3AM Page 23

  Stopping, he stared down at Charmian's corpse, while struggling to catch his breath. In his hand, the knife was slowly dripping as blood ran down the blade and fell to the floor.

  “No,” Rose whimpered, scrabbling back against the wall as she desperately tried to get her hands free from the rope. “Please, no...”

  “I knew I shouldn't have put two in together,” Michael muttered, getting to his feet. “That's one less for tonight.”

  Rose waited in the dark, trying desperately not to cry out.

  Reaching out, Michael grabbed the door and swung it shut, plunging the room into darkness.

  “No,” Rose whispered, trying to stay calm, “please, no...”

  A moment later, she heard Michael making his way toward her, and she listened as he knelt just a few inches away.

  “It's okay,” he said finally, leaning close. “They're always scared, but at the end, when they finally understand, I like to think they enjoy it. Soon you're going to join them.”

  She shook her head.

  “Don't worry,” he continued, reaching out to grab her arm, “it won't hurt much -”

  She began to cry out for help, but he quickly clamped his hand over her face.

  “When you scream,” he hissed, “you sound exactly like your goddamn sister. Please stop it, you're starting to creep me out.”

  Six

  “Do you hear it?” Toby asked as he and Beth stood in the walkway, staring out across the dark city. “The constant roar of the city. So many buildings and road and train-lines and people, and the sound is just immense, but behind it all there's a roar. Listen carefully.”

  Barely able to keep her teeth from chattering, Beth tried to listen.

  “It's coming from the other side,” Toby continued, “from the dark place. People ignore it because they just assume it's meant to be there, but it's not. The bigger a city gets, the more buildings there are, and eventually some of those buildings are like Marshall Heights. They vibrate in just the right way to weaken the barrier. That sound in the distance is the sound of the dead moaning, crying out from the other side of the barrier. You can always hear it a little more clearly at three in the morning. Cities make the barrier weaker.”

  He paused for a moment, before turning to her. “There was an accident. It was years ago, before you came. I was outside playing, just after we moved to Marshall Heights, and a van drove onto the pavement and...”

  He paused again, as if the memory was too horrific.

  “It was quick. I think so, anyway. I don't remember anything until I was on the other side, in the dark place, and then somehow I managed to get back through when the barrier was weak. So many people were clamoring to come, fighting each other. They were screaming and moaning, but I managed to slip past them all. My parents had moved away after the accident, but I couldn't go with them. So I had no choice but to stay. Most people can't see me, but sometimes...”

  He paused, as the distant moan intensified, filling the sky above London.

  “No-one notices,” he whispered. “They just think it's the sound of the city.”

  “Why are they crying?” Beth asked. “What do they want?”

  “The dark place is a horrible, painful place to be. They want to come back. It's better to be here, even as a ghost, than to be there. I managed to get through and I'm never, ever going back. I think Michael wants someone specific to come through, and I think he wants him to be more than a ghost when he arrives.”

  “You can't be dead,” Beth replied. “If you were dead, I wouldn't be able to see you, I wouldn't be able to play with you.”

  “That's what I thought at first,” Toby continued. “I thought you must have some special power, but then...” He paused for a moment, before reaching out and putting a hand on her shoulder. “Do you remember the crash that killed your father?”

  She shook her head.

  “You don't?”

  “No.”

  “You should,” he told her, “because you were in the car with him. You went head-first through the wind-shield.”

  “No I didn't,” she replied. “I wasn't there.”

  “You were,” he continued. “It's hard, because no-one ever remembers the exact moment when they died. It's like they block it from their mind. You are dead, though. If you weren't, how would we be able to talk to each other?”

  She shook her head again.

  “Denial only makes things harder,” he told her. “Your mum was mad, that's why she wouldn't accept the truth, but you died a long time ago.” Reaching out, he took her hand in his and a faint smile flickered across his face. “It's okay, though. You're not alone. You've got me.”

  In the distance, above the sound of late-night cars and planes and sirens, the vast rumbling moan of dead souls continued to boom across the city.

  Part Seven

  BROKEN TEETH

  One

  “Hello? Mrs. Bell?”

  Doctor Anthony Rogers stood at the door to Charmian's flat for a few seconds, giving her time to answer, before knocking again.

  “Mrs. Bell? It's Doctor Rogers. I'd like to have a quick word if that's possible?”

  Hearing the sound of a train rumbling past the building, he glanced over his shoulder. Beyond the sound of the train, there was a kind of groaning hum all across the city.

  Sighing, Doctor Rogers checked his watch:

  9pm.

  Figuring that no-one was home, he turned and headed back along the walkway.

  ***

  In the bins at the back of the building, rats scurried across a laptop that had been dumped a few hours earlier.

  ***

  “Hello? Is anyone here?”

  Leaning into the building manager's office, Doctor Rogers saw that the desk at the far end was unattended. Unable to stifle a sigh of annoyance, he pulled a card from his pocket along with a pen and wrote a quick note:

  Please call me at your earliest convenience to discuss one of your residents.

  Heading across the room, he placed the card on the desk where it couldn't be missed, and then he turned and made his way back out. By the time he got to the front of the building, he found that a light drizzle had begun to fall. He walked across the courtyard, but finally he turned and looked back up at the building that towered above him. Scratching his right ear, he tried to get rid of a faint ringing sound. For a moment, he felt certain that someone was watching him from one of the many windows, but he told himself that he was merely being paranoid. After buttoning his coat, he hurried back toward his car.

  As the rain began to intensify, windows all over the front of the building remained dark, with just a few exceptions: on the third floor, one window was brightly lit, while up on the eighth floor there was a faint smudge of light in another. Further up, as the rain continued to build and build, a solitary bulb burned to mark the edge of the roof, while a few feet away there was a hint of light coming from inside a storage room. The door to the storage room was partially open, moving slightly in the wind, and while the driving ran was now pounding on the roof, a noise could be heard coming from inside:

  “No!” Rose shouted as Michael clamped his hand over her mouth again, pulling her back down into the darkness. She struggled again, desperately clawing at his arm and trying to bite the palm of his hand, but he was surprisingly strong and it took only a few seconds for him to force her against the floor.

  “You don't give up, do you?” he muttered.

  Still trying to get free, Rose heard the sound of a length of tape being torn from a roll.

  “Here,” He placed the tape on her mouth and then began to wrap it around the back of her head. “That should -”

  Before he could finish, she pulled away and lunged for the door. Crying out again, she felt his arm around her neck, and as he pulled her back she was powerless to keep him from holding her down. After a moment, he grabbed the back of her collar and began to drag her back across the dark room, until he shoved her down onto the hard wooden floor.<
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  “Shout all you want,” he muttered, stepping around her. “We're on the roof. Do you really think anyone's going to hear you?”

  She stared up at him, just about able to make out his features in the gloom.

  “Don't worry,” he continued, looking down at her with calm eyes, “it'll be over soon.” He checked his watch. “Usually I get rid of people immediately, but with you and that other woman last night...” He glanced over at Charmian's dead body for a moment, before turning back to Rose. “Well, she's no good now, but you'll still be fresh. That should be okay, it should be enough, I just hope...”

  He paused for a moment and then he stepped toward her, causing her to flinch and try to pull back.

  “I'm not going to hurt you,” he explained. “Please, don't think I'd ever do anything like that. This isn't for my personal pleasure, and it's definitely nothing sexual. For God's sake, I'm not some kind of psychopath. I'm an academic, I'm a researcher, that's what this is. It's research.” His eyes flitted across the rest of her body for a moment. “They all laughed at me and said my ideas were crazy. I uncovered the greatest serial killer in British history, but no-one wanted to admit that I was right. I'll show them, though. I'll show them more than they could ever have expected.” He turned back to Rose and stared at her for a moment. “Your sister Megan called me some horrible things when I brought her up here,” he continued finally. “After I knocked her out that night, I didn't have to hold onto her for a whole day, I was better prepared.”

  Fresh tears rolled from Rose's eyes at the mention of her sister. With her mouth sealed shut, her nose was running and she could barely even breathe.

  “The field is getting weaker,” Michael explained, staring into the darkness. “I can already feel it happening now, but by 3am it'll be perfect.”

  She waited for him to finish, but he fell silent for a moment.

  “It's all going to be okay,” he said finally, forcing a faint smile. “You're not the first to go through and you won't be the last, and you should be thankful, really. Ellis Hathaway wants to come through the barrier and stay, and based on all my research so far, I think the best solution is to send as many live people through to the dark place, so that eventually the balance will even out and Ellis will be able to stay here.” Reaching down, he tugged at the rope around her ankles, as if to make sure that she was secure. “That'll do,” he muttered, before heading to the door and pushing it open. “I'll be back later.”

  Looking over at the far side, Rose saw the three dead bodies still piled together. After a moment, Michael dragged Charmian's corpse over and placed it next to the others, and then he headed outside.

  Rose stared at the bodies until the door was pushed shut and the last patch of moonlight was cut off. She could hear Michael outside, locking the door, and then she heard him walking away. She immediately set to work on the rope that was binding her wrists, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't find a way to make it come loose. With tears still rolling down her cheeks, she arched her back, trying to get a better angle, but her fingertips simply rubbed impotently at the rope. Finally, as fear and frustration rose through her body, and despite the tape over her mouth, she tried to scream.

  As she started to sob, she felt all hope ebbing away, and for a few seconds she was convinced that there was no way to get out. The whole situation felt hopeless.

  And then slowly, from somewhere deep inside, she felt a burning anger start to rise.

  Rolling onto her side, she looked across the room and despite the gloom she was just about able to make out the dead bodies on the far side. Since they were still fully clothed, she figured that one of them had to have something that she could use to cut the rope; a belt-buckle, perhaps, or a zipper. As she began to inch her way across the dirty wooden floor, she was even trying to work out how she might use loose teeth to somehow tear the rope, although the plan seemed forlorn. She edged closer to the bodies, disgusted by the stench but forcing herself to keep going. As she reached Charmian, she began to twist herself around, hoping to -

  Suddenly she felt something sharp under her shoulder. Whatever it was, it caught in the fabric of her shirt for a moment, but she was able to shake it loose. Twisting around again, she stretched her bound hands and desperately felt for the object, her fingers scrabbling across the floorboards until she felt a small, loose piece of metal with some kind of chain. She used her fingertips to trace the edges, trying to get an idea of the object's shape and also its sharpest side, but as she did so she began to feel a strange sense of recognition. She told herself it couldn't be possible, that the odds were a million to one, but finally she realized what she'd found.

  Megan's necklace.

  The necklace given to her by Scott just a few days before he died.

  For a moment, she froze, consumed by the horror. Megan had been in the same room, probably tied and bound in exactly the same way, but somehow her necklace had come loose. Rose tried not to picture the scene, but she couldn't help imagining Megan with her mouth taped shut and her wrists tied behind her back, waiting to be drawn further into whatever sick game Michael was playing.

  Waiting to disappear.

  Sniffing back her tears, Rose carefully turned the necklace in her fingers and managed to press the leading edge against a section of rope. She knew the task seemed hopeless, but it was her best shot. Slowly, making sure not to let her fingers slip, she began to use the necklace to cut at the rope.

  Two

  “No,” Doctor Rogers said as he sat waiting in his car, “I can't do my usual night shift tonight, I need you to reschedule all my appointments for the next few hours. I'm not leaving here until I've worked out what the hell's going on.”

  “But -”

  “Please,” he continued, keeping his eyes on the entrance to Marshall Heights, “just call my patients and either transfer them to Doctor Dodds or reschedule them for tomorrow. Fill some extra surgery hours if necessary, do whatever it takes, just clear a few hours for me.”

  He listened as, on the other end of the phone, his assistant checked some information on the computer system.

  “Don't you think,” she said finally, “that you're spending too much time on one person? Charmian Bell is -”

  “There's something wrong here,” he replied, interrupting her. “I've been asking around. Every doctor in the area knows that Marshall Heights is a strange place, but went through the medical records for Charmian and her daughter and I found that -”

  Pausing, he spotted a figure heading out through the front door and making his way around the side of the building. From the limited research he'd already conducted online, Doctor Rogers was fully aware that the man was Michael Powers, the building manager.

  “I have to go,” he said, cutting the call and stepping out of the car. Rain was still falling through the night air as he made his way across the courtyard and headed around to the side where a narrow alleyway ran between Marshall Heights and the train-line. Glancing up at the facade of the building, he couldn't help but note the dark shape that towered above him, and the black little windows of so many lifeless flats. By the time he reached the entrance to the alley, he looked along but saw nothing in the darkness, until a train rattled past and its lights briefly filled the scene just in time to reveal Michael making his way into the maintenance area.

  Doctor Rogers walked along the alley as the train disappeared into the distance and plunged the scene back into darkness. Up ahead, a woman was standing by the fence, staring through a gap and watching the tracks, but the doctor didn't even notice her as he hurried past. After a moment, she turned and watched him with dark, shadowed eyes.

  “He's coming,” she whispered, with fear in her eyes.

  As he reached the door that led into the maintenance area, the doctor slowed for a moment. He could hear Michael working, and as he peered around the corner he saw a set of large bins lined up along the far wall, with a solitary electric light burning in the rain, high up on the adjacent wa
ll. Michael was unscrewing the lid of a large plastic bottle, and a moment later he began to pour the contents into one of the bins, scattering a swarm of flies that had been buzzing around the open lid.

  Once the bottle was empty, Michael tossed it into the bin and then grabbed another. He unscrewed the lid and poured its contents into the bin, oblivious to the fact that he was being watched.

  Another train passed the building.

  Taking a few steps forward, Doctor Rogers watched as Michael leaned into the bin. Something inside seemed to have attracted his attention, as he reached down and began to move several of the large black sacks. The doctor stopped just a few feet away, surprised by the intensity of Michael's work, and he watched for several seconds before Michael froze and then slowly turned to meet his gaze.

  “I'm looking for one of your residents,” the doctor announced.

  He waited for a reply, but Michael seemed too startled to say anything.

  “Her name is Charmian Bell,” the doctor continued. “I know she lives here, and I need to speak to her urgently. It's about her daughter.”

  As another train rattled past, Michael turned to look over at the line.

  “Those things must drive you crazy,” Doctor Rogers added. “Going past all day and all night like that, I can't imagine how you can put up with it.”

  “Do you feel the vibration?” Michael asked.

  “I'm sorry?”

  “Every time a train goes past, the whole place vibrates a little. Do you feel it?”

  “I don't, no.”

  “The line never stops,” Michael continued, taking a moment to rearrange one of the black sacks. “You're right, it does get into your head after a while. It's almost enough to drive a man crazy.” He paused. “The worst thing is, it's not even a regular pattern. If it was regular, you might get used to it, but there are always little delays and variations. A particular train might be a few minutes late one day, then bang on time the next, then ten minutes late, then canceled altogether... The one thing worse than a repeating pattern is a sloppy pattern, one that has enough changes to make you keep listening.”