Beyond Here Lies Nothing

CHAPTER TEN

ROYLE WAS MAKING a coffee when the call came in.

His office at the Far Grove police station was small and cramped, filled with loose files and notebooks, but the one thing he could not do without was a decent coffee machine. He didn’t let anyone touch his machine — his machine; it was his personal property and he made sure everyone knew it — and often found himself the butt of station jokes because of his possessive attitude towards the appliance.

But Royle didn’t care. He liked his coffee, and that was all. He needed it to get through the day, and a few cups of Nescafe just wouldn’t cut it. His coffee had to be freshly ground, freeze-packed, and preferably from deepest Columbia.

He answered the phone, glancing at the machine as it dripped evil-looking black fluid from the filter into the misted glass jug. His mouth was watering. “This is DS Royle speaking. Can I help you?”

“Sir, it’s Sergeant Barnes here. We’ve had one of those calls.”

Royle focused completely on Barnes’ voice. “Okay, I’m all ears. Tell me what you’ve got.” It might be something; it was probably nothing. They usually turned out to be nothing.

“Mrs Millstone. She rang in five minutes ago. I’m not quite sure what the problem is, but she was scared. Upset. Something about a scarecrow… that’s all I managed to get out of her, I’m sorry. She wasn’t making much sense. She asked for you by name. Demanded I get you, actually.”

Royle thanked Barnes and hung up the phone. His coffee would have to wait. He was needed elsewhere. He rubbed at his cheek with his hand and felt the stubble rasping against his fingertips. He was tired, strung out, and needed some rest. The coffee was no longer enough. He was craving whisky. This was a first; he usually suffered these cravings later in the day, when he was weary and irritated. It was way too early to want a drink.

But there was a reason for his response: it had been one of those calls… that’s what everyone called them, on the rare occasions that they came in. One of those calls.

Basically, Royle had let it be known that he was to be informed if anyone with even the slightest connection with the Gone Away Girls case called in, no matter what the reason might be for the call. He realised that everyone on the force thought he was obsessed, and on his darker days he would agree with them. But this was both more and less than mere obsession. He’d promised each of the families that he wouldn’t rest until he found out what had happened to their girls, and he intended to make good on that promise.

He realised that this kind of honour was outdated, that it only ever seemed to feature in fiction — crime novels and Hollywood movies, stories about broken down cops trying to solve one last case before they retired. He also knew that it was a mistake to make such an impossible promise to a victim’s family. Yet still, it was what drove him. That promise — the fact that he’d made it in good faith and it had been accepted like some kind of lifeline — made it real. He wouldn’t stop until he found out what had happened to those girls. It simply was not in his nature to forget about them. Somebody needed to remember, to act as a witness, and the task had fallen to him.

Like a festering wound, the knowledge that they had been taken and nobody knew — or even cared — why or by whom burned inside him night and day.

He left the office and cut through the operations room, trying not to catch anyone’s eye. A few people nodded; one or two even said hello. Royle knew that he wasn’t well liked, and that he was only hanging on here because of his longevity and connections higher up the chain of command, but he didn’t really care. He’d stopped caring about things like friendship and career-building a long time ago. The only person who meant anything to him now refused to live with him, and that summed up how much of a mess he was in.

Outside, he climbed into his car. Reversing out of his space in the car park, he looked at his face in the rear-view mirror. His eyes were streaked with red; black smudges circled them. He looked like he hadn’t slept for weeks. In truth, he had not. The only time he ever managed to close his eyes and slip into unconsciousness was with the aid of alcohol. He was drink-dependent, maybe even an alcoholic, but the drink was what helped him at least get some form of rest. That was the real reason he was afraid to do something about the addiction: if he didn’t have the drink, he might never sleep again.

He drove north, through Far Grove and towards the Concrete Grove. His skin prickled with the Crawl as he crossed the invisible geographical border between the two districts, as if his blood were answering some strange call. He knew the sensation was psychological rather than physical, but still it didn’t mean it wasn’t real. This place, it had became a part of him. He knew that he could never leave, even if he wanted to.

The truth was he didn’t want to leave the Grove.

Vanessa had tried to convince him to apply for a transfer on several occasions, but he’d never taken her seriously. Even when she left him, six months pregnant and not really wanting to go, he had dug in his heels and told her that he would never turn his back on this place — these people, the parents and siblings of the Gone Away girls. Even a transfer to nearby Newcastle was out of the question. It was only a few miles south, but Royle felt that it was too far away from the locus of whatever strange things had been happening round here for years.

He’d never discussed his suspicions in public, but he knew that there was something deeply wrong with the fabric of the Grove. Too many bad things happened; there was a lot of darkness under the skin of the estate. Royle didn’t believe in ghosts, or magic, but he did believe that a place could be wrong. Some places attract darkness, and this was one of them. Some places are seething with the Crawl.

The Concrete Grove, Royle knew deep inside his heart, was a Bad Place.

He slowed as he drove along Grove End, past the old primary school. He watched as school kids laughed and played, remembering that those poor girls had once done the same, oblivious to the darkness that was coming for them. But nobody would ever hear their laughter again; their innocent games would forever go unseen.

He parked on Grove Crescent, outside the Millstones’ tiny two-bed semi-detached house. He didn’t get out of the car immediately. Instead he sat there for a few seconds, trying to centre his energy, to focus on what was important. He recalled the disturbance in the park the night before, and wondered what he’d almost seen there, moving through the bushes like a living embodiment of the sensation that he felt right now.

It had been yet another example of the badness that festered here, growing like a malignant tumour. He was certain of it; there was no doubt at all.

“Nothing,” he said. “It was nothing.” But he knew that he was lying to himself, just the way he lied to everyone. He could not speak aloud about his feelings, even to himself. Something was gestating here, and had been for a long time: something that wanted to be born.

He thought about Vanessa’s stomach and the life that was growing inside her. They didn’t know what she was having; Vanessa had wanted it to be a surprise. Royle was too scared to even imagine which gender the baby might be. He feared that if he thought too much about it, the baby might not come out right. It might be deformed. Or dead. What if the badness here had infected Vanessa, tainting the foetus? What if his seed had been bad, even before the baby was conceived?

What if the baby Crawled out instead of being pushed?

“Jesus…” He shook his head, closed his eyes. Why did he always have to be so dark? His thoughts were never optimistic. Perhaps that was the fault of the Grove, too. Vanessa had often said that the place — along with the job he did — had eaten away his insides, leaving behind an emptiness that he could never quite fill, no matter how hard he tried. Was she right? Was that what had happened to him? Were all of his strange thoughts about the estate nothing but the imaginings of a twisted mind, a brain attuned to darkness?

He got out of the car and approached the front gate. A figure was standing in the window, watching him. The curtain fell back into place and the figure glided away. Seconds later, the front door opened.

“Good day, DS Royle.” Tony Millstone was a ruined man. Before his daughter had vanished, he’d been something of a long-distance runner, competing in local road races and even in a few marathons. Now he was old, withered, and decrepit well before his time. He was only forty-seven but he looked at least a decade older. He dressed old, too, favouring dull, colourless cardigans and creased slacks over the jeans and colourful shirts he used to wear. His running shoes gathered dust in a cupboard somewhere, his dreams mothballed up with them.

“Tony.” Royle walked up the path and shook the man’s hand. His bones felt brittle, like bread sticks.

“Come inside. Margaret’s put the kettle on… she needed something to do with her hands.” He shrugged, smiled, and led the way inside.

It wasn’t just Tony Millstone who looked worse for wear. The house itself seemed stuck in a time warp; it hadn’t been decorated since Connie’s disappearance and judging by the dust in the corners and the cobwebs up near the ceiling, it was barely even kept clean anymore. Royle imagined that the inside of the Millstones’ hearts must also look like this: dry, empty, filled with dust and cobwebs and silence.

Margaret Millstone was standing in the kitchen doorway. She was wearing washed-out, shapeless jogging pants and a sweatshirt that had once fit her previously statuesque figure perfectly but now hung on her scrawny, malnourished body like an old potato sack. Her hair was thin and dirty, greying at the temples. She wore no makeup. Her eyes, he thought, were like piss-holes in the snow.

“Hello, Craig.” It was always first name terms with the mothers. The fathers all seemed to prefer to address him by his official title, as if that afforded them some distance from what had happened to bring him here. He’d often wondered why it worked that way and not the other way around, but had never been able to come up with a satisfactory answer.

“Hello, Mrs Millstone. I believe you called the station and asked for me.” He took the cup of tea she offered, sipped it and nodded his thanks.

“Of course I asked for you. You always say to ask for you if we ever need the police.” Her hands were shaking. “You’ve been good to us.” She did not smile. She didn’t even hold his gaze as she spoke.

“That’s right. Always ask for me. I’ll always drop anything else that I’m doing for you — you know that.” He took another small sip of the tea. It was stewed; the teabag had been left in the water far too long. “What is it? What’s the problem?”

She glanced at her husband. He nodded. “It’s probably best if we show you… here, come through. It’s outside, in the back garden.”

He followed her into the kitchen, gratefully setting down his cup on the table as he passed by. The kitchen was cold, the white goods old and battered. A few tiles had come off the wall near the door and not been replaced. The lino floor was peeling away from the concrete floor slab in one corner. There were crumbs all over the place, but at least it was proof that the Millstones were eating and not slowly starving themselves to death.

Mrs Millstone opened the back door and stepped outside, into the unkempt garden.

Royle followed her, looking up at the clearing sky. The day was unseasonably mild, the sunlight bright and surprisingly powerful now that the dark clouds had dispersed. He walked close behind her and when she stopped abruptly he almost collided with her.

“Sorry,” he said, resting the tips of his fingers at the base of her spine, but she hadn’t even noticed the contact.

“It’s over there.” She raised a hand and pointed. Her fingernails were bitten right down to the quick. The cracked cement path was flanked on either side by small, overgrown lawns, which were populated by broken stone gnomes. Connie had loved those gnomes: she had even painted them, but now the colours had faded.

To the left, there was just the length of timber fence that separated the Millstones’ property from the one next door; to the right, at the bottom of the garden and attached to the fence on that side, was a low garden shed. The roof was full of holes, the tarpaper covering was ripped. The weather had hammered at the wooden panel walls and the single glass window had been shattered and covered over with a black plastic bin bag. The bin bag was flapping slightly in a gentle breeze and distracting him, so at first Royle didn’t realise what he was meant to see.

Then he understood.

Peering around the edge of the shed there was a stocky figure. It was wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a black and red striped Dennis-the-Menace sweater. Royle took a step backwards, more surprised than afraid, and went instinctively into a fighting stance: fists raised, back leg taking his weight, shoulders hunched. Later, he’d be impressed by his presence of mind, but now he just stood there, wondering if there was going to be an attack.

“It was there when I came out here to hang up the washing. Just… just peeping round the corner like that, watching me. Creepy bloody thing…”

Royle lowered his hands and walked forward, closing the distance between him and the figure. The day’s warmth seemed to fade. The breeze became a little stronger, and colder.

It wasn’t a real figure, of course. It was some kind of bonfire guy… or, more accurately, a scarecrow, just like Barnes had said on the phone. He’d recognised within seconds that it wasn’t a living person, and yet still he’d readied himself for action. It was the face that had caused him such an extreme reaction. At first glance, it had looked real, like a person’s features staring at him… but now that he was drawing closer to the scarecrow, he could see that there was simply a photograph attached to its head.

The scarecrow’s jumper was torn in places, so the stuffing was hanging out. The torso was stuffed with what looked like old newspapers, bills and receipts, and even a few tattered old one pound notes — a monetary unit that was taken out of commission in 1984. This stout upper body was mounted on a stick that was as broad as a man’s calf, one end of which had been sunk deep into the earth to support the strange, jerrybuilt figure.

Royle stood before the scarecrow and examined it closely. The stick was in fact a tree branch. The bark had been stripped away to reveal the pale timber beneath, but the wood was untreated. He could still see the faint marks from whatever blade had been used to lay bare the natural wood grain.

He was trying not to look at the photograph that was plastered to the front of the scarecrow’s head until he’d calmed down, but still it drew his gaze.

The photograph was a portrait of little Connie Millstone, the daughter of the house and the first of the Gone Away Girls. But this was no ordinary photograph: it was old, faded, and sepia toned. Royle thought it looked stylised, like the Victorian death photographs he’d once seen in a book but never forgotten because they’d been so disturbing. But even worse than the still pose and the mordant tone of the shot, was the fact that Connie’s eyes were closed, and upon the lids someone — perhaps even the missing girl herself — had drawn in a thick black pen a crude representation of eyes.

Royle stared at the photograph.

It was a startling image.

His vision blurred; tears filled his eyes. For a moment he thought he might even faint.

He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and took a minute just to clear his head. He had to focus on what was in front of him and ignore any other references or connections his mind came up with. This was not a Victorian death study; it was a photograph of a missing little girl, perhaps the last one ever taken of her. In the photograph, Connie looked the same age she’d been when she went missing. So it wasn’t a recent shot; this had been taken at least five years ago.

He tried to remain calm. He owed the family his full attention. He owed them that, at least.

Was this some kind of sick joke, carried out by local kids on the anniversary of the girl’s disappearance? The idea was feasible, but to Royle it just didn’t feel right. There was more to this than what was immediately on show, some kind of reason hiding beneath the surface. Why would anyone go to the trouble of constructing the weird scarecrow and obscuring its face with the image of the missing girl? It didn’t make sense; it was overly complicated for some nasty practical joke.

But who else could it be? This family had no enemies. Quite the opposite, in fact; they were well liked, and most people in the area empathised with them for what had happened to their only daughter.

“Craig…” Mrs Millstone’s voice was still quite far behind him. She was afraid to come any closer. Maybe she expected the scarecrow to come to life and start hobbling along the path towards her?

“Just a minute…” He let out a long breath and stared at the image pasted over the scarecrow’s face. He committed the face to memory, even though it was already there, along with the rest of them, burned into his brain like a brand.

He turned around. “The photo… Is it one of yours?”

She shook her head. “I haven’t been too close, but I was close enough to know that I didn’t recognise it. Why would we have a photo with scribbles on her eyelids, anyway? It’s… it’s awful, like something out of a horror movie.”

“I’m sorry, but I had to check.”

She nodded. “Can we go inside now?” She turned away without waiting for an answer. “I’ll make another cup of tea.” Her voice was tiny, like that of a child. She was clinging to the everyday rituals of making tea, offering her guest refreshments, and in truth she was clinging to her sanity.

Royle followed Mrs Millstone along the uneven cement path, resisting the urge to look behind him to check if the scarecrow had moved.

He knew it hadn’t. That was silly. It would be impossible.

But still he couldn’t bring himself to look and see.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“OKAY, MARRA. JUST keep me posted. You know you’re always welcome back here.” Erik Best stared at the wall, distracted, as he spoke on the phone. There was a crack there, in the plaster. He’d never noticed it before, but it started at the corner of the double door frame and made a rough diagonal line up towards the ceiling. There were ragged cobwebs around it, but there was no sign of any spider.

He said goodbye to his friend Marty Rivers, who was now living in London for the foreseeable future, and walked across to the doorway. He peered at the crack, wondering how it might have formed. The house wasn’t new, but it was in good repair. He’d spent a fortune on having that doorway widened and glass doors installed, about six years ago, when he decided to invest some money in the property. It shouldn’t be damaged. The workmanship had been top notch. He’d handpicked and supervised the workmen himself.

He stood on his tiptoes but was still too short to reach the top of the door frame. He shook his head and turned away, pacing across the room to the front window.

“Marty, Marty, Marty…” The guy had been his best bare-knuckle fighter and one of the most reliable men on his payroll. Something had happened a few months ago, up at the Needle — one of Marty’s old school friends had been stabbed by a piece of shit kid from the estate. He’d died on the spot. Marty had gone down to London to speak to the friend’s pregnant missus, and now he’d decided to stay there, to become some kind of surrogate dad to the imminent arrival. Erik had put out feelers to see if any names came up regarding the stabbing, but so far nobody was talking.

He looked out at his garden and tried to gain pleasure from what he saw. The plot was huge; the boundary fence adjoined a small wooded area, beyond which was a private field. Erik had made a lot of money over the years and this place was his haven from the stress of his business world. He knew a lot of dodgy people, consorted with all kinds of low-life criminals and high-class scumbags, but he’d not once invited any of them into his home. It was out of bounds, and hopefully out of reach. A man like Erik Best tended to make enemies, and the less those enemies (or even friends) knew about his private life the better.

Private life… now there was a phrase. These days, the only private life he had time for consisted of sex with the kind of slappers who worked in the low-rent pubs and clubs where he arranged security, or the occasional orgy with some punters from the fights. The middle classes; they always got horny after watching bloodshed. In the past, he’d enjoyed a lot of action that way, but these days all he wanted was safety and security, someone to hold in the night.

Abby Hansen had once offered him the kind of lifestyle he now craved. When she’d been raising Erik’s daughter, little Tessa, he’d kept his distance, but as soon as the kid went missing he wanted to be part of their lives. It was just like him to want everything after the offer had been withdrawn. His timing had always been off in matters of the heart.

We never know what we’ve got until some fucker takes it away, he though, watching a small grey squirrel run across his lawn. He wished he had a gun in his hand, just to shoot something that was alive. Make it dead. It was a primal urge; a deep-rooted instinct. To kill. To destroy.

Few people had known that little Tessa Hansen had been Erik’s child until she went missing. Even the bloke Abby had been living with at the time of her disappearance — his name eluded Erik, like so many other things lately — didn’t have a clue. He thought the girl was his own. The truth had only been let out into the open because of a traumatic event. They’d only fucked a few times, and she’d fallen pregnant easily. One drunken night when she puked up her pill; a tiny life conceived during a booze-inspired grapple. More of that bad timing, he supposed… what he would give to be able to be her father now, to raise her and teach her about the world. But it was not to be.

He turned away from the window and sat down in his favourite armchair, craving a few grams of coke. He was trying to cut down on the drugs, but the opposite seemed to be happening: he wanted more and more, relying on pills and powders to give him succour from the shitstorm around him. He knew it was bad form, and that his body would be suffering, but somehow he just couldn’t manage to kick those bad habits. Indeed, ones he thought he’d overcome years ago were returning with a vengeance.

When his mobile started to ring, he almost ignored it. But it was one of the business phones, and he tried to make it a rule that business always came first — even before his so-called fucking private life.

He took the phone from his shirt pocket and thumbed the answer button. “What is it?” No pleasantries for Erik Best; no pleases and thank yous. Just straight business talk.

“Erik… I mean, Mr Best. It’s Hacky.”

One of his little lapdogs; a scruffy kid on the Grove estate he sometimes paid to keep an eye on things. One of the many; just another small cog in the mighty Best machine, each one oblivious of the rest yet working in harmony to protect him and to keep the wheels of commerce nicely greased.

“What is it, Hacky? I’m busy, so this had better be fucking good.”

A pause; then someone whispering in the background, rushed and excited. “Aye, it’s good. I think it is, anyway. For you, like. The thing is, I’m not even fucking sure what it is…” Another pause, this one longer.

“Go on, Hacky. Tell me about it.” He settled back into the chair and closed his eyes, still thinking of Abby Hansen. But not as she was now, all thin and haggard and defeated; no, Abby as she had been a few years ago, before grief got hold of her and turned her into a listless punch bag. The Abby who had always been the boss in bed and who’d never put up with any of his shit.

“You know you always tell me to ring you if I see something weird?”

“What do you mean by weird, Hacky?”

“You know. Weird. Dead strange, like. Anything out of the ordinary on the estate… you always tell us that however small it might seem, a weird growth can sometimes have long roots. That’s what you say, innit?”

Erik sighed. “Yes, son. More or less.”

“Okay, then. I got summat weird. One of them things… the things you want to know about.”

Erik opened his eyes. He glanced again at the crack in the wall. It was just the same; it hadn’t grown, or moved.

Moved? How the hell could it do that?

His mind wasn’t straight. He was drifting off into irrelevant areas, focusing on stupid, pointless concerns. He needed to concentrate, to live in the now and not the back then. “Come on, marra, spit it out, will you? I have better things to do.” But did he? Did he really?

“The thing is… the thing… oh, fuck, man. Listen, if I tried to describe it you’d think I was tripping or summat.”

“And are you?” Erik leaned forward, ready to end the call and organise a little beating for Hacky, just to warn him not to waste Erik’s time. “Were you laying it on a bit heavy last night, you and the boys? Did one of you cook up a batch of cheap smack?”

“Nah, I’m clean. Had a few beers and a smoke round me brother’s place, but nowt else. Nowt daft, like.” He sounded proud, as if this short period of abstinence meant something important in his broken life.

“Listen, Hacky, tell me what the fuck this is all about or I’ll have your legs broken.”

This time the pause was longer and held an intensity that had not been present before. Erik listened to the static on the line. He thought for a moment that he could make out other voices in there; voices and a soft slow clicking sound, like distant maracas. But then it faded.

“Remember Monty Bright?”

That got Erik’s attention. “Yes. Of course I remember Monty.” They’d been friends and sometime enemies, comrades and occasionally business rivals. Theirs was always a complex relationship, but one that often created a lot of mutual wealth. Monty had run a loan sharking business, and Erik had been known to fund some of Monty’s bigger deals. They’d been silent partners many times, mostly in security companies and anything where hired muscle was required. They’d drawn blood together, fought hard men, and shared slutty women. They’d even organised a few boxing bouts, matching local fighters for a cash prize. On the level. Everything above board. Just for the hell of it.

“It’s got something to do with him… with Monty.”

“Monty’s dead, Hacky. He died in the fire when his gym burnt down, remember? My gym, now, that is if your fucking brother and his mates hurry up and get that fit-out job finished.”

“Just come to the estate and take a look. Meet us at the gym. There’s nobody working there today. You really need to fucking see this, man. It’s… it’s… shit, I don’t know what the fuck it is, man. It’s weird. Weird, with fucking long roots…”

Erik checked the time; it was past lunchtime but he hadn’t eaten a thing. He wasn’t even hungry.

He had nothing better to do. It was a depressing thought, but it was true.

“Okay, I’ll be there in half an hour. If this isn’t good, you’d better run hard and run far, Hacky my boy. If I’m wasting my time here, it won’t just be your legs that get broken. And I might just break your brother’s, too, for slacking on the job.”

“I know,” said the kid on the other end of the line. “Just come and see.” Then he ended the call.

Erik’s mind was still on Abby Hansen. If he had business on the estate, then it wouldn’t be out of order to maybe pay her a little call. See how she was. Find out if she needed anything. He knew that he was being stupid, that she’d pussy-whipped him without even trying, but still he could not stay away. She was like a drug; he needed her, even if it was like this: brief, unwanted visits, during which she usually verbally abused him. Stolen time. Tense, bruising moments spent in her company when she didn’t even want him there, not now.

He locked up the house, checked the dogs — two border collies; Rocky and Apollo — in their kennels and set off for the Grove. On his way there, through the winding roads of the Northumberland countryside, he wished again that Abby would wake up and see what it was he had to offer, how good it could be for them both if she dropped her guard, let him back in.

Erik had never lived on the Grove. He’d been born in Byker, in the east end of Newcastle, and from a very young age had demonstrated that he could take care of himself. His father had enrolled him in a boxing academy when he was five years old. He’d beaten everyone they put in front of him, and graduated through the age and weight classes with ease.

His teenage years had seen him go off the rails and he began street fighting rather than using his craft in the ring. Erik was always bright enough to know that, unless you were truly dedicated, the fight game would never make you rich. He lacked the application and willpower to become a champion; his skills were purely natural, and a wide lazy streak coupled with habitual indiscipline meant that he could not stick to any kind of training regime.

So he used his skills in other ways.

Years ago he’d realised that he didn’t have to fight every battle himself. He surrounded himself with tough guys, men who were strong and fast but lacked his cunning and intellect. He set up illegal fights and made a fortune. When he’d made enough money he bought an old farmhouse a few miles from here and started hosting bare-knuckle bouts in the Barn, a small outbuilding with thick stone walls and neglected horse paddocks — he’d employed Hacky’s brother and his gang to do the building work there, too.

He also ran a security firm that provided pubs and clubs with trained door staff, big blokes who knew exactly what to do if trouble started. Erik saw himself as a primitive renaissance man; a facilitator; an entrepreneur: he was the Donald fucking Trump of the mean streets and even meaner housing estates.

Now, at the age of fifty-one, he was what his younger self would have considered wealthy. He owned a large, beautiful home, several other properties, two well-trained dogs, had three cars in the garage, but lacked someone to share it with. There was a time when Abby Hansen would have walked over broken glass to live with him, but that time was long gone. These days she’d rather cut herself on the scattered shards than stand by his side.

The Concrete Grove… why would she want to stay here? Their daughter wasn’t coming back; she would never come home. This place was the dark centre of a universe Erik could barely even understand. He cruised through it, that alien universe, and he used it and its denizens for personal gain, but he had no idea how it really worked. Like a black hole, it sucked everything towards it, bleeding them dry: Monty Bright, his absent friend Marty Rivers, the once beautiful Abby Hansen… all of them drawn inexorably towards the black centre of this place, screaming silently as it ate them alive.

He drove through the estate with these dark thoughts on his mind. Part of him hoped that Hacky was taking the piss; he had the urge to commit violence, and that useless kid would do as target practice. He guided the car along the grubby streets, along Grove Road and onto Grove Street, where Monty Bright’s old gym was situated. He’d acquired the building and was having it fitted out; it would be a gym again, and this time his name would be above the door… as long as Hacky’s brother got on with the job, of course, the work-shy little bastard.

He parked at the kerb and got out, walking quickly to the front door. He opened the door and stepped inside. Three young men stood at the bottom of the new timber stairs, huddled around the bottom step. Hacky looked up and smiled. He raised a hand and walked over.

“So, I’m here.”

“I’m sorry to make you come all the way here, Mr Best. Really. But there was no other way… this has got to be seen. You wouldn’t believe it otherwise.”

The other two boys nodded, looked away, staring at the fire-damaged walls. They were guilty; all of them, guilty of so many petty crimes that it would be difficult to pin a single one on them. He could see the badness dripping off them like sweat. He was covered with it, too, but he was clever enough to construct a barrier. The black hole wouldn’t suck him in. He would never allow it to get a good enough grip on his soul. These fuckers were already halfway inside; it was consuming them like space debris.

“What the fuck is it, Hacky?” He stepped forward, grabbed the kid’s upper arm with one big hand, and knocked his baseball cap from his head with the other. The cap was old, faded, and had a decal featuring Scooby Doo smoking a spliff. “I’m really not in the fucking mood for any of your bullshit.”

“Please.” Hacky cowered; he actually stepped back and hunkered down a few inches, as if he were a dog trying to subjugate itself before an alpha. He bent down and picked up his cap. “Honest, we have summat to show you.”

The other two nodded. They wouldn’t hold Erik’s gaze. They were too afraid even to speak.

“Show me.” He let go, pushed the kid away. “Show me before I change my mind and knock you out just to release some tension.”

“It’s at Beggy’s place.” Hacky motioned towards one of the other young men — a tall, thin streak of piss with acne scars all over his long neck and thin throat.

“Yeah,” said the one called Beggy. “I didn’t know what to do with it, so I put it in my old man’s lock-up. It’s on Grove Drive. One of them old garages past the Corner… you know?” He looked down, inspecting his oversized trainers. He blinked too much; it was making Erik angry, grating at his nerves.

“So take me there. Go outside and get in the car. Now.”

He watched them troop slowly out through the door and then glanced up the stairs, at the partially repaired upper floor. The walls were bare, some of them still stained by smoke. He locked the door on his way out. “Give me your keys,” he said to Hacky. “I don’t want you letting yourself in there ever again, not unless I’m around. Oh, and when you see your brother, tell him to get back here and finish the job.”

The kid handed over the keys without looking at Erik’s face. He nodded.

Erik unlocked the car. “Get in the back — all three of you. I don’t want any of you fuckers in the front with me. And try not to dribble on the upholstery.” He watched them squeeze carefully onto the back seat, three unwise monkeys, and got in the front, then started the car. It took them less than three minutes to get to Grove Drive. The garages stood in a row opposite the waste ground beyond the primary school. Seven squat, graffiti-covered buildings, none of them ever used to park a car. They were all utilised for storage instead, and the police turned a blind eye to whatever was kept inside, and to whoever rented them. Nobody cared about this place, as long as there was no serious trouble. Things ticked over in the Grove; crimes were done; people got paid; the status quo was maintained.

The black hole kept on sucking, hungry for more.

“Which one?”

Beggy spoke, but quietly. “The third one from the left.”

“Get the fuck out and show me.”

They all climbed out of the car. Erik waited until they were walking towards the garages, and then he got out, too. He locked the doors and followed them across the footpath and onto the tired grass verge, wondering what the fuck could be so important that Hacky would disturb him and ask him to come here. He’d known all along that it must be something major; the kid was too afraid to fuck with him over trivialities.

Beggy bent over and unlocked the up-and-over garage door. He opened it and the three of them stepped back in the same movement, as if they were afraid of what was in there. They stood and waited for Erik to move.

“You going to tell me what I’m here to see, or do I have to guess?”

Beggy shook his head. Hacky coughed; a harsh dry sound. The nameless third member of the group looked away, trying to pretend that he wasn’t here. He hadn’t spoken a word so far and didn’t look like he was going to change that habit any time soon.

“Well?”

“You do it,” said Beggy. “I can’t go back in there… I’ve seen enough.” He was pleading, not ordering, and Hacky nodded.

“You’re more afraid of whatever’s in there than you are of me?” Erik took a couple of steps forward, interested now. He was standing close to Beggy. The kid nodded, but didn’t raise his head. The footpath was obviously fascinating; he was inspecting it like it was the most interesting thing he’d seen so far that day. The acne scars on his throat were livid, bright red welts. They looked painful, like aggravated wounds.

“Okay, I’ll show you.” Hacky moved reluctantly into the shadow of the garage, his slim body swallowed by darkness. The other two young men stepped to the side, away from the open door.

“Don’t go anywhere,” said Erik. He walked forward, stooping at the waist to get under the garage door, and looked around.

There wasn’t much in there. In fact, it looked like someone had recently moved a lot of stuff out. Streaked dust marks decorated the internal surfaces; cobwebs had been disturbed in the corners. The oil-stained floor was scuffed in places, as if heavy objects had been pushed or pulled across it. Erik seemed to recall that Beggy’s father was some kind of low-level fence, so he probably used this place to store stolen goods that he couldn’t keep inside the house for some reason: furniture, plasma screen televisions still in their cardboard boxes, perhaps even a few large car parts that were too heavy to shift on his own.

A stack of rolled up carpet off-cuts had been pushed up against the wall on the left hand side. The right hand wall was clear, but someone had set up a small camping table, upon which there was a red and black tartan plastic flask and a set of pornographic playing cards. Erik walked over and looked down at the cards. They were vintage 1970s, showing scenes of blank-eyed women copulating with drugged farm animals. Nice.

He looked up and watched Hacky. The kid was staring at a large rectangular object covered by a dark, stained tarpaulin sheet. He was fidgeting; he shuffled his feet, picked at his fingernails, bit his bottom lip.

“Is that it?” Erik indicated the sheet.

“Yeah. It’s under there… under that cover thing.” He licked his lips. His eyes were wide. The gloom inside the garage had made his pupils dilate, unless he was strung out on drugs, despite what he’d said earlier.

“Take the fucking thing off, then. Show me what you’ve got.”

A strange kind of tension had entered the garage with them. Erik knew that he should be losing his temper by now. The kid was stringing this out, making a fucking meal of the situation. But there was an atmosphere between these concrete walls that made him cautious. There wasn’t any actual danger here — of course there wasn’t, not for him anyway. No, not danger: something else, a sense of… weirdness. Something here was not entirely right. That was the only way he could think to explain what he felt.

Then he realised what it was: he felt like he was being watched. He was experiencing that sensation of eyes upon you when you walk across a room; the sense that someone is peering at you but you can’t see them, not yet. A painting’s eyes following you across a gallery floor; or the heat of a person’s gaze burning a hole in the middle of your back from across a room.

Watched.

He was being watched.

Hacky bent over and tugged at the end of the tarpaulin sheet. He did it half-heartedly at first, as if he really didn’t want the sheet to come off, but then he used both hands and pulled hard, shuffling backwards as he did so. The sheet slid away, dropping to the floor. Beneath it was a large glass tank with a heavy lid, the kind of container that was used for keeping tropical fish, or exotic lizards.

“What’s the story with that tank, then?” Erik didn’t move.

Hacky stepped further away, not taking his eyes from the tank. “Years ago, when I was little, I used to keep snakes in there. I had a couple of pythons. Dad got hold of them from some mate. The police came and took them away. They weren’t legal, like…” He kept staring at the tank. “Dangerous, they reckoned…”

Erik paused for a moment, unwilling to move closer to the tank, and what might be lurking inside it. The shadows kept its contents hidden; all he could see was a large dark glass receptacle, with something bulky nestling behind the glass. It could have been discarded clothing; it might have been a dead animal. A cat or a dog.

Then the thing moved: a slight twitch, like a muscular spasm.

“It’s alive,” he whispered.

A snake?

“We thought it was dead,” said Hacky. “We found it down on Beacon Green, in a little ditch, half-covered by leaves and shit. We were looking for a bag of pot we’d stashed there a few nights ago.” Still he stared at the tank. Whatever was in there coiled lazily, moving a little like one of the pythons the kid had claimed to have owned before they were seized by the authorities.

“What is it?”

A snake…

Finally Hacky looked away from the tank. He turned to face Erik, and his features remained in shadow. His mouth barely moved when he spoke. Darkness writhed across his face like tar. “Honestly, I haven’t a fucking clue.”

Something thumped wetly against the other side of the glass, shifting again inside the tank. There was a moist slithering noise as it adjusted its position.

“Fucking hell,” said Erik, and his feet moved forward as if they weren’t under his control. He wanted to stop them but they refused to obey. He was walking towards the tank, and the living thing that was imprisoned inside.

“Is it one of those snakes of yours?”

Hacky didn’t answer. He’d already gone back outside, too afraid to stay and watch.

CHAPTER TWELVE

IT WAS LUNCHTIME and Marc was craving a protein fix. He’d been drinking a lot lately — much more than usual — and seemed to exist with a constant hangover, seeing the world through a thin layer of gauze. He hoped that Vince Rose hadn’t been serious about having a few cans of lager and instead wished for a nice cup of tea. A splash of milk. A spoonful of honey. Lovely.

He parked his car at the kerb and stepped out onto the street outside Harry’s house. Even though the old man was dead, Marc couldn’t help but feel as if he was waiting inside, watching through the net curtains, as he always used to when he had visitors.

Glancing at the grubby nets, he accepted the reality that Harry would no longer be there; his tall, thin form would never again stand in the window, looking out at the street and scowling at passers by.

“Hey, Marc!”

He turned around and saw Vince Rose walking along the street, a blue carrier bag clutched in each hand. He raised the bags to waist level and smiled. “Lunch.”

“Good to see you, Vince.” Marc moved towards the man and grabbed one of the bags — the one that looked heaviest — and stood to the side while Rose walked past him. He fell into step alongside the other man.

“I didn’t get any booze. I hope that’s okay. I’m trying to cut down and… well, if it’s there, it’s a temptation, right?”

Marc nodded. “Thank God for that. I’m thinking about going on a month-long detox because of all the drink I’ve been having lately. It’s getting crazy.”

They reached the front door and Rose set down his bag on the doorstep, took a bunch of keys from his jacket pocket, and opened the door.

“It’s weird coming here when Harry isn’t around.” Marc stared through the open doorway, into the gloomy hall. “I’ve never been inside this house without him inviting me inside. He would always wait in the window, watching, and as soon as I got near the door it would open. He’d say ‘Why don’t you come in for a while?’ and walk back inside, leaving me to follow.”

“He’s still here,” said Rose. “In one way or another. You’ll see.” He stepped inside and walked towards the kitchen, bumping the carrier bag against the wall.

For a moment Marc didn’t want to go inside. It wasn’t the same; it wasn’t right. This was Harry’s house, and Harry needed to be there, to give his usual greeting and put the kettle on. There was a space inside this house, and its shape was that of Harry Rose. The old man had been cut out of the world but his absence was still here, permanent, like a scar in the fabric of existence.

When he stepped over the threshold and into the house, the sunlight seemed to pull back, moving away from him. He felt the temperature drop and the daylight vanished. The lack of Harry Rose was a ghost, a forlorn spectre. In that moment Marc realised that most so-called hauntings were not about what was there, but what was no longer in place. It was not the remains that mattered, but what had been taken away, removed from the living world and placed somewhere else, where nobody could see them.

Ghosts, he thought, are simply absences made solid. They’re holes in the world, holes that will never be filled again.

He nudged the door shut with his shoulder, using his foot to make sure that it fitted properly into the frame. When the lock clicked, he followed Rose down the hallway and into the small kitchen, where the other man was putting away the shopping.

“I got ham and cheese. Is that okay? Some nice bread: fresh stuff, from the bakers.”

“That sounds great,” said Marc. He put the carrier bag on the table and sat down in one of the dining chairs. He blinked, trying not to draw attention to the fact that his eyes were moist. Not quite real tears, but almost… he missed his friend. He wished that Harry were still here, bustling around in the tiny kitchen, moaning — as he usually did — about some real or imagined slight.

“How do you take your tea?”

Marc shifted in the chair, turning to face his host. “White, one sugar, thanks. I usually take it with honey, but Harry used to laugh at that and call me a snob.”

“Aye,” said Rose, shaking his head. “The old bastard had some funny ideas about stuff like that. For years, he called me a traitor to my class simply because I attended university and went to work in insurance. He never let me live that down… never failed to twist the knife, either.”

The kettle made a popping sound, signalling that the water had boiled. Steam filled the air between the two men, making it seem like a fog had crept into the room.

Rose didn’t move. He stood there, veiled by steam, staring at nothing.

“Erm… the kettle’s boiled.” Marc made to rise, but when his host snapped back into the moment, lurching towards the kettle, he pretended that he’d simply been shifting his position on the seat.

“Sorry. I was miles away, there. Thinking about that stupid old fart.” He looked down, at the surface of the work bench. “I miss him. Even though we hadn’t spoken for years, I bloody miss him.” He poured boiling water into the cups and waited for the teabags to brew. After a few seconds of silence, he fished out the used teabags with a teaspoon and flicked them both into the sink.

Marc said nothing. He didn’t want to intrude upon the man’s thoughts.

Rose added the milk and sugar to the mugs, and then handed one to Marc. “Cheers.”

Marc raised his mug. “Salute.” It had been Harry’s favoured toast; he even said it when he was drinking a glass of water.

Marc took a long drink. The tea was hot and sweet; strongly flavoured. “That’s a nice bastard brew,” he said, out of habit. He always used to say the same phrase to Harry; over time it became a kind of running joke. Their relationship had rested on things like that: quirks and mannerisms, phrases and peculiarities. Harry had been an awkward man, and sometimes he refused to discuss a subject in a direct manner. He liked to talk around things, to make Marc work for the information. Sometimes he could be morose and even uncommunicative, but he always asked Marc to come back and see him. He was lonely. He liked the company of another human being. Marc hoped that the old bastard hadn’t been too lonely when he died.

“I miss him, too,” said Marc. “He was a one-off: a true original.”

They drank their teas and waited for the atmosphere to level out. Something had come into the room, perhaps it had followed him in from outside. It skulked around in the corners, watching them with envy. After a short while, it left them alone, and Marc was able to adjust to the house without Harry Rose. At first he’d wanted to leave; now he wanted to see why he’d been invited here.

“You hungry?” Rose began to open the bread.

“Yeah. A bit.” Marc stood, crossed to the sink, and rinsed out his cup with cold water from the tap before placing it in the sink.

“Let’s eat first, and then I’ll tell you what I found.”

Marc turned around, rested the small of his back against the edge of the sink. “Okay, that sounds good. I never like to solve a mystery on an empty stomach.”

Rose laughed. “Oh, there’s no mystery. Not really. It’s just some stuff… Harry stuff.”

“Yeah… Harry stuff.”

Marc knew exactly what was meant by that remark. One of Harry’s habits had been that he often brought home random objects, bits and pieces of junk, old files and paperwork, books without covers, broken toys. Sometimes he fixed the toys and gave them away to charity shops. More often than not, he made something different out of them, perhaps combining the remains of two or three items to construct a third. Marc remembered the time he’d made a scale replica of the Needle out of old-fashioned foil milk bottle tops. He still had no idea where Harry had found the bottle tops, but one day when he’d come to visit, there’d been a cloth sack filled with them on top of the cooker.

Harry Rose had been a creative man, but a lot of the time that creativity had been focused on wasteful things, turned in the wrong direction. Sometimes it was even directed inwards, and had manifested in extended bouts of manic depression when Harry would lock himself away and refuse to see anyone.

Rose piled high a plate with sandwiches and set it down on the table. The two men ate in silence for a while, gazing at the food and chewing slowly.

A shaft of sunlight shone through the kitchen window, moved slowly across the table between them and then vanished; a ghost of light, a promise of something that could never be realised.

“How well did you know my brother?”

Marc glanced up from his plate and saw that Rose was staring at him intently, with a serious expression on his thin, weathered face.

“I know you spent a lot of time together over the last few weeks of his life, but did he open up to you?”

“You’ll have to be more specific.” Marc put down the remains of his sandwich and waited.

“Okay, let me ask you a question. How did you meet Harry? What brought you here, to him?”

Marc leaned back in his chair. He glanced at the window. The sunlight had dimmed; the patch of visible sky outside was flat and inexpressive. “My uncle used to know Harry, years ago. Uncle Mike died of a brain tumour while I was still at Uni. It was sudden. I’d always had a lot of time for the guy — he raised me when my parents died. He wasn’t a real uncle… he was, well, just a friend of the family, I suppose. It seemed natural for him to look after me when my folks died.” He paused, looked again at the window. It was slightly brighter: a rectangle of pasty light. Said out loud, his life story seemed strange, as if it was a fiction. The edges didn’t quite fit together; there were gaps that he could not fill.

“So you already knew about Harry? You were aware of him?”

“Yes, I was. The reason I’m writing this book about the Northumberland Poltergeist case is because Uncle Mike used to talk about it all the time. He was kind of obsessed with what went on in the Needle all those years ago. I think he worked here, on the estate, and he knew a few of the people involved — maybe even the kids, the Pollack twins.”

Rose nodded. “Yes. That sounds about right.”

“You knew my uncle, too?”

Rose shook his head. “Not really. Even then, I’d cut my ties with this place. But me and Harry were still speaking back then. I used to come and visit him, and there were always all kinds of people in this house. He knew everyone. He loved to talk and to socialise. Christ, sometimes I wonder if we even came from the same stock.” He laughed softly, but it was a strained sound, as if he had to coax it from his throat. “I think your uncle was one of the blokes Harry used to drink with. I remember a Mike — big guy, with masses of curly black hair?”

“Yes,” said Marc. “That was him. People used to call him Stavros, after the sidekick from Kojak.” He smiled.

“God, yes… now I definitely remember him.” He shook his head.

There was another period of silence, but this one didn’t last for long.

“Harry was a strange man. He collected information in the same way that other people like to collect stamps or books or little pottery figurines. He liked urban myths and tall tales. He collected other people’s stories and kept them inside his head. I’m sure one day he intended to write a book of some kind, but never got around to it. But the older he got, the more withdrawn he became. Then he simply stopped being so sociable, as if he had too many stories in his head and there wasn’t room for any more.”

Marc smiled, remembering the way Harry Rose’s face used to light up whenever he talked about things that had gone on in the area.

“He also collected… other things.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was something of a kleptomaniac, my brother. He liked to take things that weren’t his. Like a magpie drawn to shiny objects, he couldn’t resist nabbing something that might have a story attached to it.”

“I see.”

“He kept a lot of this stuff in the attic rooms. Did he ever show you those rooms?” Rose glanced upwards, at the ceiling.

“No,” said Marc. “He never even mentioned them.”

“Okay.” Rose stood, pushing out his chair, and crossed to the window. He stared out of it for a moment, and then turned back to face the room again. “So I went up there to see what he might be keeping. I thought that I might be able to return some stuff to its rightful owners, if there was anything valuable, or maybe even sell it.” He paused, looked down at the floor, and then back up again, at Marc. “He’d got rid of most of it, emptied out the rooms. To make space.”

“Space?” Marc stretched his neck. It was aching. He must have slept in a bad position at Abby’s place. “Space for what?”

Rose walked across the kitchen, approached the table, but did not sit back down. “I think it’s best if I show you.” His jacket was hanging on the back of the chair. He reached into the inside pocket and brought out a folded A4-size manila envelope. “But first let me give you this.”

Marc reached out and took the envelope. His name was written on the front. He recognised Harry’s handwriting.

“I found it in his bedroom, on the bedside cabinet. He must have left it for you to find.” He remained standing, watching Marc as he examined the envelope.

“Thanks,” said Marc. He tore open the envelope and took out what was inside: a photocopied sheet of paper, folded down the middle. He straightened out the sheet of paper and saw that it was a copy of a brief extract from somebody’s diary.

He read it through twice, understanding dawning upon him long before he’d finished rereading the words. “It’s Jack Pollack… the little boy. It’s the boy who lived in the Needle and was haunted by the Northumberland Poltergeist. He wrote this, didn’t he?”

Rose did not respond. He just stood there, watching.

Marc grabbed the envelope again and peered inside. He’d missed something in his haste: a second sheet of paper, this one an original rather than a photocopy.

He gripped the sheet of paper by the edges with both hands, as if he were afraid it might burn or blow away. Upon it was drawn the crude representation of a figure. It looked like a man, but could also have been a woman. It was difficult to assign a gender because the figure was wearing a long, black cape that smothered its body and a white, beaked mask over its face. In its hand was raised a short, thin stick or wand with a pointed end.

This was obviously a child’s drawing. The lines were jagged, the shading went outside the lines, and the overall effect was that of crudity, juvenile artlessness… and yet, the drawing held an element of horror that Marc found difficult to ignore. The face was coloured with white crayon, the cape shaded in broad, angry strokes of a thick, black pencil.

Underneath this character was written its name, in the same clumsy, misspelled handwriting as he’d read in the diary extract:

“He never told me he had anything like this.” He looked up, at Rose, and the room pitched to one side, causing him to shudder. He felt like a man on a little boat, yearning for the shore.

“Maybe he didn’t have it then. He might have got hold of this stuff just before he died, and not had time to show it to you.”

“I saw him in hospital several times before he died. We talked about a lot of things — my book included, to keep his mind off his pain. He would’ve said. He would’ve told me. I’m sure of it.”

“Then I don’t know why he didn’t. Come on. Let me show you what else I found.”

Rose waited for Marc to rise and then walked out of the room, to the stairs. He paused at the bottom, resting one hand on the wall-mounted wooden banister, and then began to climb.

Marc followed him up to the first floor, noting the sound of the stairs as they creaked beneath their weight. They walked along the landing to the second stairway at the opposite end — one that had been added after the house was built, when the attic space was converted into habitable rooms.

Rose took out a set of keys and selected one of them. He unlocked the sturdy wooden door that sealed the stairway, and pushed it open. He reached inside and flicked a switch. The light came on up the stairs; a single bulb hanging from the ceiling at the top.

“Up here,” he said, redundantly.

Marc was glad he’d spoken. The atmosphere was starting to feel strange, as if there might be something up there at roof level that he might regret seeing.

He followed Rose up the narrow staircase. The timber creaked even louder than before, and Marc had the weird sensation that there were more people packed into the cramped space than just the two of them. He resisted the urge to turn around and see who was following them — he knew there was nobody there, but his body was trying to convince him otherwise. The back of his neck was prickling; his spine felt warm, as if a hand were rubbing it through his shirt.

At the top of the stairs there was a door on each side of the tiny landing, where the attic was effectively split in two. Both of the doors were closed. The single bare bulb on the ceiling between the doors struggled to illuminate the space, as if something were pushing back the light. Marc kept expecting it to flicker and then go out, but it didn’t. That only ever happened in horror films, and not in real life. Or so he kept telling himself, just to dispel the slow-creeping dread that had followed him up the stairs.

“I’ll show you the library first,” said Rose, his voice seeming too loud in the stairwell.

“The library?” said Marc, just trying to fill the space with his voice.

Rose stepped up onto the small landing area and used another key to unlock the door on the left.

“Security conscious, wasn’t he?”

Rose didn’t reply. He simply nodded once. Then he opened the door and stepped inside.

Marc was reluctant to follow, but he knew he should. In fact, he had little choice in the matter. Despite what his body was telling him, there was nothing to be afraid of here, deep inside the house of his old friend Harry Rose. There was nothing to fear; nothing that could hurt him. And if he was lucky, there might just be something in the attic that would bring his stalled book project back to life.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

ROYLE WAS SCARED to go down to the basement. It was an embarrassing admission, even if it was only to himself, but the lower level of the Far Grove police station had always made him afraid. Over ground, he was okay. He felt not a tremor of apprehension regarding the station. But once he was forced to go underneath, the fear kicked in. He was reminded of the Crawl, and how it made him feel.

The main building had been built in the mid nineteen seventies, but it had been constructed over the top of the former police station, which had been a lot older. The contractor had decided to keep the original basement and foundations, using it as a platform on which to mount the new station superstructure. The old basement had been where the cells were. Small rooms with rusted iron bars, each one containing only a tiny sink and with a metal bed frame bolted to the floor. The detainment facilities they used these days were much more modern and comfortable; those old Victorian cells were like something out of Bedlam. Whenever he was down in the basement, Royle imagined the people who’d been caged there. He felt their eyes upon him; he heard their screams ringing in the air. He could almost see them crawling across the floor towards him…

He knew it was just his mind creating an atmosphere that didn’t exist in reality, but this knowledge did nothing to reassure him. Whatever he did, however hard he tried, he couldn’t shake the nagging fear that this place was home to ghosts.

The elevator doors opened and he stood looking out into the main access corridor. He knew that he should just step out and make his way to his destination, but his body refused to obey the simple command.

The old stone basement walls had been rendered with plaster and painted what was meant to be a soothing shade of white, contemporary lighting had been fitted, and new rooms had been created within the underground space… but still, the place held a sense of dread and expectation. To Royle, it was like walking into a military bunker. As he passed open doors, he half expected to glimpse inside those rooms men in shirtsleeves leaning over table-top maps of war, moving little plastic flags around as they planned their invasion. White collars, small round spectacles, pale skin, peering eyes.

Royle finally stepped out of the elevator and turned right, heading for the small on-site lab. The facility wasn’t much to brag about, but it was somewhere the two resident techies could examine evidence that was considered urgent or too sensitive to be shipped out to the technical team based in Newcastle. The apparatus they had was limited, but the technicians — Miss Wandaful and Charlie — were talented and dedicated; they worked until the job was done, and never gave excuses when things went wrong.

He approached the computer server room and paused to glance inside the open door. He listened to the humming of the big extractor fans as they sucked warm air out through vents and through hidden ductwork, keeping the machines cool. The air-conditioned breeze cooled his cheeks. A man in jeans and a blue police-issue polo shirt was examining the system, making notes in a small black book. The man turned around and smiled. Royle recognised his face but was unable to put a name to it, so he simply nodded in greeting and continued walking along the corridor.

The lab door opened before he could reach it and Wanda Harper — the head technician — came out, her fingers struggling to take the cellophane wrapper off a fresh packet of cigarettes. She didn’t see Royle at first, but when she looked up her eyes opened wider, as if she were startled.

“Ah,” she said. “Fuck it. I thought I had another fifteen minutes before the hassle arrived.” She smiled to show that she was at least half joking.

“Sorry, Miss Wandaful, but you know me — always a few minutes ahead of the game.” Royle watched as the woman slipped the cigarettes into the back pocket of her jeans, under the white lab coat. She ran her hands through her spiky dyed blonde hair and rubbed at her temples, as if trying to ward off a headache.

“Well, seeing as you’re here…” Wanda reached back and made a big show of opening the lab door. “Age before beauty,” she said, bowing her head in mock deference as he entered.

The small room was crammed so full of stuff that it could barely fit two people, so it was always a relief when one of the technicians was on holiday — as was the case this week. The tiled walls were lined with shelves, each one packed to breaking point with box files or rows of medical supplies — bottles, cardboard boxes, instruments in sterilising machines. The floor was littered with filing cabinets, small cooler boxes and portable freezer boxes. Everywhere there were random pieces of equipment, and Royle felt hemmed in, as if he’d entered a storage facility rather than an annexe of a functioning police station.

The scarecrow was laid out on a stainless steel gurney at the centre of the room, the left side of its torso covered by a creased white sheet. The gurney was usually meant for transporting bodies, or parts of bodies, and the strange, stiff, legless figure looked out of place beneath the harsh, bright lights of the lab.

“What do you have for me, Miss Wandaful?”

Wanda grinned. Everyone at the station called her Miss Wandaful. She’d spent a long time protesting against the occasional nickname when it first started up, until finally, after six months on the job, she made the mistake of telling a uniformed officer on a station night out that she actually liked to be called that. Nobody had called her by any other name since.

“Okay,” she said, standing at one end of the gurney. She moved slowly around to the side, pulling the white sheet fully off the figure and placing it to one side. “What we have here is a scarecrow.”

“Gee,” said Royle. “Do ya really think so?”

She carried on, unperturbed. “As you know, there was a photograph of Connie Millstone attached to the scarecrow’s head. From what we can tell, it looks like the girl might have been deceased when it was taken. I’m sorry.” She glanced at him, her face tense. “I was hoping to be able to tell you otherwise, but… well. That’s how it looks. We’ve sent the photo to the main lab for an in-depth DNA analysis. The results should be back in a few days. I can tell you now, though, there were no fingerprints present.”

The too-bright light made Royle feel exposed. His head was aching and his eyesight was blurred. He blinked several times in quick succession, to clear his vision. “Is this an assumption, a hunch… or is it a fact? How do you know she was dead when it was taken?”

“It isn’t fact,” said Wanda. “But it isn’t guesswork, either. From the photo, you can see that the girl’s skin has begun to take on the soft appearance of death; her muscle tone is nonexistent. If it was in colour, you’d be able to see the slight bruising caused by pooling blood and necrosis.”

“What else?” Royle wanted a drink. He was craving whisky.

“This is where it gets really weird.” She reached out and touched the pole that formed the central support for the figure. “This is made of solid oak. The head’s the same.”

Royle moved closer and stared at the pole. The bark had been stripped away; the nude wood looked like it had been smoothed down badly with a low-grade emery cloth. He examined the length of the body, resting his gaze upon the smooth, burnished head. Someone had removed its hat. The wooden head was virtually featureless; only the grain of the wood was visible.

He was reminded of Pinocchio, and of a show that used to be on television when he was a kid: Pipkins. It had scared him so much that he wet the bed. From what he could recall, the kids’ programme was set in an old toy shop where the stuffed toys and puppets were alive: raggedy old Hartley Hare, with his dead eyes and loose stitches; Pig, Topov, and the rest of the gang. Horrible, all of them — grinning dishevelled demons. Dusty, falling apart at the seams… the awkward puppets had populated his nightmares for years afterwards.

Wanda’s voice cut into his thoughts: “There are no oak trees within a twenty mile radius of the Concrete Grove estate.”

He nodded, backtracking from his shabby, flyblown memories. “Okay. I’ll admit that is a bit weird. Why use oak particularly and why go to so much trouble in the first place? It doesn’t make sense. It isn’t logical.”

“Oh, it gets better than that.” She turned and lifted a scalpel from a steel dish on a nearby trolley. Bending forward, she opened the scarecrow’s jacket and used the blade to make a long slit down the front of its charity shop shirt — the two halves of which were stitched together using some kind of thick, fluffy thread. “That’s some kind of natural fibre. Maybe hemp. Again, we’ve sent a sample to the lab for proper identification.”

Royle didn’t speak. He was captivated. He watched as the scarecrow’s innards were exposed.

“What we have here is a mixture of stuff, all kinds of rubbish. Burnt leaves, pieces of paper… all sorts of crap.”

Royle noticed for the first time that Wanda was wearing surgical gloves. He stared at her hands, pale and bloodless beneath the tight rubber layer, and watched as she raked around inside the belly of the scarecrow. A sudden terror filled him: what if she withdrew her hand and was clutching human organs, or, even worse, Connie Millstone’s hand?

“There are a lot of receipts in here — from local shops, petrol stations, that kind of thing. All used as stuffing. What makes them special is that they’re all dated to the exact same time and date.” She stopped and looked up at him. Sweat was beaded on her forehead. Her eyes were shining, eager. She loved her work. “Can you guess when that was?” Her teeth glistened beneath the lights.

Royle nodded. “The day Connie Millstone went missing.”

Wanda nodded. “Bingo. There are also a lot of dried leaves: oak, maple, rowan, rosewood. Each one a species that isn’t present in this area. You have Charlie to thank for that information, by the way. He’s the nature buff. I emailed him some digital images and he looked at them on the beach in Mexico. Isn’t technology wonderful?” She winked. “Rather than stuff this thing with any old kind of rubbish, someone was extremely specific about what they used.” She lifted her hand. Leaves spilled between the fingers. “These things have a special significance to someone, but I’ll be shagged if it means anything to me.”

“So there’s some kind of meaning here. A message. Perhaps even some kind of ritual, perhaps?”

“You tell me. You’re the detective man.”

“Have you sent samples of everything to the main lab?”

“Yes.” She backed away from the gurney, slipping off the rubber gloves. They made a smacking sound as she peeled them from her fingers. “They’re doing every kind of analysis they can think of: chemical, fingerprinting, DNA, the whole deal. We’ve done some of the basic stuff here, of course, but we couldn’t find a thing. No fingerprints, no apparent residue. Nothing. We need to look deeper. They have a lot more sophisticated equipment in the city than our shitty little budget allows for.”

“Sorry. I wasn’t having a dig. Just being thorough. Like you always are.”

She smiled. “I know. It just pisses me off that we can’t get any decent kit in here. Charlie and I have all the skills but none of the resources. If I wasn’t so stupid, I’d fuck off and work in the city. The big lab, where my skill set would be appreciated.” She leaned back against the sink, opening the pedal bin with her foot and dropping the gloves inside. She wasn’t wearing any shoes, just the paper slippers used in hospitals. And morgues.

“I appreciate you. Don’t know what I’d do without you sometimes.”

“Fuck off, copper,” she said, but she was smiling again. The bags under her eyes were huge and dark, like bruises. She was putting on weight. Her bleached hair looked as dry as straw. The teeth she’d recently spent a lot of money on having repaired and capped looked fake, plastic. The job was taking its toll, showing up like minor injuries or subtle deformities on her body.

Mine, too, thought Royle. This fucking job, it’s killing us all.

He looked again at the scarecrow. He could have sworn that the head had not been turned that way, facing in his direction, the last time he looked, but it was difficult to be certain. There were no eyes, so it couldn’t be looking at him; no mouth, so it was unable to grin. But he felt like it was doing both of those things. The smooth, bare wooden head that lacked even the merest hint of a face was watching.

And it was laughing.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

ERIK SAT ON a dining chair and stared at the cat box. He’d found it in the lock-up garage and used it to transport the… the what? That was the big question, wasn’t it? Just what the hell did he have in there anyway? What the fuck kind of creature had those kids found and brought to him?

When Hacky had gone outside and left Erik alone in front of the glass reptile tank, he’d taken a while to summon his courage. Erik was a brave man, sometimes insanely courageous when forced into a tight situation. He feared nobody. There had been times in his long and eventful life when he’d stood and fought opponents twice his size, or had a go when he’d been outnumbered and backed into a corner. He never ran; never turned his back on a fight. It simply wasn’t in his nature to back down and walk away. But in that lock-up garage, crouching there in the shadows and staring into the glass tank, he’d never felt so much like running.

Erik was miles outside of his comfort zone on this one; his fighting distance had narrowed to almost nothing. He had no frame of reference whatsoever for the thing that had been waiting inside that tank. It was alien, from outside his realm of knowledge. He had no idea how he should even react to its existence.

There was a sound from the cat box; a low, trembling exhalation. He tried to tell himself that it was an animal noise — a mewling or a snuffling, something like that. But it wasn’t. He knew it wasn’t. The sound was… well, it was much too human to be labelled in such a way. The sound, he admitted to himself, was a voice.

“Hungry.”

It had been saying the same thing since he’d brought it back here, over and over again.

“Hungry.”

Erik stood and walked across the room. He waited at the low coffee table upon which he’d placed the battered cat box. Something moved again inside. He heard the sound of tiny nails — fingernails — scratching against the plastic walls of the box.

“Monty?” Even as he said the name of his friend, he had trouble connecting it to the thing in the cat box. He didn’t want to admit this, even to himself, but he knew what was inside that box. “Is it you, mate?” This couldn’t be real; none of it was happening.

But it was happening. He was here, enduring it. This was not a dream. It was reality — or at least what passed for it in these uncertain days.

He waited to hear the same response he’d been getting for the past half an hour.

“Hungry.”

He dipped into a low crouch, his hamstrings complaining as he lowered himself towards the floor. He peered at the slats in the box, glimpsing slow movement between them.

“Fucking hell, Monty…”

He reached out and flipped open the cat box. The lid was on top, so he had to come up out of his crouch to look inside.

The thing… Monty… Monty Bright… that’s what it was, who it was: it was his old sparring partner.

It was lying on its back looking up at the ceiling; the smooth skin of its small, shiny face caught the light. He remembered Monty as a big man, a hard man. He’d taken all kinds of shit to pump up his muscles, and worked out manically at his own gym, lifting weights and doing a lot of heavy bag work. He’d been short but huge; his wide build had been that of a battler.

Now he was small and vulnerable, like a baby, a damaged — or deformed — infant.

Monty’s face was more or less the same as he remembered. It was recognisable, at least, and that was something he could hang on to. Same eyes; same blunt nose; same round head with the hair shaved off. The eyes, in fact, were identical to the way they always had been: clear and intelligent, the eyes of a thinker rather than a brawler.

The rest of Monty was unrecognisable.

The fire at Monty’s gym had been bad, and everyone assumed that the owner had died in the blaze. But surely fire couldn’t do this to a person? Fire blackened and burned; it charred and cooked the meat on the bones. It didn’t… it didn’t shrivel a victim down to a tiny, mutated replica of themselves.

The thing’s body looked as if it had been compressed somehow, crushed and shortened and reduced by the application of phenomenal pressure. Erik remembered how, as a child, he’d put plastic crisp packets in the oven and within minutes of enduring the intense heat, they’d come out shrunk to a fraction of their original size. The same thing had happened to his old friend: the man’s physique had more or less kept its natural proportions, but they’d been reduced by something like a factor of twenty.

Certain physical changes had also occurred.

The naked little body, a solid chunk of muscle, had grown several additional appendages. Monty had developed extra limbs, but ones that didn’t look human. There were what Erik could only describe as tentacles sticking out of his sides, sprouting from the area directly under the armpits and forming a row down the sides of his ribcage. A clawed hand had erupted from his navel, and even as Erik watched it grasped weakly, clutching at the air, the knuckles popping and cracking. There were two toothless mouths in place of nipples; blinking eyes were clustered across his stomach below the ribcage.

This was Monty represented as a monster. He’d become what so many people had thought he was anyway: ugly, monstrous, a vision from a nightmare. The vile thoughts he’d kept locked up inside, the deeds he’d committed, had all manifested upon his flesh, chewing it up, destroying it and remoulding it into another shape entirely. Monty had become the sum of his evils, he had transformed into a manifestation of his deeds.

“Hungry.”

Erik looked at Monty Bright’s small, pink babyish face. The mouth was open. A small, dark tongue darted between the lips, licked the top one, and then was sucked back inside. The lips smacked together, making a repellent sound.

“What… what can I get you? What the hell do you eat?”

What happened to you? What made you like this?

Maybe if he fed Monty, and built up his strength, Monty would tell him what had happened to make him transform into such a strange being. Perhaps he’d start saying something other than that one damned word.

And so he did:

“Blood.”

Of course: there it was. Because monsters didn’t eat tinned tuna, or fish and chips, did they? They didn’t sit down to a nice plate of mince and tatties. They drank blood, like ghouls or vampires.

Erik paused for a moment to appreciate the fact that he was taking all of this in his stride. He should be raving; his mind should have snapped. But he’d seen enough strange things in the Grove during his lifetime to realise that what he saw, what he felt, what he experienced with his normal, everyday senses, was not everything. There were other sights, other experiences, that lay hidden; and sometimes, when the time was right, they popped up into the light and made themselves visible. These things lived inside the black hole, and sometimes they managed to climb out.

This was one of those times.

“Blood,” said Monty again.

“Yeah… yeah, I know. It would be, wouldn’t it?”

Erik had killed two men in his life. The first time had been in the service of his country, when he slit an enemy soldier’s throat during a night-time assault on Goose Green, during the Falklands conflict. He had not been a young man, even then: he was older and wiser than most of his fellow soldiers by several years. It was near the end of his time in the armed forces, and he always thought of it as his final battle.

He’d loved the sound of the knife sliding through meat, hitting the more solid matter of the larynx, followed by the scraping sound as the metal clipped the edge of the hyoid bone. The soft spurt of blood, like a wordless whisper; the gentle sigh of a last breath escaping through the slit he’d made in the man’s body. Silence… beautiful, blissful silence.

The second time had been during an organised fight in a warehouse in Gateshead, when a drug dealer had been trying to muscle in on Erik’s turf. Erik had never liked drugs, but he did like to control how much came into and out of the area. He allowed people like Monty Bright to buy and sell. He didn’t allow no-mark arseholes from across the water to come here and set up their own supply chains.

So he’d seen to it that the chav — who went by the name of Clancy Beevers — got to hear about a challenge. They’d met at three o’clock in the morning, shirtless, no weapons: old school. Erik had beaten the other man to death in less than five minutes. They’d chopped up the body and fed it to pigs owned by a man who’d always claimed to be Erik’s second cousin, despite a lack of familial evidence. This man had proved useful on many occasions, so Erik never disputed the claims to kinship. He’d felt an almost erotic charge as he watched three sturdy porkers fighting over the remains of the man’s head.

So, yes, he’d killed before. He’d killed before, and if he was honest, he’d have to say he liked it.

But surely that was something he should only do if everything else failed? Once a man got into the habit of killing, little else would fill the gap that appeared inside him. He’d seen it happen before, with soldiers mostly, but also a couple of times in civilian life. Murder carved holes in the soul, and the only thing that would close them — although temporarily — was more murder.

He shook his head, closed his eyes. His thoughts felt strange, as if they were being massaged, guided. They were his thoughts, of course, but they were much more intense than they should be.

His head swam. His brain twitched. Or that’s how it felt: like the grey matter was flinching away from something, a stark reality that he couldn’t face.

He walked into the kitchen and found the cat sitting near the back door, washing its paws. Its name was Cecil. He’d never liked the cat, and had inherited the thing from an ex-girlfriend who had stolen it from one of her old boyfriends as part of some oddball revenge plot. The animal had hung around when the woman left. Erik fed it and didn’t mind that it slept somewhere around the house, but he never gave it any attention. It was as if he’d been keeping the animal for a situation like this one.

He bent over and picked up the cat by the loose flesh at the back of its neck. He slammed it into the large farmhouse sink, stunning the thing as its head smacked against the edge of the draining board.

He twisted the cat’s neck, snapping the bones. It was a humane death.

He lifted the cat’s body level with his face and stared into its flat, dead eyes. He felt nothing. His heart rate had not even increased.

He slid out a butcher knife from the wooden knife block on the worktop next to the cooker and returned to the living room. He set down the knife and the corpse and then went back to the kitchen, looking for a suitably large stainless steel bowl. When he found one, he carried it through and set it down on the floor. After a moment’s pause, he went through into the hall and opened the cupboard at the bottom of the stairs, where he kept assorted odds and ends. He raked through the contents and found a box full of old folded plastic sheets, which he’d used to cover his furniture the last time he painted the living room walls. He selected one of the sheets and took it through into the living room, where he laid it out on the floor.

He picked up the corpse and the knife. Kneeling, he held the dead cat over the stainless steel bowl and drew the blade across its soft, furry throat. He held the corpse upside down over the bowl and watched the blood at first pour, and then slow down to a drip, as it filled the receptacle. It took a long time, because the heart wasn’t pumping.

When he had enough blood he carried the bowl over to the coffee table.

“How the fuck do I do this?”

He took the bowl back to the sheet and then returned to the cat box. Gritting his teeth, he picked up Monty Bright and carried him over to the bowl. His skin was thick, like rubber, yet it was also strangely smooth. It felt like a diving suit.

“Blood, blood, blood…”

“Don’t worry. It’s coming.” He cradled Monty like a baby and managed to manoeuvre him so that his face was near the blood in the bowl. He kept a tight grip on the squirming little body and pushed the face down towards the thick red fluid.

Monty lapped at the blood, his thick tongue making a wet sound as it flicked in and out of the liquid.

“That’s good… that’s better.”

Then Monty began to struggle. He was lifting his head away from the blood and making an odd wailing sound, exactly like a testy baby refusing its food.

“What the fuck’s wrong? It’s blood…”

“Blood, blood, blood…”

Erik set down Monty on the plastic sheet. His chin was thick with cat blood, and he was spitting out whatever meagre amount he’d managed to take into his mouth.

Erik realised his mistake instantly. “It’s the wrong kind of blood, isn’t it?”

Without giving too much thought to what he was doing, Erik reached for the knife, wiped it on the plastic sheet, rested the blade against the palm of his left hand, and slashed lightly. He stared at the cut, wondering how it had got there. He’d felt nothing. He was empty, nothing but a puppet, a plaything for monsters.

Monty stopped struggling. His intelligent eyes widened.

Erik pressed the wound to Monty’s mouth and let him drink.

He realised then that he would be required to kill a third human being. The act itself held no terror for him, but the motivation behind the deed was horrific. He watched as Monty lapped at his hand, and when he pulled away the meal, Monty tried to lift his head towards the dripping blood. His mouth opened and closed like that of a baby bird. He had no teeth. The gums were purple and swollen. The suckered limbs along his sides writhed, a sordid octopus-like motion.

Erik got up and grabbed a tea towel from the kitchen, which he wrapped around his hand to staunch the blood flow. The cut wasn’t deep; it would heal quickly.

When he returned to the lounge, Monty was face down on the plastic sheet. His arms and legs, the tentacles and other appendages, were flailing, making rustling sounds against the sheet. He was licking up the spilled drops of blood and laughing, gurgling, expressing undiluted pleasure.

Erik knelt down and turned Monty over onto his back. The mouths on his chest were open and stained red. He stared at Monty’s face. It looked fuller, the cheeks fatter than before. The skin looked less pale, as if his natural colour was returning. He was smiling.

“Okay,” said Erik. “I get it now.”

His head felt as if it were filled with foam; something was burrowing inside.

Monty cocked his head to one side. “Erik?” The voice sounded stronger, less childlike, and more recognisable as that of the real Monty Bright. Awareness dawned in his eyes.

“Yes, Monty, it’s Erik.”

“I need more.” His eyes flickered shut. He was exhausted. The act of feeding had worn him out.

Erik closed his eyes for a second, and then picked up Monty and returned him to the cat box. “I know you do,” he said, as he closed the lid. “And I know exactly where to get it.”

He went upstairs to his office and sat at his desk. He stared at the screen saver on his computer — a black and white photo of Nigel Benn and Chris Eubank squaring up in the ring. He’d sparred with Benn before the man was famous. Erik had once knocked him flat out in the first round. It was a good memory, one that helped get him through some tough times when he began to doubt his own strength. Times like now, like this.

He picked up the phone and dialled a number, waited for the call to be answered. It didn’t take long. Whatever he’d felt inside his head was fainter now, but it was still there, waiting.

“Erik.”

“I need to see you, Hacky.” He stared at the picture of the two proud fighters in the ring, doing exactly what was required to get the job done. No messing around. “Come out to the old country house tonight, at eight o’clock. You know the place. Don’t tell any fucker where you’re going or who you’re seeing. If you do, and I find out, you won’t get paid. You will get hurt, though.”

“Paid?”

“Yeah. I have an important job for you. We’re talking big money, son. More than you’ve ever seen before.” He raised his eyes to the wall, examined the framed painting of a young Cassius Clay. “Consider this a test. If you do well, I’ll push you up the ranks, and give you a proper role in my organisation.”

“You can trust me, Erik. Always.”

“I know I can, marra. That’s why I called you, and not one of the others.” He knew from experience that Hacky would keep his mouth shut. The kid was too afraid to disobey a direct order, and he liked money too much to even risk the chance of losing out. These scumbag estate kids were all the same: they’d do anything for cash, sell their own mother to climb up the criminal ladder and catch a glimpse of the big bucks.

“Meet me at the Barn. I’ll be waiting inside for you.”

“Is it… is it about the monster? That thing we found?”

“Sort of, marra. I’ll tell you what you need to know tonight. Until then, lay low and don’t speak to anyone. Make excuses; tell your mates you’re ill and won’t be seeing them for a few days. Give your girlfriend the elbow. Whatever. Just make yourself available to me, and only me. We have a job to do.”

“Okay. That’s easy. Am I going away, then?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes you are. Just for a little while. I’ll see you at eight, marra.” An idea occurred to him. “Bring a bag packed for a few nights. You won’t need much where you’re going; just the basic essentials.” It wasn’t a great plan, but it might fool people into thinking Hacky had gone on a journey.

He hung up the phone, feeling nothing. Nothing at all.

Back downstairs. Monty was sleeping inside the cat box. His eyes were closed, his chest rose and fell, rose and fell. Erik felt the same stirring inside his skull. Monty was doing something to him — or rather, the proximity to Monty was making something happen. It was like being in the presence of an electrical current. His skin tingled. His mind flexed, like a muscle that hadn’t been used for a long time.

Calmly, he sat down on the floor, cross-legged, and watched Monty sleep.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

WHEN VINCE ROSE unlocked and then opened the old, unpainted door to the first attic room, Marc expected to hear at least the whine of a rusty hinge, or the sound of boards shifting underfoot. But there was nothing; the door opened smoothly and without a sound.

“So you’ve never been up here before, I take it?” Rose spoke without turning around. He reached out and flicked a light switch. The room brightened. Marc wouldn’t call it light, not exactly: that would be too kind a description for the weak, watery illumination. The room beyond the threshold simply became less dark.

“No,” he said, following the old man inside. “To be honest, I didn’t even know these rooms existed.”

“Behold,” said Rose. “My brother’s library…”

The room was small but it seemed much more spacious because there was little furniture inside. Just a small tub chair pushed up against a bookcase. The walls were lined with books. Marc could not see an inch of wallpaper because there were so many ceiling-high bookshelves fitted along the walls, and volumes of differing sizes took up every inch of them. There were also books and dusty old box files lined up on the floor, along the skirting boards.

“Wow… this is quite a collection.” He walked around the room, examining the spines. There were books on religion and philosophy, aviation, birds and wildlife. Shakespeare rubbed shoulders with Orwell and Stephen King. Biographies were stacked next to fiction. There was no recognisable order — no apparent system — to any of it. The majority of the volumes seemed to focus on Fortean subjects — real life ghosts and hauntings, sightings of monsters in lakes, murders, abductions, disappearances, UFOs, cryptos and tulpas. “He was really into this stuff, wasn’t he?”

“So it seems.” Rose went to the roof-mounted Velux window and opened the tilted venetian blind, allowing a little natural light into the musty room. “He was always interested in strange stuff, and I remember he started collecting books on these subjects when he was a child. I didn’t realise he’d kept it up.”

Marc’s eyes roved over magazine collections: The Fortean Times, The Unexplained, I Want to Believe, National Geographic, The New Scientist… full sets, probably worth a small fortune on eBay.

One entire shelf differed from the rest in the fact that it was dedicated to a single subject. Marc had heard the name Roanoake before, but couldn’t quite remember where or when. He selected a book at random from that particular shelf — The Roanoake Colony: An American Mystery. He flicked through the pages, skimming a few lines here and there, not taking much of it in until something snagged in his memory.

“Ah, yes…” He remembered it now: an infamous case. He’d read an article about it, seen a documentary on TV. A bunch of 16^th Century English settlers had vanished mysteriously from an island off the coast of North Carolina. Carved into the trunk of a nearby tree, not far from the deserted camp, was the word Croatoan. There were a lot of theories on why the one-hundred and eighteen people had apparently fallen off the edge of the world, leaving behind only this vague, slightly creepy message — local Indians, cannibalism, alien abduction — and the books on this shelf seemed to examine each and every one of them in great detail.

At the end of the row of books, tucked away slightly because it was so slender a volume, Marc spotted something potentially interesting. A school exercise book with a tattered blue cover, its edges dog-eared. He replaced the book he was looking at and selected this other one, sliding it out of its place on the shelf.

On the cover was handwritten the title Croatoan and Loculus: a Study in Vanishment.

“What is it?” Rose drew close, peering at the book in Marc’s hands.

“I’m not sure. But it looks like your brother was working on something here — writing a book of his own, maybe, or at least an essay. Maybe he wanted to be published in one of those magazines he seemed to like so much.”

He began to leaf through the exercise book. Written neatly on the pages was what appeared to be a series of rough notes, fractured jottings probably penned in great haste judging by the state of the handwriting. The text was unfinished; first draft material. This was clearly something Harry Rose had been planning to develop further but his demise had brought his plans to an abrupt end.

Marc read out a section at random:

“Carved into another tree nearby — an oak tree, which isn’t indigenous to that area — was the word ‘Loculus’. None of the books mention this. It has been expunged from history. Why?”

He turned the pages and read some more:

“The ruby-throated hummingbird is a native of North Carolina. Why have these birds been seen in the Grove throughout history, particularly around the area where the Needle was built? Did they come through from Roanoake?”

He looked up from the page. The room darkened incrementally and when he glanced up at the roof and out of the tiny window, he saw that dark clouds were massing, like harbingers of a storm.

He cleared his throat and read some more:

“The name Terryn Mowbray was recorded on the shipping manifest (but oddly not on the actual passenger list — was he classed as luggage? Stored in a coffin, perhaps, like Stoker’s Dracula on the Demeter?), but this information can be found nowhere in any written account of the case.”

He flicked through the text on the remaining pages. At the back of the book, a photocopied page had been stapled to the inside cover. He opened it and stared at the image. It was a child’s pencil drawing. The lines were ragged, uneven, and the shading didn’t stay inside the lines. The sketch matched the other one in his possession: it showed a man wearing a wide-brimmed black hat and a long black cape, holding a short, pointed stick. His face was white, with large black goggle-like eyeglasses perched above an oversized beak. It was a familiar image, of course — a medieval plague doctor. But the familiarity made it no less disturbing, especially as it had seemingly been sketched by a young child.

captain clikcety, said the words beneath the sketch, drawed by Jack Pollack aged 6

“Why the hell didn’t he ever tell me about this?” He closed the book again and held on to it, not wanting to put it down but afraid to touch the volume for too long in case something infected him. It was a crazy thought, but nevertheless it caught hold inside his mind, barbed and dangerous. This information was unclean, it was tainted. Exposure to it might cause him damage.

“What is it?” Rose placed a hand on his arm. “You look… shaken.”

“Whatever Harry was working on here, it has something to do with the case I was researching. The Northumberland Poltergeist. The Pollack twins. The ghost they called Captain Clickety. Even the Hummingbirds. These were all part of my own notes… Harry was keeping this stuff from me, deliberately it seems. For some reason, he was holding it back.”

“I see. Maybe he was planning to tell you, but didn’t get the chance?”

Marc licked his lips. “Or maybe there was something he didn’t want me to find out…” He sighed. “But you’re probably right. There’s no reason he would have kept this information from me. He was a great help — why would he do that and then keep something this important back? It doesn’t make sense.”

“None of this makes sense, son. I’m starting to believe that my brother had mental health problems — far bigger ones than I ever imagined. I mean, does any of this strike you as abnormal? I don’t mean to cast aspersions on the man’s interests, but all this… well, it’s slightly over the top, don’t you think?”

Marc turned to face Rose. The man’s face was pale in the gathering gloom. His eyes were moist, as if he were about to cry. Was he looking for denial or affirmation? “I suppose so, yes. It does come across as a bit obsessive.”

“Just wait till you see what’s in the room next door. That’s the kicker.” Rose turned and walked out of the room. He stood on the other side of the small landing and used another key to unlock the door opposite. “If you thought the library was weird, just wait until you get a load of this.” He pushed open the door, switched on the light, and went inside.

Standing in the doorway of the library, Marc once again began to have the intense feeling that somebody was standing behind him. He knew that it was impossible, that he was alone inside the room, but the sensation of someone standing there silently in the corner grew and grew, becoming something that he could not ignore. He thought that it might be Harry, either urging him on or warning him not to pursue this any further.

Then, softly at first, he heard a steady, repetitive clicking sound. The sound grew in volume, but remained at a level that ensured no one outside the room could have heard it. The clicking remained at an even tone, droning on and on. Then, like a Geiger counter picking up levels of radiation in the air, it began to wax and wane, creating a hideous song.

Air trapped in the radiator? Old water pipes under the floorboards, making a racket?

The clicking decreased in volume and by the time he was facing the part of the room where it was coming from, it had ceased. The corner was empty. There was nobody there, watching him. Yet he felt as if there was yet another figure hiding just out of sight, perhaps drawn into a fold of darkness.

Marc backed out of the room, taking the exercise book with him. When he finally shut the door, he struggled to let go of the handle. He wanted to keep his hand there, gripping it tightly, effectively trapping whatever was inside that room for as long as he could. Like the fabled little boy with his finger stuck in the dyke, he was holding back the flood — but this was not a flood of water, it was a surging wave of darkness and desolation, the terrible precursor to an ocean of nightmare that would drown all who stood in its path.

“Are you coming?”

He turned his head at Rose’s voice, which was coming from beyond the other open door. He pulled free his hand, backing away from the library, and allowed his body to turn around, too. He was beginning to feel hemmed in. Claustrophobia had never been something that had bothered Marc, but right now he felt trapped.

He stepped into the other room. The window blind was closed but Rose had turned on a small table lamp that was positioned on the floor in the far corner. It cast dim light across the room, creating a creepy atmosphere that wasn’t helped by what was waiting at the centre of the room.

On a large plinth or table, and taking up most of the room, there was a scale model of the Concrete Grove estate. Marc stood and stared at it, hardly able to believe what he saw. He remembered a boyhood friend whose father had been obsessed with model railways. The man had created a system of tracks and fields, and even a small village, in the basement of their house. As a boy, Marc had been fascinated by the sight; as he grew older, he began to think it was all a bit sad and obsessive.

This reminded him of that guy and his model railway. A similar level of detail was displayed here, but possibly to an even greater degree of ambition. He recalled Harry’s milk-bottle-top replica of the Needle. Had it been a practice model, a warm-up or a template he’d completed before tackling the real thing?

He moved towards the model, unsure of what to do in the presence of such a thing.

“Impressive, isn’t it?”

He glanced at Rose, nodded. “Yes… and it’s a bit scary, too. He must’ve spent hours in here, working away at this thing. It’s too lifelike… know what I mean?”

“Yes, I do. It’s creepy. Nothing like this should exist. It’s… It’s unhealthy.”

Marc leaned across the table and reached out towards the replica of the Needle, the ugly tower block that stood at the centre of the estate. This one was not constructed from foil bottle tops.

“I think it’s made out of cement, or maybe even proper concrete. He must’ve cast it himself, mixing the materials, constructing a little mould…”

Marc’s hand had paused in mid air. He moved it forward, brushing his fingertips against the side of the tower. It was hard and rough, unpleasant to the touch.

Rose sounded troubled. “Cardboard I could understand. Even balsa wood. Perhaps some MDF off-cuts from a DIY store. But cement? That’s going a bit too far.”

Marc remained silent as he inspected the model. He didn’t know what to say.

The estate was designed to form a series of concentric circles, each street wrapping around the one before. The plan view, looked at in this way, was weird. It looked like a magic circle, or a form of pentagram. Marc knew this was nonsense, but his gut instinct suggested otherwise. Why build the estate in such a specific layout? What was the purpose behind the circular pattern?

There was no furniture in the room; no shelves on the walls; no carpet on the floor. Just bare plaster and varnished boards. The model took centre stage. It was the reason this room existed. Nobody but Harry Rose had ever been in here until it had been discovered by his brother — Marc could sense it. The man had worked on his model every night, adding and subtracting tiny elements, making repairs and replicating alterations carried out in the real world by builders or council workmen. It was an ongoing project; his life’s work. He must not have told anyone about the model. It was his secret. He had kept it all for himself.

But now that Harry Rose was dead, the seal had been broken: eyes other than his had taken in this small-scale urban wonder.

Some of the houses were made from the salvaged parts of plastic model kits. The vehicles on the streets were almost certainly bastardised toys and model kits; the tiny people were plastic toy soldiers that had been moulded and altered by the application of heat and a sharp craft knife, then dressed in perfect little clothes that Harry had fashioned from scraps of material.

The grass, when he touched it, felt like pieces of Astroturf. White lines had been painted by hand onto the road surfaces; drainage gullies and gutters had been fitted into the kerbs. No detail had been missed. Marc had no doubt that Harry’s model matched the real thing down to the tiniest detail. He could tell by the painstaking work the man had put in that there was little margin for error. It was obvious how much love, dedication, and sheer hard work had been carried out in this room.

Then he noticed the flags.

They looked like minuscule versions of the kind of flags found on a golf course, the ones used to mark the holes. Or football corner flags. A cocktail stick topped off with a triangular cutting from a sheet of cotton had been used for each pole. As he looked closer, he saw that each of the flags had a name and a number written onto the material.

He knew what these were immediately. They were the names and ages of the Gone Away Girls, and each flag was positioned in the place from which they’d vanished. He made a mental note to look up the information, just to collaborate his hunch, but he knew he was correct.

Connie’s flag was stuck in the grass at the sorry excuse for a children’s playground the locals called Seer Green.

Alice’s flag was in the car park of the small supermarket to the east of Grove Lane.

Fiona’s flag had fallen over and lay flat inside the skateboarding park.

Tessa’s flag stood forlorn and lopsided on the pavement outside a sweet shop near Grove Corner.

“What does this mean?” Marc turned and looked at Rose.

“I’m not sure. I think I’m too scared to even think about it.”

“You noticed the names?”

Rose nodded.

“Do you know what they are? Do you know who those flags are meant to represent?”

“I do. It’s those poor little girls, the ones that went missing.”

Marc licked his lips. He didn’t even want to think about this too deeply, but he needed to ask the question. “Do you think… do you really think that Harry could have been involved in their disappearances? Is there any way that he could have been responsible, or at least that he might have known who was?”

Rose didn’t speak for a few seconds. He stared at Marc, then looked quickly away and examined the model. When he looked at Marc again, his eyes were moist. “In all honestly, I don’t really know.”

BACK DOWNSTAIRS, IN the small, neat kitchen, they drank coffee and stared at each other across the table.

“Here.” Rose reached into his jacket pocket and took out a key. He placed it on the table in front of him, alongside the keys to the attic rooms. “It’s for the front door. Use this place as you please. I have a feeling all that stuff upstairs might help you with your book, and if you can shine any light at all on Harry’s possible involvement with those kids, I’d be grateful. I can’t stay here — can’t even come here. It feels… wrong.”

Marc nodded and sipped his coffee. He reached out and took the keys, making a fist around them. “Thanks. I’m not sure what your brother was into, but I’ll be honest — my muse is sitting up and begging for more.”

“Just keep me posted. Let me know what you find out. I… I can’t stay here. It’s too much for me. I’m not a young man. I need to get out and breathe.”

Marc nodded. “I understand. And I appreciate this, I really do.” He opened his hand and looked at the keys. “I’ll find out what I can and keep in touch.”

Rose didn’t take his eyes off Marc’s face. “Let’s just hope you find out that Harry wasn’t involved.”

“What do we do if… well, if he was involved? How the hell do we tackle that situation?”

Rose set down his cup. He placed his hands, palms down, on either side and made them into fists. “I don’t know. Let’s just see what you dig up first, eh? We’ll face that problem if it is a problem.”

“Okay. We’ll see where the wind blows us on this. I’m pretty sure Harry wasn’t doing anything bad. I think I knew him well enough that I’d be able to recognise something… you know, if he was a bad man.” He paused. “And you were his brother: you’d at least have a slight inkling if he was some kind of child abductor. I doubt we’re going to find any bodies buried under the cellar floor.” He tried to smile but it was a struggle. “Worst case scenario: he knew a lot more than he ever let on, and something scared him enough that he kept quiet for all these years.”

“That’s what I’m hoping.”

Marc nodded. “Yeah. Me, too.”

LATER, BACK DOWNSTAIRS, Marc stood at the front window of Harry Rose’s lounge, watching the sky grow dull and leaden. Like time lapse photography, the clouds moved quickly across the heavens, darkening the area, cutting it off from the sun. It was an unusual effect; he had never seen anything quite like it before. When he’d been up in the attic rooms with Rose, he’d glimpsed similar dark clouds out of the attic window, but these were much more expansive. He’d thought of those earlier clouds as harbingers of a storm, and still the idea felt right. But the oncoming storm was not one caused by atmospheric conditions; it was more of a spiritual upheaval.

Marc was not a religious man. Depending on what day he was asked, he would tell people that he was either an atheist or agnostic. He certainly didn’t believe in the God his parents had prayed to. Look what that had achieved for them… nothing; nothing at all. Just a slow, painful, drawn-out death in front of their son.

He watched the darkening sky, his skin prickling as if tiny ghost fingers were pitter-pattering across every inch of his body. He felt cold. The hair on his arms and on the back of his neck was bristling. It was a sensation he’d only ever read about in books, but now that it was happening to him he realised that the physical experience — like most clichés — was based in reality.

“Jesus…” He reached out and closed the window blinds, then turned to face the room. He didn’t feel comfortable here. Not on the estate or in this house. Everything seemed vaguely hostile, as if his presence was unwelcome.

When Rose had left, Marc had gone straight back up to the attic. After studying the model of the estate for a little while, he’d crossed the landing to the library. Ignoring the sensation that there was still someone in there, standing in the corner and watching him, he’d browsed again through the volumes. On a shelf near the door, he found another notebook. He’d failed to notice it the first time, but this time it was as if his eyes had come to rest immediately upon it, deliberately seeking it out. He refused to believe that it had not been there the first time, and someone had placed it on the shelf for him to find when Rose wasn’t around.

The two notebooks were now on the coffee table. He crossed the room, sat down, and picked up the second one again. It was old, the cover creased and stained, yet unmarked by any kind of writing.

There wasn’t much content inside this one, but on the first page was stapled a faded copy of an old-fashioned print or woodcut of a plague doctor. The name Terryn Mowbray was written underneath in Harry’s neat, small script.

“Terryn Mowbray is Captain Clickety…” Even as he said the words, he appreciated their inevitability.

He turned the page and read the words over, trying to understand them more fully this time. There were scribbled footnotes at the bottom of the page, and Marc could at least see the shape and structure that Harry had been attempting to impose upon the writing.

Marc set the notebook down next to him on the sofa. He leaned back and tilted his face up towards the ceiling, closed his eyes. It was madness. None of this could be true — it was all myth and hearsay, local legend given the kind of attention that it surely did not deserve. He opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. There was a large cobweb in one corner; he could see the fat black body of a spider, motionless against the white plaster ceiling. The spider seemed to be watching him. Or perhaps it was dead.

“Why the hell didn’t you get yourself a computer, Harry?”

Harry’s system was difficult to follow. The books in the library were kept in some kind of highly personal and esoteric order, and he had found no more of the slender notebooks on the shelves. There wasn’t much written down. It must all be in Harry’s head, burned to ashes along with his body.

“What else did you know?” The spider moved; it was alive after all. The web shuddered. The spider was no longer there. But something was… and not just in the corner of the ceiling. Marc became convinced that it was everywhere, inside and outside the house; all around him, trying to get inside him. Something was coming.

“What is it that you were keeping from me, and are you trying to tell me now that you’re dead?”

He thought about the Pollack twins, and the Northumberland Poltergeist. He’d always known there was more to the story than a simple urban haunting, but who the hell would believe any of this? His publisher would laugh at him; they’d send him away without an advance. It was fantastic, improbable… more than that: it was fucking insane.

Other worlds, demonic plague doctors, links to a famous case of vanishing New World settlers, a monster called the Underthing… the more he dug, the more incredible all this seemed.

He closed his eyes and tried to pin down the facts. But facts were thin on the ground here; all he had to cling to was a bunch of ghosts and stories within stories.

Only one thing was certain. Doors were opening, or being opened.

Something was on its way.

Something was coming.