Behind her, Heather heard Nikki moving against the concrete, but sounds in the square concrete room were growing distant and distorted. She could see the old man in front of her, his sneering expression of disgust twisting his face into something goblin-like, but hanging over him and obscuring him was a stark, red landscape – a place that beckoned to her, that called her home. She held the knife up.

‘You don’t know me at all.’

She slammed the knife into his chest. A fierce bolt of joy passed through her, and briefly all the pain from her own wounds was wiped out. The old goblin made a strangled noise and he seemed to crumple in front of her. There was a dog barking, somewhere.

Heather, Heather, Heather.

And then reality crashed back into her in a rush. At some point, she had pulled the knife back out again – she had stabbed him in the upper part of his chest, not far from his collar bone – and bright spurts of his blood covered her hands and arms. In a shudder of revulsion and horror she dropped the knife, and it clattered against the concrete floor.

‘Fuck!’

‘I knew it,’ he croaked. ‘All of you, so weak.’ He pressed one gnarled hand to the wound turning his shirt black. ‘Why … do I even … waste … my time?’

‘I can’t …’ Heather glanced at the knife, then back to the old man. ‘I’m not—’

From the shadowy stairwell behind him, an arm reached out of the dark and circled his neck. The old man was yanked backwards, and this time he did scream, just before something shiny and lethal ripped his throat into a giant gaping mouth. There was a brief struggle, Bert’s arms flapping at nothing, and then he fell back to the floor in a rapidly expanding pool of blood. Heather had a glimpse of the figure on the stairs – he wore her face, though his eyes were not human, not human at all – and then Lyle was gone. His footsteps were light scuffles on the steps, and there was the crash of a door opening and closing. Gone.

With some difficulty, Heather reached down and plucked the knife from the floor, then staggered back to Nikki and the woman called Cathy. She tugged away her friend’s gag, then used the last of her strength to cut the bonds around her hands.

‘Hev? Are you all right? Christ, you’re bleeding all over.’

Heather nodded dumbly. She sat down, and she now had the distinct feeling she couldn’t get back up. Nikki was still looking at her even as she untied the other woman.

Heather looked slowly around the room. It was growing darker. ‘Hey, where’s the dog? I didn’t see where the dog went.’

‘What dog?’ Nikki took her arm then and shook it. ‘Stay awake, Hev. What dog? There wasn’t any dog. Hev?’

46

Before