he merely observing it, or attracting it somehow? He was distracted by the slowing of the train. Presumably the fog, or a medium that improved on fog, was closing in ahead as well, but he was suddenly afraid that it was designed to halt the train – to prevent him from finding Hugh or Ellen or Charlotte.
That was worse than stupid. He was letting his thoughts trap him in his skull. The train had reached a station, that was all. Admittedly so had the surrounding blankness. As the walls of the suburban station blocked his view of the city he saw the opaque medium creeping up a ramp towards the platform. He couldn't discern even a hint of the city beyond the enclosed ramp, but at least someone was approaching up the slope. As the carriage passed it Rory saw a man emerge from the blank mass that filled the lower half of the passage. The man's face did not, however.
Rory just had time to see that nothingness was trailing the figure up the tunnel before the entrance coasted out of sight, by no means far enough. The next moment the train stopped, and all the doors sprang open as though welcoming the traveller. As Rory's head lolled against the upholstery he saw the figure stalk fast out of the passage. It was little more than a ragged silhouette, scrawny and blackened. If he'd been capable of gratitude Rory would have felt glad of his inability to distinguish much above its neck, where the jagged outline suggested a collapsed cavity rather than a face. Nevertheless the figure was advancing at speed, and so was the vast absence at its back. Rory's fists clenched, or did their shaky best to do so, reminding him that he was still clutching the phone. Was it attracting the intruder? Perhaps, because at last he heard the name that the whisper had been repeating. It belonged to the figure that leapt into the carriage and so, he thought too late, did the all- encompassing blur that followed. As he saw his companion clearly at last, he was almost glad when the nothingness claimed him.
THIRTY-SEVEN
As Charlotte backed away from the impossible aperture in the earth, a mass of blackness reared up in pursuit. It was a shadow dragged out of the depths by the flashlight beam, but she couldn't be reassured while she was so aware of walking over a roof. She was still gripping the handle of the spade, and as her retreat pulled it out of the earth, the unsteadily illuminated patch of ground around the skylight and the entire dim common stirred as if the buried house were preparing to slough its concealment. She mustn't think she'd roused the house or anything within it. All she was seeing was wind in the grass, but the knowledge didn't help much. She could hardly think for yearning to be off the hidden roof and as far as an uninterrupted run would take her from the house.
She believed at last, which made her realise how desperately she'd been hoping not to have to do so. The possibility of different explanations for her cousins' states and her own had fled as she wished she could. So the house was indeed beneath Thurstaston Mound, but not in the sense they'd assumed. Had the mound collapsed simply from erosion, or could it have been somehow encouraged to collapse? Certainly it appeared to have trapped the occupant of the house in his own worst nightmare. Charlotte had no doubt that he'd been buried along with the house.
The idea was enough to send her several paces backwards. What had she imagined she could do here? For that matter, what had Hugh and Ellen done? She ought to try to locate them, but the prospect of calling out so close to the open skylight didn't appeal to her. Using her mobile was a problem too, even once she'd dealt with the spade by leaning it against her rather than risk digging it into the earth that covered the roof. She hung her bag on the handle and trained the flashlight beam on the hole in the ground, and then she peered at the mobile to key the call one-handed. All at once she was afraid to hear Hugh's or Ellen's ringtone in the depths below the skylight, and she re-called the hospital instead.
'Putting you through,' the receptionist said as the edges of the hole grew restless. In a few seconds Charlotte heard not just her own unquiet heart but the sister on the ward. 'Sorry to bother you,' Charlotte said, which seemed grotesquely remote from her situation. 'I was wondering if there's been any change with Rory Lucas.'
'Rory Lucas?' Presumably the sister was questioning a nurse, but the audible reply came from Annie, who called 'He's not moved since she left him.'
'Nothing yet, I'm afraid. We've got your number, haven't we?'
'You have, thanks,' Charlotte said, already envisaging a situation where she might prefer it not to ring. She ended the call, and her finger wavered over the keys until she became furiously impatient with herself. She jabbed the key to display the list of names and selected Hugh's. A breathless silence followed, and a heartbeat, and then an imitation bell began to shrill in her ear. Her heart had time to thump again before the call belatedly triggered the theme from
She felt as if she wouldn't be able to move until it was answered, and quite possibly not then. It might depend who spoke. As the jolly theme jingled on, it sounded increasingly like a mockery of childhood. The melody fell silent halfway through a jaunty rising phrase, and a voice spoke in Charlotte's ear.
She had to take a disoriented moment to recognise why it wasn't audible beyond the skylight as well. It was the automated message, responding from somewhere that seemed hardly to exist. 'Hugh, are you there?' Charlotte pleaded. 'Can you hear me? Answer me, Hugh.'
Nobody did. She terminated the call and managed not to yield to the temptation to repeat some or all of the words at the top of her voice. She brought up the list again and thumbed Ellen's number. 'Be somewhere up here,' she prayed under her breath. She hadn't finished whispering when the title song from
Like Hugh's tune, it sounded several floors deep. The protracted cry suggested an attempt to rise above a nightmare. When it arrived at the rest of the verse, Charlotte was assailed by an image of Ellen prancing helplessly at the behest of the music in the dark. Ellen might be too frail or too distressed to offer much resistance. The unwelcome fancy made Charlotte shout her cousin's name before the song was cut off by the familiar message. 'What are you both doing down there?' she could hardly wait to plead. 'Can't either of you answer?'
The question seemed to grow more ominous as it left her mouth. 'Someone speak to me,' she called loud enough to be heard without the phone, an appeal that raised nobody as far as she could tell. She dropped the mobile in her bag and clenched her fist on the handle of the spade. She knew where she had to go now if she could.
The mouth of the house worked, eager to swallow her, as the grass around the hole trembled in the wind while the flashlight beam magnified her nervousness. She did her best to lose her temper with that and to hold onto her anger as she followed the shivering beam to the hole, which was far too reminiscent of an open grave. The resemblance wasn't entirely dispelled when the beam plunged into the dark.
It crept across the floorboards and spilled over the brink of the trapdoor to grow dimmer on the stairs. 'Hugh,' Charlotte called down. 'Ellen.' She didn't know whether she was more afraid to find out why they didn't answer or to descend into the house. She succeeded in recapturing some of her anger as she clung to the spade, which she wasn't about to leave behind when it was the nearest thing she had to a weapon. She lowered it through the skylight at arm's length and let it fall with a thud that resounded through more levels of the house than she could judge. Without going after it she wouldn't have a weapon. She slipped the strap of her bag over her shoulder and nestled the bag under her arm, and turned to set foot on the ladder.
Beyond the cliff and the foreshortened river the Welsh coast glittered as if to communicate a message she had neither the time nor the ability to decipher. Perhaps it was simply reminding her how much light she was leaving behind. Under her foot the topmost rung felt treacherous with rust. She mustn't take these as excuses not to proceed, and a flare of anger was enough to send her onto the next crumbling rung and the ones beneath, taking her up to her waist in the lightless house. The flashlight beam shrank from the edge of the cliff as she groped for the next rung with a foot, and she was aware of the gaping space beneath her and closing in at her back. She gripped the highest rung with her free hand, and as scales of rust scraped together under her fingers she brought the flashlight to waist level. Darkness flooded across the common, blotching her vision, so that when the flashlight beam jerked downwards with her uncertain descent she wasn't sure how many shadows were fluttering around her among the rafters. She planted both feet on a rung and closed her fist on another while she aimed the light at the floor. The beam wobbled across the boards until it encountered a shape that had been lying low. The light seemed to rouse the thin twisted limbs as the object glared at her with its solitary orb.
