CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Matt stood on the doorstep of Barley Street, reeking of bonfire night. ‘They’re taking her to hospital.’
Mary sipped from her mug and winced. She put a hand on the doorframe, painted fingernails pressing into the wood.
‘Mary, did you hear me? I said she’s in the ambulance now.’
‘You know she never told me about you.’ She blinked slowly and looked at him. ‘She kept you a biiiiiig secret. Now why is that?’
‘There’s nothing to tell. I’m just a friend of Bob and Joyce. So do you need a lift to the hospital?’
She nodded. ‘Can I get my jacket?’
‘Of course, and I need to get her recorder. She says it’s in her room.’
‘Fine. Fine.’ She stepped aside and started tugging a black jacket from a coat hook, struggling to yank it free. She shuffled her feet to stop herself from stumbling. He’d found some gaffer tape and cardboard earlier and it still sat to the side. He quickly grabbed it and rushed into Holly’s room. Sliding the tape against the pane he secured it as best he could, except he nicked his finger on a shard of glass.
‘Dammit.’ He sucked the red bead that mushroomed from it and noticed his fingernail was black with soot. Then he looked at Holly’s room for a few moments, before switching off the light.
Rachel’s recorder was still on the bed. It reminded him of a Star Trek tricorder. He bundled it and the headphones up, grabbing the charger just in case she needed it. Then he paused.
‘I’ll just be a minute,’ he called down. ‘I have to check if it’s working.’
He pulled the headphones on and tapped the power button. When he hit play, the sound of the seance exploded in his ears and he frantically turned it down. He rewound it a touch and listened for about thirty seconds to the part she seemed so engrossed in. But he heard nothing new, nothing that he didn’t hear at the time.
It was just after he was slipping it into its case that he bent down to grab the headphone wire. He saw the paper out of the corner of his eye. The corner of the folded sheet stuck out from under her mattress, like a shark’s tooth.
‘Just packing up now,’ he called out as he tugged the tooth free.
He knew what it was. Knew it instantly even as it folded itself open as he brought it into the light. Unfurling like it was eager for air and keen to be read.
The scrapes of Joyce’s mad, spirit-driven pencil had marked deep, jerky lines across the sheet. This was during the pencil’s angry, intense phase. In the top corner, he could see one of Bob Hodge’s numbers that he’d handwritten in neat blue ink.
#44.
Around the outside, he could see the scrawled words that he remembered Rachel reading out. In fact, it was the exact part she’d been listening to in the recording, over and over.
In the dark. In the dark. With Me. In the dark.
Fine, but he wasn’t interested in those.
He pulled the paper closer and read the other two words in the centre. Words that he knew for a fact Rachel had skipped reading. Words that nobody else had seen and that weren’t even on the recording. He frowned and gazed at them for a second, tracing out the scraped lead with his finger.
He left a tiny scrape of dried blood on the sheet. ‘Shit.’ He pulled his hand back then folded the paper back up. He slipped it into his pocket, confused at why she’d hide this. And as he trotted down the stairs to get Mary, the two words swam and dived into his memory, even though he had no idea what they meant.
The vaults.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Where fields are open and the sky is warm,
And the smells are precious.
Rabbit was.
Trickle-sound of rivers running,
Time is kept.
So rabbit leapt.
Then
Clouds fell from the mountain,
They dried the sea and snapped the door,
Broke the lock upon the fountain.
Left old rabbit scared and shouting,
Whore, whore, evermore.
Who took my hand and danced the floor.
Whore, whore, witch and bitch.
Who took my life, my all.
Let me stop, and catch a breath.
And do your will no more.
And do your will no more.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Morgues, Matt discovered, are very bright.
They’re not mood-lit techno caverns or chambers, like the movies tell you. They’re crisp and clean and looked to him surprisingly similar to a peanut factory he worked in when he was a student. Glaring fluorescent bulbs glowed through frosted plastic squares set into the roof and shone off stainless steel sinks and slabs bolted to the washable, white-tiled floor. But a closer look brought out the strange little features that he didn’t fully understand. He could make a grim guess at their function, though. Suspended over each metal body-table was what looked like sleek white hoovers, emerging from industrial, dentist-style arms and brackets. And on the metal slabs themselves were little white rollers where the bodies would lie. It must have been a lot easier to slide the cadavers on and off that way.
There was one other detail too, which was perhaps the first truly significant step in setting his teeth on edge. Up on the wall, near the ceiling, he could see two rings, glowing blue behind a metal grille with the brand name Insect-o-cutor written across it. A sort of meticulously clean version of those industrial fly- and wasp-killers you see up in the corner of a fish and chip shop, buzzing now and then as they spark out another life. The sight of those two glowing rings did no favours to his imagination, and he wondered what things might creep or even fly out of the seams of the silent guests they had in here.
No wonder, then, that even Larry looked a little pale. He certainly kept tugging at his tie, loosening its grip on his neck.
The latent smell of the Jo
