Addison Hager

Lightning cracked, dancing between the clouds in a sinister waltz. The asylum sirens wailed faintly in the distance.

He didn’t hear them. The voices were too loud as they urged him forward.

The pavement, wet and shiny with a layer of rain, reflected the white of his jumpsuit, now marred by dirt and sludge. A chill nipped at his nose, his bare feet, and his fingertips. The same fingertips that could still feel her dwindling pulse beneath them.

“I didn’t do it,” he repeated under his breath. “I didn’t kill her.”

As he neared the tunnel that intersected the mountain, he was reminded that no one could hear him. He could scream. He could hit things. He could kill. And no one would be the wiser. Not this time.

“I didn’t do it.” Despite knowing of his solidarity, he spoke no louder than he needed to. The voices were the only ones that needed to hear him, and they went wherever he did.

The man held his breath as he passed into the tunnel—a long, inescapable hole. He tilted his head back as if bleeding from the nose. He imagined jumping down the hole, the dark pit of infinity. If he jumped, would he fall? Would he cascade into the black abyss forevermore? Or, perhaps, would he reach the bottom with a familiar splat? Would his blood spatter in the same way the blonde woman’s did?

“I didn’t kill her.”

He righted his head and continued further into the tunnel, as the voices told him to. The lights flickered dimly overhead, casting oblong shadows at his feet as the sirens squealed their song.

“I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it. I didn’t—” Despite what the voices were telling him he should do, he stopped, cold in his tracks. Something had moved in the shadows. He was sure of it.

But the longer he looked, waited, and listened, the more apparent it became that he must have imagined it. The voices told him that he did that all the time.

He shook it off and continued deeper. The tunnel seemed to close in behind him, locking him in the dim, confined concrete tube.

He tried not to compare it to the asylum. He knew they weren’t the same. Nothing was. He was free. He was free of the prison at last. But the voices told him that freedom and captivity were one and the same. They reminded him that he’d always be shackled by the chains of his insanity and his guilt.

“I’m not crazy! I didn’t do it!”

His voice echoed through the tunnel, bouncing off the walls and stabbing back into his ears.

He threw his hands up, pressing them into the sides of his head. “I’m not crazy,” he whispered.

The echoing died out, drawing its last breath just as the blonde woman had drawn hers. “I didn’t do it.” He pried his hands away from his face and resumed down the tunnel as if nothing had happened. That is, until he caught another glimpse of something moving in the shadows.

“I’m not crazy.” He whipped around in time to spot the fingers of the thing—elongated, whispy, blade-like, and shadowy—as they melted into the surrounding darkness. The voices told him that it was never there. He was imagining it.

“I’m not crazy.” He drew a deep breath, which did little to quiet the voices, and continued down the tunnel. He had no idea how far from the entrance he had wandered nor how close the exit grew. If anything was in the tunnel with him, they would have to face his wrath—and, oh, how powerful his wrath was.

He could feel her neck straining beneath his grasp—feel her blood slowing, pulsing like molasses. There was crimson everywhere from the struggle. The blonde woman had thrown a picture frame at his head. Too bad she had missed, hitting the wall and providing him with plenty of sharp things for the taking.

“I didn’t do it,” he said, a smirk tugging at his lips, curling them with delight. “I didn’t kill her. I promise.”

A mischievous voice whispered through the tunnel. “Guilty,” it hissed.

This time, there was no way the voices were going to convince him that he had simply imagined the shadow speaking.

“I didn’t do it!” he screeched, maniacally searching for the source of the devilish claim.

There was nothing.

A light flickered overhead. Flickered on, and there was nothing. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to fear. The voices tried to convince him of the fact, but they couldn’t penetrate deep enough into his consciousness to entirely rid him of the skepticism. There was something in the shadows—something evil mocking him, punishing him for his crimes.

“I didn’t do it.” With his heart beating like a caged bat in his chest, he hastened his steps, harkening to the hellish tunnel. The shadow would strike again, and this time he would be ready to strike back.

“I’m not crazy. I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill her.” But even as he said it, he remembered the bulge in her eyes, the scream that echoed through her kitchen, and the scream that still echoed through his mind. The voices never let him rest. They were always punishing him. Even now, in the face of terror, they drive him forward.

If I could just escape the tunnel, maybe they would leave me alone. He thought. The shadow would leave me alone.

Suddenly, he felt a cool, tingling sensation on the back of his neck, as if numbing blood was trickling from his ears. He reached back slowly, and, feeling nothing, he brought his hand away. To his great surprise and chilling dismay, it was stained with crimson, like the blonde woman’s hand was after she had cut herself on the shattered glass.

He stopped and stared at the stain for an alarming amount of time before calmly stating, “I didn’t do it.” As if he himself couldn’t believe the fact. He wiped his hand off his white trousers and continued down the dark tunnel.

He was coming upon a patch where a light had completely burned out overhead. He would be drenched in darkness entirely.

“I’m not crazy,” he said for the last time before plunging fully into the haunting darkness.

The voices raged in his head as he waded his way through the shadows, heart pounding, breath pacing, hands balling.

A crack of lightning lit up the tunnel, and there he was—the man in the shadows, standing before him for only the briefest of seconds before melting away.

The roll of thunder followed the light closely, and with it came an unsettling silence. He had been so used to the voices in his head that he didn’t know what to do when they were suddenly gone—carried out with a crash from the heavens.

“I’m not crazy!” he shouted in glee. He had known it all along! He was not insane! The voices were not real! He was free at last! And free he would stay!

A voice so soft swept over the ground like a sussurus of leaves on a chill autumn eve. “Guilty,” it whispered.

He hollered, struck by the fist of fright, and began to sprint toward the nearest light. However, when he reached it, he found no solace in the flickering brightness.

“Guilty,” the voice said, louder this time and closer too.

He could not escape, and now even the voices had left him alone and defenseless against the shadowy demon.

“I didn’t do it!” he shouted, pressing his hands once again over his ears and pinching his eyes shut. “I didn’t kill her! I swear!” There was no echo this time. His voice came out unnaturally muffled, and of course, he recognized it even through his hands. He let his eyes sliver open.

His blood ran cold.

Standing before him, pressing a suffocating hand over his mouth, was the man in the shadows. His skin was pure black, void of any brightness even under the flickering bulb. The man’s skin was icy cold, as the blonde woman’s had been after she was left to sit.

Cold as a corpse.

He didn’t try to scream; he knew he couldn’t. Instead, he wrenched free of the man’s grasp and took off for the tunnel’s exit, which he still couldn’t make out.

He stumbled over cobblestones, rocks stabbing into his bare feet and leaving behind a trail of red. The man in the shadows might be sneaky, he thought, but he could never outrun me.

When the man’s lungs began to burn and his side was in stitches, he slowed. Having heard no indication that the man in the shadows was pursuing him, he thought it safe to continue at a more comfortable pace. The thought, however distressing it was, crossed his mind that perhaps he had invented the man in his very quiet cavern of a head. Am I crazy? he thought. Am I mad? Am I insane?!

He shook his head, attempting to cast away the notions. “I’m not crazy,” he said, repeating his mantra. “I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill her.”

Then, from the corner of his periphery, he spotted the man in the shadows, lurking mere feet away.

His heart stopped.

His foot caught.

He stumbled back.

Falling is such a distressing feeling, for one knows what is fast approaching, but he has no power over his fate and therefore must welcome it to him.

His head hit the ground with a deafening crack, one that echoed through the tunnel, as if mocking him in his last hour.

The man in the shadows didn’t stay to watch the grueling end of his victim.

The voices didn’t return to provide him with some sort of comfort and familiarity in his last moments.

The light flickered overhead.

The sirens wailed in the distance.

The blood pooled under his skull, spreading smoothly over the pavement.

Is this what the blonde woman had felt? Perhaps she was just as calm in the end.

He welcomed this blissful release. This delightful darkness.

Blood spurted from his mouth as he garbled, “I’m not crazy. But I did do it. I did kill—” a spasm cut off his sentence as death’s shadow finally took his soul, marching him into the depths of hell.

He had only the man in the shadows to thank, forevermore.