There was enough light in the chamber for him to see the walls, but he couldn’t make out where the light was coming from. There were also soft noises — the muted sound of someone crying.
He manipulated himself up into a sitting position and realized his clothes were sopping wet, as were the stones on the floor around him. It was a small wonder he felt so cold.
He wasn’t alone in the chamber. Sitting on the floor, twenty feet away from him was a naked figure; a girl, head bowed, arms wrapped around her legs, face pressed against her knees, crying softly.
‘Where are we?’ he said to her.
She didn’t respond, but sniffed and continued to cry. He got up and moved slowly across the stone floor, not wanting to alarm her. When he was within a few feet of her he saw something that made him pause. On the girl’s naked shoulder he saw a tiny tattoo of a rose. He recognized it. ‘Sian?’ he said.
Still the girl didn’t look up. She hugged herself tighter as if trying to hide her nakedness. He put out a hand and stroked the spiky black hair. ‘Sian, it’s me. It’s Robert.’
The girl said something between sobs that sounded like, ‘Go away.’
He crouched down beside her and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. She shuddered at his touch but didn’t pull away.
‘What is this place?’ he said.
‘Hell,’ the girl said, her voice muffled.
‘Sian, look at me. It’s all right. I’m here now.’
For a moment the girl’s body tensed, as if she might spring away from him, then the tension left her body and she leaned into him.
‘Look at me,’ he said again, cupping his hand under her chin, trying to lift her face.
‘No,’ she said.
‘Please, Sian,’ he said, his voice gently insistent.
Slowly the girl raised her head from her knees and turned her face to him.
‘Jesus Christ Almighty!’ Carter couldn’t help the involuntary exclamation.
The face he was looking into belonged to Sian Davies, but there was something horribly wrong with it. Where the eyes should have been there was nothing but empty holes, bloody sockets. The eyes had been ripped out.
He pulled her close, hugging her tightly, as if holding her could repair the damage to her ravaged face. ‘Oh Christ, Sian. Who did this to you?’
‘They did.’ She started to cry again, harder this time, her shoulders heaving as the sobs wracked her body.
‘Who are they?’ Carter looked around but couldn’t see anyone.
She took a lungful of air, struggling to control her breathing. ‘The ones who took me from the car! The ones who brought me here!’
‘I don’t understand, Sian.’
A shudder passed through her body. He held her tighter.
‘Why did they take you?’
‘Because of you!’ she shouted at him, her voice rising hysterically. ‘ To make you come here.’ She started to sob again, her whole body shaking and heaving. ‘They tore out my eyes to stop me from seeing them,’ she said softly.
‘I’m going to get you out of here,’ he said.
‘A noble sentiment,’ a voice said, a male voice, deep and sonorous.
He jerked his head up, looking for the source of the voice, but there was nobody else in the chamber.
‘Where are you?’ he shouted. ‘Show yourself!’
‘As you wish.’ Another voice sounded behind him; higher pitched than the first — almost feminine.
Carter spun round.
Three figures stood by the wall, tall and imposing, cloaked in gray, cowls covering their heads, making it impossible to distinguish features or gender. Carter scanned the wall quickly looking for a doorway, or some gap in the smooth stone; some way the figures could have entered the chamber. He saw nothing.
Carter stood up and took a step towards them. ‘What do you want with us?’
Nothing, only silence.
The figures were drifting in and out of focus, shimmering, as if they were standing behind a heat haze.
‘Let the girl go.’ Carter took another step and was about to move again when the figure to the left raised its arm. He froze midstride, unable to move.
‘Why should we?’ Three voices merging into one; baritone, tenor and soprano, speaking in a macabre harmony.
‘She’s done nothing to you.’ Carter struggled to move his body but it was useless. He was paralyzed.
‘Bring us the others!’
The central figure raised its arm and Carter was hurled backwards through the air. His body hit the wall, the back of his skull cracking against the rough stone. With a groan he slid down the wall to the floor and darkness enveloped him.
Jane switched off the phone and threw it down on the bed just as Kirby emerged from the en suite bathroom wrapped in a white fluffy towel, her dark hair hanging in wet ringlets about her face.
‘Problems?’ Kirby said, pointing at the phone.
‘You heard?’
‘It was hard not to.’ She sat on the edge of the bed, grabbed another towel and rubbed her dripping hair. ‘So, do you want to talk about it?’
‘I wouldn’t bore you.’
‘You won’t. Honestly.’ Despite her youth there was a sensible maturity about Kirby that Jane had always liked.
‘It’s just my mother being…well, mother. She’s looking after the girls for me and never misses an opportunity to tell me what a terrible parent I am.’
‘That’s not fair,’ Kirby said.
‘Not according to her. I take it you heard about David and me?’
‘Was it supposed to be a secret? Hard to keep, secrets, when you’re surrounded by psychics. Actually, Raj told me. Don’t ask me how he knew though.’ Kirby smiled sympathetically. ‘It’s a shame. I always thought you and David were rock solid.’
‘We were…once.’
‘What happened?’ Kirby continued towel drying her hair but was wholly focused on Jane.
‘The job happened.’
Kirby reached across to the dressing table, picked up her hair dryer and started blasting her curls. ‘Did I ever tell you about Malcolm?’ she said over the noise of the dryer.
Jane shook her head.
‘We were together for about five years. I didn’t tell him about the job at first. For ages he thought I worked in the Civil Service — which I suppose was true in a way. It was only after we’d been together for quite a while — a few months, I think — that I told him what I actually did.’
‘How did he take it?’ Kirby had never opened up about her private life before.
‘He was fascinated. He wanted to know all about it; what cases I was working on — all the details. Looking back on it now, I think his interest bordered on the unhealthy. It became something of an obsession for him. He started spending hours on the Internet, researching psychic phenomena and all the related mumbo jumbo. I suppose he was trying to find out what made me tick.’ She switched off the dryer and ran her fingers through her hair, fluffing out the curls. ‘The turning point came when I was sent to investigate that house in Bradford. Do you remember the one? The Lockhart family?’
Jane nodded. She had a photographic and retentive memory, and could list all the cases, certainly the recent ones, without reference to any notes.
‘If you remember, they had the teenage daughter — a troubled soul — and there was an awful lot of poltergeist activity. Things moving from room to room, clothes ripped to shreds, all manner of noises and smells. Well, everything was fine until we started getting similar activity at home. Malcolm was a keen golfer and he got home one evening to find that a couple of his clubs had been taken from his bag, twisted into pretzels and dumped on the bed.