Page 54 of The Man Made of Smoke

But thinking about that now… who else could have found her?

Earlier today, I had wondered why the killer would make the effort tocarry the body out into the woods, only to leave it where it would be discovered so easily. But my father’s routine in retirement had been predictable. He had walked that same trail through the woods every morning. And anyone familiar enough with him would have known that.

Two connections. Darren Field. My father.

I reached down to the computer and scrolled a little way up the page, back to the photograph of Robbie Garforth that I had found at the rest area that day. And I thought about the boy I had seen there that day. Despite my initial doubts, I had convinced myself that it must have been Robbie too. Because how could it be anyone else? How was it possible that another boy had disappeared without anyone ever noticing or caring?

And then I felt a different presence behind me.

The figure at my back remained opaque for the moment. Still little more than a shade hanging in the air. But when I shifted angles in my subconscious to allow it a voice, it spoke more strongly now than it had this morning on the crag.

You thought I wanted to be seen, it told me.And you were right.

But not just by anyone.

I waited.

I wanted to be seen by you.

James

August 1998

Click.

James is lying on the dirty mattress when the key turns in the lock. The sound makes him draw his knees up to his chest. It’s instinctive; it won’t do anything to protect him. But when faced with danger, we all have a desire to curl up. To make ourselves small and unseen.

The door opens slowly.

In the first few months after he was brought here, James was kept in one of the wooden pens outside, tethered by his ankle to a post in the ground. He would lie there shivering at night under a black sky full of implacable stars, and there were moments when he thought he would die, and then ones in which he thought he might already have.

But at some point in the last few weeks, the man had brought him inside. Now he sleeps up here, in a small, windowless room on the first floor of the house. It had been a relief at first. And yet there was also the crawling sensation that all of this was happening by design. That the man had waited until a part of James reallyhaddied outside—lost somewhere between winter and spring—and that the man was now intending to fill the gap that dead part had left.

The door creaks to a halt.

It’s pitch black in the room, so whenever he’s locked in here, it’s impossible to tell if it’s day or night. But there’s a window at the far end of the hallway outside the door, and the dim light in the corridor right now suggests to James that it’s either dawn or dusk. He doesn’t know which; time is difficult to keep track of. It feels like the man usually only keeps him locked in here overnight, but James has the impression that he has been left alone for longer this time.

That’s not good.

Because despite the fear and horror, he is alive. The man hasn’t killed him. But any shift in routine could mean that is about to change.

The man steps into the doorway.

As always, James avoids looking at his face. The man doesn’t like that. But the truth is that there is nothing to see there anyway. Even lying in the darkness, with nothing to distract him, James finds it impossible to picture his features. Ever since that first day at the beach, he has been a black space in James’s mind, not so much a presence as an absence. The man is as vast and unfathomable as that night sky outside.

But even out of the corner of his eye, James can see it.

The man is usually empty-handed when he arrives on a morning. There have been times when he brings a camera with him: a bulky old Polaroid contraption. He will hear a click and a whir and then become aware of the man wafting the photograph in the air.

But today, he’s holding a knife.

James closes his eyes quickly. Instinct again; if we can’t see the monster then it isn’t really there. That was something his mother used to say sometimes when he woke up scared in the night. A lot of growing up, she’d tell him, gently stroking his forehead, is about pretending there’s no such thing as monsters until you eventually realize that it’s true.

Except she was wrong. There is such a thing.

His heart patters in his chest.

“Get up,” the man says. “Follow me.”

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