The Dead Tracks dr-2

by Tom Weaver

  A noise from our left.

  I swivelled and lifted up my phone. The blue light from it dropped off about twenty feet away. I could see the polished concrete floor fade off into the darkness, and some sort of base unit on the edge of the phone's glow. It looked like a plinth. I took a couple of steps forward, pulling Megan along behind me, and the blue light extended across the structure. Another step. Another. It was definitely a plinth.

  Then I realized what was lying on top.

  A coffin.

  It was completely transparent. Reinforced plastic. Every surface, every angle, shone in the light from the phone. Inside it, at the bottom, I could see two blocks — but then realized they weren't blocks. They were feet. I moved the phone up the side of the coffin: feet, legs, hands, arms. It was a woman. Her head was turned to the right, facing out at us, her hair hovering around her face in snaking strands of blonde. She was naked and floating in formalin.

  'Fucking hell,' I said quietly, stepping up to the coffin and looking down through the top. Her skin had bleached white, but otherwise she could have been drifting beneath the surface of the waves. Apart from her hair, she was completely still, her body hardened, arms out to either side, legs together, eyes open. She'd been operated on before she died: there was a scar along the side of her face, running past her ear and around to the back. A facelift. The stitches were still in place, but they didn't run all the way down. Level with the top of the ear lobe they stopped, as if the surgeon had abandoned the procedure. Flesh was visible where the stitches didn't continue.

  I recognized her as Isabelle Connors.

  The first woman to go missing two years before.

  I glanced back at Megan. There were tears running down her face as she looked at the woman in the coffin. I brought her into me, partly to shield her from the sight of the woman looking out, and partly to quieten the sobs she was making.

  We moved on.

  Out of the dark emerged more shapes, defined and frozen in the glow from the phone. More coffins. More women. All blonde, all posed Exactly the same as they lay submerged. When I moved to the next, I could see she'd had the same surgery, except her chin had been cut open too, a piece of silicone visible where the stitches hadn't been closed properly. April Brunei. The second woman to be taken. The coffins were in order.

  Then behind me, another noise.

  A dull clunk.

  I waited for it to repeat, but there was nothing. Just a buzz. I knew then I was right: it was a generator.

  The lights came on.

  For a second I was disorientated. Then I realized why: the light was purple. Above us, a series of strip lights ran the length of the room, a dull glow travelling along them. It created a watery effect, as if the room's colouring had been turned up a notch on the dial. Every shape in the room suddenly emerged, without being fully defined.

  The room wasn't anywhere near as big as it had seemed in the dark, but the ceiling was high — maybe sixty feet — and a half-oval shape, like the mid-section of a railway tunnel. There were crates all over the place, but congregated mostly on my left. Coffins in a row to my right. A big archway behind them, leading into a room full of more mannequins, standing like an army.

  On the other side of the room, in the far corner, was a whitewashed wall with photos of the missing women in two rows. Four on the top. Five, including Jill, on the bottom. Each of the women had dotted lines marked on their faces. Surgical marks. Around the pictures was a network of other documents: newspaper cuttings, anatomical drawings, cross-sections of faces, blueprints of buildings. Other photographs. Markham. Frank White. Jamie Hart. Charlie Bryant. My house. My kitchen. My living room. Liz and me standing on the front porch of her house.

  Then the lights went out again.

  Complete darkness.

  Megan moved in even closer to me, her face pressed against my chest, her eyes still closed. I could feel her crying, the movement of her jaw, the soft sound as she tried to dampen the noise. I pressed a hand flat to her head and kept her close, then started inching forward.

  Six feet ahead, there was a dull orange glow on the floor.

  Healy's phone.

  On the very edge of the light, I could see a hand, the gun about a foot from it. As we took another step forward, Healy emerged, lying face down, trails of blood running from his head. Next to him, its muzzle at his chest, was the dog. The patch of skin on its face looked infected. It darted a look at us, eyes turning to pinpricks of light, and then turned and headed off in the other direction.

  If the dog is inside here, the exit must be too.

  I squeezed Megan to let her know we were going to move again, and then edged forward. When I got to Healy, he was making quiet noises, like air escaping from a balloon. He was still alive — but only just. His blood was smeared across the floor and over the coffin next to him.

  The sixth one.

  Leanne.

  She was looking up through the lid with wide eyes, her skin the colour of snow. In that moment, it was like every ounce of Healy's vengeance had transferred to me. I felt his pain. His burning rage. His need to hit out.

  'Uhhhhhhh…'

  As Healy groaned, the generator clunked and purple light erupted right above us again. In my peripheral vision, something moved. A blur, darting right to left. Feet slapping against the floor. He's trying to confuse me. I squeezed Megan tighter, looking down at her.

  And that was when I saw my hands.

  They were fluorescent orange, my fingers, my palms, my wrists, glowing. It was all over the sleeve of my jacket as well. I checked my body and there were marks on my trousers and shoes. Megan's shoulders and her vest were glowing too, where I'd had my arms around her.

  I glanced at Healy.

  Exactly the same: hands, arms, legs, clothes, shoes, everything illuminated. And suddenly I realized — too late - what was happening. The residue I'd felt on the way down the ladder wasn't dew or oil. The bulbs above me were ultraviolet black light. Virtually no light and no visible effect — until they reacted with fluorescent paint.

  And I was covered in it.

  'Hello, David.'

  I turned. He was standing behind me, all in black, glass shard on a chain at his throat, surgical mask over his mouth and nose. His eyes flared, widening as if trying to draw me in.

  'You're easier to see when you're lit up like a Christmas tree.'

  And then he stabbed me with a surgeon's knife.

  Chapter Sixty-eight

  In a split second I pushed Megan to the side and brought my arm up. The knife went into the flesh just above my elbow. The blade wasn't more than two inches, but I felt the pain instantly. It shot up my arm and exploded out across my chest.

  I heard footsteps as Megan ran off into the darkness, and I felt a second of relief that she'd got herself away. Glass followed the noise too. By the time he'd realized his mistake, I was on him: one punch to the face; one to the side of the head; one to the chest, next to the heart. We crashed to the floor. The knife pinged off the ground and spun away. He was dazed, but still fighting: hands came up to my throat, surgical gloves clawed at my face, fingers grabbed at my nose and eyes.

  I pushed him away and hit him again. All my anger and revulsion channelled into the punch. Something cracked. In the darkness, both of us semi-lit by Healy's phone, his eyes rolled up into his head and I realized I'd broken his nose. Blood slowly soaked through from the inside of the mask.

  He lay still. Eyes closed.

  Getting up, I searched for Megan in the dull glow of the black lights. 'Megan?' Silence. I moved towards the shadows at the back of the room, feeling the breeze. 'Megan? It's okay, honey. Everything's okay. I just need to know you're safe.'

  Suddenly, everything descended into darkness again and I heard footsteps. I spun on my heel, preparing for Glass's approach - but it didn't arrive. Instead the footsteps circled me. I heard crates tumble and something fall to the floor with a clang. And then a rectangle of creamy light burst open in the space
beyond the coffins.

  A door.

  Glass looked back at me — and then disappeared inside.

  I sprinted after him. The corridor looked like it had been some kind of service tunnel. The walls were crumbling, the cement turning to dust. At the end was a stairwell, zigzagging upwards and out of sight. Glass glanced back again from the steps, then started moving up to the surface.

  The stairs rose for about thirty feet. At the top, a door had been sealed with a welding torch and a series of boards. To one side, there was daylight coming through a disused air vent. Glass dived inside the vent, clattering against the metal. As I got to the landing area, I headed after him. The vent opened up in a straight line for about forty feet, before angling upwards. When Glass reached the end, he hauled himself up. Feet dangling. Then he was gone. I slowed down five feet from the end and looked up.

  Above me, the same LED light alarm system was in place. The covering for the vent - sitting half over the hole - was a piece of wire mesh. I could see a thick canopy of trees and snatches of blue sky. He wasn't at the lip of the hole. But it didn't mean he wasn't close. If he'd picked up Healy's gun, he would have fired it already. But he might have had another knife — and I wasn't about to fight him from below.

  Slowly, quietly, I manoeuvred into position.

  Then I gripped the edges at the top of the hole and pulled myself up. The air vent opened into a small brick building with a concrete floor. No roof; trees overhead.

  Behind me, stacked against one of the remaining walls were a series of railway sleepers, cobwebs clinging to them. The railway line that had never been laid.

  The Dead Tracks.

  I searched for a weapon and found a rusting shovel propped against the sleepers, then quickly circled the building. To my left there was a vague path through long grass; to my right, a path that continued for sixty feet before hitting impenetrable woodland.

  I headed left.

  The canopy was thick and the path quickly became mud and stones. Further along was a length of railway track, cutting across the trail, from one side to the other. I carried on, looking over my shoulder the whole time, the shovel up and primed. Moments later, a wind passed through the woods, the leaves in the trees whispering. A few seconds later it came again, and this time it clearly sounded like a voice. Or maybe I was spooked. I wasn't sure now. I looked around, feeling like someone was watching me.

  On my right, I noticed the grass had stopped growing. It had been flattened, ripped away in places. And in the spaces that remained were a series of white posts, spaced equally apart, each one numbered.

  An odd sensation shivered through me.

  And then I realized why: he's behind you.

  I turned. His eyes widened above the bloodied mask as he raised the knife at his side. I ducked away from him - but too late. The blade came fast and pierced the skin at the top of my shoulder. I sucked in the pain and rolled away, keeping my grip tight on the shovel.

  He came at me a second time, stabbing the knife towards my throat then cutting across in one swift motion. I stepped back but he was keeping me closed up, forcing my arms in against my body as protection, not allowing me to open up an arc for the shovel. The third time he got me in the folds of my top. I heard the tear of fabric, felt the tip of the knife blade come all the way through to my skin. But then, as he was drawing away, I swept the shovel in a half-circle. It thudded against the top of his arm and he slipped on the wet ground, falling to his side. As I went for him again, he raised a forearm, and the shovel clanged against the bone. He screamed out in pain, the noise echoing out through the Dead Tracks. I went again, catching him in the small of his back, and he thumped against the turf like a sack of cement.

  Still.

  As I edged closer, shovel up, I could see the posts more clearly. There were thirteen of them, all recently driven into the earth. Each one stationed about five feet apart. I stopped, eyes moving from one post to the next, a sickening realization forming. This is it. A wind came through the trees towards me. Brief and violent, like the last breath of the thirteen women Milton Sykes had killed a century before.

  This is Sykes's burial ground.

  Glass had found it. Nurtured it.

  I stepped up behind him. The water from the grass had soaked through his medical scrubs. The mask had been pushed up to the top of his head. Long grass covered his features. 'Roll over,' I said to him, teeth gritted. He didn't react. I prodded him with the blade of the shovel. 'Roll over, you piece of shit.'

  Nothing.

  Forcing the shovel in under him, I flipped his body over. He rolled on to his back. Eyes closed. And suddenly he became someone else.

  Someone I knew.

  Aron Crane.

  But it wasn't the Aron I remembered from the support group. The man who'd sat next to Jill. Even unconscious, he was different: darker and more dangerous. He wasn't the man who'd been concerned about Jill. The man I'd thought I'd bumped into by accident the day before. He wasn't anyone I remembered.

  'Aron?'

  He moved fast, grabbing my ankle, trying to turn it, trying to twist it the wrong way to force me to the ground. Teeth clenched. Eyes flashing. Adrenalin surging through his system as he saw a last chance to turn the tables. He forced me into a half-turn away from him and was on his feet within a second, grabbing me by the neck and pushing me to the ground. Suddenly I was beneath him, his body on mine, his hands tightening at my throat. As he closed off my air, I started to lose the sensation in my hands: my fingers numbed, my palms, my wrists.

  But then his grip loosened.

  Not much, but enough.

  Nerves fired in my hands. Prickles of sensation drifted into my fingers. And I could feel the shovel again. The wood. The iron. The weight.

  I gripped it as hard as I could and launched it off the ground towards him. The blade was side-on, the thin width of it leading first. It cracked against his skull, behind his ear, and his fingers sprang from my throat immediately; a bear trap flipping open. His eyes rolled up into his head. He wobbled. Then he slumped sideways and hit the wet ground about an inch from the thirteenth grave.

  Above me, the gentle patter of rain started, popping against the canopy, coming down in a fine spray against my face.

  Otherwise, the Dead Tracks was silent.

  PART FIVE

  Chapter Sixty-nine

  Police arrived on the northern edge of the woods ten minutes after I called them. I'd dragged Crane's body back to the storage building and tied him up, then found Megan and brought her back up to the surface. We huddled together, away from him, under what remained of the roof. By the time Jamie Hart's head popped up from the air vent, his body covered in a white crime-scene boiler suit, Crane was awake but drowsy. Blood ran from his face, mixing with the rainwater pelting down through the open roof. Hart came over, a uniformed officer flanking him, and told Megan that they were going to take her somewhere safe. She looked at me for some kind of assurance, and when I told her that everything was going to be okay, she whispered a thank you and they led her off and out of sight. A minute after that, I was in handcuffs.

  Three hours later, Hart and Davidson were facing me in an interview room. I was tired. I'd barely slept in over thirty hours, and I could feel every minute of it. They'd already taken away what I was wearing as evidence and sent a uniformed officer back to my house to pick up a spare set of clothes. But new clothes and machine coffee didn't help. What my body wanted most was to shut down and recharge.

  'How's Healy?' I asked.

  Hart had been filling out some paperwork, but he looked up at the mention of the name. He set his pen down, bony fingers tapping out a rhythm on the table. Tour partner in crime,' he said quietly.

  'Is he alive?'

  Neither of them said anything for a moment.

  Then Hart started to nod. 'Yes, he's alive - but he's in surgery. When he wakes up, he'll probably wish those knife wounds had been a couple of inches to the left.'

  A knock on the
door.

  They both looked up as a uniformed officer let Liz in. She was dressed in a black trouser suit with a cream blouse, her hair against her shoulders. She looked fantastic. She'd come straight from the office: in one hand was a briefcase; in the other a laptop bag. I was pleased to see her — and not just because she was my lawyer.

  She looked at me but didn't smile. You okay?'

  I nodded.

  She turned to Hart and Davidson. 'I sincerely hope the tape isn't running'

  Hart shook his head. 'No, we haven't start-'

  'Good. Because I want some time to talk to my client. And that means not here, and not with you two taking notes.' She glanced over her shoulder. 'Is there somewhere my client and I can go where we will have some privacy?'

  I could see Davidson twitch. He preferred me the first time they'd brought me in: on my own and lawyer-free. Hart smiled - trying to play the game - but it was wasted on Liz. She just stared at him, and both Hart and Davidson realized in about three seconds that she was the real deal. Hart, a little resigned, leaned back in his chair and then turned to the uniformed officer. 'PC Wright, please show Ms Feeny and Mr Raker to Room C.' He glanced at Liz. 'Just let me know when you're ready.'

  She nodded once, then led me out.

  I spent an hour going over the case with her. Every detail I could remember. She didn't say much, which only added to the atmosphere between us. I'd never seen her like this. She just typed everything into her laptop, asking me a couple of times to spell names or go back over certain events. This wasn't the Liz I thought I knew.

  When we were done she leaned back in her seat and studied me. 'You're in a lot of trouble here.'

  I nodded. 'I know.'

  'Where's this Healy guy?'

  'In a hospital.'

  'Is he dead?'

  'No.'