night working on his thesis, but had awoken early, unable to get any decent sleep. A quest for milk had brought him onto the streets of East Lee. His craving for caffeine was strong, but not so strong that he would take his coffee black. The coffee would warm him up, too. A dodgy boiler meant that the central heating in the house was a hit-and-miss affair; the timer switch was long since broken, its repair on a long list of things to do that, in reality, would never get done. A gust of wind stung his face and he once again cursed his own apathy.

  The Co-op was located on the corner of a junction at the far end of the high street. He passed small businesses, hardware shops, charity shops, Ali’s Pizza Emporium, all still closed at this relatively early hour. The last shop before the store was a hairdressing salon, and Dave could see the glow of the lights from within, spilling out onto the pavement as he approached it. Open early, he thought.

  He
stopped in his tracks as he passed the front of the salon. The same bunting as that strewn across the street had been pinned around the glass of the window. Photocopied union flags were sellotaped to the glass in each corner, and in the centre of the huge pane of glass an A4 enlargement of a photograph had been similarly attached. It was a portrait he recognised immediately, even though the image was slightly out of focus, no doubt a result of enlarging an already less than perfect photograph.

  The drunken soldier, the man he’d first encountered at Ali’s and who he’d seen looking at him from across the road yesterday evening, stared out at him from the photo. Dressed in his uniform, a beret covering his bald pate, he grinned at the camera, a cocky expression exuding arrogance, a look which had undoubtedly been the precursor to a number of fights.

  A card had been stuck on the window beneath the photograph. Someone had scrawled words across it using a black marker pen. Dave read them, and as he did ice water ran down his spine. Gary Wallace, the top line on the card proclaimed. My son, the next line read, gone but not forgotten. Beneath that, at the bottom of the card, three letters of varying size, that variation a reflection of the emotional state of the author.

  RIP.

  And then in smaller, though just as erratically written print, a date. The date Gary Wallace had died.

  A wave of light-headedness washed over him and he had to breathe deeply, take a step backwards to prevent himself from falling.