Page 104 of The Man Made of Smoke

James lies awake in the darkness.

The room is pitch black and yet the air seems to be throbbing in his eyes and ears. He’s been lying here like this for what feels like hours, his nerves singing the whole time. What is he waiting for? He isn’t sure. There’s no way to tell what time it is. No way to know how many hours have passed since the man brought him up here earlier.

It had been the same as every other night, except for one small difference. Whenever the man closed the door in the past, James has always heard the sound of the key turning in the lock.

Click.

But not tonight.

He had lain there listening, waiting for it, but the sound never came. Tonight, the man has left the door to James’s room unlocked. But then, why wouldn’t he? He knows that James has accepted the truth now. The world doesn’t want him. It never had. Nobody has ever seen him; nobody has ever cared. And at dawn, the two of them will take the final step together. There was no more need for the man to lock the bedroom doorearlier than there had been for him to worry that James would run away from him at the rest area.

Except that the mandoesn’tknow that. He only thinks it.

James listens carefully.

The house has been silent for hours now, surely? And if he leaves it much longer then it will be too late. So he slips out from beneath the thin cover and stands up.

Listens again. Hears …

Breathing.

He feels a burst of panic—suddenly sure that the man has been standing here in the room the whole time, motionless and invisible in the blackness. But that can’t be true. James remembers watching the door close. Later on, he saw the thin line of hallway light at the bottom go out.

It’s his own breathing he can hear.

With his palms out in front of him, he walks blindly across the room in what he knows to be the direction of the door. The floorboards are rough against the soles of his bare feet. When he reaches the wall, he takes a step to one side, feeling for the handle.

Finding it.

Then he turns it very gently. A centimeter at a time.

The door opens inward with the quietest of creaks. James listens again carefully. When he hears nothing, he dares to open the door a little wider, his hand trembling the whole time.

Then he steps out into the corridor.

It’s dark, illuminated only by a wedge of moonlight from the window at the far end. That’s where the stairs are. There are three doors in between. The nearest is the bathroom, but he doesn’t know what’s behind the other two. He assumes one of them must be the man’s bedroom, but he has no idea which one. They’re all closed right now.

James wishes that he had Barnaby here to protect him. But the man threw Barnaby into the sea on the day he abducted him, and so he’ll have to find the courage inside himself instead. He starts to walk down the hallway, one small step at a time, imagining that his feet are barelytouching the ground. That he’s lighter than air. And it seems to work. He can feel the soft push of the carpet against his feet as he creeps along, but every footstep is as quiet as snowfall.

He reaches the first door.

If the man were to step suddenly out of nowhere, this is the final spot for him to claim he was just going to the toilet. The temptation to turn back is overwhelming. But he can’t do that. He fixes his gaze on that window at the end of the corridor: at the moonlight he can see through the dirty glass. At the outside world. Therealworld.

And he keeps going.

Past the second door.

The third.

And then he is at the top of the stairs. He looks back down the hallway, and all the doors there are still closed. There’s no sense of movement. And everything is silent, aside from a faint rush of air he can hear from around the window nailed shut beside him.

The stairs.

He places his weight down gingerly, one step at a time, keeping a gentle grip on the banister for support. The living room below him is lost in darkness at first, but the shapes there begin to resolve the farther he descends. He begins to move a little more quickly—wanting to run—but forces himself to slow down. The danger might be above and behind him now, but he can still feel it, hovering like a knife that will drive itself between his shoulder blades if he makes the slightest mistake.

He steps down into the living room.

Stands still. Listens again carefully.

---