No Ghost, No Haunting - Just a Thread of Panic

This might be a ghost story, but there is no haunting, and certainly no ghost.
I didn't realise I was unnerved until today.

The weekend had been a melancholy affair; Saturday's light sadness had, by Sunday afternoon, turned into something heavier - a rain shower rather than drizzle. The weather outside did not reflect my internal mood so I went for a walk at about a quarter to nine.
It was still light, still slightly sunny - there may have been something dusky about the sky - there was certainly something autumnal about it. OctobralI would have said, which is of course, not a word, but describes that sky more than words that do exist. White clouds, breeze-pulled into faces against a pale blue sky. Silent air - no sound of anyone as I left the Mews and headed up toward Portland Road.
I had gone for a similar walk last Sunday - at about exactly the same time - and I listened to the same album as I had then too, Storm Corrosion's debut.
On the walk last week I had ended up walking past the cemetery on the Old Shoreham Road just before sunset. I remembered a pleasing dream-like serenity, an unreal kind of peace.
I was eager to see if the place had that same effect on me again, so I walked down Portland Road, nearly to Portslade, then took that odd curve of a road up (passing by the building that looks like some old radio transmitter station) onto the Old Shoreham Road. I then doubled back on myself so I was heading toward Hove Station again.
There is something about walking past a churchyard at twilight - nothing sinister - or even ghostly, but something dream-like. Particularly in late midsummer days such as this. It was still light - though beginning, a little, to fade, and I slowed my walk, watching the tombs, the bushes, the spires, the quiet line of trees against the far edge of the graveyard.
Like I said, I didn't realise I was unnerved until today, but the quietness of the Old Shoreham Road began to bother me, and I started to feel strangely exposed. Not exactly watched, but vulnerable and aware. The road didn't feel safe.
As I left the cemetery behind me, I quickened my pace. Houses and the edges of industrial estates. Sudden laughter - no - or was it seagull cries? The laughter increased. It was an unpleasant laughter, mob-laughter. No. It was the sound of seagulls squalling. I couldn't tell. Movement ahead unnerved me. Were those figures in the kind-of-distance laughing? I felt in some kind of unspecified danger, began to look at other roads I could take. There were none except those which would lead into the Sunday quiet of the industrial estates.
I turned off my music.
The laughter was a sound effect on the Storm Corrosion album I hadn't noticed before.
Instead of setting my mind at rest, this set me even more on edge. There was something suddenly awful about the brightness, the unrealness, of the light. It was the kind of light you get in dreams that are about to turn nightmarish. A light heavy with an unwanted meaning, about to reveal something that should remain unwitnessed.
I was relieved when I got to the Shell Petrol Station, began to relax a little. I saw the long haired man who works there come out, look up and down the forecourt - checking for something. Probably to see if he could shut the garage down while he went for a piss. It seemed a long time since I worked there.
I turned right, took the bridge and walked past the bus garage. I was going to walk under the distant archway ahead of me down into Blatchington Road. A sudden flurry of movement. Teenage angles, gangly spider jab-moves. People walking past. I didn't like the way they were moving, something aggressive in the few seconds I saw them.
I began to feel oddly vulnerable and exposed again. Everything was normal; bus-men stood outside the garages, luminous vests and eyes hidden behind glasses, pot belly comfort, cups of tea and easy Sunday evening stances.
Prickling panic. Turn right and walk quick.
This proved to be an error if I thought that this route would ease my for-no-reason uneasiness. We had got to those last few seconds before the street lamps come on, those liminal minutes when the day-shadows deepen enough to drown in. A narrow pavement between some bus-garage building (do not smoke in front of these open windows) and a line of double decker buses. All the buses seemed dead. Blank windows watching dark interiors. Claustrophobic between diesel-metal and harsh brick wall. Walking quickly through cold shadow. Hurry, hurry, hurry.
Another man in front of me. Crosses the road, and stops on the pavement before me, ostensibly to talk on the phone, but I hear no voice, and we're in the middle of nowhere here. Sudden thoughts of murderers in this suddenly lonely industrial estate bus garage nowhere.
I turn left quickly, cross the road, come finally to Sackville Road, cross Portland Road and then into those streets that lead here. I am relieved to be home, but I do not quite realise how unnerved I am until today.

I'm not sure when I realised how spooked out I had been on my walk last night - I think it may have been lunchtime, as I bought old comics to try to shift this melancholy that has settled over me. I felt suddenly followed, and I thought of the churchyard in that light just before dusk, that watchful serenity, and all those ghosts of midsummer; sirens rising from lakes, distant songs beautiful and sinister, full of verses leading to people vanishing. Pan-flutes in woods, the hushed hiss of night-breeze through full trees.
Despite all this, the sense of threat I felt last night, wasn't paranormal. I felt in stead as if I had wondered into some region where crime might happen. A sudden flare-up of street violence, a mugging, an assault.
Name calling. Nasty stares.
That feeling hasn't entirely gone. Maybe just beginning to fade into Monday's twilight. I can't help it, but I think of next Sunday, of going back to the Old Shoreham Road again, just before sunset.
See what waits for me this time.
Summer is haunted. I don't care what anyone says. Summer is so haunted.