Shadow Of The Sun is a very old short story of mine. It’s not the best thing I’ve ever written, but I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for it…
Shadow Of The Sun
L. Robson
I
Whenever I heard the stories about people who’d lost someone close to them, and how it left a big hole in their life they could never seem to fill, I never really gave them a thought. I always put it down to cliché, them filtering their perceptions and feelings through Hollywood films, using a language, a shorthand, that the silver screen had created to make it easier for us to understand and use.
When it happened to me, I realised what you saw in the movies was only the beginning. They left out the parts about the dark underbelly, when your world becomes full of well meaning friends and relatives, who try to understand your loss, but only succeed in making it worse by reminding you of everything that’s been taken out of your life. They can never really understand, no matter how hard you try and make them; all those words you give them are never enough. Then the vultures come out and circle, desperate to see what’s been left for them, and when they realise there’s nothing, their hollow sense of grief suddenly vanishes and shows the anger and bitterness lurking just underneath the surface. People that never even liked you or had no part of your life come forward wearing pathetic masks of false sympathy and say how terrible it must be for you, thinking they can relate, thinking that in telling you this they can pretend they know what you’re going through, and then, having dispensed their good words of kindness, done their self-appointed duty, they vanish back into the world never to be seen again.
After I lost Natalie, that became my world.
Day in, day out, I had people call me, stop me in the street, post letters and cards, come round to our flat (I still can’t think of it as just my flat), right up to the day of the funeral. Some of them even had the balls to turn up at the church and talk to her family. But after that, I hardly saw any of them again, and when I did, they didn’t always acknowledge I was even there, let alone speak to me.
As time passed, I did the only thing I could do, and learned to live without her. I didn’t handle it well. I would come through the door from work expecting her to be curled up on the couch with a book and a warm smile for me; I’d climb into bed and try and wrap my arms around her only to be reminded with a sharp slap that she wasn’t there any more and never would be again.
Those first few days were the worst; I’d find myself slumped on the floor, too numb to even cry. It felt like I’d taken a few steps forward but left her behind, like I could just turn around and see her strolling along. I contemplated ending everything, but I couldn’t for her sake. She’d never have forgiven me.
So, I began to search for something to help me try and live a little more comfortably with that aching hole Natalie had left, something to help me understand…everything, I suppose, that little bit more.
It took almost a month, but I found it.
Natalie had always had an insatiable passion for the subject of dreaming; she was always fascinated with their meanings and purposes, to the point that she kept dream diaries, her own private logs of her travels in her imaginary worlds. I stumbled across them while I was sorting through her belongings, and found myself being drawn into her worlds and their magic. A part of me told me to pack them away with the rest of her things and leave them alone, but I didn’t even listen to it. I sat myself down on the living room floor and began to read through them, looking at her handwriting and letting memories wash over me. I read and read until I fell asleep with her words freewheeling through my mind.
Maybe it was the discovery of those books that prompted me that night, fed some silent command into my waiting subconscious to trigger the events that followed. I honestly don’t know, and if I had the choice, I don’t think I’d want to know.
I found myself walking through the town where I grew up, the place where I had spent the first twenty or so years of my life. I was wandering aimlessly, past the old store fronts and street signs, never seeing or hearing a thing, not another living person, until I suddenly found myself standing outside the old bookshop at the top end of town. I stopped at the door and stared at the building across the street, another bookshop where the old estate agents offices should’ve been; it was larger than the one I was outside of, seemed to be more like part of a chain. A poster in the huge window of the first floor held my attention for no reason I could pin down: it pictured a woman in a Victorian-style dress, lying face down on a bare wooden floor. An upturned goblet lay next to her, with a trickle of something red running away from it.
It was then that my eyes – my senses – suddenly began to take everything in, like I had suddenly regained control of my body. I turned around to find myself standing in a place both alien and yet achingly familiar to me. I didn’t recognise the town at all: it was somewhere…else. Not the place where I had grown up, some other town I had never set foot in before. As I stood staring at the mixture of modern brick and old stone buildings around me, an overwhelming sense of familiarity began to pour steadily through my mind, slowly drowning everything else out.
“I’ve been here before,” I said to myself.
“Yes,” someone said. “You have.”
II
When I was a kid, I loved to dream. I’d find myself in worlds of magic and heroes and fantastic adventures; my heart and my head would be full of wonder as I headed off on these voyages. There were times when all I wanted to do was sleep so I could dream my way back to certain worlds that I’d been in the night before; I remember being disappointed in the morning, when I emerged from a dream-free night. But I always knew, with that amazing certainty only a child can ever possess, they would come again and again, and I would have them forever.
But as I grew older, my dreams changed and slowly I forgot how magical and simple the world around me was; there was always a part of myself that yearned for a return to it all. I would chase those dreams through the fields of my sleeping world, trying to bring them back and re-live it all. I succeeded to a degree, but they were never the same. They always lacked that one essential ingredient that was needed for a complete return; my innocence had been stripped away with the advancing years and I could never take it back.
At the age of thirteen, some new magic entered my dreams.
I had found myself walking through a town almost identical to the one where I lived at the time, yet completely alien to me in every way. I walked through the main street, past the line of shops I knew so well, wondering where the people were. I remember being scared, but my curiosity pushed it all to one side and drove me on, begging to be satisfied; it was like a horror movie, building up to something you just know is coming. Slowly, I headed down to the corner, past the bank, the baker, the jewellers, the newsagents, and around to the old foot bridge, only stopping to look behind me and see if anyone had actually appeared. I came to a halt in the centre of the bridge and looked out over the river flowing away beneath me. Slowly, I turned around to take a look at the road bridge that lay a hundred or so yards opposite, only to find an identical copy of the bridge I was standing on in its place. A young girl stood in my exact position, leaning on the iron railings, staring back at me. Her face wasn’t clear enough to see any detail, but somehow I knew she was smiling at me. I waved and she waved back.
That same dream came back to me when I was seventeen, and again when I was twenty; although I could never see her face, I just knew it was the same girl. A little taller, a little older, but somehow I knew it was her.
Years later, when I told Natalie about those dreams, a tiny part of me so desperately wanted her to say that she was the girl on the bridge. If she’d said that, I thought, it would’ve made so much sense.
But she didn’t.
The world isn’t that perfect.
III
I stood there with my mouth hanging open and my mind a complete blank. Words had literally failed me.
I stared at my new found ‘companion,’ while my brain struggled to make some kind of sense of the last few seconds of my life, try and put it into some kind of context it could actually understand. He looked back at me, almost as if he were weighing me up, ready to tackle a potential intruder on his land. I looked around the empty street, almost hoping the answers would leap out from behind a shop door and scream at me. A chill drove its way down my spine as I turned back to him.
“Who-” I began
“Who are you,” he said “Where am I. How did I get here. Yes?”
I nodded. My mouth was dry.
“You’ve been here before,” he added.
“I-I know,” I replied, hesitant.
“Don’t you recognise this place?” he asked “At all?”
“No…” I said, turning around slowly.
And then it hit me. I was running before I knew what I was doing; down to the main street, past the line of shops that were so familiar, catching fleeting glimpses of posters and sales and names. He shouted something, but I wasn’t listening.
I knew what he was saying, but I didn’t want to hear.
My heart was carrying me, hoping against hope she would be there, waiting for me. Just to see her standing, breathing, living again would be enough, but to actually hold her and tell her everything I never had the chance to, all those stupid, soppy words that are just so perfect in your head, but never seem to come out right when you say them out loud… To do that would’ve been nothing short of pure ecstasy.
I ran on and on, my lungs burning and my heart pounding, until I turned that final corner to the bridge. My pace slowed, but I didn’t waver; in those few moments, there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that she would be there waiting for me. I came to a halt in the centre of the bridge and looked over to the copy across the river.
And she was there. Waiting.
“Natalie! ” I screamed. She looked up, toward me, and waved.
My heart almost exploded.
I tried to remember the way to the opposite bridge; I looked over to my right to see the old barber shop and the short terrace of modern-looking houses waiting there, still looking so out of place in the old road. I let out a huge, ridiculous smile and took one last look at her. I tore myself away and ran along the pathway, around the corner and past the old Victorian-style houses (with their dull green window frames and thick net curtains, just as I remembered them), then past the old sweet shop to the bridge.
But even as I turned that final corner, I knew. Right down in the bottom of my heart, I knew.
She wasn’t there.
To my left, I heard my ‘companion’ gasping for air. I turned to look at him through tear filled eyes. He planted one hand on the tired old stones of the sweet shop wall, taking huge gulps of air. And then, somewhere, far off, I was sure I could hear my name being said softly, over and over. I wiped the tears from my cheeks and looked at him.
“I tried…to tell you,” he gasped. “I tr-”
But I didn’t hear those final words.
My eyes peeled slowly open to face the real world again.
IV
Someone was there, talking to me, whispering my name, but it took a handful of seconds for anything to actually register in my mind. My head was still fuzzy with that early morning haze, and I couldn’t make out who it was at first.
“Jill?” I said, blinking at her.
“Yeah,” she said, scratching her neck. “Sorry about barging in like this, but I couldn’t get an answer at the door. I thought there was something wrong.”
“No, no. I just fell asleep.”
“I noticed. I could hear you snoring.”
“Weird dream.”
“Come on,” she said, taking my arm. “I’ll get us some coffee or something, and you can tell me.”
I let her help me back to my feet; the notebook I’d been reading fell off my chest and onto the floor, and I looked down at it, wondering. The dream ebbed through my mind then. I remember being suddenly afraid that it would slip away like dreams have a nasty habit of doing and I would lose her again. I wondered if that was why Natalie had kept the books, so she could re-live those happy times as often as she liked, just escape from the real world for a little while every day.
Jill threw her coat onto the sofa and headed into the kitchen. Drowsily, I followed her and sat down at the table, letting her busy herself with the coffee. It had become a ritual since Natalie’s death: Jill would turn up almost every day, just to talk. She had been the last person to see Nat before the accident. She’d seen the car hit Nat, actually watched it happen. They’d bumped into each other in town and gone for a coffee to discuss some final cover proofs for some new horror novel. Just another normal day. Then, after they left the cafe, they said their goodbyes and Nat crossed that road.
The two of them had shared a closeness that would be more akin to siblings. I never really understood it, and never tried to. It was something that was special to those two, perfect in its own little way, and to try to understand, get inside and join them there, would spoil it.
The night of the accident, Jill stayed with me in the flat; both of us were trying to be strong for the other, determined not to cry, but we just couldn’t do it. I broke down first and she followed. I cried and cried until I thought my head would crack open. We ended up sitting on the floor together, holding each other as tightly as possible, trying to suck all the grief and pain out of one another; we talked for hours about Natalie, trying to keep her alive for a little longer, until we fell asleep.
Just holding Jill felt like a betrayal. I loved Natalie too much.
I tried to explain it to her, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t really express the way I felt when I just turned to Nat and just shared a smile, speechless with the sheer force of the feelings hurtling around inside me; the way I walked with my arm around her, just holding her; lying in bed at night, listening to her breathe. I know, in hindsight, it’s the same with any relationship, but it was unique to us, just as it’s unique to another couple.
I loved Natalie. I still do. I always will.
It’s that simple.
“What were you dreaming about, then?” she asked, putting a mug down in front of me.
I just stretched and cracked a joint or two in reply. “It was really weird,” I told her. She sat down next to me with her own mug, fingers wrapped tightly around it, her grey eyes fixed on the swirl in the coffee. “I was back home, where I grew up, you know? But it was different, like it was how I wanted to remember it, sort of.” She made a noise and sipped her coffee. “It sounds daft, I know. But this is the weirdest part: I’d been there before, in a dream I mean. I was sure of it. And there was this bloke there who told me I had.”
“Bloke?” she asked, looking at me.
“Yeah, he was the only other person there. About my height, thin, short hair, shaved, you know? Couldn’t have been much older than me, or he didn’t look it anyway. He was wearing a white t-shirt and a black jacket.”
“What was his name?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I woke up before I got to find out.”
“Oh, sorry. I’ll wait a little bit longer before I wake you up, should I?”
I gave her a half-hearted smile in reply. We sat in one of those awkward silences for a while, drinking. Both of us wanted to mention Natalie then, I could see the need in her eyes and I’m sure she could see the same thing in mine.
“Before I forget,” she said “Nat left some proofs with me a while ago. I brought them around, to see what you wanted to do with them. Hold on, I left them in the hall.”
She stood up and left me alone. I couldn’t help feeling relieved. There was still far too much to be said. There still is.
“Here we go,” she said. I stood up to put the mugs on the counter to clear some space. “They were covers she was doing for a romance novel,” she added, laying the papers down on the table. “A real bodice-ripper, you know? It was pretty racy, actually. Lots of heaving bosoms and illicit relations under the stairs.”
I turned to take a good look at the pictures and my jaw almost bounced off the kitchen floor.
For a brief moment I thought my brain was about to reject everything my eyes were seeing and go and sit in the corner gibbering for a while. It was one of Natalie’s paintings, the signature in the corner was plain as day, but it was one that I couldn’t remember ever seeing, and something I never expected to see again: a woman in classic Victorian dress lying face down on a bare wooden floor, with an upturned goblet next to her, something red trickling away from it.
V
I knew there was a reasonable and rational explanation to it all. I knew that I had probably just seen the picture Jill had shown me somewhere before and the memory just bubbled up to the surface like the half-remembered images of the old town had. They’d all just banded together and created this little dream world for me; the book store was where I had first met Natalie, when she was visiting relatives all those years ago, and the stranger I had seen there was probably nothing more than someone I had seen in the street or on TV, or maybe even a character from one of Nat’s paintings.
I knew all of that, and I knew that had to be the explanation.
I hadn’t taken her death well. I couldn’t fully comprehend the whole concept of her being dead, of her not being there in my life. This was my way of coping.
Of course I didn’t believe that. It was nothing more than a quick fix solution I was using to patch over the wound. I was trying to hold on to her, and the more I tried to make myself believe my explanation, the more I just rejected it. I kept thinking of those weird dreams I had when I was a kid, like maybe they were some sort of answer.
That night, I slept fitfully; waking up every so often then forcing myself back to sleep to try and get to that dream again. I took a long look at the picture Jill had left the following night, hoping it would trigger something and launch me back in there. For the next two nights after, I tried reading the same dream diaries I had read that first time, from cover to cover in the exact same order, but nothing happened.
By the sixth night, I gave up.
Almost a week and a half later, I was back.
The dream followed the exact same track: I was wandering aimlessly through that town until I reached the bookstore, never taking in any details, never seeing anyone. And then, when I saw Nat’s painting, it all fell back into place. I span around, looking for him, expecting him to be standing there behind me again, but I was completely alone on that street.
“I’m back!” I shouted out “I’m here!”
“It’s about bloody time,” he said from my left. I turned to look at him. He was smiling. “Are you going to run off again?”
“No,” I replied, trying to keep cool.
“Good,” he said. “We can get down to business this time. Want a coffee or something?”
“What?”
“Do you want to get a coffee or a cup of tea.”
It took another second or so for that to sink in.
“No!” I snapped “I-I want to know what’s happening here.”
“I could do with one. Come on.”
I watched helplessly as he turned his back on me and wandered casually up the steps of the old book shop behind us. I just did the only thing I could think of at that exact moment and stared at him in disbelief. He opened the door and looked at me expectantly.
So I walked in.
VI
What I expected was the rough brown carpet, and being confronted with copies of the latest best-sellers arranged into some kind of cheap cardboard display, while, on the right, somebody kept themselves busy behind the counter or on the phone.
What I saw was a huge open space, bigger than the outside, taken up with tables and chairs, and the walls lined with book shelves, crammed full of well-handled paperbacks; directly ahead, where the bookcase-lined wall and a doorway to the upper floor should have been, was a long open space ending in a staircase leading down to what appeared to be a slightly more private area. All around, people sat chatting or reading – some of them even greeted my ‘guide’ as he closed the door. I watched him move past me, to a table near the front window and sit down. I followed him, failing to make sense of any of this. Outside, the shop was more or less exactly as I remembered, right down to the posters in the window and the books on display; there was even the open sign on the door, declaring the fact they sell OS maps, and the little hand-written card taped underneath asking all patrons to please close the door behind them.
At that exact moment, I felt as if some emotion needed to be let out, but I wasn’t sure if I should laugh at the insanity of all this or cry with the confusion. A thousand questions formed in my mind, ready and waiting to be asked, but I couldn’t seem to get any of them to come out of my mouth.
He motioned for me to sit in front of him, my back to the window, giving me a full view of the room and the people in it.
“This is difficult,” he said, like he was responding to my thoughts. “I’m not very good at this bit, you know?”
“No,” I said, surprisingly calmly. “I don’t.”
“Hmm. No, you wouldn’t, would you? Right… I’m assuming you know where this place is now, yes?”
“I think so,” I said. “The dreams. When I was younger. This has something to do with that, right?”
His attention became suddenly focused outside.
“Excuse me,” he said jumping up. “There’s someone I have to see, outside there. Back in a minute.”
He was across the floor before I could even open my mouth again. I watched him walk outside, then turned to look at him through the window. Behind the display, I could clearly see a second person, dressed in a black overcoat; wandering back and forth in a small circle, but never letting me see their face, keeping it hidden behind the books the whole time. Somewhere inside, I think I had an inkling of who it was standing out there, but that didn’t soften the surprise when I followed him out of the door.
VII
The blood in my veins ran cold.
I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. It wasn’t possible.
My mouth fell open and I scrabbled around for something to say.
It just wasn’t possible.
Her name fell off my lips in a deathly whisper.
“Jill?”
“Christ, I’m sorry!” she started “I’m really sorry. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I tried to get hold of Curtis to tell him. I tried to stop him. You’re not ready for this, not now.”
“What?” I said, in place of anything more meaningful.
“God, this is going to take some explaining.”
I looked over at ‘Curtis’ and saw the equally confused look he was currently sharing with me. We both looked at Jill.
“What’s going on here?” Curtis asked. “I’m supposed to talk to him-”
“I know,” Jill snapped back. “He’s not ready yet. Something…happened. It’s too soon. I tried to get you, tell you to leave this alone for now.”
I didn’t know what to say, or do, or even think. Two of my…dreams were standing there, talking about me like I wasn’t even there. There’s nothing catalogued in the realm of human consciousness that can prepare you for something like that; there’s no standard reaction you can give, no look you can throw out, no words to say, or if there are, I’m not aware of them.
“What’s going on?” I asked quietly. It felt more like I was mouthing the words than saying them aloud. I looked at each of them in turn, hoping they’d turn and tell me everything. But they didn’t. They just ignored me and carried on their discussion.
“This was supposed to be my assignment,” Curtis protested. “I was supposed to make contact with him.”
“I know,” she replied “But something’s happened. This isn’t the right time for him.”
“Why? What was it that happened?”
“My girlfriend was killed,” I said sternly.
They both stopped and looked at me. Something about saying it like that made it sound final, like it was a line I had crossed, a taboo I was breaking. Like I was admitting it to myself.
“Please, Curtis,” Jill said, looking at him. “Let me handle this.”
He nodded. “I-I’m Sorry, mate,” he added, turning to me.
“Come on,” Jill said, taking my arm. She led me back inside, to the first empty table she came to. “This place,” she said sitting down opposite “Is somewhere in New York, I think. Curtis lives there now. He comes to this place regularly. I kind of like it. I’ll have to try and find it if I get to New York sometime.”
“Jill,” I said “What’s going on here?”
“Jesus. The biggie, eh? Um… You know this place, don’t you? You remember it?”
“Yeah. From when I was about thirteen. It was in a dream.”
“That’s when they – we – knew.”
“Knew what?”
She sighed and looked around the room thoughtfully. “I don’t know where to start. There’s…a lot. You… You’re like me and Curtis. You have a thing. It’s a-a power of some sort. A gift. But it’s not fully realised in you yet.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“This dream world. Curtis didn’t create this. You did.”
“Me?” I could feel my mouth opening and closing, but no words were leaving. It was becoming a habit. “I-I don’t understand.”
She dropped her head for a moment and then looked me directly in the eye.
“You can control dreams,” she said.
VIII
I just shook my head, unable (or maybe unwilling) to grasp what she was telling me. It was like someone was forcing information into my head in paving slab-sized chunks.
“It’s like I said, you’re like me,” she continued “An-and Curtis. We both have it. You can control dreams. Not just your own, but any dream. This whole thing with Curtis making contact with you, it was all designed to…bring you out. I realised when you told me about the first meeting with him. I recognised Curtis when you told me what he looked like. He did the same for me a couple of years back. They must’ve thought it was the right time and sent him. They couldn’t've known about Natalie.”
“They?” I asked.
“There’s more of us out there.”
“Us.”
“What?”
“I don’t know,” I said “It doesn’t sound right.”
“All these people in here,” she added, waving a hand over her shoulder “Can do the same thing. This seems to be some kind of meeting place for some of them. They come here and talk about stuff. Easier than e-mail. More personal, too.”
“Did she know?” I asked numbly.
“About what?”
“You. Them. This whole thing.”
“No,” she said, leaning back. “I never told her. I couldn’t. I wanted to, though. Christ knows I wanted to. But I couldn’t. One of the rules.”
A long silence hung over us.
“So now what?” I asked quietly.
“Explain everything, then show you how to use it, I suppose. I don’t know. Curtis was supposed to take you through it all. He’s the expert here, not me.”
“What happens if I wake up now? What then?”
“I come over and see you tomorrow, and we’ll talk this out.”
“What if I don’t want any part of them?”
“They’ll badger you until you give in.”
“And if I don’t?”
“You will. They’ll force you one way or another.”
“So I don’t have a choice, then?”
“You can try and hold out for as long as you can, but at the end of the day it’s not worth it.”
“They don’t sound like your type of people.”
“Most of them aren’t. I doubt they’ll be yours either. Curtis is about the only one I can stomach. He’s a good bloke Most of the people I’ve met so far have been pretentious wankers. After I got shown the ropes, I kept away from them. That’s a choice you can make. They’ll let you alone after you become fully aware.”
I rolled all the information around my head, trying to break it down into something I could process a little more easily.
“I can control my dreams?” I asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“Can you show me how. Just something basic.”
“No problem.” She let the word trail off as she looked at me. She knew. Or at least, she thought she did.
“You’re not, are you?”
“Not what?” I said.
“You can’t just conjure her up and stay here with her. I-I won’t let you do it.”
“No, you don’t understand.”
“Don’t I?” she snapped; her face was becoming flushed. “Do you realise how selfish that is-”
“Jill, I just want to say goodbye.”
Her mouth opened then closed. She flashed me a look of stunned disbelief, backed with an icy gaze that was rapidly melting. She brushed her mouth with her fingers, trying to give herself a few seconds to think of something to say, but all she did was lean back in her chair and look at me some more. I saw in those few seconds of silence that she had done the same thing. She’d laid her ghosts to rest.
She’d said the hardest word in the world.
IX
There’s no happy ending to this. You’ve probably guessed that by now. All there is an ending. But, I’m not even sure if you can call it that. I think ‘a beginning’ is a better way to describe it. A beginning instead of an ending. I think that’s what it is.
Curtis had taken some persuading, but eventually he caved and helped Jill set things up for me, on the condition I let him start my ‘training’ a week or so later. They’d given me some basic instructions to help get me on my feet, so now all I had to do was walk around to the bridge and say what I wanted to say. I’d tried to cobble together some kind of speech for her, but nothing seemed right. I just wanted to say something to her, but when it came down to it, all I could think of was that word.
She was leaning on the rail, watching the river; she tilted her head and smiled that smile of hers. I think I knew then that I wasn’t going to say it. If she hadn’t smiled, I could’ve done it.
I walked out to meet her and held her hand and tried to get some words out, but they stuck in my throat. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t say goodbye. I still can’t. That’s not what the word’s about.
Her hand came up and stroked my cheek, and I said the only thing I could say at that moment. The only thing I could ever say.
“I love you, Natalie.”
Copyright © 2008 Lee Robson
I'm a struggling writer trying to get noticed. When I'm not doing that, I'm usually being a surly, misanthropic bastard that really doesn't care about you or you life.
This blog contains some previously unpublished short stories, along with various other bits and pieces of writing. 
