Liar

I am not a liar. It is important to me that you know and understand this, I’m not a bad person and everything I did I did because I thought it was the right thing to do.

My best friend in the world when I was eight years old was a gangly, smart mouth girl called Fatima. She was far too smart for her own good and had a wicked right hook that all the boys were afraid of. She was the kind of kid you knew was gonna get into lots of trouble, but the good kind of trouble. Raising hell for people, rather than against people. If you know what I mean.

No-one has ever believed me about how she died. No-one has ever believed that she died at all. We both lived in a pretty stretchy part of town and everyone just assumed that she had run away. 

Like she would have abandoned her family like that. We were playing out the back of the run-down train station. A leftover from when people still used to come to our rinky-dink town, it was a very dangerous place for kids to play and we were all told never to play there.

So obviously that’s what we all did. 

We were playing hide and seek, the place was perfect for it. Loads of small hidey spaces, and an added frisson of danger (the ever-present risk of broken glass and other sundries). I was hiding and she was seeking, and we were joined by two other kids. 

I wasn’t particularly fond of those kids. There was nothing wrong with them, they just weren’t Fatima and I was always very jealous of her time. She was my first and best friend and I hated it when she split her attention to anyone else. 

She was very good about making sure that I was involved in games, even then I was a weird and standoffish person but I didn’t have the benefit of the wealth now. So I was a weirdo rather than being ‘eccentric’. The train station was a ramshackle place, along one side were the slowly disintegrating trains and their cars; I always liked picking over the old advertisements from back in the day. I have never seen a moon pie or brill cream in real life, but based on the advertisements they’re modern miracles. 

On the other side of the tracks were remnants of all the businesses which relied on the out of town foot traffic. Cafes, corner stores, a restaurant, which was at some point, wonderful. Over the years the station had become the town’s unofficial dump. It was all very discrete, piles of old clothes, kickbacks and other more salacious things were hidden under and inside every dark space. 

It was a wonderland. 

I was hidden under a bench in the stationmaster’s office. I remember it was winter when it happened. My breath kept fogging up my glasses, and my mum wanted me home before dark so I was worried when no-one came to find me. Some of the other kids had ditched me before, but not Fatima. Even if she got bored with the game, she’d always call out and let me know. 

I was cold, and alone and scared and I didn’t like it. And Fatima didn’t come.

Eventually, I squeezed myself out of that crawl space and looked for her. It was getting dark, there were long shadows snaking their way across the sides of the station. I called out but no-one answered, it felt like I was completely alone in the world.

I thought I was afraid before, but that was nothing compared to how I felt now. I tried calling out again, but my voice froze in my throat. It felt like something was in the dark with me, watching me. I wanted to run away and hide in my bed, but Fatima was still out there somewhere. 

I made my way through the station, I tried not to make any noise. I was terrified of being found. The sun was setting as I crept around what felt like my tomb. I couldn’t see Fatima or any of the other kids anywhere, I couldn’t hear anything other than my own ragged breathing. 

Then, somewhere in the depths of the station I heard a small cry. A whimper like a dog had been kicked or a child crying. I hastened my steps, still trying to be as silent as possible. 

I couldn’t see much at first, just the vague outline of a tall figure dressed in black. Whenever I tell this story people always think I’m making a Slenderman reference, never mind the fact that all of this happened years before the internet. 

It seemed to take up half of the room. A huge, sinuous creature looming over my best friend. She was crying, I had never seen Fatima cry even when her brother died she kept it all together, she was stoic, strong. 

It felt wrong seeing her cry. It made me so mad that this thing made her cry. I don’t know what overcame me, I screamed. I think I startled the thing. 

It screamed at me. At least I think it did, I’ve never heard such a sound before or since. I panicked and closed my eyes and held my breath. When I opened them again, it was gone and so was Fatima.

I don’t remember much more of that night, eventually my parents came and fetched me. Apparently I was shaking and crying. It took hours for them to get the story out of me and when they did they didn’t believe me. 

After that terrible night came years of therapy, they said I had ongoing mental health issues. It’s only been after the unfortunate death of my parents that I’ve been able to investigate any of this.

I know it sounds crazy, but I promise you I’ll find what happened to Fatima or I’ll die trying. So what do you say? Are you with me