Shadows And Charades

“At the end of Elm Street, you will find a narrow path. Take this path for two hundred metres and you will reach the old factory where the concert is taking place.”

Sally looked down at the directions on the back of the ticket, then up at the path in front of her, wriggling away into murky darkness. She could make out a dim light in the distance, which she supposed must be the factory. She lingered at the edge of the path, swaying between the thrill of adventure and the comfort of the residential street behind her, blotched with lights from cosy family dinners.

She heard footsteps behind her and whipped around to see a young man walking towards her, dressed in a suit and smart shoes, which clipped as he walked along the pavement. He was tall and slight, with messy brown hair and a cheerful smile. As he approached, he held up a small piece of paper, which she recognised as a ticket. "I guess you’re here for the concert too?"

"Yes I am,” she said, smiling back at him. "I think it must be across there."

He followed her gaze, squinting into the gloom. "Ah yes, you're right. Wow, they've really gone all out for this secret concert haven't they? Come on, let's go!"

As he headed off down the path, Sally hesitated for a moment, watching as the shadows circled him like a snake and then swallowed him whole. She waited a heartbeat after he disappeared, then hurried after him.

He fumbled in his jacket pocket for his phone and then switched on the torch, holding it in front of them to light the way. In the faint light, she could see that they were walking along a narrow path which cut through an industrial wasteland. To either side of them, the deserted landscape disappeared into fuzzy blackness, empty except for a few unruly shrubs and abandoned pieces of rusting machinery.

"I'm Luke by the way," her new companion said.

"I'm Sally."

"This is all really very exciting isn't it," he said. "These guys are one of my favourite bands. I couldn't believe it when I received a free ticket! I never win anything!"

"Yes," she said. "This certainly isn't like any other concert I've ever been to."

"So what do you do?" he asked.

"I work in PR," she said. "What about you?"

"Finance,” he said. “I work for a boutique firm called Sage & Co. You probably wouldn’t have heard of them."

"Sage & Co? I have actually. My ex-boyfriend used to work there. Richard Maine – do you know him?"

Luke stopped walking and turned to face her, holding his phone in front of him so that his face was illuminated in the glow of the flashlight. "Richard Maine?" he repeated.

"Yes, why?"

"Well.... he didn't exactly leave on good terms."

"Yes, well, I know he got made redundant," Sally said. "He was really down about it. It's one of the reasons I broke up with him, really. I couldn't handle how depressed he became."

"Redundant?" Luke laughed, and turned to carry on walking. "He wasn't made redundant. He was caught stealing money from the firm. I was actually the one who found out what he was up to and had to report it to my boss."

"What? Are you serious? What a liar! He had me feeling so sorry for him, and so guilty for leaving him!"

“It sounds to me like you had a lucky escape,” Luke said. “Funny though, that we know the same person.”

They continued walking in the direction of the lights and, as they approached, the factory began to loom out of the darkness. It was a large, concrete building, two storeys high and cut into an ugly grey square. Some of the windows on the upper floor had been smashed and the remaining shards of glass clung helplessly to the window frames. Graffiti was smeared across the outer walls, obscene words shrieking the disillusionment and frustration of their authors.

A small crowd of people had gathered outside the front of the building. Sally and Luke joined the group, all stamping their feet and rubbing their hands together to try and keep warm. Sally pulled her jacket tightly around herself, but this only seemed to press the cold into her skin.

After a few minutes, there was a loud scraping sound as the factory doors were pulled open. A faint light sloshed out on to the crowd and trickled away into the shadows. A figure appeared in the doorway, silhouetted against the light, and Sally could just make out that it was a teenage boy.

"Please leave your phones in the lockers to your left as you enter the building,” he said, his voice flattened by the hardship of an inner-city childhood. “You can then proceed down the corridor to the main room.”

The boy stepped back out of sight and the crowd started to head inside, chattering excitedly. They entered a long, shadowy hallway. A few naked bulbs flickered on the walls, which gave enough light to see that there was a set of lockers immediately to the left of the doors.

Sally and Luke dropped their phones in a locker, then followed the crowd down the hallway, through a set of concrete doors and into a large room. Like the hallway, the room was dimly lit and cold, with grey concrete walls and a ceiling so high that it was invisible through the swathes of blackness. At the front of the room, there was a wooden makeshift stage.

Suddenly, a door was slammed shut and the crash of concrete sliced through the babble of conversation. In the silence that followed, Sally heard a soft click, just like the sound of padlock being closed.

People started muttering and whispering, anticipation bubbling and rippling through the crowd. Then there was a creak at the front of the room and everyone turned to see a man climbing the stairs on to the stage.

Through the hazy gloom, Sally could see that he was a tall man, with short hair and hunched shoulders. He was dressed completely in black and had a large bag slung over his shoulder. He was climbing the stairs lazily, his head dropped to his chest.

The man reached the top of the stairs and turned to look at the crowd. His face was partially obscured by patches of darkness but, even through a balaclava of shadows, Sally would recognise him anywhere. It was Richard Maine.

"Welcome!" Richard's booming voice ricocheted around the room. "Welcome to the secret concert you've all been looking forward to!"

Sally glanced around the room and saw people looking quizzically at each other. She heard someone whisper to the person next to them, "I know him," and the other person replied, "Yeah, me too....."

She caught Luke’s eye and he shrugged at her, confusion and curiosity blended on his face.

"I bet you were all so surprised when you received your winning tickets in the post," Richard said, starting to pace up and down the stage. "You hadn't even entered a competition – you must have thought it was your lucky day!"

Sally saw that he was grinning wildly, his teeth gleaming in the shadows like a wolf bearing its fangs.

"So, what have we got in store for you tonight? Well, I'm afraid it won't quite be the concert you were hoping for, but I assure you there will still be plenty of entertainment. Now, there's something that everyone here in the audience has in common. Can anyone guess what it is?”

He scanned the crowd but nobody said a word.

“Okay, I'll tell you."

He slipped his hand into the bag that was draped over his shoulder and held it there for a moment. He breathed deeply a few times and Sally saw his chest rise and fall. Suddenly, he pulled his arm out of the bag with a flourish, like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. The crowd screamed when they saw that he was holding a gun.

"The thing you all have in common,” he said, his voice as dark as the shadows that enveloped him, “is that you all screwed me over."

Panic swept through the room like an infection and people began pushing to get to the back of the room. The instinct of fear, honed for millennia in the human nervous system, screamed at them to run from danger.

Richard fired a shot into the air, shocking everyone into silence.

"Do not move!" he shouted. "There is only one exit and the door is padlocked. There is no way to escape. Now, everyone needs to calm down so that we can carry on with tonight's entertainment."

Realising he was right, that the door was locked, the crowd clustered at the back of the room like a pack of terrified gazelle.

"You've all treated me like crap, trodden all over me, behaved in a way that nobody should behave towards another human being. So I'm here tonight to seek justice, to right the wrongs that you have all inflicted."

Richard was pacing up and down the stage as he spoke, his voice rising excitedly with every word, the gun gripped in his right hand.

"So what I'm going to do is call each one of you on to the stage, one at a time, and you're going to apologise to me. If I believe that you're sorry, I will let you go. But if I don't..."

He tipped the gun so that it was facing the ceiling and fired it. The sound smashed through the room and Sally felt as though it smacked her in the face.

The crowd of people was heaving and sobbing, feeding each other fear, growing rapidly hysterical. Their panic drenched the darkness, sweated into the shadows. Terror filled the room like a poisonous gas.

"The first person I'm going to call is the person who has hurt me most in my life," Richard said. "I truly loved her and she broke my heart."

Sally jerked her head to look at Richard. His eyes were already on her, a snarl curling on his lips.

"Yes, she was the love of my life and she treated me like dirt. Come on up here, Sally Walters!"

Sally shrunk back into the crowd, tripping over fear, grappling for someone to cling on to. She was hyperventilating, trembling, her pupils stretched wide with terror.

“Come on Sally. If you don’t come up here, you will force me to shoot everyone in this room.’

"You have to go," Luke whispered. "But don't worry, he won't hurt you. He's trying to scare us."

He gave her a gentle push and she stumbled forward. People jumped to let her past, afraid to touch her, as if she were a leper. They were silent as she walked towards the front of the room, her footfalls echoing on the concrete. She reached the stage and slowly climbed the stairs, terrified tears streaming down her face.

Up close, Richard was sweating despite the cold and his eyes were wild. He grinned at her crazily. "Welcome on stage!"

"Richard," she said, quietly. "Don't do this. Stop this now, let us all go home, before anyone gets hurt."

Richard started laughing manically. "You stupid bitch!" he hissed at her. "Don't you realise that the whole point of this is for people to get hurt?"

He turned to address the crowd again. "Now, Sally here is going to apologise for ruthlessly trampling over my heart and I'm going to decide if I believe her or not."

He turned to Sally. "Go on then."

"Richard…." Sally began.

"Actually," he said, lifting the gun so that it was pointing at her chest. "I don't need you to even try. I know you're not sorry."

He pulled the trigger and the world went dark.