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TWO

Unbeknownst to me at the time, Vincent was beginning to approach Moorside, also waiting for it to get dark. The first time I saw him, properly I mean, was when I was sitting there, staring aimlessly at nothing. I still think that people can only really see him for the first time if they don't intend to. Like, if they're zoned out or something. I could see him through my uncovered bedroom window, just standing there in the courtyard, a vast figure of black against the snow.

Of course, he had been following me closely for quite some time now. As I stared some more, and he came into focus, I recalled some of the odd signs and omens from the past couple of days: a shadow in the corner of my eye every time I left my flat. He loomed outside, just out of sight of the doorway to the corner shop as I bought my razor blades. He often used the cover of night to keep himself hidden. When I left the shop, there was no trace of him. When I walked home from work for the last time, I was sure that on the pavement I had two silhouettes instead of one, and looked around wildly for my pursuer, but he was nowhere to be found. There were the missed connections where I almost saw him, but not quite- in a flash in a reflection somewhere, a ruined face made up of shadow-y tones. A blink and I was alone again. As I packed up my books to be rubbish-ed, I felt like I had an audience, even when there was no one around. In the nights, I would peer out of my window across the courtyard, and could see puffs of smoke in the air, the in-out orange glow of a cigarette. Someone right by my window.

And there he was now, and it all came together.

A stalker, I had thought questioningly. But why me? And why now? Most unnervingly, I could feel his gaze on me as I stared at him, could sense that he was staring straight back. I still to this day don't know what compelled me to do what I did next. Let's call it writer's brain: inactive for some time, but now, when I was in the throes of death it was alive and burned with curiosity. One last little unpredictability to prod with a stick before I go, I might have thought. It would be a mystery to put me to sleep, like a bedtime story. One last scary tale before the campfire was doused.

So, I prised open my bedroom window and balked at the cold night air. The bulb in the courtyard lamppost was temperamental, flickering, but every time it shone, he was easy enough to pick out in the snow-covered yard, though he stood in the shadows. It was the first time I'd been able to see him steadily without his disappearance into a puff of smoke. I gritted my teeth, unnerved by the way I could feel his eyes on me, rather than see them. He still stood motionless, and I called out to him.

"What are you doing out there?" I asked. When I got no response, I raised my voice a little. "It's freezing out!" It was indeed cold, the snow coming down in sheets, thick and fast and heavy. This got a response- he slowly began to make his way over to me. He shouldered a satchel, and his movements had a sort of tentativeness about them. It wasn't as if he was scared exactly, but I got this impression of intense wariness, as if he wasn't sure whether he was allowed to be seen by me.

He came closer and I could see a heavy black coat lined with white fur on the inside. He had unkempt dark hair. It wasn't until he was at the window that I realised that he wasn't quite right. He stood at well over six and a half feet, having to stoop down to peer through into my bedroom. I was still lounging about on the windowsill like a stupid schoolgirl, but my muscles had tensed up, and all the moisture had gone from my mouth. More than his height and his unnaturally extended limbs, what disturbed me so much was how little I could make out of his face, even now that we were up close and personal. The shadows clung to his features like a wrap, or a veil. Like some trick of the not-light, the darkness was playing funny games with his face, warping it in dramatic ways- what little flesh I could see was pale and waxy, but otherwise, he was completely undecipherable. It struck me then that if I needed to, I would be completely unable to pick this man out of a line up. I don't know why I had thought that. The only part of his face that I could see clearly, and this is what really gave me pause, were his eyes. White eyes- shiny and blank like five-pence pieces. I swallowed but held where I was, fighting all of my instincts not to step back and slam the window.

I realised then that he was holding up an old camcorder with one pale hand, pointing it directly at me. I remembered the red-eye of my fever dream the previous night, peering through my window. The red pinprick light signifying 'record' gazed at me lecherously from his camera. Perhaps this had been a mistake.

I swallowed roughly, my mouth dry. "What are you doing out here?" I repeated.

"Waiting for you," he said softly. His voice was odd- almost feminine, but raspy, and dragged down an octave by a harsh Northern accent.

I wasn't quite sure what to say to this, and was still greatly unnerved by the camera.

"Who are you?" I asked, after a moment's pause.

"Vincent," he replied slowly. As an afterthought, he stared down at his feet and stuck out his hand that wasn't holding the camera. I now noticed that the veins on the back of his hands, as well as his nails, were blackened, necrotic. It took me a moment to realise that he meant us to shake, so I took his hand lightly after a slight pause. His skin was ice-cold to the touch. I found it bizarre that politeness and formality, my grandmother's lessons, were now leading me though my altercation with this phantom. I was sure she wouldn't have imagined that her good manners would be put to use communing with monsters.

An awful image suddenly flashed into my mind: that he was some sort of estranged family relation. All of a sudden, I could see him in the background of various family photographs, peering through the darkness of photography studio backdrops. He was, then, the man who took my school picture and waved me away for the next child, even though I knew I hadn't smiled right and that my grandmother would be angry. He was from the cupboard under the stairs in my grandmother's house. They had sat and had tea as I lay in bed one floor above them, tossing and turning and fretting about going to the toilet.

"Did you know my grandmother?" I blurted out before I could stop myself.

He shook his head, once.

"Right," I said, struggling to regain composure. "It's just that you've been, sort of, following me around a bit. And you're- well, you're recording me now. That's a bit weird, like."

He said nothing, just stood there taking up space in my window frame, the camera unwavering.

Seeing that the conversation was going nowhere, and noticing that it must have been uncomfortable for someone of his height to be leaning down and talking to me like this, I took another cue from my grandmother just to spite her. "Would you like to come in?" I had asked.

I'm still unsure as to why I did this. I can't blame it all on curiosity, as I've heard, and certainly stood by, the old adage about curiosity and the cat. Something seemed to guide me to the decision, like I was being pulled toward inviting him in. At the time, it seemed like the right thing to do.

I drew back as he climbed over the windowsill and suddenly, he was there, in my flat, extending himself to full height. I could feel rather than see the invisible man in the room behind me cower further into the sofa. Everything in my mind screamed at me that this was a mistake, and yet I plunged further forward. He must have been cold, standing out there for so long, watching me.

"I'll put on some coffee," I said, and excused myself. He stared me off as I went into the kitchen, with those awful white eyes of his. My movements were stiff as I fumbled with the kettle. Dead eyes, I had thought. He can see me because he's dead. I don't know why I thought that.

I had loved the phrase 'paralysed with fear' back when I was writing, and used it liberally. I remembered it as I made the coffee because the last time I had used it, it had been in a vampire story. The vampire prowls gracefully through the house, cornering the man as he hides behind a kitchen cabinet. The man is paralysed with fear, rigid because he cannot see an alternative moment in which he is safe. He knows that this is the end, and that there will not be any time left in his life where he will not be scared. He can't imagine running, or speaking, or fighting back, because he knows all of these things will be fruitless. He is so scared that his future seals itself as the present moment becomes hard stone. "That's why they call it petrified," he thought. I was decidedly unpetrified, calm even. That's why my hands shook as I stirred the coffee grounds.

When I turned, my shadow monster man was still recording me. I bit my lip and placed the mugs on the table. "Can you turn that thing off please?" I asked. He tilted his head toward me. "I don't really like being filmed." He shrugged and span around slowly, recording the interior of my flat instead. He paused thoughtfully when his camera landed on my sofa and held the shot for a full ten seconds, just a shot of my sofa, before snapping the camera shut and sitting at my kitchen table. I sat opposite him and we sat in silence.

Vincent took his coffee mug stiffly into one hand, and broke the silence. "How long has he been sitting there?" he asked.

"Who?" I replied.

"Your man there." Vincent flicked a wrist in the direction of the sofa, the area he had just been filming. I looked to where he had gestured, completely at a loss, but then saw the invisible man. I turned my head back to Vincent sharply. Seeing him tilt his head and raise an eyebrow slightly in questioning was like watching smoke curl, and still, the gleaming white eyes stared at me. I had preferred it when he only looked at me through his camera. I remembered all the times in my childhood bedroom when I thought I had seen something staring at me through the dark, only to flick the lamp on and realise it was the silhouette of a coat, or a chair. That's what he was like, hunched there at the table. It seemed right to me, that one fear would be able to commune with another, even through time: of course he could see my invisible man. Fears reach out to each other and hold hands. They become daisy chains. The idea made so much sense to me that it inadvertently calmed me for a moment as I replied.

"A few days now. Do you know what he is?"

"He's a not-there-yet." Vincent said. "His name is Marshall Friess. He'll study fine art for a year, then architectural design for another three. Twenty-three years after that he'll break his neck in a motorcycle accident."

"A not-there-yet," I echoed like I understood.

"A haunting from the future, not the past."

I bit my lip again, starting to worry a little toothmark into it, drawing blood. "Why are you here?" I asked softly.

He made a little noise in his throat and cocked his head toward me in a surely-you-know gesture, but I remained silent.

"You know in movies," Vincent said quietly, "they have people pulling the strings behind the camera to make sure the scene goes ahead alright? I'm your final check, if you like. I'm just from production. I'll oversee everything, and put it to film."

"Everything?"

"Your death."

I took a drink from my mug, because that's all I could think to do. On the one hand I was convinced that Vincent wasn't human, so I wasn't surprised that he knew, especially considering he was able to see my invisible man. On the other hand, I remembered how closely observed I'd felt the past few days, and suddenly thought of my posted forward suicide note.

"Have you been going through the bins?" I asked him.

He looked puzzled. "Why would I have been?" he rasped, and quickly fumbled for his camera. "Anything interesting in there?"

"No, no, nothing. It's just that... I didn't want anyone to know. That was the plan."

Vincent shrugged. "That's invitation enough for me. I'm nobody."

I laughed weakly. "You're not here to stop me or anything? You're not, like, an angel?"

He shook his head once.

"Are you a... what did you call them, a not-there-yet?"

"No."

"But you can tell the future?"

"The same way a Magic 8-Ball can."

"And you're here to film me dying?"

"For posterity."

"Whose posterity?" I asked.

"Yours," Vincent replied.

I blew out another plume of smoke. I could make out vaguely avian features in Vincent's blackened face, if I looked hard enough. The fur-lined coat didn't help. He was a vulture man. The cameraman. The reaper.

"Are you death?" I asked.

"No," he responded, but he sounded unsure.

"My posterity, what do you mean, my posterity?"

"Dying's confusing." His voice was smooth now, rehearsed. "I sat with an old woman once. She was riding the bus alone, late at night. She fell asleep and never woke up, dead right there before she'd reached her stop. She had known it was coming for a while, but death flips you inside out, and she was frightened. She didn't know what to do, so she got off the bus and went home. After a while, I went to find her and showed her my film. Bits and pieces, 'cos I'd been watching her for a while. If I showed you it, or anyone else, it wouldn't make sense to them, but she got it because it was her. And it got to the part where she died. We were sitting watching it on her TV. She turned to me and she went: "So that's all it is then? It's just like a film, just like in the movies?" She got it, and then she was gone. It helped her. I know it works. Most people'll never star in a film apart from the ones I make. It helps 'em make heads and tails of it all, so they can move on."

I shook my head. "But I want to die. I won't hang about."

"It rarely works like that: you'll get bored here, dead, with nothing to watch." His voice was softer now, I took note. He sounded sincere.

"How many times have you done this?" I asked.

"Lots of times."

I extended my hands in a fruitless gesture. "A ballpark figure?"

He took another sip from his coffee mug, and his face twitched. His eyes were unfocused, but something moved behind them, a thought, as if he was weighing up his options. The moment passed, and he put the coffee mug down and folded himself over, reaching for his satchel. The shadows moved across his face as he did this, and it clicked to me why it was so disconcerting to watch- every time, it was like his features were shifting, realigning themselves on his face. He hadn't lied, he was nobody, because he could be anybody. Of course, he was memorable, but he was ever changing, hard to pin down. He hoisted up the satchel and with his other hand, moved the closed camera deftly across the table and out of the way. He flung down the bag and it flapped open. A tape fell out- one of those old VHS tapes. Scrawled on the label was a date, only two weeks prior, and underneath that: 'Isabelle Martin-Jackson (House Fire)', in spider-y handwriting. There were three more tapes in the recesses of his bag.

"These are from this month and last month," he said.

Something snapped in my head, something primal. The urge to cry perhaps, or to scream bloody murder. "You're serious?" I said, looking at him.

"Deadly."

I imagined a funeral home with a gift shop. A bored clerk sat behind the desk, flipping through a eulogy service booklet. Boxed videotapes lined the shelves and the clerk looked up and thanked a grieving woman, veiled but audibly in tears, for her customer-ship as she walked out.

"What do you do with all the tapes? You don't... sell them, do you?" I asked, repulsed at the idea.

"I do." He said, surprising me. "Most of what I make finds new homes." He reached into his coat and took a battered cigarette from his pocket, lit it, and waited for me to respond, but he must have seen the disgusted look on my face and he laughed quietly, a small noise coming from somewhere deep in his chest.

"People have jobs, don't they?" he said.

"Are you... people?"

He though about it for a moment as I reached for my own cigarettes and lit one.

"You're not scared by me?" he asked.

I thought deeply, taking a drag on my cigarette as I did. He brought fear with him, sure, but he was a caricature. When I was younger, I had assumed that the word 'fearmonger' meant the same as 'cheesemonger' or 'fishmonger'. Someone who sells fear, someone whose business is to scare. Someone who can dredge up the feeling in others, and sharpen it like an axe. A creature made simply to inspire terror in others. Him to a tee- the fearmonger. But no, he didn't scare me per say, and I can't say now whether that was just because I had plans to kill myself. It was like meeting a celebrity. I was more nervous than scared.

"No," I told him truthfully.

"Then I'm people," he said plainly, and took a deep drink from his mug.

I pictured my grotesque body in a bathtub somewhere on a big screen. I was watching the movie of myself sputtering and gasping through tears, as I slid the razor down my wrist, the skin snagging. The me on the big screen would would wail out, with nothing to do but press on, cursing myself and cursing it all in my last few moments. I would watch from the rows of seats and look around at the other audience members as they laughed and flicked popcorn at the screen. There would be Vincent, an immovable wall of stone, unemotional, an usher in the aisles, done up in a waistcoat and bowtie. The image on the screen would zoom in to show a close up shot of my wound as the laughter increased. The tendons in my wrist would snap in the slick of the gore and mottled shades of red. The whole cinema would flash red in the glow of the screen, and my cries would radiate from the speakers, reverberating around and shaking the backs of chairs. All of a sudden, the video would snag, and the same shot would be replayed over and over, a close up of my crying face, my screaming endless as the audience began to boo loudly.

"I won't go through with it," I told Vincent. "Not if you're filming. Not if you're selling."

He hummed as if he didn't know what to say.

"Has no one ever... backed out before?" I asked.

"Never."

"Someone always dies when you're around."

"It's not like that," Vincent snapped, suddenly flaring up in anger. "I've never harmed anyone, and it's certainly not like what you're thinking."

I gaped at his sudden change in mood. He was almost like a toddler throwing a tantrum when they didn't get what they want. "Can you read my mind?" I asked.

"No," he huffed, in a voice that suggested that he wished he could.

"Look at me," I said to him, "I'm camera-shy. I get, like, stage fright and stuff. I won't make for a good subject and the video you're making won't help me." I was suddenly stoic. "What if I say you can't film me?"

He was silent for a moment, and then said: "How would you stop me?"

It was the first time I was scared of him, and I think he could tell that, because he withdrew. His eyes brightened, and I could see his face with perfect clarity, but it was only for a moment, and then it was gone.

"You can watch one," he said quietly, "but not any of these, he said, gesturing to the tapes spilling out of his satchel and onto the table. "You're camera-shy- that's true enough. I can see you don't like being watched. You don't want to be made a spectacle of, but it's not like that when I film. I can show you one I've made, one like you, a wrist-cutter. See what I did with him, and you can see what I'll make of you."

"A preview?" I asked.

"If you like."

When I spoke next, I spoke quietly, even though I hadn't meant to. My voice caught before I realised what I was saying. I was almost crying. "It has to happen, you know. It's going to happen, because there's nothing else left. But I don't want it to be bad, I just want it... to be over. But if I watch your tape, I can move on, right, you make movies so people can move on?"

He nodded.

"So that's what I'll do, if you're offering. I'll watch your preview, just to push the thing in motion. Do you have it?"

He shook his head.

"It's one you sold? Who did you sell it to?"

"It's not as easy as that. These things tend to pass from hand to hand."

"Well, how would you get it back," I asked evenly. "Could you even get it back?"

"If it's meant to return to me, it will. Most things happen the way they're meant to. It's doable."

"I'll know by tomorrow."

"Tomorrow," I echoed, running the word round my tongue. "You're coming back then?" A day's delay wasn't too bad. Tomorrow, at the whim of my curiosity.

"Hm." He pocketed his cigarettes and picked up his camera, moving toward my bedroom window, which he forced open. I didn't stop him, but at the last minute he turned to me. "One more thing," he said, pointing to the floor with one blackened finger, to where my book lay. My favourite book, in ruin with damp and mould. "Can I borrow that?"

I hesitated, but couldn't see why not, so stooped to grab it and passed it to him. "Sure," I said, not knowing what anyone would want with a rotten book, "But make sure you bring it back."

He looked at the cover with interest, and then slid it inside his coat, into an inner pocket, maybe. "Thanks," he said thoughtfully, quietly, and passed through the window. And then he was gone away into the night, and the flat seemed a few watts lighter.

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