-- o --
I stare into the dark swirls of the canal, watching the reflections shift and change but never quite coalesce to form my face. For how long I have been here, I do not know, but the dirt is gone now, washed away in the current. The living, cleansing power of water fascinates me. I notice a few blood-stained scraps of cloth clinging to the tips of the weeds hanging over the water; mindful of my mother's warnings about cleanliness, I lean down and flick them into the stream. As I follow their passage with the other debris off into the distance, I see a faint, pink glow down the tow path. My heart hammers, and I am up and running past the old warehouse with its spiderweb windows, fleeing from -
A bedtime story, a childhood nightmare.("Mum, what's the Radman?")
I reach the footbridge and cross it, peering through the steel triangles for signs of my pursuer. The glow is closer, brighter. I run down the other side and through the housing estate, taking the route I usually avoid for fear of the streetlamps (Mum said that they were safe, but they still scare me). I pass through a tunnel littered with human detritus and smelling of urine - a newspaper, its print forming patterns in my head that I do not understand, wraps itself around my right foot and travels with me a few steps - and emerge onto the street. The identical terraced houses, neat and ordered, windows blanked by curtain backs, reassure me; I slow to a walk and look round. The glow no longer follows - it was only a story after all. A cat emerges from an alley and turns to look at me. I stare into its slitted green eyes until it runs away. As I pass the alleyway the Radman's rays strike me in the face, and I realise that all this time he has been stalking me along adjacent streets. Too late I remember that cats and birds are his allies, his minions, his spies.
("Now don't be out too late or the Radman will hunt you down and burn you up with his flaming eyes."
"Come off it mum, that's kid's stories!"
"The Radman isn't a story. I've seen him."
"Oh don't be such a child, mum!")
I run, flinging myself across the gaps between the houses. The Radman keeps pace with me. I reach the end of the street as pain begins to claw at my diaphragm, out into the path of his rays. But I have no choice; he has seen me, and the only way in which I can escape him is to get home. That much I remember.
("...So Naughty Nigel ran and ran and ran, but the Radman was faster than he was, and more cunning. For he hid in the grass just a few feet from Naughty Nigel's front door and as Naughty Nigel ran up to it, thinking he'd escaped, the Radman leapt out and fixed his flaming eyes upon him. And Naughty Nigel shrivelled and blackened and burned 'til there was nothing left but ashes. So don't you ever go being a naughty boy and staying out too late, or the Radman will burn you up too."
"I won't, mum. Ever!"
A smile in the darkness. "Goodnight, my darling."
"Goodnight, mum.")
I splash through a puddle which glows with the Radman's passing, welcoming the cooling dampness that clings to my feet. Ranks of streetlamps hang in the air above me like cold electric fires; I look up at them, seeking respite from the Radman's brightness, but his radiance touches them and flicks them off. A pillar box looms up in front of me, red and angry, its mouth gaping black. Somehow I manage to dodge it. I know now that I must find somewhere to hide from the Radman so that I can reach home safely; my panicked mind thinks only of the park, its softness, its shady greenness. The Radman could not follow me there.
Now I am passing the school, running low behind the white, flaking fence so that the Radman does not see me. Already the skin of my back and neck is reddening, swelling. Across the road, the windows of the houses reflect his radiance like searchlights, but they do not see me. I reach a corner, gasping; clinging to the brickwork, seeing its texture more clearly than ever before, I peer into the next street. I cry out, for I see the Radman's blinding eye staring at me; then I realise (as I do not burn) that it is a reflection in a car wing mirror, and that the Radman is coming up the street behind me. Quickly I turn the corner and run up the street. The Radman plays with me, reflecting death rays off the parked cars which I must dodge - I blunder into something which falls over with a deafening clatter, scattering the contents which he gleefully infects with his glow. In one of the faceless houses, a dog begins to bark.
("Shrivelled and blackened and burned...")
I reach a street of shops where streetlamps are, but looking up I see only the Radman's blinding glow. A loose paving stone catches my feet, and as I fall and roll over I scream, for I see the Radman's outline in a shop window, his aura stretching out to me and burning my face with its fiery caress.
As I flee, blinded, I bump into a man with a sack. I do not hear the words, but his tone expresses concern. I push past him and rush onwards away from the blankness, the faint sketched features of his face.
My body is bright and glowing now. The Radman is making me his. I feel his heat insinuate itself into my bones with every agonising step I take.
The shining houses fall away as I reach the park, but the Radman has got there before me; instead of the shade and softness I longed for, the trees are hard and sharp and brilliantly, blindingly green. As I gaze in despair, shrill piping voices, echoes of madness in my own skull, assault my ears and drive me back on wobbling legs into the city. About me, the buildings begin to fade into the brightness.
(One day my mum went out in search of food and didn't come back. I thought that she had starved to death or been picked up by the police; now I know better. She didn't believe enough.)
The brightness is all around me now, filling my eyes and flaying my skin. I see the Radman to my left, the two blinding white objects in his hands clinking as he sets them down and turns to come for me. I look for somewhere to hide, but all is tainted with his glow; only a patch of slightly dimmer light offers any hope, and I stagger into it, feeling the rough stone burn beneath my blistered hand.
A building emerges out of the glare. From the silhouetted cross at the top, I know it is the church. The Radman crouches on the roof, waiting. Smoke rises from my blackened skin; the Radman's agonising fire smoulders within me, ready to flare up and consume me. Frantically pushing past the pale shapes that loom in my path, I race for the cool, damp darkness and dive in; as he reaches down for me, I pull the heavy stone lid across and shut him out.
Thank God.
Goodnight.
(With apologies to Clive Barker and Ramsey Campbell.)