I left the house without a thought, something propelling me forward. I had to go. That noise. I needed to get to it.
I turned right, the florist and newsagent opposite dark, the streetlamps glowing orange. My breathing was loud in my ears.
A scream. A scream that made my whole body jerk, hairs bristling on my flesh.
Oh my God. I ran.
Flecks of sleet clung to my face and hair as I skidded on icy ground in my boots, speeding toward the sound, eyes straining in the dark. A voice. Someone called something. A bark, nearby. Gus. I knew I was close, felt an icy shiver drip down my neck as I turned right into a side street. Something up ahead that seemed all wrong.
I saw the strange angle of the headlights first, the car bent and steaming, buried in the side of another parked car, Gus barking, circling something large on the ground in the middle of the road. No. No. No. No.
The glass crunched underneath me as I approached, my steps slower now. There were two figures on the pavement bent over someone sat on the ground near the crumpled car: neither of them Dan. “The ambulance is on its way. It’s OK, stay there, it’s OK.”
A terrible keening noise from the person on the ground between them, high, animal. It made my flesh bristle.
I didn’t want to keep walking forward but my body seemed unable to stop.
Past the distorted brightness of the headlights, the car’s windscreen filled with the whites of an airbag. There was something familiar about it all, as if I’d dreamed it, and yet everything felt totally alien. Across the street a curtain was pulled aside, an orange triangle appearing, a face peering out: an audience as I approached the shape in the middle of the road, Gus still now, staring at it too.
I stopped ten feet away.
Had I known when I first heard that noise? My entire world slowed in the seconds that I saw the shape—the shape of Dan lying twisted on the ground.
“Oh my God, oh my God.” My hands covered my mouth.
Dan was lying diagonally across the white line in the middle of the road.
“Dan?”
His head was bent to one side, eyes open and staring unseeingly at Gus who was sat on his back legs, head tilted to the side as if he too expected him to stand up.
“Dan, get up. You’re scaring me.”
His right leg was bent at an impossible angle, the foot bare. He must have been so desperate to get out of the house he hadn’t even put on socks. His shoe was nowhere to be seen. His foot must be freezing, the road glistening with ice. A noise emerged from my throat, and my hands moved around my neck, squeezing. Something sticky and dark pooled around his head. Something glinted nearby. His hated reading glasses, upside-down but perfect on the road.
This wasn’t happening. Not to Dan. He’d just been in our kitchen. We’d had dinner. I blinked, his disappointed face swirling in front of me. The dejection in his eyes.
“Dan?”
Gus inched over to his body and nudged him gently with his nose. In that second I knew he’d get up. He’d place a hand on his head. He’d walk home with us. I’d say sorry—I’d say I was so fucking sorry. That it was all my fault, that I should never have rounded on him. I’d shouted at him, oh my God I’d forced him out of that house. He’d have been upset, not looking . . .
Gus nudged him another time. Nothing.
“Please, Dan, for God’s sake, get up.”
I covered my mouth again, choked sounds escaping from me.
Behind Gus, a disembodied voice. “Are you all right? Do you know him?”
I couldn’t do anything but stare at Dan, will him to move, to stop this.
“Dan. Get up. Get up and come home with us. Don’t stay out, it’s freezing.”
Gus bent over him; breathing on his master, a little whimper emerging as if he realized he couldn’t bring him back either. I felt ice drip down my spine. Then Gus threw back his head and howled and something broke inside me.
Dan was gone.