The Boy at the Window

CW: Gore, injury, substance abuse, mental health issues, grief, child neglect

Fog had lingered for days, viscous and cold, cloaking all it touched, creating looming shadows of people and buildings. Barney had overslept again and he was running late for the ferry. Racing down the high street hoping he wouldn’t miss it, horns sounding in the Solent, his attention was caught by a face watching from a shop window. Wiping his eyes, sipping his scalding coffee, he slowed, curious. Was this place new? Shops came and went all the time, but with its peeling paint and scuffed frontage it looked like it’d been an unloved feature for donkey’s years. Any hanging sign was obscured, and looking in, the little figure who’d been there had disappeared. Barney reached for his buzzing phone and read the text alert.

     Passengers are advised that services are currently delayed. We apologise for any inconvenience.

     “Ah, Hell!” This could make him late for his therapist. Sighing, and making a mental note to check out the shop on the way home, he proceeded to join the scrum of miserable fellow travellers.

A week later Barney found himself rushing again for the ferry in a state of deja-vu; fog, scalding coffee, therapist. ‘Dumb ass’ he chided himself before abruptly remembering what he’d forgotten a week earlier and stopped outside the old shop. He peered through the mist at the empty façade but there was nothing on display to suggest what it sold, and the place looked, through the grubby glass, abandoned and empty. Fly and woodlice carcasses lay scattered on the faded sill, dusty cobwebs strung across the dirty panes. A boy suddenly appeared at the window, startling Barney who stepped backwards into a dog walker.

     “Sorry,” he said as the woman huffed.

     Turning back to the shop, the thickening fog almost obscured it, Barney was unable to make out if the kid was still there. Wiping his palm across the grimy glass there was no sign of him. Odd. Why was a child in an empty shop? A tiny lurking memory jangled his synapses, dying before he could make sense of it. His heart beating a little faster, he restarted his journey, turning briefly to see the shop swallowed by the murk.

Barney was still thinking about the boy at the window when his therapist interrupted and asked him about his earliest childhood memories. He always drew a blank trying to remember what happened before he went into foster care, before the independent living accommodation and being spat out of one welfare system and into another. The kid’s face in the window flashed again.

     “Do you believe in ghosts?” Barney asked.

     “Why?”

     “I just…no, doesn’t matter.”

     Glad the session was over and wondering what prompted him to ask such a stupid question, he agreed to do his homework, writing down his dreams to see if his subconscious would throw up hints about his childhood. Travelling home, the boy at the window was all he could think about.

Another week later and the shop was the last thing on his mind, a lovely bright morning, his walk filled with spirit-raising sparklingly crisp sunlight.

     “Did anything come to mind?” his therapist asked.

     “No, not really. The dreams seem to have dried up.”

     “Are you still curious about ghosts?”

     Barney looked away, ‘fool’ he cursed himself, ‘why did I say that?’

     “Barney?”

     “No, not curious about ghosts but I need to understand what happened to me. Though sometimes I think I should leave the past alone.”

Returning tired and unsettled from his appointment the fog began to roll in again, worse than ever and the ferry journey became painfully slow. Horns boomed as Barney joined the disembarking passengers spilling out of the terminal and as always he turned right and this time, through the opaque mist, he made out the shabby frontage.

     ‘This is weird.’ Stopping he thought he saw a light somewhere deep in the premises. He pushed at the wooden door, but it was locked so, cupping his hand to his brow, he leaned against the cold glass to see if anyone was about. Instantly the boy appeared from nowhere making Barney’s heart leap. Catching his breath he raised a hand in a feeble greeting. There wasn’t a response from the boy who held the gaze of the man on the other side of the glass. Barney offered a smile to the child who appeared to try and turn up the corners of his mouth before a thick drift of mist lowered itself across what was left of the early evening light, and each faded from the other.

“Tell me, have you recalled anything from your very early childhood?”

     Barney swallowed and nodded. That boy in the shop was dwelling on his mind, triggering flashbacks from years before. “Sort of. I remember playing on the floor with a toy car, drawing things in the dust with a wet finger, the place always smelt damp and nasty, Mum in the background shouting ‘get away from there.’ Just scraps of memory before...” His voice trailed off.

     “That’s good,” his therapist said. “How does it make you feel revisiting those times?”

     Barney shrugged, “Empty, I guess.”

     “Why empty?”

     Barney took his time before responding. “There’s this big gap I can’t fill, emptiness and loss but I don’t know what I lost. If I remember anything its only in fragments that don’t amount to anything.”

     “Keep working on it. You’re making great progress.”

     Heading home he caught his reflection in the window of the ferry and pictured the boy in the shop with his dark eyes and long lashes like his own, the same lashes he was teased about when he was a kid. Girl’s lashes.

Barney’s sleep had been fretful, with dreams of shadowy corners and dusty shelves accompanied by a woman screaming between sobs, warning him of some unseen threat. Someone lay on the floor, frigid and still. He’d woken tired and irritable, dreading his therapy appointment.

     Coffee in hand he set off at a trot into the cold, miserable morning. Rain had come in, a thin mizzle soaking his hair, seeping into his jacket and up his sleeves, finding its way through the soles of his boots leaving his feet sodden. Most shops were still shut as water puddled on window ledges and in doorways. He wondered if that kid would be there again and kept an eye open as he passed the estate agents and scented emporia selling bits and bobs for the home. The shop wasn’t there. He squinted through the rain. Where was it? It should be next to that place selling greetings cards but no. No bay window. No shop. No boy. Frowning, he checked his watch and seeing he was cutting it fine he picked up the pace towards the terminal building. Shops don’t disappear. He must be mistaken, distracted, because it had been there last week. Sitting amongst the warm fug of passengers, everyone wringing wet, Barney wiped a line through the condensation on the ferry window and looked into the grey morning, catching a glimpse of his reflection and his eyes, dark brown with long heavy lashes. Girl’s lashes.

“And how has this week been? You asked me about ghosts a while ago? Can you explain why?”

     Barney squirmed like a pinned insect, “It’s stupid really. On the way to the boat I pass an old shut up shop and sometimes I see a kid watching me from the front window and, I don’t know, it feels like that kid isn’t quite real, or the shop. Today I didn’t see it, which is stupid.”

     His therapist merely nodded, leaning forward, “You mentioned ghosts. I think that ghosts are just memories, ghosts are frozen in the moment. What are you seeing when you stop at that shopfront? A memory?”

     ‘Or a ghost?’ Barney wondered.

The shop was there. This is getting freaky thought Barney, staring through the window. Throughout his session he’d felt a sense of disquiet, sensations from dreams resurfacing, making him uneasy, expectant, but of what he didn’t know. Placing his forehead against the cold pane he squinted, trying to see inside. From nowhere the boy’s face appeared and Barney jumped, his heart pounding. How did he do that, where’d he come from?

     Tilting a head of curly dark hair and pale, almost blue skin, the child gave Barney a curious look with his deep brown eyes. He raised a hand, one finger wrapped in a grubby plaster, his palm on the glass. Barney mirrored the act, his own larger palm dwarfing the child’s. He couldn’t look away from the boy’s unblinking stare as a woman called out, presumably for the kid, his name unclear. The boy turned in the direction of the voice and trotted into the gloom. Barney, desperately trying to see further into the store, caught his hand on the door handle and with a click and a rusty groan it opened a fraction. Barney looked about him, but no one on the street paid him any attention, everyone rushing to get home. He hesitated. He couldn’t just walk into a premises that was clearly empty and shut up, could he? Was he being a good citizen or an interfering busybody? No, he reasoned, he wanted to know more about this place and was the kid safe? Barney pushed his way in and the shop bell over the door rang brightly. Waiting for the ring to fade and for someone to come see who was there, the only sound Barney could hear was his own breathing.

     “Hello?” he called.

     No response. He inched forward on the bare boards, listening out for any movement towards the rear of the shop. It felt as cold and damp inside as it was out, and he shuddered, taking another couple of steps. In the fading light from the street, he found a wooden counter and a selection of empty glass-fronted cabinets with drawers beneath. Everywhere smelt of decay, the dust coated shelves empty. The wide bare floorboards were uneven, creaking like old bones, with childish daubs scribbled in the dust. A nervousness began to swell in Barney’s chest. Little buzzing sparks of long buried incidents reminded him of somewhere similar, a place with a towering counter top and cabinets as steep and inaccessible as a cliff face.

     A chair scraped the floor somewhere at the back of the shop. He froze. Was someone coming, demanding to know what the hell he thought he was doing? He waited a minute, but no one appeared. Taking deep breaths Barney moved behind the counter and into the narrow space beyond. By now his eyes were growing accustomed to the dark and he spotted a tiny table with two chairs where the little boy was eating alone, his head bowed over a small plate, a toy car at his elbow.

     “Hi,” said Barney quietly.

     The boy didn’t acknowledge him.

     “I saw you a minute ago. Is anyone else here?”

     The boy turned, looking up through long lashes, nodding.

     “Your mum?”

     He nodded again.

     “Is she around?”

     The boy pointed towards a side room that may have been a pantry. Barney caught his breath as he stepped into what was no more than a stinking squalid alcove lacking warmth or light, a teeny shabby kitchen of bare shelves with a single greasy worktop beside a rusted gas stove. He stumbled over something, and steadying himself he looked down, his hand flew to his mouth at the sight of a woman sprawled on the worn linoleum floor. Instinctively he reached forward to touch her, “Hey, you hurt? Are you alright?” His fingers felt the cold flesh of her exposed arm. You’ve got to be kidding me? A body? He needed to get help, this was serious. Twisting awkwardly he tumbled and with a thud cracked his head hard on the table. A warm trickle of blood dripped down his face as he staggered to his feet, knowing he had to get help, hurry the child outside, call an ambulance, the police.

     The boy was gone, his plate empty. Barney, hands shaking with shock, headed back into the shop and towards the window, hoping to attract someone’s attention. The room seemed larger, a trick of the light he guessed, maybe concussion? The shop door must have blown shut and he attempted to grasp at the handle he now seemed unable to reach. He felt for his phone, but he must’ve dropped it somewhere. Wobbly and disorientated he fell to his knees before shuffling over to the window. Face pressed against the glass, Barney banged it, trying to attract the attention of passers-by, all of them ignoring him as collars up, umbrellas out, they battled through the rain.

     “Help!” he called, wiping the condensation from the small square pane.

     A figure approached, a man whom Barney recognised. His heart skipped as the man drew closer, smiling slightly, wiping the rain from his eyes. Incredibly, the man’s face resembled his own; the same pale skin, same nose, same smile and his eyes with long lashes. Girl’s lashes. Barney now looked at his small hand against the window with a plaster on his finger, then down at his slight, frail body, his voice a high treble, “I need help, can you hear me? Someone’s dead in here and I’m hurt.” Head swimming, he slumped backwards onto the shop floor. He felt for the abrasion on his skull and his fingers found loose skin and the unctuous warmth of his blood. Still faint, he tried to get to his feet, wiping the condensation from the window, looking out. The man in the street who looked so much like him gave a kindly wave, then turned and disappeared into the flow of strangers as Barney’s vision began to fade, just as he heard the ring of the shop door.

     “Hello? Anyone there? It’s the police! Hey sunshine, what’s happened to you?”

Despite winter drawing in with its cold, dark mornings and short days, the fog had lifted leaving Barney more upbeat. A breakthrough, that’s what his therapist would say about this, his last session. As usual he was late and after grabbing his coffee he raced down the high street, glancing sideways at the little boutiques, estate agents and card shops. The old storefront was gone, abandoned years before his mother, squatting in the derelict space, had moved in, subsisting on raiding the bins from pubs and restaurants nearby, her heroin habit worsening day on day, Barney hidden away in the unlit guts of the building. He remembered the policeman now and the warm interior of a car that smelled of leather and cigarettes, the fussing attention of nurses, the large plump hand of his foster mother.

“And your memories of the shop, Barney? It’s a very powerful step forward to acknowledge the pain of the past and move on. How do you feel now you’ve acknowledged those early years?”

     He considered his response, knowing full well he needed to give the answer expected of him, “In my mind, walking back into that place helped me find that frightened, lonely, damaged little boy. Knowing what I know, I can move on.”

     “Good, that’s excellent. I’m so pleased for you.”

As the ferry pulled away, Barney looked at his reflection in the steamed up window. Again, there were those eyes, his eyes, the boy’s eyes. He heard the shop door creak, the bell ring, smelt the rotting insides of the building, spoke to his three year old self, touched his mother’s corpse. Yes, he could leave all of that behind, but that shopfront, bowed and dirty, remained somewhere, and he was part of the glass, bricks and timbers. ‘I may think I’ve moved on,’ he thought, ‘but not really. Deep down, I’ll always be that boy at the window. I never left.’

     Catching his reflection again, he held his gaze for a moment, with his long lashes, girl’s lashes, then turned away.