Secret Places and Hidden Things

Chapter Eighteen

A Long time ago...

It was evening. It had been snowing all day.

William sat looking out the window as the parking lot, and then the cars, slowly disappeared beneath a blanket of white. He had the window open in spite of the cold—it was always hot in his apartment—and watched his breath roll lazily out beyond the eves.

He felt lonely today—as he had for most of the summer, and all of the fall—and wondered what other people usually did with their time. William hardly ever spoke to people. He just stayed up in his apartment, on the third floor, wondering if anybody below might be friendly. Occasionally, he made expeditions to the store for food, but he usually did this at night since the daylight made him anxious.

Sometimes, as he sat by the window, he would imagine himself laughing with the groups of boys he saw below—heading for the pool or the tennis court and planning the night's bonfire, or wandering the streets after dark with those odd skaters who made so much noise—grinding over the uneven pavement at two thirty in the morning and setting off car alarms, or even holed up in someone's basement playing videogames and getting fat on chips. It was no use, though. He was alone and friendless, and he didn't belong anywhere. It hadn't always been that way, he had a few friends before, but slowly he had detached himself from the world, politely refusing invitations, never offering his own. Then, after college ended, it was too easy, too abrupt. Everyone he knew moved away.

For a while he convinced himself he liked it. He was on retreat. Eventually, he would master himself and emerge back into the world, a new and better person. It didn't work out that way. Being alone just made him withdraw even more. One day he discovered he was afraid to leave his apartment. He almost stopped eating, rationing his food to put off the moment he had to go out. He became very pale, very thin—he felt like he was fading away.

As summer had turned to fall, he decided to try harder. He started going for walks in the evening, trying to ignore how naked he felt, avoiding people's eyes on the street. He was sure he looked strange, like some dejected creature, emerging from under a rock, but walking made things a little better. For a while he was hopeful.

Then winter came, and he stopped walking, and there were no people out his window anymore. He had started to fade again. This time it would be more complete.

William gave his head a little shake. He knew he shouldn't think so morbidly, but, the truth was, he had never felt so completely alone, watching the snow fall and cover the world. He hadn't seen anyone all day or the day before. It was Christmas eve. The world was empty.

He decided to go for a walk.

When he got outside, the parking lot by the door was empty. The snow fell softly with no wind, making a dull sort of popping as it landed. The street lamps dyed everything orange, even the low sky.

He began walking, crunching into the snow up to his knees. It had drifted against the garbage bins, and he gave them a wide berth. He felt very warm, in spite of the snow. There was no wind, and everything seemed so soft and still. The world had lost all of its edges. As he made his way out of the parking lot, he noticed an even bigger drift going into the road. The plows must have been through earlier. It didn't seem to have helped much, though, as there were already a few inches piled back on top.

The sidewalk was swamped, so William decided to walk along the road. He turned left and made his way down to the stop light on the corner. He walked in the middle of the street, but there were no cars, and no people. The snow had obliterated most things to the point that he couldn't tell what they were under the mounds. The air was charged with some strange potential.

He stopped when he reached the middle of the intersection and looked down each road. In all four directions the roads went on into the dull fog the snow was making. His whole world was monochromatic, dazzled by the orange glow of the street lamps and the blinking red of the stoplights. It was both dark and bright. Everything seemed to glow.

After making a full turn, he looked down and was surprised to see a set of tracks leading away down the cross street. They were almost right under his feet, and he didn't see where they came from. On an impulse he decided to follow them.

Wouldn't it be strange, he thought, if I were to meet someone out here now?

The tracks seemed fresh, and as he walked he strained his ears for any signs of a footstep ahead. He came to another cross street, and the trail turned, leading off towards the old college. William had gone there the year before. These days he just watched the students out his window.

The tracks wound off over the rolling lawn and past the old clock tower. It gave a deep series of chimes just as he passed. It was very late; two forty-five.

He passed under the memorial arch, made from the bricks of the old buildings that used to be there. William had drawn the arch for class, once. He'd sat out on the lawn and tried to copy the perspective. That seemed like a long time ago, now. He thought so at least. It had only been a few months, really.

He stopped and looked down at the tracks.

What am I doing? He asked himself. Is my life really so empty that I've resorted to following tracks in the snow?

He didn't know how to answer that. The obvious answer was yes, but he didn't have the will to admit it to himself.

He walked on.

The tracks curved off around the outside of the science building. He'd never been that way before. There was a narrow alley between two buildings that the footsteps went through. The snow was lower here, rising up the sides of the brick and clinging there like snagged lint. The footsteps veered off across a courtyard and went under the walkway between buildings. William saw a light on in an office next to the doorway there, and for a moment he stopped and wondered what he'd say if he actually caught up with whoever he was following. Would they have a quixotic mind that would accept that some destiny had drawn him along, out into the weather, and along the trail of freshly minted footsteps he'd found?

Probably not.

It didn't matter.

He walked on and passed by the office. A dog was sniffing around the window from inside, Christmas lights blinking along the frame, and he wondered if the people in there, working late on their holiday, felt him pass by.

The footsteps led on, and on he followed, up an embankment and across another parking lot out into the middle of the road. Somehow, walking in the middle of the road made the world seem even more empty. It was usually very busy here, college students making their way from the dorms to class. Cars zooming faster than they should as people walked in front of them. Even late at night, like this, it was usually full of students, just out walking, or making their way to the university square. Tonight it was just empty. Empty save a singular set of footprints leading off into the distance, right down the middle of the road.

William kept following. He had started to feel cold a while ago, and now it was sinking in through his jacket. The bottoms of his pants were frozen into a stiff slush. He hadn't really planned to be out this long.

The footsteps led to an intersection and turned left. He was back on his street, now. Off in the distance, two blocks down, he could see the other intersection where he'd started. Curious, he made his way down the street slowly, watching as the lights shifted automatically between red and green. He looked up at his apartment as he passed by. It was a long road, and he suspected that if he was ever going to meet the maker of the footsteps, he'd probably have been able to see them at this point.

Disappointment settled over him. He was almost back to the intersection, and he was cold and rather tired now. He didn't think he'd bother continuing after this. It seemed kind of pointless and silly now.

He reached the intersection and stopped right on the footprints he had made earlier, right in the very middle. He couldn't see the tracks he'd been following before. In fact, when he turned around and looked at the ground, they'd disappeared there too. There were no footprints left in any direction—not even the ghost of prints under the steadily accumulating snow.

He shivered.

Suddenly, he heard a voice from behind him.

"Hello, have you been following me?"