Page 105 of The Man Made of Smoke

And the house is no longer silent.

It takes him a second to realize what he’s hearing, and when he does, his skin goes cold. He turns his head very slowly. His gaze moves from the wall in front of him to the settee under the window at the far end of the living room, where the man is sitting.

James holds his breath.

As always, he can’t see the man’s face, but his gnarled hands are restingon his thighs, and an angle of moonlight lies over them like a sheet. They are entirely still.

The soft sound of his snoring drifts over.

James remains frozen in place, and the moment seems to go on forever. There’s nowhere for him to hide. All the man has to do is shift slightly and open his eyes, and he’ll see James standing there. And then he’ll hurt him very badly before killing him for this betrayal. Once again, James feels the urge to go back. It wouldn’t be impossible. He could creep up the stairs behind him. Return to his room. The man would be none the wiser, and he would still be alive.

But dawn is coming.

If he takes part in the killing in the morning then the last surviving fragment of him will be dead anyway. And once James realizes that, he feels a sense of resolve, that fluttering hope inside him replaced by a small core of steel.

He breathes out quietly.

Then he turns and moves into the kitchen.

The man has left the door to the cellar unlocked too, and the hinges creak as James opens it. It’s so dark that he can only see the very top step below him. Beyond that is just a black hole that seems to go down into the depths of the earth forever. He takes the first step. Then the next. Breathing in slowly as he goes, the air around him beginning to smell of freshly turned soil. Until he feels encased by the ground.This is what it must be like to be buried, he thinks. But he isn’t buried. He isn’t dead. He is alive.

His foot touches the cellar floor.

The darkness down here is absolute, and he doesn’t dare pull the cord on the light in case the faint illumination somehow reaches the floor above. But he remembers the layout of the room from when he was down here earlier. He takes four steps forward, moving to the wall where the old filing cabinets are, then reaches out above them in the darkness and begins to feel his way along the row of keys hanging on the metal hooks there. They chitter gently as his hand moves over them.

He finds the one the man used for the main gate when they left today.

It’s the only one he needs—that’s what a part of him wants to insist—except that it isn’t. It’s not good enough. So he keeps moving his hand to the left, searching for the other keys he saw earlier. He can’t find them. Time stretches out, threatens to snap. Has the man moved them? The voice in his head telling him to run grows impatient and shrill. The silence is singing. But he ignores it all. Focuses as best he can.

And …

There they are.

He stands there for a moment with the keys clenched tightly in his fist and his heart beating hard. God—can he really do this? He feels himself faltering. But then he becomes aware of all the invisible things in the room around him: all the souvenirs stored away in the bags and boxes that are lost in darkness against the walls to either side. This little room is a grave. There are ghosts here. And he can sense them in the air now.

You are strong, they tell him.You are brave.

You know what you have to do.

Yes, he thinks.

He knows exactly what he has to do.

A few moments later, he turns and starts up the stairs. The doorway to the kitchen is a dark gray rectangle far above, and he keeps his attention focused on that as he climbs, expecting the man to step into view at any moment. But it remains empty.

Back in the kitchen. He listens.

Nothing. The house is entirely silent.

And he’s about to start moving when he realizes that’s wrong—that it shouldn’t be. He edges into the living room. The man remains on the settee under the window, the moonlight still draped over his hands, his face invisible. He doesn’t appear to have moved at all.

But the snoring has stopped.

And yet there’s no going back now, is there? Not after what he’s just done downstairs. James imagines the man staring back at him from the black void where his face should be.

How worthless you are.

No, James thinks. No, I’m not.

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