Terms and Conditions

“You can’t give it to anyone. I can’t stress that enough. There will be consequences.”

That had been the last thing that the man had said to George before getting in his car, scraping his shoes on the pavement edge to avoid tracking any snow in. He had been driving an unassuming beat-up old Honda, but the shoes had been immaculate, sparkling – expensive. George didn’t know much about footwear, but they looked like the kind that cost more than he’d make in a month. Shivering there in his booth, he hoped the man would be back soon. 

            “I have something that I need guarding, for a short while. No, don’t worry, it’s not dangerous. On the contrary, it’s very precious to me. I merely have a small errand to run nearby.”

            He had already been on the third hour of his late shift at the car park when the man arrived. The shift had started dark and chilly, with a scattering of snowflakes that had developed quickly into a harsh, biting flurry, confining George to the poorly-insulated rectangle at the main gate. The car park was open air and normally at that hour he would’ve been free to stroll around a little, but the wind had burned his ears and stung the tips of his fingers when he had attempted to, and he had been sent jogging back to his relative shelter with his hands in his jacket pockets and puffing out great frosty plumes of breath. The handful of cars littered about the lot were gaining a thin veneer of snow. He hadn’t been in England long enough to know if it would stick, but he was worried about his own drive home. 

            It was around two in the morning when George looked up from scrolling on his phone to see two cones of light cutting a swathe through the swirling night. Even squinting he struggled to estimate the distance, but the driver didn’t seem to be in a hurry. The weather was playing havoc with his depth perception, the lights seeming to arbitrarily grow and shrink each time he blinked. He thought he could hear the stuttering purr of an engine now over the wind, oscillating in unnerving surround sound. Swallowing, his throat felt very dry. Customers were rare during this shift and there had already been one occasion where a passenger had been dropped off and then attempted to drive off in their own car, stumbling for the keys with tequila on their breath. His wife begged him not to get involved in any trouble every night before he left for work, but some things he couldn’t ignore. 

            “Do you consider yourself to be a principled man, George? A man who honours his word? I get that sense of you… perhaps you could be of assistance to me? I am equally, genuine, George, and I can assure that it will be worth your while.”

            The man had pulled up to the booth and rolled down his window. He was wearing a pair of driving gloves and thick, black-framed glasses, and when he smiled at George he could see that his top left incisor was chipped halfway off. He had explained, politely, that he had spent the day travelling up from the south coast on business and would be soon be bedding down for the night nearby, but had seen the lights of the car park through the blizzard and had turned off the road for a brief rest. There was something about the man’s demeanour that both drew George in and repelled him at the same time: it was a pleasantness that he felt sure could curdle very quickly. 

The man had asked him if he could park there for a few minutes, and that he would be more than happy to pay the same as the half-hour rate that they charged during the day. George held out the card reader and took the money, too off-guard to question or offer an alternative. The man had asked him his name, and George immediately told him his real name, not the anglicised one that he had adopted after he emigrated to avoid downturned mouths and steely, distrustful eyes. It was an involuntary action – sliding out of his mouth with no friction, but the man simply nodded, still politely, and asked if he was adjusting to English life without much hardship. George said it was ok, tongue thick in his mouth, but different, and told the man the name he was using now. To make things easier, he clarified, knowing he didn’t need to. The man’s eyes were understanding, his expression impassive. That’s when he asked his favour. 

“It contains nothing of value to you. Or anyone, for that matter. Purely sentimental. But where I need to go, I cannot take it with me. I am aware that is an unsatisfactory explanation for even the mildly curious but it is the only one I can proffer. Do you accept my terms?”

The man had laid out the conditions of his proposal. George had understood them, but he couldn’t comprehend them. Keep watch over the item, for no more than two hours, and he would be rewarded. He didn’t know with what, but there was something in the man’s tone… He thought of his wife. He thought of the life that they wanted for each other, and that he had promised to her. The man’s hand was outstretched, and he leant out of the window of the booth to take it. An image shot across his brain: a dangling, luminescent bulb-like protrusion hanging tantalisingly in front of the gaping maw of a deep-sea fish. The man already had him in a strong shake in his pale, ice-cold hand. He had been stood outside for some time now, far longer than George had managed, but seemed thoroughly unconcerned with the snow whipping against his long, slim coat. He smiled his cracked smile again. “A deal is struck, my friend. And I treat my friends well. I will be back for my property, at this exact spot, in the allotted timeframe. Thank you, George. I have faith.” He had then delivered his final rule, and the red glow of his brake lights was swallowed up, and George was left alone in his booth, shivering and nervous in the wind and the white.

He had been clutching the small drawstring bag ever since. It was plain and brown and made from some cheap, coarse cloth. There was weight to it, but when he moved it around there were no discernible objects inside. No scraping or clinking or movement whatsoever. He was, of course, curious, but he intended to follow the man’s instructions to the letter and to get his task over with as soon as possible. A numbingly uneventful hour had passed already, and George had spent it fantasising about what he and Noor could do with the money he was certain was coming his way. He wasn’t a greedy man, nor a particularly ambitious one, but the thought of security, a little safety net, was doing a better job of warming him than his jacket was. It helped keep his mind off of the pit in his stomach, too. What if the man took longer than two hours? What if he took all night? He was getting relieved at six, and he didn’t fancy explaining to his colleague why he wanted to wait around unpaid and off the clock. He hadn’t decided yet how he was going to explain this to his wife, let alone strangers. Small, flitting doubts were starting to dig into him like acupuncture needles. The blizzard was getting worse. The man could miss the turning with the visibility being this poor. George stopped himself at the tip of his spiral. There was nothing he could do: focus on the comfort in that. You can’t change this, he thought. So, you wait.

And wait. He checked his watch. Fifty minutes to go. Snow was settling thick on the lip of the booth now, and he opened the window quickly to brush it off, wincing at the sensation. 

Thirty-seven minutes. And wait. He had placed the bag on the seat between his legs. Watching the snowfall was starting to mess with his eyes, and when he closed them he felt like he could still see the flakes dancing in small white dots across his eyelids. 

Wait. Twenty-three minutes. George was back to watching the drive up to the car park, scouring the gloom for headlights. Anything more than a few metres away looked like static on a television screen. He turned his head slowly towards the gate. Movement.

George was so startled that he knocked the bag onto the floor. He scrambled for it, pushing his chair back hard and sending it down too. Panting, he felt the bag all over for damage. Nothing – weight, but no sensation. No change. Standing up gingerly, cradling his cargo, he looked around again. Back to static, but the snow on the ground by the gate was different. It could have been his eyes playing tricks after the long night, or nothing more than the wind. But he could swear there were footprints there. 

The torch on George’s phone didn’t stand a chance. He held it out into the dark, thin beam trying valiantly to illuminate anything useful, but it was hopeless. There had been footprints, he was certain of that now – small, clear indents made by toes, probably a woman’s foot. His heart was pounding somewhere in his now very dry throat. There couldn’t be a woman or a child walking around barefoot out here, that would be insanity. The tracks had stopped, too, just within the boundary of the cone of light around the booth. He considered calling out, but was ashamed of what we might do if someone called back. 

George rose to his feet, turned back to the booth, and she was there. He yelled out and fell backwards, landing on snow but bouncing painfully off of a bollard on the way down. The woman was stood right in the centre of the drive leading into the car park, not only barefoot but wearing what amounted to little more than tattered rags, thin fraying fabric billowing violently around her shivering frame in the winds. Her legs were covered in a mix of mud and bruises and a shallow gash in her side was still leaking small, bright drops on to the snow. Her cracked lips moved, silently at first like she’d forgotten how to form sounds, and then said 

“Help.”

That snapped George out of his fear and into swift, unthinking protective instinct. He shot up, tearing his jacket off of himself and immediately wrapping it tight around her, ushering her with one kind, firm hand on her back into the booth. He guided her gently into the chair and pressed himself up against the wall, squatting down low, trying to give her as much room as he could in the cramped space and not present as threatening. She was staring at him with grey, unblinking eyes. 

“What happened to you? What’s your name? Is there anyone else with you?”

She pulled the jacket tighter around her shoulders. “I got lost.”

George assumed she was in shock. “Were you in a car accident? Has somebody hurt you?”

“No,” she answered. She spoke slowly and meticulously, as if stretching out a muscle that she hadn’t used in a while. “I don’t remember.” 

“I don’t have anything to clean that cut for you, would you like me to call an ambulance?”

“No, thank you.”

“Is there anybody you would like me to call?”

“No, thank you.”

George bit his lip. “I, uh…well, can you at least stay for a while? You can’t go back out like that and I can’t, uh… I can’t leave. Not yet. But then I can drive you back into town.”

The woman didn’t say anything. Her skin was starting to get a little colour back, but she was clearly very pale and it was stretched too thinly over her bones, which George thought might have been a sign of malnourishment. “Is there anything I can get you?”

“I’m very hungry,” she said, flatly. 

“I’m so sorry, I don’t think I have anything,” he said, feeling useless. “I ate my snack earlier tonight.”

“What have you got in there?”

She was staring right at the pocket he’d stashed the stranger’s bag in for safekeeping before venturing outside. George’s mouth flopped open and shut like a dying fish, desperately grasping for a quick lie.

"What – Ah, what do you mean?”

“There’s food in your pocket, isn’t there? I think I can smell it.”

He hadn’t mentioned the bag. He hadn’t reached for it at any point since seeing this woman. He suddenly felt like the walls were closing in and his vision was darkening around the edges. 

“I promise, ma’am, I’m not lying to you. I’m holding something for a, uh, for a man, just for a while. I can show you, I don’t want you to think I’m lying. I wouldn’t do that.”

He had pulled the bag out while he was speaking, and held it out towards her in his flat open palm. Her eyes had widened and were brimming with tears. 

            “Please, I’m begging you. I can smell it.”

            “I’m telling you, there’s noth-“ 

            His fingers started to tremble. He had loosened the strings and opened the bag and was hit instantly by the warm aroma of fresh bread. He thought for a moment that this could be the beginning of a stroke, and that thought was briefly comforting in the face of the reality – the bag was now filled with chunks of bread, still lightly steaming as if they had just come out of the oven. 

            “Don’t make me beg you. Please. I’m so hungry. Please let me eat.”

            “I made a promise,” George answered, his voice a weak, hoarse whisper. “He said he would reward me. I need this.”

            Even as he said the words, his body knew they were hollow. He blinked, and he had already handed the woman the bag. She was shovelling handfuls of food into her mouth, barely stopping to chew and littering her legs and the chair with a broad carpet of crumbs. She fished around inside the bag for the last few bites, scooped them up, and passed the bag back. He didn’t say a word. Neither did she. 

            The woman rose, smiling, and stood over George as he slumped numbly against the door of the booth. “I can’t…I can’t let you go back out there,” he murmured. She stayed silent, and kept smiling. 

            “How are you going to get home?”

            Nothing.

            “Please talk to me, ma’am. I don’t think that you’re well.”

            She gently pushed him aside with one bruised leg and stepped out into the blizzard. By the time George had got to his feet, the woman was already back at the main gate. She was facing him, and there were no footprints behind her this time. He flung open the door and collapsed out into the snow, his pleas for her to stop and come back blown away to fruitless nothing in the gale. As he watched, the darkness behind her seemed to grow and wave until she receded into it completely, all without taking another step. She never stopped smiling. 

George knelt in the white powder staring out into the night, disbelieving. He had to call the police. A part of him had already accepted that there would be nothing they could do, but he was hanging desperately on to rational thought like a man dangling over a chasm on a fraying rope. He reached into his pocket but pulled out the bag instead. It felt different. There was a new object in there: round, light, and soft. Squishy, even. Tentatively, he pulled the drawstrings back again. 

Nestled inside was a human eye. It was peppered with bloodshot red, spidery veins, and still trailing nerve endings. George let out a keening moan that he couldn’t have ever imagined coming from his own throat. The pale green iris and enlarged pupil were only partially visible, until the eye turned to look at him. 

He screamed, primal and mad, and flung the bag out past the light, out of sight before it could splinter his brain clean in two. It could live in the dark now, with all the things that slithered and pulsed and were beyond comprehension, and he would do everything he could to push the night away before it wrapped itself around him and filled all of his moments, waking and sleeping. His phone was ringing.  

            “Noor? I can’t…are you ok? What’s wrong?”

            “My love.” She sounded terrified, her voice vibrating with barely concealed fear. “There’s a man here.”

            “Who? Who’s there? What’s going on?”

            “He showed up at the house and he says he knows you.” She swallowed, a big, desperate gulp. “I don’t know what’s happening. He’s not making any sense. I need you here, please. Hurry. Please.”

            George yelled into the phone as he ran for the car, sliding on the ice and on the verge of tears. “Just stay there. Don’t do anything he tells you. I’m coming home.”

            Noor’s voice was brimming with panic. “What did you do, my love? He said that you agreed to the terms. He said that you know there would be consequences. What did you do? What did you do?”