Young Writers Society

Madeleine Whitpoint’s heart was beating a steady tune of pride. At thirty-six years old, she had believed that she would never find love, never have children. Yet here she was two years later, with her beautiful daughter, Sasha Durick, and her fiancé, Robert Durick. Outside, it was a misty, shadowy Saturday evening. Inside their living room, with curtains drawn and candles alight, the moment was timeless.

It was late by now, and although she fought to stay awake, Sasha head soon became heavy on Madeleine's lap.

“Has she fallen asleep?” Robert asked in a hushed, affectionate voice.

Madeleine stroked her long, soft hair. “Yes,” she told Robert. She lifted Sasha up and began to carry her up the stairs. She let out a small, sleepy mutter and Madeleine stroked her hair again. Eventually she set her down in bed, and tucked her in safely.

“Happy birthday, Sasha,” she whispered. “Goodnight; don’t let the bedbugs bite.” And she slipped out of the room, as silently as a shadow, though she was very aware of her own heart beating steadily inside her ribcage and of her hesitant breaths as they travelled in and out of her lungs. As she walked up to their bedroom, knowing that Sasha was safely asleep, she thought for a few moments that she could even distinctly feel her blood flowing through her veins.

It wasn’t a nice sensation. Suddenly, the insides of her body were somehow thick. Thicker than she felt comfortable with.

She entered the bedroom, and there was Robert lounging on their bed, a book open in his hands. He set it down as soon as she entered. “Are you alright, Maddie?” he asked her as she slipped in. She knew that her face was set and rigid, because she didn’t feel right. She felt proud, and happy that Sasha was finally two years old – but she still felt inexplicably uneasy about something.

Still, she gave Robert a small smile. “I’ve never been better,” she lied, because she couldn’t bear to tell him otherwise. “But I’ve just got a couple of things I need to do. I’ll be back in a second.” She sidled over to him and gave him a brief kiss. His lips parted reluctantly with hers; she could see from the way his expression followed her slowly that it had left him longing for more.

“Just one minute,” she reassured him as she left the room. She had to put her mind at rest.

She was bathed again in the golden candlelight as she passed through the doorway to the living room. She moved the candle off the windowsill to pull the curtains slightly apart. Through the gap, she could faintly see the streets outside, illuminated in the dim orange glow of the streetlamps. Her heart stilled for a moment; then it seemed to jump right back into life in its place deep within her ribcage, pounding frantically until she felt almost dizzy.

It was there. The red car which had been parked outside their house since morning still remained there, stationary in the late evening half-light.

Why was it still there? Why hadn’t it moved by now?

The car windows were slightly tinted. She remembered asking Robert curiously what type of car it was. She’d never had any interest in it herself. His eyes had widened at her question.

“Wow,” he had said. “That’s a Honda Civic. Now that’s the kind of car I wanted.” They owned an old Ford themselves. It wasn’t second hand – more along the lines of sixth hand.

Now the red Honda Civic was still there, and Madeleine had the odd feeling as if she was being watched. She peered hard into the night, trying to see through the black-tinted windows of the car, but it was all in vain. Instead she tried to breathe deeply, to reassure herself that all was alright. The owner of the Honda was visiting a neighbour; that was all.

She tugged the curtain back into place and laid the candle back on the windowsill, watching the flame as it wavered, trying to clear her slightly cloudy mind. Then she turned on her tail and crept back up the stairs, pulling the door shut behind her once inside the bedroom. She turned and started when she saw Robert watching her.

“What?” she snapped. It came out a little too sharply.

“I was just thinking how beautiful you are. You - and Sasha. She looks just like you.”

Madeleine didn’t know what to feel. She knew that the feelings inside of her right then were a mixture of pride, love and guilt, but she didn’t know which one was the strongest. So she lay next to Robert and pulled the bedcovers over them both. He leaned sideways to kiss her, but she gently pulled away.

“No,” she said. “Not tonight; I just want to talk tonight.”

He quickly hid the disappointment flitting over his face with a brief, serious nod. “What do you want to talk about?” he asked. Then, more quietly, “Is anything bothering you, Maddie?”

“No,” she breathed. “No … nothing’s bothering me. I just feel … oh, never mind. It’s silly, really. I suppose it’s just the fact that out little daughter is growing up so fast. It feels like we’ve been together for centuries, but we’re not even married yet.”

He gazed at her anxiously. “You mean it doesn’t feel new and exciting anymore?”

“No! No, that’s not what I mean at all.”

“Well, that’s alright then. And the wedding’s only a month away. Then you will officially be Mrs Madeleine Durick,” he said, gently feeling for her hand and bringing it out from under the covers to gaze at it. There, on the ring finger, was an engagement ring, silver and encased with a tiny blue jewel.

“Are you sure you like the ring?” he asked her.

“Of course I do. It’s beautiful. And I can’t wait to be Mrs Robert Durick. Sasha will look so pretty in a bridesmaid’s dress.” Her thoughts were skipping around a lot more than usual, and she knew that Robert must have noticed, though he gave no indication of it other than for a small, puzzled frown. Even that was soon replaced by one of his warm smiles.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Robert found himself asking her again.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I’m fine. I think I just need to sleep it off.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “We’ll have an early night; tomorrow’s another day.”

“I love you, Robert.” She didn’t know why she had said it – other than for the fact that it was completely true.

“I love you too.”

He switched off the lamp and Madeleine lay awake in the darkness. She lay there for long after she had begun to hear Robert’s steady, comforting snores, staring up into the darkness and thinking of the red Honda parked outside their house. Finally, sleep came and took her away on a wave of dreams and her breathing became steady to match Robert’s.



She dreamed that the house was on fire – but the dream was so real. God, it was so real. She dreamed that she woke and that the nauseating smell of burning was overwhelming her nostrils, a thick cloud of grey smoke drifting steadily towards her. Somewhere far away, she could hear the incessant roaring of flames. She opened her eyes and drifted lazily. She inhaled the smoke; she could feel it stirring around in her lungs, but still she did not rise. It was just a dream.

Then she felt a stranger’s skin touching the palm of her hand, and her shoulder, and she sat up suddenly in a fit of coughing. That was when she realised it had never been a dream. That touch had been all too real – and it hadn’t been Robert’s.



The Visitor tried in vain to shake Madeleine awake. The space in the bed beside her was empty. Robert Durick had gone to try and rescue little Sasha from the flames. Right now, the Visitor knew, he was probably little more than a pile of charred, blackened ashes.

“Come on,” he hissed at Madeleine. “You’re going to die if you can’t get up!”

Her eyelids fluttered open. At first she drifted, but then her eyes snapped open and she stared directly at him, horrified. She opened her mouth as if to scream, but instead lapsed into a painful coughing fit, all the while staring at him, until tears streamed down her face.

“Who are you?” she gasped. “Where’s Robert? Where’s Sasha?”

“You need to come with me – unless you want to die,” the man said. He was tall and slender, with short brown hair and a stubble covering his firm, tightly set jaw. He was looking at her tensely, desperately.

“Please,” he said. “I’ve broken the window. We’re going to have to climb out.”

“Where are my family?”

He stared at her determined, frantic face and he saw that it was the only option. “They’re safe. They’re right outside. Come with me and I’ll take you to them,” he lied.

“Oh, thank God,” she gasped, and lapsed into another coughing fit. Drowsy and weak, she let the Visitor drag her towards the broken window. They climbed down the trellys – it was lucky that it was there – and although the Visitor tried hard to help her climb down safely, they both lost their footing midway down and tumbled to the ground. The Visitor rushed over to Madeleine, but she had already risen and begun to call frantically for her daughter and fiancé.

It was then, once they were safely outside and firemen were rushing up to them, that Madeleine realised that her fiancé and her daughter weren’t outside as the visitor had told her but still inside the flaming building. It was a beautiful if terrifying scene. The house was a sea of red and deep orange flames devouring every corner, every brick. A thick cloud of coal black smoke drifted up from roaring fire. She ran forward, screaming Robert and Sasha’s names, but it was hopeless; even the firemen knew so. All they could do was stand by and watch.

When the house had burned down to the ground and the inferno had finally ceased, the sun began to rise over the gloomy horizon. By the time Madeleine thought to look for him, the Visitor was gone, as was his red Honda Civic.



Standing outside the cottage and trying to push away the image which had been haunting him for so long – of a middle-aged, beautiful woman with blonde hair and vivid green eyes, her face flickering in the light cast by the flames – David Clements thought of Mrs Vorce. Then he thought of how this was the last thing he wanted to be doing – cleaning her house at such a ridiculous time of night.

He glanced longingly back at his red Honda Civic where it shimmered in the night. Then he glanced back at the white-bricked cottage before him, and forced himself to start towards it.

It was just another visit; just another night.

His footsteps echoed through the still evening air. He had to open the gate by feeling for the latch; the streetlights were out and the ghostly pale light of the moon wasn’t enough to light his way. Eventually it swung open. He never closed it, instead heading towards the cottage and ringing the doorbell. He heard the sound ring out faintly inside the cottage.

As a bewildered Mrs Vorce invited him in, and he explained all about his purpose here – she never questioned him – David Clements felt some kind of deep remorse. Yet he couldn’t quite bring himself to understand why.

His mind was only on this remorse, on his muddled, tangled thoughts. He didn’t have to think about what he was saying to Mrs Vorce – not for one moment. The face of a woman swam before David Clements’ mind'd eye, and he felt a strange emotion coursing through him in throbs. What was it … love? Heartache?

His attention was barely on Mrs Vorce. He took in her vague appearance: her hair was dyed a light brown, but he could see that the roots were grey, and her eyes were a deep blue and looking at him bemusedly.

Then came the question – the inevitable question. The only question which would ever truly bring him out of his dreamy haze.

“Mr Clements – why are you here?”



It was a cold winter’s day, and a light drizzle pattered down onto the cold, damp pavements. The village life of Crawley had never been particularly lively in the first place, but now it seemed that it had come to a near complete standstill.

Rocky Flacks was thirteen years old. He had been doing the paper round for exactly four weeks, and he had soon learnt every trick of the trade. There was nothing particularly exciting about shoving newspapers and leaflets into people’s letterboxes, or about getting your hands filthy and blackened with ink, and so he generally learnt to switch off while doing his round. There was little of interest in Crawley, so he drifted into a world of his own instead.

It was on this particular Wednesday evening, though, when the sky was just beginning to fade from a bleak, grey daylight into a much preferable, deep blue twilight, that something finally caught Rocky’s attention. It was the red Honda Civic – as if come from a dream to haunt him – again.

He had seen the red Civic twice before. Once, coming from one of the nearby cottages the previous week. The next time, parked outside a completely different house. He assumed that it must have been a different car, but he had glanced at the number plate and little to his surprise, they had seemed to match. It made him nervous to think about it.

Now, the Honda Civic was manoeuvring into the very same cottage he had seen it coming from before, and as Rocky watched, frozen on the spot with an undelivered paper dangling uselessly in his hand, a middle-aged man climbed out of it. His face was quite handsome, topped by a short crop of brown hair. His jaw was angular and covered by a short stubble. He wore jeans, and a white shirt concealed mostly by his long, thick winter coat.

When he saw Rocky looking, he gave him a once-over and a brief, confused smile. He walked over to Rocky. “Is one of these for my house?” he asked. “Because I’ll take it now in that case, if you don’t mind.” When Rocky didn’t respond, he gently prised the paper out of his hand, gave Rocky another smile, a brief thank you, and then walked back inside the cottage, slamming the door shut behind him.

Rocky snapped his gum. Then he turned around, fished another newspaper out of his yellow paper boy’s bag, and once again forgot all about the red Honda Civic.

But it came to haunt him. Rocky saw the Civic once more that night – outside a cottage he happened to know very well. Inside lived an old lady called Mrs Vorce. She usually came out when she saw him bringing the paper to greet him and say a quick word of thanks. It was with confidence that he walked up to Mrs Vorce’s white bricked cottage.

It was only once he saw the Civic outside that he froze in his tracks. And as he pulled out the paper and walked up the driveway to the cottage’s door, he couldn’t resist a peek inside the window. Inside was the middle aged man he had seen before. He had taken his coat off, and now wore only a white shirt.

This time, Rocky spat out his gum and it fell soundlessly to the floor. For a moment, he looked straight into the man’s eyes, and the man looked straight back. Then the man gave him a small wink and slid down from his sitting position on the sofa and out of sight.



There was not a sound in the night, apart from the rustling of the trees.

David Clement looked around nervously. He tugged the collar of his shirt up slightly as he eyed the darkness around him. It advanced on him as he slammed shut the door of his red Honda Civic, and the sound echoed through the night like a battle cry.

It was only late evening, but it felt like midnight. He used one hand to lock the car while still looking warily around him. When he heard the footsteps in the night, light and hurried, he almost jumped out of his skin. He tugged his collar up again, just slightly, when his eyes met the young boy’s. The boy wore a yellow bag slung over his shoulder, the kind David had once worn in his paper round days. He stared at the boy, and the boy stared back. David tried to open his mouth, to warn him not to come out so late at night, but his mouth was dry and he opened and closed it helplessly, the words evading him.

It was then that he realised that the boy was standing in the middle of the road.

Move, he willed him, but the boy stood there, staring at David, and the roaring of the engine grew nearer and nearer. The car was going to hit him, but still he stood there, blinking like a startled rabbit in the light of the car’s approaching headlights. And David pitched forward as if in slow motion, reaching for Rocky’s hand and pulling him out of the way so that his foot missed the screeching tyres of the car by a mere inch.

If there was one thing David was good at, it was saving lives. He let the boy’s hand slide out of his and stared at him wordlessly, shaking his head, unsure what to say. The black car came to a screeching halt at the end of the road and then the engine picked up again and it speeded off, unwilling to be associated with such an incident.

The boy, frozen in his tracks, looked at David for a moment longer. Then he seemed to come to his senses, and he sprinted off into the night, his hand on the yellow bag to stop it from bouncing against his thigh as he ran. David stared after him as he went, before stepping forward to pick up something the boy had dropped as he had begun to run. The paper lay, forgotten and pages fluttering, on the ground.

A sudden gust of wind came as he watched the paper, slamming the front page down so that it stared him in the face. It was the local free paper, so it was typical of them to have found this news worthy of the front page. This, David thought, explained why the boy had run.

He leaned down, and began to read in a voice which seemed to still the wind. The trees swayed very gently along with his words, listening avidly.

“The Visitor,” he whispered. “Suspicious activity in Crawley at night – a strange man has been spotted entering people’s houses after what are known to be the acceptable hours of the day. People are encouraged to stay away from this man and report any suspicious activity concerning him; we are not yet sure about him, but it is possible that he may be a criminal on the loose. The identity of this man is as yet unknown, although because of the worried claims of so many residents of Crawley, the local police have begun a small scale investigation to try and uncover it. They are urging citizens not to panic, but the fact remains that wherever the Visitor goes, havoc and disaster follows in his wake …”

The wind picked up again, and David gave a start. The newspaper was blown out of his reach, its pages fluttering like the feathers of a stranded bird. David Clement stared after the newspaper, his skin frozen and his eyes narrowed. He hadn’t felt quite so uneasy for months.

He shivered and pulled his long winter coat closer to him. He then turned and walked past his Honda, which glimmered red in the night. He picked up his pace and started down the stone path, towards the cottage. Mismatched slabs of stone jutted from it, and weeds crept upwards through the cracks. He nearly tripped over once – twice. When he reached the door, there was no blinding glare of a porch light. He didn’t know whether to feel relieved or even more uneasy.

David cleared his throat, and again the sound rang through the all too silent night. He raised a hesitant fist to the door and gave it three swift, brief knocks. The unpolished wood of the cottage door – so surprising compared to the rest of the perfectly finished outer décor – was harsh against his already callused knuckles.

There was no answer. David raised the letterbox and it slipped out of his hands, meeting with the door with what was more of a thump than a clang. Relief flooded through him, and he shook his head, telling himself that if he had to wait one more moment, he would go back to his Honda and he would drive off home and sleep for the rest of the night. Then he would wake in the early daylight hours, and he would take a long walk, breathe in the fresh air and be assured by the ability to see his immediate surroundings, by the presence of others around him.

He couldn’t have made out the difference between a leaf and a feather in darkness this thorough, and for that reason he was glad that he was alone.

He turned on his heels and made to walk away, his heart thumping as if he was doing something terribly wrong and he knew it, when the door creaked open. His stomach plummeting, he turned around and found himself face to face with a middle aged woman. She was forty going on a hundred. Her eyes were untrusting and in the darkness, they looked almost withered. Her hair was lank and un-brushed. The wild tangles looked black, as did everything else, in the darkness, but David imagined that they might be fair in the light.

“Clements, is it?” she asked him, and her voice was cracked and tired.

“Mr Clements, if you don’t mind.” He tried to act dignified as he said it, but it came out flat, and so he added in a small voice, “But David would do.”

“Come in then, David,” she said, paying no attention to his flushed face or the fact that his hand had snuck up to his collar again, something it always did when he was nervous.

Inside the hallway, there was light. He gave a sigh of tremendous relief when he saw it. His skin shone in its luxurious beams. He let his gaze sweep over the woman and saw that her rat’s nest hair really was blond, as he had suspected. They entered the living room, so empty other than for that threadbare couch and a small television on standby, sitting desolately on a cabinet in a corner, and a small bookcase filled with books he automatically craned his neck to see but could not make out the titles of. She gestured for him to sit down. He perched rather than sat on the threadbare sofa, and she took a seat in the armchair opposite him.

He winced when he saw the prominence of her cheekbones, and the dark shadows which had nested themselves underneath those withered eyes. She stared at him unsmilingly, but she pulled up her legs and sat in a foetal position, her arms around her knees and her head in the groove between them.

There was a coffee table in between them, though he hadn’t noticed it before. On it, in plain view, lay the day’s local free newspaper. David let his eyes skim over it but he didn’t read the entire article. It had made him feel uneasy in a way he couldn’t quite place a finger on. There was a photograph with the article. It showed a shrouded, dark figure walking away from the camera. He couldn’t see the man’s face, but there was something about the curves of his shoulders, something about the proud yet hassled way he held himself, which was eerily familiar to David.

He shivered again.

“Somebody walking over your grave,” the woman muttered. It sounded like something she would say automatically. Then she widened her eyes, and looked down into the groove between her knees. She gave a muffled half-laugh, and David stared at her, bewildered. She raised her head to look at him again.

“Not that you have a grave, of course,” she said.

He frowned. “What makes you say that? Everybody has a grave – in the end.”

She shrugged and looked down at her knees again. She may have been forty going on a hundred, but when she sat like that, she looked like a child. “You just look like the kind of man who would want to be cremated to me, that’s all,” she said nonchalantly.

His frown eased. “Right.” He returned to looking at the newspaper, and for a moment made as if to reach for it, his hand moving towards it as if of its own accord but retracting back to his side under her scalding gaze.

“Just got it not long ago,” she said. “Paper boy came.”

“I remember when I was a paper boy,” David said fondly, and she glared at him again. What was her problem? Why did she have to glare at him so hard?

“No, you don’t,” she said, and he simply stared at her.

“What could you possibly mean by that?” he asked, his blood running cold. “I think I know what I remember and what I don’t remember.”

And she half-closed her eyes, and brought her chin to her knees as they had had to so long ago when learning to float in swimming lessons. David had ducked his head under the water and nearly choked. For that he had been forced to duck his head underneath the water again and again, until he was begging for it all to stop.

Eventually she brought her head up again. Resurfaced from the water. It was then that she looked him straight in the eyes for the first time, and he felt frozen to his seat for the few brief moments that she really held his gaze. He hadn’t realised it, but she had been pointedly avoiding his eyes ever since he had entered the cottage.

“What are you here to do, then, David Clements?” she asked, and her voice was full of pent up tension, though to his ears it was perfectly still and mind-numbingly calm.

Filled with a wonderful self-assurance, he raised his head and he gave her a beaming smile. “That’s simple,” he said. “I’m here to assess your mental health. I believe that you’ve had some problems with depression in the past?”
Her eyes flickered for a moment, but then it was there again – her steady, unwavering gaze. “If you’re here to assess my mental health,” she said, “Where are you files?”

“They’re just over …” he faltered. He glanced around frantically for his files, but he couldn’t see them anywhere. Now that he came to think of it, he hadn’t brought anything with him into the cottage. What was going on? His heart gave a terrified leap. His thoughts raced faster and faster inside of his mind. Her eyes pierced into his.

Then everything was black.



He came to sitting on her threadbare sofa, with her steady, unwavering gaze penetrating into his eyes once more.
“You’re not here to assess my mental health, David Clements,” she said softly. “So what are you here to do?”

He positively beamed at her. “I’m here to fix your plumbing,” he said. “I hear that you’ve been having some problems with your water supply?”

“No,” she said. “I haven’t.”

David frowned. “Well, I suppose that perhaps I had better check anyway …”

“Go ahead,” the woman said, and David realised that she didn’t know her name.

“What’s your name?” he asked, his hand absent-mindedly fiddling with the collar of his shirt.

“Madeleine,” she said.

His frown deepened. “Well, I suppose I had better just …” he looked around him. He was here to fix Madeleine’s plumbing. He knew that he was. Some deep, primal instinct told him so … but where were his tools?

It was then, with a heart-wrenching feeling of terror overwhelming his entire body that he realised that he didn’t know a thing about plumbing. He didn’t know a thing about anything. His mind was blank. The world was blank.

No, the world was black …



The second time that the Visitor saved Madeleine Whitpoint was nearly a year later. This time, he saved her from an altogether different kind of fate. It was funny, because she had never for the world expected him to turn up at such a time – yet in another way, she had been waiting for him for her entire life.

She was standing by the train tracks with her arms folded, as kids sometimes do, but she wasn’t playing a game. Her face was hardened, her expression sombre. There were no tears, no goodbyes.

It was when she began to climb over the railings and she was nearly halfway over, her mind buzzing in some kind of unclear haze, that she saw the man running up to her, shouting for her to stop. She looked at him, and he looked straight into her eyes. In her shock, she slid down the railings and came down to the ground with a crash.

He looked the same as ever – the Visitor. It was then that she began to cry, sitting alone on the floor, and he ran up to her and gave her a hand up. Then he looked long and hard into her face, and told her he was taking her to a café. Something in his tone told her that there would be no use in arguing.

She didn’t know what she felt. Disappointment? Pain? Relief? She thought it might have been a mixture of all three. Here was the Visitor, and he was here to save her again. It was too bad that he hadn’t been able to save her daughter, or her fiancé. It never once occurred to her to feel angry at him for lying to her. She had, in the days following the fire, but the thought had soon faded away, aided by her conviction that he was just trying to save her, or perhaps that he
really thought her family were outside.

“You’re not alone, you know,” he told her once they were inside the café and she was staring at him out through hollow eyes. It was warm and steamy inside the café, and although it was probably busy, she didn’t notice anyone around but him. Slowly, as he talked to her, her fear began to ebb away. A plan began to form in her head, a plan to keep her going for a few more months. As soon as she returned home, she would phone a friend and ask them for help. It was time to let down her poorly built, unnecessary defences.

It was only once she was miles away from that little Crawley café and it was too late to turn back that Madeleine realised she had never asked him for his name.



He came to on the floor. There was a woman with wild blonde tangles of hair surrounding a prematurely ageing face gazing down at him with wizened eyes. She was forty going on a hundred … at least, that’s how she looked. David saw, with a funny, slow motion skip of his heart, that she was crying. He thought to ask her for her name.

“Hey …” he said. “Why are you crying? What’s the matter? Who are you? Why am I here?”

“I’m crying because you don’t remember my name, David,” she said, and she leaned forward and she kissed him. The back of his head, which he had been feebly trying to raise, slammed against the floor and he felt with dismay a dull, numbing pain spreading through it. Her wet, salty tears ran into his mouth. He could barely breathe because she was sucking all the air away from him.

“I said, what is your name? And what am I doing here?” he asked more insistently, pulling himself up and leaning against the threadbare sofa so that she couldn’t knock him down again. She stared at him, breathing hard through her silent tears, her breath hitching a little every so often as a skirt might when it snags against the branches of a tree.

“My name is Madeleine,” she told him, “And the last question is a question only you can answer for yourself.”

“I can?” he said, blinking bemusedly.

“You can,” she breathed. “I just don’t want to ask you to answer it. Look, David,” she said softly, “Kiss me. Please.”

He recoiled from her. “No! Who are you? Why am I here? Did you – did you rape me?”

Even through her tears, she began to laugh, small ripples of amusement erupting from inside of her followed by the occasional small snort. “I’ll ask you one more time,” she said, and he wondered what on earth she was talking about. “If you promise to be more reasonable the next time.” And she took a deep breath. “David, why are you here?”

He jumped to his feet and stared at her, wide-eyed. “I’ve come to cut off the toes of your pigs and sew onions onto your sheep,” he said wildly, and then, with a feeling of utter horror, he keeled over and began to retch uncontrollably.

“Here, David, here,” a shocked but caressingly soft voice, and the firm feeling of someone supporting his back, then blackness.



His mind was in turmoil. The face of Madeleine Whitpoint kept swimming up in front of his eyes. He knew he was imagining her, but still he couldn’t help himself from reaching out for her. Then the rage came, a bloodthirsty rage starting deep within his mind and progressing to grip his entire body. He was curling up on himself, sweating, screaming for it to stop.

“Why am I here?” he asked. “Why am I here? Why?”

The rage vanished. He found himself sitting up calmly, and, to his horror, speaking almost automatically. “I’m here to kill Madeleine Whitpoint,” he said. “I’m here to undo what I have done.”

The rage returned and he lay down on his back on his double bed. The blinds were rolled down and only a glimmer of light penetrated them, casting pale shadows around the room. It was a hot summer’s night and the sky outside was an impenetrable black but it was clear, and the stars shone like beacons in the sky.

Curling in on himself, he let out a small whimper and then began to speak to himself. “How could I kill her,” he said, “When I love her more than anything I have ever known?”

The rage intensified, until his knuckles were white as he gripped his bed-sheets, until his breathing was heavy and laboured, until he felt the fuse blow inside his mind and everything went black.

When the world swam back into his vision, he felt a sudden inescapable urgency consuming his mind. He stood up, shaking slightly, and went towards the paper. He sifted through the pages, muttering all the time.

“Why am I here? Why am I here? I’m here to visit someone, but who am I here to visit?”

Finally, he found the page, and the name wedged itself into the deepest corners of his mind. There was a small advert in the back of the newspaper: Daisy Atwater photography, it said.

He sat up tall and straight. “I’m here to visit Daisy Atwater,” he said to himself. His hands reached for the key of his Honda. “I’m here to visit Daisy Atwater. I’m going to get my photograph taken.”




Then he came to and he was sitting on a threadbare sofa, and there was a woman staring at him, and a sheet of paper on his lap. There, scrawled in large, black letters, was a note: “Hello, David. My name is Madeleine.”

He looked up at the woman with a smile. Her eyes were slightly red and swollen, but that didn’t trouble him. “Hello, Madeleine,” he said to her with a bright smile. His mouth tasted funny, as if he had been throwing up. Along with that taste was the strong one of mouthwash. How odd, he thought.

The woman gave him a small, almost forced smile. “’Allo, David,” she said. “How are you tonight?”

“I’ve never been better,” he said, and he got to his feet. He noticed that there was a newspaper on the coffee table before him, but it had been turned over to that he could only see the back page. His gaze flitted over it – it was mostly uninteresting – so he lurched forward slightly but steadied himself and walked more easily towards the bookcase in the far corner of the room.

Bookcases had always fascinated him. He loved to leaf through a good book.

Even more so, he loved the musty, crinkly taste of the paper inside his mouth.

Madeleine watched this all with an amused, fascinated horror. He was halfway through his second book before she had the heart to walk over and interrupt him. “David,” she breathed into his ear, placing a comforting hand on his back. “David, have you ever thought of reading the books? Did your mother never tell you not to eat your books?”

He dropped the book he had been holding. He spat out the soggy, inky page of paper he had been chewing on. He looked all around him, and a thousand soggy, chewed pages glared at him from all over the mahogany floorboards.
He glanced at the woman called Madeleine, at the bookcase, at the soggy pieces of paper, and then back at Madeleine again. Then, his fingers an inch away from tearing out another page from the book, he opened his mouth and began to wail inconsolably.

“Hush, David,” she said, and he crawled to her and nestled up to her as if she were his mother. He crawled through the darkness towards the sound of her voice. And the blankness began to truly clear again. It had snuck up on him while he had been chewing the pages.

“You’re right, Madeleine,” he said in an awed voice. “I don’t know what I was doing. I want to read the book, Maddie. That’s all I ever wanted to do.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, David.” She paused, and then her face fell a little. “Unless …”

“Unless?” he prompted her, suddenly wide awake.

“Unless you promise to kiss me,” she whispered, and she sidled over him and began to stroke his soft brown hair. In her arms, he felt like he was a five-year old again.

“I promise,” he said, because it was suddenly very, very important to read the books. He picked the half-devoured one up from the floor, and he closed it to stare at the front cover. “The Visitor,” declared the title. It sounded oddly familiar.

“See, David, I’ve known about you for a long, long time,” Madeleine said vaguely.

“What?”

“Never mind. It doesn’t matter,” she waved it away.

He bent his head down, hungry for words, and began to read.



The third time David Clements saved Madeleine Whitpoint, it was a complete accident. He saw her walking along the street, and although he did not, at the time, recognise her, her face left him standing there with an odd urge to curse and shout. So he averted his eyes from her and hurried along the pavement, eager to get away from her.

But as soon as she saw him, her eyes widened and he saw her hurrying along after him. He picked up his pace, but it was useless. Within moments, she was by his side.

“Hey …” she said, breathlessly. “It’s you! I can’t believe it!”

He frowned and kept walking. “I’m sorry, but … do I know you?”

Her face dropped. “Of course you do,” she said. “I’m the girl you saved.”

He stopped in his tracks. It was just as well they were well away from the busy part of the path; here, there were only
a few stragglers who passed them by, glaring as they did so. A car horn honked somewhere in the distance.

“What’s your name?” he asked her suddenly; she did look familiar and he couldn’t quite put a finger on it.

“I never told you my name either, did I?” she breathed. “It’s Madeleine. Madeleine Whitpoint.”

Her name was familiar, too. It definitely rang a bell – but again, he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

“Well, hello, Madeleine,” he said. “I’m …” and for a moment, he had to think hard. “I’m Trent. Yes, that’s right. My name’s Trent Bailiwick.”

“Nice to meet you, Trent Bailiwick,” she said, and for some inexplicable reason, she winked.

They carried on along the path, and then turned into an alleyway. It was evening, and darkness was bearing upon them both. When they reached the alleyway, Madeleine stopped in her tracks. He gave her a polite, bewildered smile and passed her by.

“Hey! Wait …” she said, and he turned around, surprised.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“I’m coming with you,” she said.

“You are?” he frowned, and then shrugged. “Well, come on then.”

She hesitated. “It’s just that it makes me uneasy, going through alleyways in the dark.”

He laughed and walked over to her. Then he gently linked arms with her, because for some reason he felt strangely at ease with her, and she beamed at him.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he assured her.

“I know,” she laughed. “It’s just that …well; let’s just say I haven’t had the best of luck.”

“Well,” he said, “There’s one main way to conquer your fears …”

They were about halfway through the alleyway; they couldn’t yet see the end.

“And that is …?” she asked, frowning.

“To run ahead through the alleyway.”

She looked at him, shocked. “I couldn’t,” she said.

There was a mischievous, childish glint in his eyes. “Go on,” he said, and gave her a little nudge forwards. “I dare you.”

She laughed and the sound echoed merrily through the alleyway. Then she shook her head at him, still laughing, and began to sprint forward. The visitor smiled, and he walked slowly behind her, ready to startle her when she reached the end.

However, when he reached the end, Madeleine was nowhere to be seen. Until he heard her cry out his name, and his head turned at the speed of lightening towards where she was struggling with a hooded man who held her from behind, the glint of a knife visible in his hand.

He didn’t think about it, not for a moment. Instead he sprinted forwards, before the man could see him, and knocked the knife out of his hand.

“Oi!” the man yelled. “What’cha think yar doin’?”

He released Madeleine, and she collapsed against the stone wall, gasping. The Visitor leaned sideways to pick up the knife, and advanced on the hooded man with it.

“Get away from her,” he said. “Get away from her, or you’ll not see another day.” The ferocity his voice came out with both astounded and terrified him. But it worked – the man gave them both one last lingering glance and then sprinted off through the alleyway they had come from, the sound of something metal jingling in his pocket.

The Visitor hurried over to Madeleine and helped her up, where she stood shaking in his arms. Then she seemed to gather herself a little. “I think we’d better go back to mine,” she said in a small voice. Then she turned around and looked full on into his eyes again, shaking her head with both a little wonder and bewilderment. “That’s the third time you’ve saved me now.”

He didn’t know what it meant, but he didn’t ask her. They went home, and there the spark between them ignited both unexpectedly and inevitably, and they made love for the first time. Still he didn’t ask her, even when they lay in each other’s arms as morning came, even after she had asked him the question. After she had asked him the question, he had blacked out and woken up in hospital, and the rage had begun to build up inside of him again, slowly but surely.

That day, he walked straight through the exit without a second glance back, ripping the cannula away from his already torn skin.

All that time, and he had never once asked her.



They lay on the bed, she in his arms and he in hers. He felt her gentle breath on the nape of his neck, but more prominently, felt her bare skin where it connected with hers. He felt her exhausted, heaving flank rising and falling like
a horse’s.

“Thank you for that, David,” she whispered, as though it had been the most casual thing in the entire world, though she sounded winded, and breath-taken.

“I know who I am now,” he said, his statement bearing no connection to her wondering words, “But I don’t know why I am here. Why am I here, Madeleine?” his voice was curious and bewildered yet strangely flat.

“No,” she said, frantically. “No, don’t start on that again, please, David. You know what will happen. Please, please, I thought this was working …”

He rolled over on top of her, suddenly, forcefully, and she gasped with the impact and pain of it. His face was inches away from hers and their eyes were close to connecting entirely. “I need to know,” he growled at her, and she whimpered under his weight.

“I’ll tell you,” she moaned. “I’ll tell you, just get off me. Please, David. For God’s sake, David, get off me.”

He did so, rolling off her and to lie beside her on his back, breathing heavily, his arms folded against his chest.

“I’m glad we did that, David,” she said, “Because it was the last time we were ever going to get to do it. You see, I knew it was this time.”

“How could you have known that?”

“Because I’ve already escaped it so many times. And because it is in the dead of the night that I have to be afraid. When I have nothing more to hold on to. When I have no-one – apart from you.”

He stared at her. Her chest rose and fell. Her startled eyes were tearless but hurt.

“David, I know it always happens. I know that it’s the rule, but – but I’m different. Things are changing. The newspaper showed that. Things are changing,” she said again. “Rules are meant to be broken.”

His eyes were that of a wild animal when he turned to stare at her again. “What newspaper? What rules? Why am I here?”

Like a broken record, Madeleine thought, and her eyes filled up with tears again as he pulled off the covers and ran through the house, stark naked, to find the newspaper. When she entered the living room, she found him on the floor – blacked out. She remembered the legend from the book that now lay devoured, its pages scattered all over the floor, a soggy, inky mess. She remembered what happened when the Visitor saved your life once.

Then she recounted how he had technically saved her life thrice, but she considered him – or at least, the thought of him - to have saved her soul many more times than that. And she laughed then, unafraid that David would wake up. Rules were meant to be broken, she thought, they really were.

But not this one.

She went into the bedroom and she retrieved his clothes. Back in the living room, she began to dress him as gently as she could. Then she went over to the newspaper and turned it over. She stared at it, not taking any of the words in, until it left a negative imprint in her mind. She slammed it down with the speed of light as David Clements’ eyes began to flutter open again.

This time his eyes held a little more understanding. Madeleine thought wryly that the true way to a man’s heart never really had been food, but something much more intimate. But she pushed the thought away when he pounced on her, and he held her down with an instinct so primal that she could feel the chemicals coursing through his veins.

He kissed her, slowly, hungrily, and the soul inside his eyes – she could see it, she had always been able to see it – was wracked and restless. Then he pulled apart from her, and he stared at her as if he had never seen her before.

“You’re going to kill me,” she whispered, because she couldn’t stand it any longer, “But you’re not going to remember it. You’re going to put me in my grave and I want you to do it now because you had to kill those other people – that poor Mrs Vorce and that Daisy Atwater … just because you saved me and … and …A life for a life. It should be my life, David. It should have been me all along.”

The tears were coming again. He raised a finger to his lips, he caressed her tangled curls, her soft curves, and then he snatched his hand away from her as though he had just placed his fingers on the metal inside of a red hot oven.

“I love you …” he whispered. “But I do not know your name. I think my name is Colin. Colin Stanford – that sounds about right. That is right, isn’t it? But then …” his eyes glazed over. “Why am I here?”

She could barely breathe through her tears. When she spoke, her voice was husky and wavering. “Shut up,” she told him, and she placed her hand over his mouth and lay beside him as he rolled off her, dazed. “Shut up,” she said. “I can’t stand this anymore. David, I have a question I need to ask you.”

“What is it?” he asked, with all the innocence of a new-born baby.

“That’s the thing,” she sobbed. She had lost control, although she had sworn not to. Although she had seen this coming. That was how she had known that he would be Dave Clements and that he would later be Colin Stanford. But staying in control was one of those things which were simply more easily said than done.

“What’s the thing?”

“I don’t want to tell you,” Madeleine admitted.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to die.”

“How would asking me a question cause you to die?”

“Because you would kill me.”

“I would never do that!”

“You would; believe me.”

“Then … if you’re so sure,” he hesitated, “Then I don’t think you should ask me. He leaned over and gave her a loving, gentle kiss. “I love you,” he said, but then his eyes clouded over. “But what’s your name? I never knew your name,” he laughed. “I guess you’re mysterious. I always liked mysterious women.”

“Shut up,” she said again. “I have a question to ask you – Colin – Dave – whatever it was.”

He grinned at her. “Well, then, what are you waiting for?” Then his face fell. “Wait … have you been crying?”

“Just shut up,” she said. “I have a question to ask you,” she repeated, “But first I want to let you know something. I don’t want you to feel guilty about this. I don’t want you to feel guilty about things that you have to do.”

He sat up slowly, like a man waking out of a coma. “I’m not guilty,” he said, bewildered, as Madeleine sat up beside him.

“Oh, yes you are,” she said. “Not consciously, but …” she reached over and gently pulled his eyelids down over his eyes. He giggled and kept them closed. “But inside there. Whatever is inside there – your soul, if such a thing even exists – it’s suffering for it. But I want you to remember that you saved my life.”

“I did?”

“Yes,” she said. His eyelids began to flutter. “Keep your eyes closed,” she snapped, but her voice soon softened when his face fell once more. He kept his eyes firmly closed, though, and she slipped her hand inside of his. “Yes, you saved me. And since then, my whole world … my entire life … has revolved around the day you … the day you …” she faltered. Her voice was lost in his deep, peaceful breaths.

“The day I what?” he asked her softly.

“The day you visited me,” Madeleine whispered.

He lay down again. He kept his eyes closed, and stared at the enticing blackness. “Madeleine?” he asked, but waited for
no answer. “Madeleine, I love you.”

He felt her smile. She squeezed his hand, a firm yet gentle squeeze. “I love you too,” she said, “But I’m not going to let you take innocent lives just to prolong my own. I have a question to ask you, David.”

He did not need to ask what it was. Instead he waited for it, patiently, expectantly.

“My love … why have you come to visit tonight?”

His hand clenched on to hers. His eyes flew open and his pupils pulsed in time to his heart, which beat at double its intended speed, and she closed her eyes, for she wanted to come in peace.



The paper boy, Rocky Flacks, slept badly that night. He awoke in the middle of the night, and although he was fifteen – which felt very, very old for the time being – he woke up from his nightmare sweating and whimpering and calling for his mother.

When morning finally came, he slipped out of bed and vowed unrealistically never to lie down to rest on it again. He felt that another night of such terror would kill him. Then he dressed, and he was out like a bolt to pick up the top paper on the stack which had been left on the porch. It had been a compulsion, almost, to read it every morning. Ever since the unreasonable, inexplicable terror had begun. It had started as a small, barely noticeable spark inside of him, and had grown to become an all-consuming monster.

He wouldn’t look at the newspaper until he settled on the sofa in the lounge. There his father would be reading his own newspaper and his mother would be sipping a cup of coffee and watching the television. There, when he knew that he was safe, he would risk a glance down at the front paper.

But this morning his parents were out. They’d gone to do some shopping – a reason innocent enough to leave the house. It was with a growing terror that the paper boy looked down at the front page of the paper, and with an even worse terror swallowing him up from the inside out that he began to read the first few lines of the front page article. The article continued on to page three, and he turned over to it, fuelled by some kind of terrible morbid curiosity.



Last night, a widowed, unemployed woman by the name of Madeleine Whitpoint was found murdered in her home in southern Crawley.

Four years ago, Madeleine was a mother living with her fiancé, Robert Durick, and her newborn daughter, Sasha Durick. Both died two years ago in a tragic house fire, and soon afterwards she moved to a cottage not far from her old home, in which she was found murdered just past midnight last night.

As yet, the murderer has not been captured, but the Crawley Police Force believes that they have a good lead as to who the murderer may be. For the mysterious Visitor was spotted entering Madeleine’s house on the night of her death. He is believed to be the last person to have seen her before her death. The police are currently searching for him in order to bring him in for questioning, but for now he seems to have vanished into thin air.

There have been three murders in the past two years in the otherwise peaceful town of Crawley, and new evidence suggests that the Visitor might have been involved in all of them – in other words, all three murders may well have been connected.

The victim of the first murder was Amelia Vorce. Details about this death were withheld for a long time, and so many came to believe that the death was of natural causes.

Unfortunately, the death of Amelia Vorce, an old age pensioner, was not an accident. Details have finally been officially released by the police – the much loved retired nurse was strangled in her own home, and her body was found mangled, with more of her bones broken than not; it had been shoved into her own closet and left there to rot for days.

The second murder came nearly a year later. This one was much less easily explained, and so details were released only weeks after the murder occurred. The victim in question was Daisy Atwater, a single mother who had only recently set up a photography business in Crawley. Her two-month old baby was taken to Crawley Children’s Home after her mother was found with her tongue cut off and an electrical cord wrapped around her neck. At first it was believed to be suicide, but has now been officially confirmed as a murder.

The third murder occurred last night – at just past midnight, neighbours heard screams coming from Madeleine Whitpoint’s house. Madeleine was forty years old and had been unemployed for six months. She was found lying in her bathtub with her arteries slit open and a knife wound in her stomach, through which a book had been shoved. The state her home was found in was equally disturbing. Her possessions had been flung around the place, soggy pages of torn apart books were littered around the house, and in the living room, a note was found: Hello, David. My name is Madeleine, it said.

The Visitor has been confirmed as the main suspect for the murders. Police have found that he was seen by at least once neighbour entering the houses of each of the women in question … on the night they were murdered. A CCTV photograph has been captured of the Visitor and printed on the next page. His appearances have also been associated with a red Honda Civic. The registration plate is unknown.

The Crawley Police Force urges citizens ...

It was then that Rocky stopped reading. He thought he heard the clicking sound of a door opening, faint footsteps in the distance. He glanced out of his window, and barely held back a gasp. Parked outside his house was the red Honda Civic. At least, he thought it was the same one. A shiver crawled up his spine, and he found himself frozen to the spot, unable to breathe, unable to move, unable to do anything but glance back down at the newspaper.

It was then that he saw the photograph, and then that everything fitted, and a terror so great that he thought he might have a heart attack on the spot gripped his body, from his chest to his shaking knees.

It was then that he realised that there was nobody around to hear his screams.

Wow. This is really good. I can't really find anything to point out but I'm not that great of an editor either. Great story though. I'm looking forward to reading more of your work.