He grabbed his phone, spattered with blood and dog hair. He smeared it on his jeans, one side then the other. He quickly hobbled to the door.
Another scream came, muffled and desperate. He had no weapon.
Somewhere in the vaults of his own heart, the ghost of the vicar he once was had already dropped to his knees, pleading with God for this to turn out okay. But when he reached out into the void, desperate for a rare second to be that man, it shimmered away and other voices, more gleeful and cruel, started whispering right into his ear.
Teenagers in witches’ outfits, supping cider and laughing into the night. ‘Let’s leave her in there. Yeah, let’s shut the hatch and run off.’
‘No,’ he said to them. ‘Not me.’
No time left, no more moments in the jar.
Phone light. Click.
He pushed the door open.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
It was an empty stone room, with a mattress in the corner. The place stank of oil and what seemed like … he sniffed the air … rubber.
He spotted another door on the other side of the room and was about to go through it when the screaming stopped. At the same time his phone light fell across a small desk that had been pushed against the wall. A metal chair was underneath it. A pile of history books sat neatly on the side. The top one was on medieval history, the one underneath was something on the Salem Witch Trials. The local paper lay on the desk, neatly folded, with its headline about the masturbating man at the school gates. But the page had been scribbled over with a few pens’ worth of ink. The Menham Evangelical notice sheet sat next to it too and a flyer for the Phoenix Club.
Get your life back! it said.
He found a grubby notepad too, filled with strange poetry in blue ink.
But underneath that were a few articles, neatly cut from newspapers. A five-second glance showed they had the same theme. They were reports about indecent assaults on girls. All of them were under ten. There were no pictures, no victims were named.
Which was why it was so odd that above each block of text, a name was neatly written.
Louisa Ford, 9, Penny Mendelson, 9, Ella Hudson, 9 and others. He leant forward and saw an article that looked different from the rest. This one had a photograph and a name.
Haunted House Mystery Ends in Suicide. Girl, 9, Dead
Holly Wasson stared up from the table, in a shot he hadn’t seen before. Smiling on a swing, both hands holding the chains. Her head was cocked to the side with some sort of daisy clip in her hair, eyes squinting in the sunlight.
And then one final sheet, underneath them all. Not a newspaper cutting but a photocopied page from some old report. He slid the Holly picture to one side – with the phone rather than his fingers – and saw a series of young boys, naked. They stood in a line in front of a bare brick wall. Some had their hands over their eyes to block out the light from the flash. Instantly he knew what they were, because he felt that familiar loping, acidic turn in his stomach. The children’s home abuse scandal. The pictures he’d seen on his phone.
This clipping was decades older than all the others on the desk, but it did share one thing with the rest. Directly above the head of one of the naked boys was a name, written with care though perhaps not pride. A very tall, skinny kid with a bulk to his shoulders and a haunt in his eye. He was looking at the camera as if the Devil himself was holding it, and Matt could tell who the boy was. It was the bald guy from the Phoenix Club, the one who had prayed at him the other morning, the one who spilled the coffee. The one with the gentle smile.
Matt stared at the picture of the boy on the table, and the name pencilled across.
Jeremy Phillip Marlowe, Aged 9.
He looked away at the bricks on the wall next to him, and then back at the ones in the picture. The same place.
The rubber smell was setting his teeth on edge, and he noticed an old cardboard box under the desk. He quickly dragged it out, looking for a weapon. He found something else instead.
Rubber masks.
Lots of them. Shaped like animals with string threaded through the back, all tattered. They had peeling labels inside, which looked very old indeed, thick with dust.
The box lid said Christmas Show. 1979. In red felt tip.
He glanced back at the picture of the boys. The date, January 12th 1980, was typed in the corner. He wondered … who had used these masks last? The children?
Something shivered across his back.
The staff.
The staff had used these. For anonymity.
He wanted to burn them. Nuke this repellent box into oblivion. But instead he quickly grabbed two, which turned out to be a white goat and a black owl. He quickly stretched the rubber around his foot and looped the masks together, threading each through warped eye and mouth holes. Animals in every sense, gripped him tight. It seemed to stay threaded. Seemed to keep the gash on his foot together. At least for now.
He heaved his leg to the
