The road stretches before me in the blackness of night, lazy pools of water reflecting silver in the glare of the moon, a low-lying cloud masks the Yorkshire Dales in my windscreen as I peer through the glass trying to understand the amber lights flashing way in the distance like a metronome. Must be a breakdown I reckon, or a farmer parked at the roadside distributing feed from the back of a pickup. I don’t know, but it doesn’t worry me, I’ve seen it a million times before on these scant tracks, as anything can happen in the daily life of the Dales. I slow ready to wave a cheery hello to some neighbour I might know, then I see debris strewn across the tarmac – lots of it – scattered for a hundred yards like a skip full of scrap metal that’s been jettisoned. There’s plastic and glass scattered like confetti, an engine waits nonchalantly on the grass verge steaming. A wreck of a people carrier stares me in the face, crumpled and collapsed, severely embedded into the dry-stone wall.

I drive on because it’s not my business, so why should I stop – I’m sure they’ll be okay? You see if I stop I might discover something my pathetic human nature can’t deal with, understand if you will the fear I have in my cold heart – to look upon a grimness of twisted and drained flesh, some mutilation, maybe a horror beyond comprehension and approach – a small child. But I don’t care because I’ll never stop to see inside that truck and nobody will know or see me run. It’s so desolate out here, this road is just a slim layer of tarmac beyond a farm track, no regular traffic but tractors and Land Rover Defenders. So, in real terms this tragedy and me are all alone in a wilderness, but you see I’m lost in a sea of self-preservation, of pitiful preclusion of basic effort because I can’t deal with this, there’s no bottle in my constitution and because I hold my own destiny in guiltless hands I can walk away from this thing completely scot free. As a useless hunk of man, full of pathetic excuses why I can’t stop and give hope and help whilst the real rescue party arrives, then it’s only my problem, nothing for anyone else to consider or complain about except my own conscience. I hate myself, detest my very soul and the unnecessary rationale creeping through the bone in my head – I can’t explain what I’m thinking as the amber lights grow dim in my rear-view mirror, but I have to drive on, flee the scene like a scared bird, it’s the only option that will remedy the situation and let me off the hook. Can’t you see how it all makes sense, this self-preservation, the simple fact that I can’t get my hands dirty with some-one else’s mess. Not to linger on my proposal, because in a few minutes or an hour or two it will be a problem for another party, when the person/people in the car don’t turn up at home or don’t ring the parents they have left to say they have arrived home safely. They’ll send out a search party or get the police involved to retrace the route they had in mind and then what will they find – grim death and why? Because some pathetic asshole couldn’t bring himself to stop and assist in keeping the injured alive. My god, in the cold dark hours of night what am I – a monster, a behemoth of a monster, a mammoth of a monster complete with tusks and woolly back selfish bastard? I’m almost ashamed to write this and put the details out into the public domain because I know the reader (should there be one) will hate me to the core and wish upon me the same fate I left to the people in the wrecked car and you’d be right to threaten that consequence on me. Believe me when I say I hate myself more than you do, but that wouldn’t stand up in my own personal court.

When I hit the brakes the car falters on the greasy wet road and slithers to a sideways halt. I ram it into reverse, wheels screaming, it’s an uncontrollable reaction like suddenly believing in God. This is my epiphany, a brilliant dose of reality that’s Instinctive and bares no clarity to my innermost conscience. Now I care about life and death, a sudden change from seconds ago when I didn’t care, now I do – what’s going on?

There is no door for me to pull open, it lies imbedded in the wall, there is only one person in the wreck, a woman by the mass of blonde hair. She’s tangled in the windscreen, moaning softly, blood drips across the dashboard from a heavy gash across her wrist. It looks messy, the flow comes in spurts every second or so, I feel sick and instinct tells me to apply a tourniquet to stop the blood loss. The emergency services answer my call in a moment.

“What service do you require? The lady at the other end of the line ask.

I try and stay cool and calm, “Ambulance, there’s a road accident, with a woman that’s hurt. No other passengers I believe?”

“Is there a danger to life sir? And where are you that we can get the service there as quickly as possible?”

“She’s not in a good way I reckon, there’s a lot of blood – it looks bad. I’m about three miles outside Hadford on the top road to Lockton Spile.”

“Thank you, we’re on our way. Can you wait there with the lady, should be about ten minutes before we get the vehicle to you. Can you assist the injured person, if you brief me on what you see I can provide first aid for you to administer sir? Is that okay, can you do that?”

I can’t answer as I’m frozen in panic, no lips to speak, no voice I can control.

“Sir?”

Nothing. Silence is all I have.

“SIR! Are you there?

The phone shatters as it hits the tarmac and splinters to pieces as I crush it with my foot. I throw it into the nearest field and jump back into the car. As I look back I think I see the woman in the car move her head and raise an arm in salute of my cowardice as the car gains speed running from the scene of something desperate and a woman in heightened peril. How could I just turn and run, a life in danger, hanging in the balance waiting for strangers to comfort and repair a body broken and damaged. I almost wish I could change places, put myself in that smashed car and let the woman escape. Almost I said – but I never meant it – did I?

The next few days run slowly, I go to work and return at night to an empty house full of difficulty and emptiness. I worry, reliving the night a few days earlier and try and erase it from my thoughts, but it hurts, my conscience won’t let me sleep, it constantly rubs the inside of my head. There is no news in the press or on the internet, but analysis of the drama tells me it couldn’t end with any degree of happiness. How could it, everything was truly smashed and broken. Sleep is misplaced and distant, like it should be attained easily after strenuous hours, but it remains untouchable like an image in a dream I cannot recall after waking. I’m sinking into a pit of stress and despair, lack of sleep and worry sap me, I’m erratic, introvert and edgy like a bomb with the timer ticking down quickly.

The curtains hold back the light, the clock glows in its own space on the bedside cabinet, it’s 9.46 am and I’m late for work, so there’s no reason to go now – I can’t be bothered, but who cares anyway, it’s a dead end deal I don’t need.

She taps me on the shoulder. “You awake yet?” The feminine voice asks.

“Well yeh, I think?” It’s a desperate mumble dragged from the bowels of a half sleep. There’s a woman stretched out on top of the covers, lounging in normal day wear as if she’s been there hours. I don’t recall a one-night stand, but it wouldn’t be the first time I found a strange woman in my bed, but of late I have vivid dreams about waking from sleep, but the dream remains – false awakenings – it causes me worry as its unnatural, maybe it’s the onset of a brain tumour? Is that causing me to be erratic and awkward?

“You remember me?” she asks.

“Nay, sorry luv, which bar did I pick you up in last night?” I say rubbing sleep from my bleary tired eyes.

“Cast your mind back a few days to a dark murky night, not to a bar but a slippery road?”

She notes the puzzled look I have, but deep inside I struggle to hold back the certainty of recognition as it emerges like a fledgling escaping a nest wedged high up in the branches of an oak tree. The look I have turns to fright then horror, as the truth grips me. I touch her arm, it’s real, not a hologram, or an empty dream. I really am awake – fully drawn into the land of the living – this is my nightmare reality.

“What do you want?” I speak slowly, my hands are shaking, once again the words don’t come easily.

“Just to speak, open-up some dialogue about what happened that night, that’s all.” It drips out of her mouth deliberately like treacle, but I know there’s more to come, so I wait for the punch line.

“Well its history, so what can I tell you . . . “ The words are cracked and uneven, there’s a golf ball in my throat trying to choke the life out of me and I cough the last of the words free “ . . . like you don’t know?”

She hesitates and there’s the glimmer of a wry smile hiding behind the blank mask. “Why you murdered me, of course!”

“Don’t you think my guilt is reason enough without you coming to rest on my bed?” I say embarrassed, not wanting to look directly into the eyes of this woman.

“Don’t hoist that responsibility on me, I don’t care. You have to reconcile your own emotions to your failings.” She says coldly. “It’s an explanation of your callous selfishness, your cowardice, the point you decided I would die that puts me in your house and in your mind.”

“I called the ambulance, they were minutes away from you, so I saved you. I could have just turned a blind eye to your problem and driven away and then felt nothing but pity. Don’t you think I paid the price for my endeavours, worrying I should have done more, but no I did my duty, so there is no blame you can hang on my conscience.” The words spray out like a rant, my pride is badly hurt, and this is retaliation.

“The ambulance came late, it received another call to a baby who’d fallen down some stairs, I was deemed collateral damage in the face of an injured child. When it finally arrived, I was already dead. A simple tourniquet would have stemmed the blood and saved my life, but you knew that yet chose to leave with no thought or kindness or consideration for the safety of a fellow man. So why was that, why did you make that choice, did I not have a right to survive also. No – well you betrayed the whole of humanity and with that comes a cost?”

“What cost?” I ask with dread, fearing the appearance of the Devil or another less malevolent spirit bent on tearing me limb from limb because of simple human failings.

“Redemption, remorse, a desire to make amends.” She adds.

“And if I say it’s not my problem and you can go back to hell from where you came – what then?” I state arrogantly.

“Then I stay here and stick with you night and day, right until the point you pass over to the other side. Nobody sees me, only you, when you kiss your girlfriend, have sex, I’ll be there in the bed with you, watching, giving my commentary. At breakfast, in the toilet, at work, in your dreams driving you slowly insane till you make that choice that rids you of me.”

“Which is what, how do I clear the decks with you and get some peace?” I say jumping in quickly, tired of her endless whining chatter.

“When you take your own life, of course. That’s how it always ends. You know that don’t you – right?” She says quietly.

“Spiritual blackmail, well that’s a new game to me.” I grunt in agitation.

“It’s no game, my cowardly friend, it’s all about right and wrong.” I look puzzled, she notes the expression on my face. “You wronged, so now it has to be righted. That’s the rule of humanity on both sides of the line.”

“The line?” I ask, moving out of bed making sure I’m fully dressed before my feet touch the floor. I’m safe, pants intact, brain in tatters and on the edge of throwing me into an abyss of blackened desperation. “What line for God’s sake?” I splutter.

“The line between heaven and hell where nothing matters, where spirits are invisible, where there is no sense or sensibility – a no man’s land of forbidden passage.”

The curtains are brown with multicoloured butterfly’s embossed on heavy material, they slide easily on the pole. The sun is bright, the sky almost clear in the morning light. I sigh thinking it’s just another false awakening and I’ll open my eyes and find there is no dead woman on the bed and it’s raining and thundering and the world has revolved right back to its original starting point, but I test it first. “So where do we go from here – if I agree to your suggestion?” When I turn nothing has changed, there she lies stretched out like an unused sleeping partner.

“Take a life, give a life,” she says, like it’s a mantra and then again very slowly like I didn’t hear the first time. “Take a life . . . give a life!”

“What the hell does that mean, are we playing a game of riddles now, because I’m not exactly in the mood for that shit lady nor do I really care anymore?”

“Well okay then, all I ask,” she says with little expression or sympathy, “is that you think it over a while. You’ve only got the rest of your lonely pathetic life to give it some thought?”

The days roll by, life returns to normal, except I have a new lodger that refuses to leave. We wake in the morning, go to work and come home, occasionally we go out to the pub or the cinema to watch a new movie. Nothing much changes, I learn her name – Jane, she lived locally to where she died, and her husband is devastated by his loss. It doesn’t help with my guilt, if I wasn’t so selfish and arrogant about having done any wrong then no doubt I would have plunged into the darkest depths of despair – thank god, she had no children, that would have slayed me, but the whole guilt trip seems to wane and diminish over time. Still my new friend sticks to me like she’s attached by a cord, she watches TV with me on the sofa, appears at the top of the stairs like a guest at a surprise birthday party and invades the most intimate of events, crushes me in the shower when I least expect it, laughing at my nervous genitalia like a school girl seeing a naked man for the first time. My girlfriend suspected I had found someone else, so I had to let her go and it almost destroyed me as she was gorgeous and fantastic in everyway that I don’t want to describe in this narrative. I was so lucky, a complete bastard some of my mates said when they eyeballed her and asked what I was paying her, like she was some escort or prostitute. I said where the girls were concerned I had a big secret that they all loved. I told them to watch “The Full Monty” as that might give them a clue to my endless appeal. Not one of them understood, I’m not that bright, so they must be particularly dim. Not to worry, the days of a girlfriend are behind me while I decide on the fate of Jane, I can’t afford the embarrassment, she might do something mad and kill the moment – if you understand?

I get used to Jane being around, we don’t talk much, it’s just like having the sister I never had. There’s limited discussion most evenings, not politics, I couldn’t care less about that, I know poverties on the increase and children are getting fat and the governments shit and has no interest in the trials of the working man, and benefit fraud and violent crime is going through the roof, but what on earth has that got to do with me – I can’t make it right? Sometimes she gets angry and rises onto her pedestal when the feeling fires her up chuntering and wittering about my remorse, that I have no compunction to forgive my sins and the Lord will find his own way to get payment in full. “Take a life . . . give a life,” she says to me all the time and by the second month I’ve heard it a million times and try and scrub in from my mind and ears, but It’s there like a worm burying itself deep into my flimsy subconscious. I get to the point where I can’t stand it anymore and shout and ball at her to ‘shut up’ and just want to kill her, but that’s out of the question. Go back and see your husband I say, is he okay, maybe he needs help and support. It’s not in her remit to help the innocent, I’m her only task and she must see it through and get a result, it’s been ordained by top men in the other world that I can’t see. She reminds me of Clarence in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ I know the film it’s a favourite of mine, the counter play between the duty of George Bailey to the towns folk of Bedford Falls and the love he holds for his wife and family and how the persistence of Clarence the Angel wins his wings. A tear jerker if there ever was one, it has me in floods of tears on every viewing, maybe I have a heart after all – but that’s just a film, make believe, a made-up story – I’m living real life and how’s that going to get me emotional, most of the time it’s crap and we just exist in an endless wheel of daily grind and establishment bureaucracy and personal fear.

There seems to be no way Jane is getting ready to leave, she follows me with her tether intact, I’m beginning to tire of the constant companionship, her enduring personality grates on my nerves and I think there is a panic attack ever present if I cannot find a way to lose her. “Take a life . . . give a life,” what does it mean, Jane’s answer is always vague, I can’t get to the bottom of understanding the context of the message and then when I really push her she says ‘it’s for me to work out and if my mental capacity is so limited then I have small scope for forgiveness – and my days are truly numbered on this planet.’ I’m confused and emotionally on the brink and gotta rid myself of Jane before I go mad.

The next weekend I visit my parents and obviously Jane comes along for the ride as she always does, there is a dedicated reluctance to leave me to my own devices at any time. That would be an unequivocal failing to let up on her relentless quest to push me along the road to insanity and acquiesce her wishes. For me to fail would be her greatest success and earn her metaphorical angel wings, but I’m beyond compliance now and will not be beat by some forlorn manifestation of a world I care to stay clear of and consequently I remain silent most of the way there. It’s a short journey but when I look at Jane I’m filled with a hatred and rage I can’t explain or control, I’ve come to hate everything she stands for. What that is I don’t know, maybe it’s a perception I created around my own consciousness, but what do I expect, for it’s my problem, my calamity and helpless inevitability that brought this to a head and caused the curse to be laid upon me after her death – the demise I apparently caused – well in her reasoning alone.

We have fun, my parents and I that day and dine out early evening at a local bistro. They are modern for old folks and there is a friendship between us that’s not common with relatives of their generation. Goodbyes are never easy at any time, I see tears well up in my mother’s eyes, she can’t bear to see me leave, like it’s been the last supper and we’ll never meet again only in another life. We struggle to meet emotionally, she’s never been tactile or demonstrative, to my loss I’ve got the same gene in my system that tends to make me cold in public till you get to know me, but as the reader you’ll have gathered that note already. Jane stays in close range goading me endlessly, even in the company of others, strangers or friends and relatives it matters not, the pressure is always there that I question my faults, parade my flaws in public almost as if she can manipulate my thoughts and my mouth. I end up saying words and sentences I shouldn’t, it’s occasionally embarrassing as strangers look across a room or view me in close proximity – apparently pitying a man with Tourette syndrome, tutting like I have an incurable mental disorder.

As bizarre as life seems, the extraordinary becomes routine and Jane’s presence neither hinders nor restricts what I do or become, I just detest the personality of a persistent ghost. Driving home, the sun is sinking quickly producing a rich red haze over the horizon, it is a beautiful sight to behold in the mid-summer month of July, no rain for weeks and a drought in the making – don’t tell me there will be a hosepipe ban and water shortage soon, that’s all I need?

We take a detour down single-track roads where I hope to God I don’t meet other vehicles, Jane is shown the scenic route as time is on our side and I decide not to rush, I see from her expression it is a joy to her, so might as well continue to take in the sights and maybe stop at a country pub for a cheeky pint before the evening is done? The satnav system is a good guide, but the roads are new to me, all hedges and brooks with broken bridges and derelict barns meant to house animals in severe weather, then from nowhere a single-track railway emerges from a leafy glade and begins to run parallel to the little used road. Even in the vague evening light the scene is gorgeous, it could almost be a film set it looks so perfect, even the colours blend like the choices in a Picasso or Renoir. Up a head the tiny road passes over the rail tracks, there is an automated crossing, but the barriers are up so the way is clear and safe, but in the shade is a car, a big BMW by the design and shape and it’s stationary in the centre of the crossing. I move towards it slowly, there is anxiety on Jane’s face, she makes some worried comment I don’t hear in the wake of my concentration and I feel there is trouble in the air. A strange emotion that I can only describe as déjà vu washes over me, an electricity coursing up and down my nerve endings sets my phycological register to the dread position and I bring the car to a halt and slowly open the door and climb out. I mouth to Jane to wait inside while I have a look around like she’s a real human capable of feeling violence and disorder at the wrath of another.

Inside is a woman, a female who’s alone and then I see the child, maybe eight or nine years old sat quietly in the back playing a colourful game without thought on a tablet.

“What are you doing?” I ask the stranger in the driver’s seat.

She looks away almost ashamed to catch my eyes. “Waiting.” She says creepily.

“What for, you can’t just park your car in the centre of the tracks.” I argue.

“I’m okay, no need to worry about me.” Looking at the puffy red eyes I conceive the lady is upset, the scratches and cuts on her cheek reflect another matter, but I choose not to pursue that series of questions – it’s not my business?

Something is very odd; body language is skewed, and the injuries concern me. “You meeting someone, because if you are, this is not a good place to park?”

“Not exactly,” she says turning to face me properly, “just the train. It’s due in a minute.” Almost immediately the crossing alarm sounds, lights begin to flash, and the barriers begin to fall, and I’m stuck with a woman and child on a railway line where a train is cruising towards us at high speed. No wonder I was apprehensive – doom washes over me like an unexpected shower – a hundred-ton projectile is steaming down a track, unable to stop – smashing into fragile souls – mashing steel and flesh into a bloody cocktail of mist and particles. Senses begin to panic, stomach wants to drop out of my pants and suddenly I need to find the toilet, I know this feeling well, another nervous emotion inherited from my mother – it’s called being terrified and there is no known cure.

“You’ll die and the child too – is that what you want?” I shout looking up the line in search of lights, so far there is nothing to worry about.

She looks back at the child in admiration and then to me with dread in her eyes. “Yeh,” she says nonchalantly, and I see by the cold dead look in the back of her mind that it’s said with a sublime honesty. “I really don’t care, the train can take us, I have nothing to thank this world for. It’s made me redundant to its needs.” She looks back at the child. “You okay sweetie?” There is no answer from the child, it only has eyes for the game and the endlessly annoying music coming out of the tablet’s speaker. The train sees us and sounds its horn in anger, it must be a couple of miles back down the long straight track, but it sees us, and I see its lights shining in the dusky haze of the damp evening. It must stop, there is more than enough time and space to pull that metal monster to a halt. I wait for the squeal of the applied brakes, there is no knowledgeable sound, no screech of metal upon metal, no sparks, stress or tension upon the tracks – the locomotive is running under full power, I see the lights bright on the landscape and hear the horn blaring its disturbing message and then I know it’s not going to stop. We will all be dead in a couple of minutes!

The panic jolts me into action, for a moment I forget about Jane stranded in the car, then she’s at my side questioning my motives as I’m pulling on the car’s rear door handle, rattling the fitting with all my might, there is no movement, the lock is firmly in place.

“What’s going on?” she asks.

As I see the lights slowly closing in and the sounding of the horn gets louder and louder I’m aware my time on earth has a worth of seconds and no more. “This woman wants to die, but I’ll be damned if she’s taking the child with her to hell. If it’s the last thing I do Jane, I’m getting this youngster outta there! Open the godamn door lady, or I’m putting the window through.” The roar of my voice could shake coconuts from a tree. “You want your child to be killed this way?” I ask sympathetically, hoping she’ll see sense and release the lock.

“She’s not my child!” Her stilted voice grates like fingernails on a blackboard, and as she glances across at me I recognise the evil grimace on her pretty face and I freeze in horror at the abstract suggestion that I can’t recall if I believe. Jane grabs my attention, ‘what’ she mouths in puzzled fascination and I raise my shoulders to say, ‘I don’t understand.’ In my grasp I find a lump of steel, its old and rust but sharp, the side window collapses with one blow – the girl screams, the tablet drops to the floor and she looks at me like I’m an alien from a far away planet, and there are tiny droplets of blood on her face as the small shards of glass fall from her flesh, chip by chip.

“We’re getting you out girl,” I reach across and unbuckle the seat belt, the woman up front, my nemesis is going crazy, screaming and growling like a demon unlashed, but this child is mine, no doubt, no fear, even if I am battling the Devil himself for my own soul I’m taking her out. She is light and lifts from the child seat with ease, there are tears welling, cascading down her cheeks, but no cries of sorrow or loss. I glance through the rear window, that train with its lights blazing and horn raging its symphony of death is almost upon us. The child’s feet touch the tracks, she is out of the vehicle, out of danger and harms way and somehow by mysterious magic Jane teases her to a place of safety. I am stuck, the flesh of my stomach caught and ripped by the broken shards of the window. There is no room for manoeuvre, I’m half in and half out of that terminal car and without cutting myself apart, those splinters hold me solid. I feel the grip of death clutch the membrane of my internal organs, there is no future, all ends here on this god-awful crossing at the hands of my own stupidity. Take the scenic route, my brain told me, well that was only half the story, if only I had a crystal ball or a method to detect the future, then I’d have been far away by now, not giving this tragic scene one nano-second of thought. What fool I am, what an arrogant self-centered idiot I have become. Is it too late to hate myself, to ask forgiveness for the remorse I never gave credit to or felt the need to use? No – so I close my eyes, prayer is futile I know but it’s always worth a shot ever in the most dire of moments, and as I wait out the last few seconds of life the pain from the shackles that grip me like a vice is too intense to describe and then impact . . .

Through the curtain shines the golden glow of the first light of morning, it’s going to be a perfect day. In the bedroom Jane is to my right, we relax on the bed in the warmth of our own intimacy, happy and content as life passes us by on the advent of another glorious day. Talk seems futile and pointless, what more can we say that’s not already been said in silence.

“He could have stopped?” I say putting into words a question that floats on a gentle breeze through my head. “There’s no doubt, not a single scrap of uncertainty,” I repeat looking at Jane as I put my hand on her knee. “There was plenty of time to make the train stop?”

“But are you really sure?” She says.

“Jane, I’ve never been surer of anything in my life.”

She looks at me in absolute admiration with a smile as sweet as honey. “Take a life . . . give a life my darling – you know the rules. You better wake him up then?”

“Sure,” I say, as I kiss her lovingly on the cheek and give her knee a gentle squeeze. To my left is a sleeping man, alone and happily contained by the heat of a summer duvet, breathing heavily with not a care in the world dreaming of being untouchable, drifting through a cloudless sky of perpetual pleasure. Heaven is a non-existent thought, hell is a place unknown for a man who has done no wrong, where remorse and guilt are pure contamination of spirit.

“You awake yet?” I murmur touching his exposed shoulder. “You could have stopped, should have stopped, but instead you murdered me!”