He clambers laboriously out of the hole. ‘It’s worked,’ he whispers into the Angel. ‘I got through, I’m in... some kind of cellar.’ Then he switches off the transmitter; it feels wrong to be talking out loud, or even whispering, down here in the silence. He raises the lamp, sweeping it around him like a sabre. But the Angel is not a weapon; Jan has nothing with which he could defend himself, and he feels a bit like a four-year-old who has been left all alone in a big, dark house.
The air is stale here. There are no carpets on the floor, no colourful drawings on the walls. Still, having got out of the cramped tunnel, he ought to be feeling better than he actually does.
He is standing in an empty corridor which leads straight ahead, then disappears into the darkness around a corner. When he moves forward and looks around the corner, he sees a dark doorway seven or eight metres further ahead, on the left-hand side.
Jan hesitates, then begins to edge silently and cautiously towards the open doorway. He is in a completely unfamiliar environment now, and he is totally alone. But he blinks into the darkness and manages to summon up Alice Rami’s face — not as she looked when they met as teenagers, but as he has imagined she will look as an adult, the way he has imagined her during all those lonely nights. Beautiful, intelligent, experienced. Perhaps a little weary, bearing the marks of the years that have passed, but strong and smiling.
Rami, his first love, his only girlfriend.
He gropes for a light switch along the walls, but fails to find one. Without the light of the Angel he would be in total darkness down here, but the beam has grown noticeably less bright over the past couple of minutes, and he has no spare batteries.
At the end of the corridor he raises the Angel and peers into the room beyond. It is an enormous cellar which appears to go on for ever. Jan can see white tiles on both the floor and the walls. The floor is grey with dirt and dust, and black mould has spread over every pale surface.
Is it a shower room? No, he can see decrepit bookshelves and steel tables along the walls. Further away there are some yellow plastic curtains, half closed around rusting beds and low washstands.
This is some kind of laboratory; it looks as if it has been closed up and abandoned for decades.
Jan looks around the tiled walls and feels his heart pounding.
He has found his way into St Psycho’s.
Part Two
Rituals
Madness is a sad, grim business. Loss of control is hardly romantic.
Instead of bringing a release from reality, it becomes a more complex trap.
Jan couldn’t see much of the forest in the darkness, but he was surrounded by all the sounds of the countryside at night. His boots scuffed rhythmically over rocks and gravel, the night breeze soughed in the fir trees, an owl hooted down by the lake. And the drums kept on beating, but that was just inside his head.
It was almost half past nine and he was on his way out of the narrow ravine. The hillside looming up on his left was no more than a black, shapeless lump, but Jan had found his way easily.
He reached the path down below the bunker a few minutes later; he stopped and listened intently. He couldn’t hear any shouting or crying.
He crept up the slope like a cat, silent and wary. When he reached the steel door he lifted away the branches, placed his ear to the metal surface and listened again. Not a sound.
Slowly he drew back the bolts, opened the door and looked in. He heard nothing, felt nothing. It was neither hot nor cold inside the bunker.
Nor was there the smell of fear.
Jan held his breath. Nothing was moving, but in the stillness he could just make out the faint sound of someone breathing.
He tiptoed inside. Slowly and carefully he took out his mobile and switched it on so that a weak white light illuminated the bunker. Roboman was in the middle of the floor, switched on, its little lights flashing away. Jan noticed a couple of empty drinks cartons in one corner, along with open packets of sweets and crumpled sandwich wrappers.
That was good; William had eaten and drunk during the evening. And if he had needed to pee, there was the bucket Jan had placed at the far end of the room.
A little body was lying on the mattress: William. He was moving very slightly in his sleep. At some point during the evening he must have felt tired, and settled down next to the wall. He was now sleeping peacefully beneath a thick layer of blankets.
Jan crept across the room, took the bucket outside and emptied it a few metres away. Then he went back inside and lay down on his back to listen to William’s breathing.
At this particular moment Jan felt a fantastic sense of calm suffusing his body. He felt victorious, almost happy that everything had worked out so well today. William had been lured away and locked up, but no harm whatsoever had come to him.
Jan could do this, no problem. Forty-six hours would soon pass.
William’s parents were in the worst position; Jan knew they would be suffering agonies right now. Anxiety would have turned into fear, then into sheer terror. They wouldn’t sleep tonight, not for one minute.
Jan sighed and closed his eyes. All was well in the forest.
He would just lie here for a while and keep watch over William, even though he was under no obligation to do so — no adult had kept watch over Jan when he’d been locked up.
33
Jan takes short steps through the basement of St Patricia’s, stopping frequently, like an explorer in an unfamiliar system of caves. Slowly he gropes his way through dark rooms and corridors turning this way and that, his only support a small torch. The Angel in his right hand has not gone out yet, but the light is growing weaker all the time.
The room he came to first doesn’t appear to have any other exits, so he turns back and continues down the corridor. It bends to the right after a few metres, then right again, then left and into another big room with tiled walls and floor. Something crunches beneath his shoes: there is broken glass on the floor.
The Dell seems far away right now; a part of him longs to turn around and head back to the familiarity of the safe room. But instead he keeps on going.
The darkness around him remains silent, which is reassuring.
Jan can see four black doorways leading out of this large, tiled room. He walks over and shines his torch through them one by one, but beyond each opening there is only a dusty passageway leading to a rusty metal door. He decides to ignore three of these passageways, but there is less dust on the floor of the fourth, as if someone has walked on it fairly recently. The door also looks less rusty, so he turns the handle.
Behind it is another corridor, lined with a series of doorways. He peers into the first opening and sees a small, bare room with an old iron bed, but no mattress. When he steps inside and holds up the Angel, he can just make out faded and yellowing postcards pinned to the walls, and some illegible graffiti. It seems to be an old sick room, or a cell.
Jan remembers the Black Hole at the Unit, and quickly backs out.
He glances into each cell, but sees only more bare walls and old iron beds. His steps are getting shorter and shorter. He has never been particularly afraid of the dark, but he is beginning to feel more and more alone down here. The doorways gape at him like black mouths, ready to swallow him up. Are they really empty?