Right Behind You
by
Shaun Tennant
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Right behind You
Copyright © 2012 by Shaun Tennant
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Samantha Mortgen was young and blonde and was starting summer vacation. The newspapers say she was the first to die. It was the first of June and she had just finished a long shift behind the counter at the local coffee joint. Even though it was warm outside, she pulled on a baggy sweater to cover her uniform. The last person she spoke to was her boss, and the last food that she ate was a day-old donut she snagged from behind the counter on her way out. She left alone, after eleven. She cut through St. Joe’s park and onto Highridge Road.
Highridge is a quiet street at rush hour, so it would have been dead by this time of night. While she walked, somebody came at her, and drove a knife into her belly. Possibly a switchblade. He stabbed her a dozen or more times, stabbing fast and reckless, like some kind of crazed maniac. You know the expression ‘surgical precision?’ This guy is the opposite of that.
The news says that he was probably going on a lot of adrenaline. Isn’t that nasty to think of, some guy all hyped up and getting off on stabbing a girl? She died right then, because her heart was opened up by the tip of the blade. The townie who found her would later tell the news that even though he had seen the body and the blood and was the one who closed her eyes, the thing that would stick with him the most was how she smelled so strongly of fancy expensive coffee. He said he’d never be able to drink the stuff again.
The news called the murderer the “Highridge Killer” because the second murder was on the very same road, a few kilometres down. But soon there were other deaths, and none of them happened on Highridge, so I guess the name became inaccurate. There were murders on other streets, or in back alleys; one man was killed in the park. The locations varied, but they’d all been killed with the same weapon. It was a small knife, possibly a switchblade. One newspaper, The Citizen, took to using the impossibly simple moniker of “The Knifeman,” a name that always puzzled me because it was never proven that the killer was a man. Or is “Knifeperson” somehow less compelling? Nonetheless, the TV stuck with “Highridge Killer” and eventually all of the newspapers came around, until “Highridge” was the name of choice.
That summer, I moved into town. I lived on Highridge Road.
It was the middle of September when I walked through the woods at night for the very first time. I remember that it was Friday and I was furious that the professor would actually make his students come to a class at seven on a Friday. Didn’t he know anything about students? We’ve got better, far more dubious places to be. But I went, knowing that in these psych classes the tests come fast and often, and if you get even one week behind you can crash and burn in half a semester. For three full hours I listened and I took notes, while everyone I knew and everyone I didn’t yet know was out having beers. I tried to accept that this was what my Fridays would be from now on, told myself that if I wasn’t in class I’d probably just be sitting at home anyway. I didn’t quite convince myself.
Since it was the first week, I didn’t know anyone in the class, so I couldn’t even make whispered conversation to pass the time. Not that I would talk in class, because I really wouldn’t want to be kicked out of a lecture, but you know what I mean.
At ten o’clock the old man let us out, and the twenty-or-so of us split off, each following a different branch of the same invisible tree, dividing into different hallways, different exits, different footpaths and sidewalks. Within a minute or two I had branched my way into total solitude, walking through a field toward the woods at the east end of campus. It’s just a little patch of trees, small enough to walk through in a minute or two, but thick enough to block out the streetlights on the other side. In the winter the bare branches foregrounding the streetlights look like something from a ghost story, but with the leaves still on the trees it becomes like a black velvet wall- impenetrable to the human eye.
When I had passed through here before class it was light out, the last of the summer sun making the forest a pleasant little short cut. But it was September and at ten o’clock there’s no sun, just a black curtain of trunks and leaves, and the persistent rustling sounds that emerge from all forests when you’re walking alone. All my other classes were during the day, so I had never gone through the woods at night. While I remembered the path being relatively straight the last time I went through, suddenly I was certain that I would lose my way in the dark.
Now, I was eighteen at the time, a grown man and no chicken, but I have to admit that I almost turned around. It wasn’t the trees that made me think twice, or the darkness, or the rustling, but the lingering thought that the Highridge Killer was still out there. If not for the special circumstance of this town having its own maniac, I would have gone right on in. I’m not a chicken.
I looked around and studied the area, my eyes only picking up silhouettes in the dark. I considered turning around and taking the long way home, so I turned to see how far the walk back would be. Behind me, maybe fifty metres back, there was a man in a long coat. He was just a shape, a pair of feet and a jacket against the backdrop of the well-lit campus. Where his face should have been, I could see the glowing orange tip of his cigarette and nothing more. My first thought was whether he’d think I was a wuss for hesitating to enter the woods. Next, I thought that I should march right in, show him that I’m not afraid, but then it dawned on me that it would safer if the two of us walked through the woods together.
But the loudest thought of all was the one that screamed Nobody in class had a trench coat. I was damn certain that there was only the one night class on Fridays, and the man approaching me hadn’t been in it. It was a beautiful night, the warmth of summer lingering into September, and I was growing increasingly positive that nobody in class had worn a long coat of any kind. So what was up with the guy in the big long coat?
Who the hell was he?
The college sits on a decent patch of land in the corner of town. The property features a lot of fields and grassy lawns, and it was possible that somebody who lived nearby would prefer to cut through campus to get to their house. That was surely what this guy was doing. I just wished that he didn’t have to walk the same way that I did.
Twenty feet away now and still faceless in the gloom, the man paused to stomp out his cigarette and light up a new one. As his lighter flared I got a flash of his face- a strong, large jaw and eyes that stayed hidden in darkness even with the lighter’s flame so close. Something about that struck me as wrong. He holds a light up to his face, and his eyes stay dark? It was like something out of a movie. That, or he had a caveman’s brow. Either way I had a very powerful urge to not let him get too close. I headed into the forest just as he tucked his lighter away and started walking again.
The man in the long coat didn’t hesitate for a moment about entering the darkness behind me. Didn’t even break his stride. It was like walking right into the blackness between the trees didn’t scare this guy at all. Like he knew that there was nothing in there that could threaten him. Not even the Highridge Knifeperson Maniac. I made sure to glance back at the guy from time to time. I was stealthy about it, sneaking glances, partly because I didn‘t want him to see me at a party some time and tell people how I was scared of him, but mostly because I didn’t want him to know that I was watching him.
The path seemed to have sprouted whole new plants in the three hours I had been away; it used to be clear but now I was tripping over roots and shrubs and constantly correcting my course. The man behind me walked steadily, not an obstacle in his way. This was a man who knew the path well, who had walked through this darkness many times before. The fear grew stronger that this m
an might be that man, might be the Knifeman. I dug my right hand into my pocket and felt what was there and was glad for the little relief that I had not lost it along the way. Maybe I expected the darkness to have picked my pocket.
As I left the woods and crossed the street to the sidewalk, I gave another glance behind me. The man had put out his smoke again, and without the orange ember hovering in the black, I couldn’t place him anymore. He had faded completely into the gloom and become indistinguishable from it. Why would he put out his smoke? I thought, He only just lit it a second ago. Unless he put it out because he saw me watching him. He put it out so he could hide in the darkness. I walked faster.
My apartment was about