With helmet in one hand and overladen saddle bags in the other, Ethan charged out into the bitter autumn evening from number 43 and let the door slam behind him. He glanced back at the building, once a large house for an expansive family and now three mediocre flats. One of them, until just that moment, had housed him and Erin.
He wiped the wet from his eyes and stepped quickly to the road. His bike, an obedient if underpowered Royal Enfield Bullet 500, waited patiently. He unlocked the chain that bound it to the lamppost and fastened his bags, dropping the chain into a pouch on the largest sack-like bag which sat on the passenger seat. Within two minutes he’d fastened the clips and cords that secured his cargo. He stood back for a final visual check. Strange to think that he was leaving with so little. But that’s how it was.
Erin had been very clear. She was done. With him, with his lack of ambition, with his slovenly habits. And that meant he was done with the town. After dropping out of Uni, he’d only stayed in Ferenbrooke to be with her.
With a resigned shake of his head, Ethan swung his leg over his bike and sat in the saddle. He pulled his helmet on and fastened it while mentally repeating the riding advice his grandfather had shared with him a thousand times, until it had become lodged in his mind as a mantra.
Don’t ride angry.
‘Well, shit,’ he muttered to himself.
Assume everyone else is out to kill you.
That, he could do.
When there’s no street lights at night, follow the cat’s eyes.
Ethan smiled at that. He’d been mystified by the little road reflectors when he was a young child, huddled in the back of Dad’s Volvo during any one of their frequent long drives. He’d imagined an elaborate back-story linked to the name. That the cat’s eyes really were just that; that cats laid submerged in the tarmac to guide drivers home.
The sky had shifted to a moody navy blue while he’d been readying his departure. Lampposts began to wake while he inserted his key into the ignition and pulled on his gloves.
With a final deep inhale, Ethan put his hands on his bike’s handlebars, thumbed the electric start, and kicked up the side stand. He knocked the burbling single-cylinder machine into gear and set off. To where? Who knows?
#
Road passed quickly beneath him. His front tyre effortlessly weaved between potholes and detritus while Ethan kept his eyes up to monitor traffic and road signals. It was a quiet evening and there were few cars about. This part of town was largely residential and very well-lit, both by street lights and the windows of densely packed dwellings. The flat was near the hospital, south of the city centre. Supposedly Cheyford, the area they lived in, had once been a village that had been swallowed up by a metastatic Ferenbrooke. It was a common story, many of the outer areas of Ferenbrooke had their own names and stories. Like many such towns, Ferenbrooke was always growing, fuelled by old-money investment in new ideas which wanted to be near the University in order to harvest the emerging talent from its halls.
Socio-economic trends and half-forgotten history aside, the area had always been dull as far as Ethan was concerned. A mess of bland 80’s houses, blocks of shit flats, decent old buildings renovated unto ruin and the occasional eighteenth-century pub hanging on for dear life. Generic little corner shops and precisely fuck all to do unless you were happy to walk 45 minutes into town.
They’d chosen to live there because Erin’s work was at the hospital. She’d studied biomedical science and graduated into a clinical scientist training program. Unglamorous but crucial work in the blood lab.
Ethan chose his route carefully to avoid the city centre. He needed the north road out of Ferenbrooke, so that meant cutting through several residential areas and a couple of industrial estates. There was no ring road circling this town, unfortunately. It made the journey cumbersome.
By the time he reached the north road, the night was full black and dotted with flickering stars. He switched to high-beams as he put Ferenbrooke behind him, pulled the throttle and then switched to a higher gear as he settled into a decent cruising speed. The cold air lashed his exposed neck and whistled through the air vents on his helmet, reminding him of riding pillion on his grandfather’s bike during Christmas holiday visits.
Before long the road widened and the trees along either side of the road grew thicker. Ethan slowed slightly to account for lessened visibility with the thickness of the tree line and the winding shape of the road. Despite that precaution, he did not feel safe. Something deep in the oldest part of his brain was rustling uncomfortably, some atrophied instinct more at home in a burrowing mammal than a grown man.
Up ahead of him, he saw the road do something unexpected.
The road he was on—the road he knew—meandered onwards for about ten miles with the occasional branch off towards a village or hamlet. So why was there a crossroad in front of him?
He slowed to a stop and took stock. No signs. No indication of where these new roads that looked as though they’d always been there would lead.
Something caught his eye within the trees. A faint light, somewhere deep beyond the ragged rowans. Adventurous teenagers, perhaps.
He took a deep breath and set off again. Those roads and whoever was shining light off the beaten path would have to be someone else’s problem.
At least until Ethan found himself at a road closure half a mile down the road.
‘Bollocks,’ he said as he rolled to a stop in front of a large yellow sign which helpfully informed him that the north road would be closed until the next Thursday.
He pulled his bike around and sped back down the road, heading south in geography as much as in spirit. The thought of returning to Ferenbrooke filled him with dread. He hated the place, always had. He couldn’t go back. Not even for one night.
And so, once he reached that perplexing crossroad, he turned left into uncharted territory with barely a second thought.
Within a mile a lay-by emerged. Ethan pulled in and knocked the Bullet into neutral then tugged off his gloves. He dug in his pocket for his phone, unlocked it and pulled up a map application. The app sputtered; no signal. Ethan sighed and replaced the phone in his pocket, readied himself, and set off again. There would be something soon, some sign or landmark he could use to find his way back onto familiar roads, he was sure of it.
The road continued on, writhing and rough. The trees either side became more twisted and gnarled as Ethan went on, lending the wind that worked its way through them a character somewhere between forlorn and seething. As that evening air sang its mournful song, Ethan found himself checking the treeline for disturbances, inconsistencies. He couldn’t be sure, but he had the sensation of flashes of colour in his peripheral vision as he proceeded towards an uncertain destination.
Another three or so miles and Ethan became more sure that there was something in the woods, running parallel to him, something huge that effortlessly kept pace and cast off faint prismatic light as it moved. A vehicle, perhaps. One that managed to be silent somehow and had malfunctioning lights, just coincidentally going in the same direction. It was a comforting thought, that distant possibility, and Ethan clung to it.
Up ahead, the road forked. One road followed the tree line and the other curled off and was bordered by farmer’s fields on both sides. Ethan took the latter, risking a quick glance back at the woods as they fell behind him.
Before long, lights appeared in the distance. They were the first he’d seen in some time and it occurred to him that the lack of other vehicles on his journey was a little strange.
It quickly became apparent that the lights he saw were not other vehicles. They were stationary, lights from some sort of building which was revealed to be a service station as Ethan drew closer. He breathed a sigh of relief. Fuel and a break were surely called for.
Ethan guided his bike off the road and into a waiting petrol pump station. He pulled off his helmet and gloves and plugged a pump into his tank. While his bike fed, he eyed the service station itself. It had a glass front, behind which there was a central seating area surrounded by a number of fast food outlets and a convenience store. A struggling fluorescent sign above the entrance declared the services to operate 24/7.
Once his tank was good and full, Ethan replaced the cap and pulled on his helmet. He parked his bike in one of the spaces by the services entrance and entered, removing his helmet once more. He made for the convenience store, where he paid for his petrol. The young guy who served him had a vaguely glazed look and didn’t utter a word.
Next to the store there was a chain coffee place. Ethan ordered a double espresso and acquired the WiFi password. Drink in hand, he sat at a table and pulled out his phone. He connected to the WiFi and opened his map app. The little spinning icon that indicated something was failing to happen mercilessly filled his screen. He sighed and put his phone on the table, leaned back in his chair and looked around. He was the only customer in there. Each of the tenant businesses had one or two staff members, which meant he was far from alone, but still it felt eerie. The buzz of chillers and pumps and uncared-for pipes were the only background sounds. No music, no chatter.
The cashier from the convenience store had emerged from his perch, was stood in the doorway of his shop and eyeing Ethan. This made him a little uncomfortable. He cast his eyes around and saw that all the workers were looking at him. All had ceased whatever busywork had been inflicted upon them and stood, unblinking, unmoving.
For the briefest of moments, Ethan was sure he saw some rainbow-like stream of light bounce from a barista to a burger cook.
As one, the workers began to move. They all walked towards Ethan’s table, forming a loose circle.
Ethan’s heart quickened. He didn’t have a single clue what was happening, but he knew he wanted no part of it. He retrieved his phone from the table and stood, coffee forgotten. He marched for the entrance, cursing under his breathe when the convence store worker jogged to the door and locked it.
‘Okay,’ he shouted, ‘just what the fuck is happening here?’
They were close now. The loose circle had tightened, losing all gaps and requiring some of the participants to look over the shoulders of their compatriots to get a good look at the lost biker.
Ethan locked eyes with the closest of them. Her eyes had pinhole pupils and the irises were rapidly cycling through every part of the visible light spectrum; one breath they were violet, then sunflower yellow, then a filthy orange.
Panicking, Ethan grabbed the only thing in reach, a chair, and swung wildly from left to right.
One of them was knocked down by the blow. His neighbour, a donut seller, caught the chair and tried to pull it away from Ethan.
Ethan responded by putting his weight into the chair, forcing his way forwards, pushing the worker back. A dozen or more hands grabbed at his jacket, most sliding off the slick leather, but a few finding purchase on straps and pockets.
The donut seller gritted his teeth as Ethan gained a little ground, then opened his mouth and released a fox-like wail. His face was barely a foot from Ethans, and Ethan winced at the sound, and then again at the blinding light emanating from the back of the donut seller’s throat.
Using every ounce of his blue-collar muscle, Ethan twisted the chair left and threw the donut seller to the floor. He sprinted through the gap in the crowd, elbowing aside a buffet server who launched herself at him.
Just inside the door, on either side, there were plastic palm trees about the height of a tall man. Ethan grabbed one and swung it 360 degrees before launching it at the large glass front of the building. It cracked and the plastic tree bounced off. Ethan swore again as the crowd caught up to him, all wailing now.
He threw a couple of punches and a clumsy kick, knocked a couple of them down. A particularly large barista grabbed his shoulders and pushed him back, into the cracked glass.
Ethan crashed through, landed painfully on his side with chips of glass embedding themselves in his face and hands and the large barista on top of him. He shoved, elbowed, and kicked his assailant, dislodged him and scrambled towards his bike and mounted, shoved the key into the ignition, and kicked it into gear with more haste than he’d ever known.
He sped off without helmet or gloves. He looked into his mirrors and saw the crowd of service station workers gathering outside, shuddering as one, screaming. Light poured from their mouths and coalesced into a vague, shimmering shape. It was translucent, only visible at the edges. Something car-sized with a mess of legs. The workers collapsed as one when the shape left them, bounding after Ethan’s bike.
Ethan pulled the throttle wide open and moved through the gears as quickly as he could. Short glances into his rear-view mirrors told him little. The shape, as realised as it was likely to be, was barely visible. It could have been gaining on him or not, there was no way to tell.
Not until his left mirror disappeared, anyway.
A brief shriek of torn steel, a momentary flash of scarlet, and a twist of the handlebars to the left. Ethan struggled to right the Bullet’s trajectory, managed to manhandle it away from the low stone wall lining the road. He wiped sweat from his eyes and brought his torso down to meet the petrol tank, praying to gods he’d never believed in for a little more speed.
Another fork in the road. He looked left, looked right. No signs. Looked left, then right. No idea where either would lead.
He spotted a faint reflective glimmer on the left road. Realised there was a line of them.
Follow the cat’s eyes.
The small reflectors were his beacons. If not a way home, they’d provide at least a course of travel other than away from the thing behind.
He glanced into his remaining rear-view mirror, saw it filled with cascading lights.
He leaned left, taking the turn faster than a rider of his limited skill had any right to. The bike’s front wobbled dangerously as he straightened out, but he powered through and it regained stability. As he drew level with the first of the cat’s eyes, a shriek of Biblical proportions erupted behind him. He powered on for three seconds, then turned his head and looked behind. The prismatic shape was stationary, quivering. It extended one of its uncountable limbs, recoiling as its own light was reflected upon it.
Ethan took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. He didn’t dare slow until he saw the Welcome to Ferenbrooke - Please Drive Carefully sign on his left, accompanied by a camera and a 30 mile-per-hour limit. He glanced back again, saw the shape had not followed.
Obeying the limit, he cruised for a short while before finding himself on Camberton high street, one of the suburb areas a little way east of Stone Street. He turned off the high street and rolled to a stop behind a parked car, turned his bike off and ran his hands through his hair.
‘Fuck,’ he said.
‘Bit brave,’ said a voice behind him, ‘riding without a helmet. They’ll nick you for that, you know.’
Ethan turned and saw that the voice came from an elderly man with a dog and a gnarled cane.
‘I lost it a little while back,’ Ethan said weakly, ‘Any idea if it’s okay to park my bike here while I go home and get my spare?’
‘Shouldn’t be an issue,’ the old man said. ‘Lovely bike by the way. Enfield, is it? Where were you taking it?’
‘I was leaving town. Got turned around.’
The old man chuckled. ‘Yes, that does happen. Sometimes, the town just isn’t done with you.’