The Shadow That Waited

I left Auden’s funeral with his scarf wound twice around my throat and his house key pressed so hard into my palm that its teeth marked the skin.

The cemetery gates had already been chained behind me. Beyond them, the fresh earth lay black beneath a crust of snow, and the wreaths bowed under the weight of the bitter wind. I did not look back. If I looked back, I would see the place where they had lowered him. If I saw that, I would have to accept that the last time I had seen Auden alive was not the last time I would ever see him.

The city waited at the bottom of the hill, all yellow windows and wet pavement. I walked toward it because there was nowhere else to go.

His scarf still smelled faintly of cedar soap and the peppermint gum he chewed when he was trying not to smoke. I had taken it from the peg beside his front door before his sister could ask what I was doing. She had watched me fold it into my coat without saying anything. Everyone had been gentle with me today, which was worse than anger. Anger would have given me something to push against.

At the first crossing, the signal changed. I stepped off the curb.

My shadow followed me across the snow-dusted road.

I noticed it only because the streetlamp above the intersection flickered. My boots landed. My shadow landed a heartbeat later.

I stopped.

The traffic light clicked from green to red. Somewhere behind me, a bus sighed at the curb. My shadow stretched ahead of me over the striped crossing, long and thin, though the lamp was behind my left shoulder. It should have fallen in the opposite direction.

I lifted my hand.

The shadow’s hand lifted after mine.

A laugh escaped me, small and breathless. It was the kind of laugh that came before crying, and I hated myself for making it. Grief had turned every ordinary mistake into an omen. A faulty lamp. A trick of snow. A body that could no longer trust what it saw.

“Auden,” I said, before I could stop myself.

The shadow went still.

A car horn sounded, and I stumbled backward onto the pavement. The driver shouted something through his closed window. I bowed my head, clutching the scarf at my throat, and waited until the car passed.

When I looked again, the shadow lay where it was supposed to lie.

I walked faster.

The streets between the cemetery and my flat had changed since Auden died. They were the same streets, but without him beside me they seemed to have lost their rules. The bakery shutters were down. The pharmacy sign buzzed red over an empty doorway. Snow had collected in the mouths of the drains, and the wind pushed scraps of newspaper along the pavement like pale, frantic animals.

I had taken this route with Auden dozens of times. He always walked on the outside, between me and the road. When I teased him about it, he said he was not being protective; he simply disliked getting splashed by passing cars.

“You hate being wet,” I had told him.

“I hate your face when you’re wet,” he’d replied.

I had thrown a glove at him. He had caught it and tucked it into his pocket instead of giving it back.

The memory struck so sharply that I stopped beneath an awning. For a moment, I could almost feel his shoulder brushing mine.

Then there was only the scarf, the cold, and the empty space beside me.

I had been the one who called him that night.

That was the thought that returned whenever the others failed. I had called. I had said I couldn’t get home in the storm. I had asked if he would come for me. He had said yes before I finished speaking. The road had been glazed with black ice near the river. A lorry had crossed the center line.

People told me none of it had been my fault. People had said the word accident as though it were a locked door, something no one could enter and examine.

But I knew the truth. If I had walked home, Auden would still be alive.

I turned into Mercer Lane, taking the shortcut between the closed cinema and the old printworks. Halfway through, I heard footsteps behind me.

They were not hurried. That made them worse.

I kept walking. The footsteps continued.

The alley narrowed ahead, its walls slick with old snow. A single lamp burned near the far end, throwing a dull oval over the pavement. I glanced back.

No one.

The footsteps stopped.

I told myself to keep going. I told myself the sound had been the wind knocking loose metal against a drainpipe. I told myself many things, and none of them reached the part of me that had begun to tremble.

Something shifted in the mouth of the alley behind me.

Not a person. Not exactly. A darkness detached itself from the darker wall and leaned into the light. I could not see a face, but I felt its attention settle on me. The cold changed. It pressed against my back with the intimate weight of a hand.

My fingers closed around Auden’s key.

I tried to run.

My shadow moved first.

It tore across the pavement in the wrong direction, stretching away from my feet and up the alley wall. One long arm reached toward the darkness behind me. The shape of it was unmistakably a man’s, though it had no features, no body to cast it. It spread itself between me and whatever waited there.

The pressure at my back vanished.

A sound came from the alley—a wet scrape, followed by a sharp intake of breath. The darkness recoiled. For one second, the lamp above us flared white, and I saw a man standing by the bins. He wore a hood pulled low over his face. One hand was raised, as if he had meant to seize my coat.

Then he fled.

His boots struck the pavement twice, three times, and he was gone around the corner.

I did not move. My heart beat so violently it hurt.

The shadow remained stretched across the alley, guarding the space where he had stood.

“Auden?”

The name came out broken.

The shadow lowered its arm.

It did not return to my feet immediately. Instead, it bent toward me, a dark shape inclining as Auden used to when he was listening closely. The resemblance was so exact that grief opened inside me like a second mouth.

I reached for it without thinking.

My hand passed over the pavement. There was no body beneath my fingers. No coat sleeve. No warm wrist to catch.

But heat gathered against my palm.

Not much. Less than the warmth of a cup of tea. Enough to make me gasp.

The shadow trembled. Then it slid back across the ground and settled at my feet.

I crouched in the snow, one hand pressed flat beside it. My knees soaked through my trousers. The scarf loosened around my throat and fell forward, its end touching the black shape.

For a moment, the shadow curled around the scarf as if it recognized it.

I stared until my eyes blurred.

“Auden,” I whispered again. “Is that you?”

It could not answer. I knew that. Death had taken his voice along with everything else. Still, I waited.

The shadow shifted closer to my hand.

That was all.

I gathered the scarf and stood. The alley was empty now, but the fear had not gone. Neither had the warmth. It followed me as I walked, a faint heat at my heels beneath the winter-dark city.

At my building, I climbed the stairs instead of taking the lift. On the landing outside my flat, I turned toward the window.

My reflection looked pale and hollow. Behind it, the shadow waited on the stairwell wall.

It raised its head a heartbeat after I did.

I unlocked the door with Auden’s key. The lock turned easily, though he had never given me permission to use it. He had only laughed when I said I might need it someday.

Inside, the flat was cold and dark.

I stepped over the threshold. The shadow crossed after me.

This time, it did not lag behind.