The Dead Tracks

nothing to hold.

    'Healy?'

    The files were stacked on my lap, the photograph of the woman in the eighth facing out at me. Healy looked at me, then down at her photo.

    'Later,' he said quietly.

    Static

    When Sona opened her eyes, everything was filled by light. She immediately closed them again, rolled over and crawled across the floor to the wall of the hole. Except the wall wasn't there. And she wasn't in the hole.

    She gradually opened her eyes for a second time and, around her, shapes started to form. The four white walls of the room she was in. Two thin strip lights above her, buzzing constantly. A glass panel built into one of the walls, running halfway down from the ceiling. When she looked more closely, she saw it was a one-way mirror: everything in the room was reflected back at her; nothing visible on the other side.

    She sat up. There was a door in the wall, adjacent to the mirror, and — next to that — a table with a glass of water. Next to the glass was a small piece of card folded in half: an arrow pointed to the water, and the message Drink this had been written underneath. Along from that, hung across the table, was a medical gown. A second card sat on top of it: Put this on, it read. For a second, she thought of her mother reading Alice in Wonderland to her when she was a child. Then a creeping sense of dread washed away the memory.

    Standing, Sona examined herself in the glass. She wasn't sure how long she'd been kept in the hole. She'd started to lose count after a week. But she could see a change in herself. She had a bruise on her face where he'd come for her last time. One of her eyes looked a little puffy too; the kind of look insomniacs wore. She'd slept most nights, but never well. Part of her was always switched on so she'd hear him approach.

    But it wasn't the bruise, or her eyes, that was changing.

    It was her skin.

    She stepped up closer to the mirror and touched a finger to the glass. On the hardness of her cheekbones, on the bump of her chin, at the tip of her nose, little blobs of light formed, dull and matte. Her skin was waxy. When she touched it, it left a trace of itself on her fingers.

    Then something moved.

    She stepped back and gazed at the window. A flicker behind the glass. Or had she imagined it? Fear blossomed in her chest, prickling, moving through her blood and her muscles and her bones. 'Hello?' she said quietly.

    Nothing.

    Drink this. Put this on.

    She pulled the medical gown off the table. It was thin cotton, and there were ties at the neck and midway down the back. Then she picked up the water and drank some. Gown in hand, she moved to the far corner of the room. Turned, so her back was opposite the glass. Then started undressing. She'd been in the same clothes for however long she'd been kept in the hole. But although she could smell sweat on herself, some of her other scents remained. Perfume. Moisturizer. She could even smell a little of the shampoo she'd used on her hair the day Mark took her to the woods.

    When she was naked except for her underwear, she glanced back at the window. Another brief movement. A tiny blur, like the outline of a shadow. She studied it for a while longer, her own thoughts {he's watching me) sending a shiver down her spine, then slid her arms into the gown and began to tie it at the neck and back. When she was finished, she faced the door.

    Something had changed.

    She looked around the room, spinning on her heel. Walls. Window. Table. Water. Her clothes on the floor. In the mirrors, the only thing she could see was the room and herself.

    Then she realized: it wasn't something she could see.

    It was something she could hear.

    She looked up. The strip lights above her had stopped buzzing.

    Suddenly, the first one blinked, like a flash of lightning, then cut out altogether. The walls lost their brightness. The floor lost its shine. She backed up a couple of steps, her eyes fixed on the only remaining working light, fear squeezing at her throat. There was a pregnant pause. A long, terrible moment where she silently begged it to stay on. Then it blinked once, mirroring the first strip light - and went out.

    Dark.

    She moved in the vague direction she remembered the door being, and when she couldn't find it, she started to panic. Breath shortened. Heart pumped harder.

    'Please,' she said, tears forming in her eyes.

    Crank.

    A noise from her left. Then a line of light opened up in the darkness. The door. A shape filled the gap. Behind its shoulders was a white corridor, lit by a dull bulb.

    'Please don't hurt me.'

    A tremor passed through her voice as she backed away from the door. The shape, still in the corridor, stepped into the room. And then it pushed the door shut.

    'Please,' she said again.

    No response. No sound of movement.

    Nothing until, about five seconds later, a crackling sound started to emerge from somewhere.

    Static.

    To her side: movement.

    'Mark?'

    'You won't feel a thing,' a voice said from somewhere inside the room.

    And then a hand slipped around her face, clamping on her mouth, a tissue pressed against her nose and lips. And within a couple of seconds, she'd blacked out.

Chapter Forty-four

    Healy and I walked up the path towards Alba, the block of flats in Mile End Daniel Markham had once occupied. The doors were open. Just inside, in the foyer, a woman was mopping floors, big puddles of water scattered around her. She didn't even look up as we moved behind her and into the ground-floor flats.

    It was eight-thirty. Commuting hour. A couple of people left their apartments, dressed for work. At Markham's door we waited, listening to the sounds of the building. Televisions. A conversation next door. But no one about to exit their flat. I pushed at the door to number eight and it swung gently away from its frame. The piece of card I'd used to wedge it shut dropped to the floor. Healy stepped back and let me take in the flat — any changes, any suggestion Markham had been back. But it looked exactly the same.

    Healy headed to the living room. I went back to the bathroom and flicked on the light. The bathroom cabinet remained open, the clasp still broken. Nothing else had been moved. I placed my hands either side of it and lifted the cabinet off the wall. The message emerged. Help me.

    'Healy.'

    He appeared a couple of seconds later, looking at me, then at the message on the wall. 'You think Markham wrote that?'

    'You don't?'

    He studied the wall, shrugged. 'Why's he asking for help? And why bother hiding it where no one's going to find it?'

    'I found it.'

    'By accident.'

    'But I found it.'

    'So what's your point?'

    'Maybe he wants to be stopped,' I said, looking at the message again. 'Or maybe he's caught up in something, he's scared, and he wants someone else to be stopped.'