First Sighting

Nadia saw it first.

She and her brother Callum were walking home from school on a Tuesday in November, the kind of November afternoon that felt like evening from the moment it started, the sky low and grey-white and the streetlights already on even though it was only half past three.

They were on Orchard Road, two streets from home, when Nadia slowed down.

The street was quiet. Most people were still inside at this hour, not yet home from work. The bare November trees on either side made thin dark lines against the sky. A cat watched them from a garden wall and then looked away.

"What?" Callum said. He was thirteen, one year older, and had the permanently distracted air of someone composing a message in his head.

"There is someone at the end of the street," Nadia said.

Callum looked up. At the far end of Orchard Road, where it met the junction with Beeches Lane, there was a figure. Standing very still. Facing them.

"So?" Callum said. "People stand at ends of streets."

"They were there when we turned onto the road," Nadia said. "I noticed because I looked both ways before we crossed. And they have not moved."

Callum looked at the figure. It was too far away to make out any detail. Just a shape. Dark coat, or dark clothes, standing at the junction in the grey afternoon light.

"They are probably waiting for someone," he said.

"Okay," Nadia said. She kept walking. Callum kept walking. The figure at the end of the street did not move.

They reached the junction. They turned left onto Beeches Lane.

Nadia looked back. The figure was gone.

"See," Callum said, not looking back. "They went the other way."

Nadia said nothing. She had been looking at the end of Orchard Road the entire time they walked down it, all the way to the junction. She had not seen the figure move at any point. She had not seen it look away. She had not seen it do anything at all except be there and then not be there.

She had not seen them go anywhere. They had simply been there, and then not been there, and the street behind them was empty in a way that felt different from ordinary empty.

She walked the rest of the way home quickly, slightly closer to Callum than usual, and did not say anything more about it.

But at dinner she ate without tasting anything and afterwards she stood at the living room window looking out at the street for a long time before Callum told her to come and watch something on television and she made herself turn away.