The Dead Tracks

Chapter Sixty-seven

Thirty seconds later we were at the door with the rivets, stepping into the darkness. I'd brought Megan with me, had her hand in mine. I could hear her breathing close to my ear — soft, short, scared — and knew I was taking a risk. But I had to get her and her baby to safety. And I had to get to Healy now too.

We moved inside. I felt a hesitation in her stride and glanced back. She looked terrified. Her eyes widened, glistening in the blue glow from my phone. I squeezed her hand and swung the light around. The room was big. It had ceilings so high the light wouldn't stretch to them. There were no speakers inside this part of the tunnel system, and as we inched further in, the static was replaced by a gentle buzz, like an electrical current. It was freezing cold too. I could feel a breeze at ankle level and chill air against my face and hands.

A breeze. That means an exit.

There was a red-brick wall about fifteen feet to our right, wooden crates stacked up against it. We couldn't see where the room ended on our left. In front of us, a path wound its way through more crates, some broken and empty, some unopened. We must have been going for forty seconds when the buzz got louder. It was definitely an electrical current — and powering something big.

I looked off to the right, the glow of my phone following.

And then it felt like my heart had hit my throat.

Out of the darkness, a series of mannequins appeared, all in a line, all looking straight at us. Some were missing arms. Some legs. All of them were female and completely unclothed, and all were attached to a base by a metal pole.

They were wearing latex masks.

Milton Sykes, over and over and over. Each mask slightly different, a prototype for the next. Adjusted nose. Adjusted cheeks. Bigger chin. Smaller chin. More prominent forehead. Different colouring. Some had torn and didn't hang as well. Some looked completely realistic in the lack of light, only the dummy beneath giving it away. Megan went to scream and then squeezed a hand against her mouth, her breath whistling out of her nose in short bursts.

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.