In the center of the room was a metal shelving unit, loaded up with all kinds of scrapped electronics—old printers, microwaves, telephones, fax machines, all piled up and in various states of disrepair—blocking whatever was behind the shelves, where the clicking sound and the light was coming from.

He picked his way through the cables, and as he reoriented, the scene behind the shelves revealed itself. First, he saw a mess of monitors—there had to be five or six all stacked up on top of each other, all old and chunky, but all up and running. They were all displaying the same thing, a ream of text, growing bigger and bigger by the second. He realized what the click-clacking sound was before he saw the girl sat at the keyboard, in a large desk chair. She was typing.

She spun around toward him.

“Welcome to The Red Door... Robin.”

She beamed.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“Can I interest you in a chocolate beverage?” the girl said, as she took a swig from a milk carton.

“This is The Red Door? The website?” Robin said.

“Yes. Hence the red door. It doesn’t look like much, but it’s my home. And my secret base.” She looked around, almost lovingly.

“You have a habit of bringing strangers to your secret base?”

“You’re hardly a stranger, Robin,” the girl said, smiling like she was pleased with herself.

“So you’ve been following me?”

“Yes,” she said, bluntly. “I had to know why you were here. At first, I thought you might be a Doory, but...”

“I’m sorry—a Doory?”

“A fan of the site. Had a couple of spikes in popularity the last few months. The report on the North Fern Phantom. My exposé on The Faceless Ones. The only public interview with Kace Carver. Site’s been lighting up like a Christmas tree. But nothing seems quite as big as...Standedge.”

“Who are you?”

“You’re not a Doory, though. You were at the prison visiting Matthew McConnell. You were at the tunnel. You went to the Visitor Centre this morning, no doubt trying to get inside. That, and you’re a journalist—or at least were. More into long-form writing these days, huh?”

“You seem to know who I am, so tell me who you are,” Robin said forcefully.

She raised her eyebrows, took her headphones from around her neck and put them on the desk beside her keyboard. She hesitated a little. “Sally. Sally Morgan.”

“Sally?” There was something in her voice, or maybe it was the hesitation. Something made him think that she wasn’t telling the truth. But for now, Sally would do. “You live out here alone, Sally?”

“Yeah. Problem with that?”

“This just doesn’t seem like a place typically for a young girl to live.”

Sally raised her eyebrows and frowned, as though that was answer enough.

“So—” Robin started looking around “—you work the website all by yourself?”