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  “I know you,” Kirsten said firmly.

  Elly opened her mouth to cry about, but something about Kirsten's expression made her hold back.

  “I see you,” Kirsten continued, fixing her with a determined gaze. “It's on a lower level, it's undisciplined and primitive, but you've heard the voice too.”

  “What... What voice?”

  “You know what voice. The voice that made you such a goddamn freak.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Twenty years ago

  “Okay,” Ms. Simmons said with a smile, “during recess I want everyone to think of at least three things that make them think of summer.” She watched as the children hurried to the door. “Did you hear me? Three things that make you think of summer!”

  While the rest of the children raced excitedly out into the schoolyard, Elly Blackstock held back. Just nine years old, she already had shades of darkness under her eyes, and when she got to the next door she held back for a moment, seeing one of her classmates, Janine Reilly, waiting for her.

  “It's time,” Janine said, with a hint of real seriousness in her voice. “We've made our decision.”

  ***

  “It's not that you're a really bad person or anything,” Carly Boucher said a little while later, “it's just...”

  “People judge us,” Janine continued, “based on who we hang out with.”

  “Totally,” Alison Morgan added. “They judge us. We have to be careful, and you... Well, hanging out with you makes us look bad, so...”

  Sitting facing the three other girls in the corner of the yard, Elly already knew what was coming. She'd been friends with Carly, Janine and Alison for almost a year, but lately things had been cooling and she'd begun to feel frozen out. Finally, a few days earlier, the other girls had told her that they needed time to talk about something without her around, and now they'd come up with a decision. Somehow, in the pit of her stomach, Elly had known for a while that this decision wouldn't go in her favor.

  “You're just...” Carly paused. “I mean, you're...”

  “Don't,” Alison whispered, nudging Carly's arm. “It's mean.”

  “It's not mean,” Carly continued with a frown, “I'm trying to help.” Stepping forward, she sat in front of Elly and took her hands. “Elly, I like you. We all like you. It's just that you're... weird.”

  Elly paused, before nodding.

  “It's not like you do weird things,” Carly explained, “because you don't. It's nothing like that, it's more like...”

  “It's your eyes,” Janine suggested.

  “Yeah,” Carly said brightly, “it's your eyes. Does that make sense?”

  Elly paused again. “Um...”

  “You've got weird eyes,” Carly continued. “Whatever you're doing, it's like, it's in your eyes, it's obvious that you're... I don't know, thinking about the wrong thing. Like last week when we were decorating the wall in Alison's new bedroom, and it was super fun and we all had a super cool time, but it was more like, we were having fun and you were just pretending to enjoy yourself. You pretended really well, but your eyes gave it away.”

  “Yeah,” Alison said after a moment. “Your eyes.”

  They sat in silence for a few seconds, as the rest of the class played nearby.

  “What's wrong with my eyes?” Elly asked finally.

  “Nothing,” Carly said, smiling as she squeezed her hands. “Nothing you can change, anyway. It's who you are, and that's cool. It just means we find it slightly weird hanging out with you, so we've decided to... Well, we're going to get someone else to be our fourth friend.”

  “You are?”

  “We've already decided who,” Janine suggested. “Winnie Rolfe.”

  “Winnie Rolfe?” Elly looked across the yard and saw Winnie standing over by one of the trees, watching what was happening. Waiting to take her place.

  “You understand, don't you?” Carly asked. “It's really hard finding a way to say all of this to you without sounding like bitches. Please, tell us you understand.”

  Elly turned to her. Deep in the pit of her stomach, she felt a slow, twisting sense of nausea, but at the same time she knew she couldn't let it out, not while anyone was watching. After a moment, she realized that Carly and the other girls were not so much looking at her, as watching her eyes.

  “Is it happening now?” she asked.

  “Is what happening?” Carl replied.

  “She means the weird look she gets,” Janine said. “Yeah, Elly. You've got it now. You've kind of always got it.”

  “Oh.” Elly paused. “But if -”

  “Kill her.”

  Turning, Elly looked around. She'd heard a voice, just for a moment, but she had no idea where it had come from. She turned again, before realizing that Carly, Janine and Alison were staring at her.

  “Did you... Did you hear that?” Elly asked cautiously.

  “Hear what?” Carly asked.

  For a moment, Elly began to doubt herself. The voice had come so suddenly, and so briefly, that it was almost as if it hadn't been there at all, as if it had been more of an idea that had intruded on her usual thoughts. In fact, she was starting to think that she hadn't so much heard it as imagined it, or just become aware of it as a possible thought among all the others. She waited to see if it would come again, but now all she could hear was the sound of other children playing in the yard.

  “So... Yeah...” Carly said finally. “We'll still see you around, Elly, we just won't be quite so tight.”

  “It's not like we're going to pretend you don't exist,” Janine added. “We'll still, like, acknowledge you if we see you in a corridor.”

  The other girls mumbled in agreement.

  Sensing movement nearby, Elly turned and saw that Winnie Rolfe had edged closer, as if she was impatient to take her new place in the group.

  Realizing that her time was up, Elly got to her feet and took a step back. She wanted to say something, but Winnie quickly slipped past to join the other girls. Suddenly feeling as if they were all watching her and seeing the weirdness in her eyes, Elly turned and made her way across the schoolyard.

  Everyone was watching her. She understood that now. Everyone knew she was weird.

  ***

  “Mom, can I have sunglasses?”

  “Sunglasses?” Her mother looked down at her with a frown as they walked home. “Why do you want sunglasses?”

  “I don't know,” Elly replied, figuring that she shouldn't tell her mother how much she wanted to hide her eyes from other people. “I just do.”

  “Hang on,” her mother added, hearing a ringing sound in her bag. She pulled out her mobile phone, a brick-sized device with an antenna. “Hello?” she said as she answered. “Catherine Blackstock speaking.”

  “I just want sunglasses,” Elly muttered, sniffing back tears. “I don't want people to be able to see that I'm weird.”

  “Well go and take a look,” her mother said to whoever was on the other end of the line. “What are you afraid of? Come on, I'll show you.”

  “Who are you talking to?” Elly asked.

  “You trust me, don't you?” her mother continued.

  “Mom,” Elly said, tugging on her sleeve. “Who is it? Can I have sunglasses?”

  “Yes,” her mother said, glancing down at her, “wait a minute darling, I'll be with you.” She stopped and turned away slightly, clearly more interested in talking to whoever was on the phone. “Now listen, you must go and take a look. It's perfectly simple. You can get down here with no trouble at all, if you just think about it.”

  Elly frowned.

  “Go and look!” her mother continued, as if she was trying to persuade someone.

  Hearing some girls laughing, Elly turned and saw some of her classmates walking past on the other side of the street. They were talking to one another, giggling about something, and although they didn't seem to have looked over at her, Elly felt certain that she must be the butt of whatever joke they were finding so hilarious.
In fact, she was starting to think that other people were always talking about her.

  “Now why do you think it was put there,” her mother told the person on her phone, “of all places?”

  “Mom?” Elly said. “Where are you? This isn't possible, you're... Mom, what's happening?”

  One of the girls on the other side of the street glanced at Elly, smiled, and then turned to say something to her friend. A moment later, they all laughed.

  “It's a marker,” her mother continued. “It's there to show you the way, you just -”

  “Can we go?” Elly asked, tugging her sleeve again. “Please, Mom?”

  Her mother sighed.

  “Please?” Elly continued. “I really want some sunglasses!”

  “Oh, I have to go,” her mother said with a sigh. “I swear, this child knows how to nag. Something about sunglasses. Just go and look, and you'll see.” She paused. “Yes, I know, look you just have to go and look.” Cutting the call, she put her phone in her bag.

  “Who were you talking to?” Elly asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Who were you talking to on the phone?”

  Her mother frowned. “I wasn't talking to anyone, Elly.”

  “You were just on your cellphone.”

  “No, I wasn't.” Taking her hand, she led Elly around the corner, heading toward the pharmacy. “Now, do you really want sunglasses? If it'll stop this nagging, I'll get you some.”

  “I need them,” Elly whispered. “I need to stop people seeing my eyes. I don't want them to know that I'm weird.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Today

  “Load him up!” Kirsten shouted as she pulled open the back door to the ambulance. “We've got a long way to drive and I don't want to waste any more time at this...”

  Looking up at the dark hospital building, she paused for a moment, trying to find the right word. Rain had begun to fall, pounding down against the surfaces.

  “This wretched pit of despair,” she added finally. “This foul place.”

  “Where are we taking him?” Elly asked as she slotted the bed's wheels into the mechanism and began to lift Mr. Lacy up into the ambulance. “Another hospital?”

  “You could say that.”

  “And what -” Stopping suddenly as she pushed the bed into place, Elly saw that Rachel Brown was strapped to another bed further into the ambulance. “What's she doing here?” she asked, turning to Kirsten. “What the hell are you doing with these people?”

  “Don't you trust me?”

  “No! Of course I don't trust you!”

  “Really?” Kirsten took a step closer to her. “I was expecting a different answer.”

  “This has gone far enough,” Elly replied, her voice trembling with fear. “I don't know what you're trying to achieve, but I'm going to -”

  Before she could finish, Kirsten grabbed Elly and slammed her head into the wall, knocking her out cold. After lowering her unconscious body down to the floor, she turned and looked at Rachel, who was pulling on the restraints that tied her to the bed, and then at Mr. Lacy, who had been shocked into a kind of horrified silence before finally passing out.

  “It's okay,” she said, reaching out and brushing a hand against the side of the old man's face. “I've had my fun with you. I've broken your mind. Now it's time for you to be useful.”

  Turning, she made her way to the back of the ambulance and grabbed the doors, ready to pull them shut. At the last moment, she looked out across the dark yard and allowed herself a faint smile.

  “I know you're there,” she called out. “I don't need a mobile phone to light your faces. I know you came a long way to see the man who killed you all, and I know that maybe you feel you didn't get to make him suffer enough. I promise you, the horror of seeing you all was enough to drive him out of his mind, and now I'm going to take him and use him for a very specific purpose. I hope you can all find peace now that you know this wretch of a man won't simply get away with what he did. If I hadn't arranged all of this, he would have gone unpunished. Now his final moments are approaching, and they will be filled with more pain than you can possibly imagine.”

  She paused, before pulling the doors shut. Stepping over Elly's unconscious body, she clambered through to the front of the ambulance and climbed into the driver's seat before starting the engine. Glancing at the rear-view mirror, she saw the hundreds of ghosts standing in the rain. One of them, holding a baby in her arms, took a step closer.

  “Sorry,” Kirsten muttered, flooring the throttle. “I can't leave him for you guys to finish off.”

  With its wheels screeching, the ambulance raced across the parking lot before crashing through the remains of the old garden and then bumping out onto the main road. In the back of the vehicle, Rachel and Mr. Lacy were securely tied to their beds but Elly, left loose on the floor, was sent slamming into one of the walls.

  “Whoops!” Kirsten called back to her. “Sorry, I forgot!”

  Taking a phone from her pocket, she tapped the screen a couple of times and then placed a call to the detonator she'd arranged earlier. Glancing in her rear-view mirror, she began to count out loud, but she only got to 'two' before an explosion ripped through Middleford Cross, sending flames into the night sky as the dark building began to crumble. The road shook briefly but Kirsten kept driving, even as she saw several police cars racing toward the hospital. Focusing on the journey ahead, she swallowed hard.

  “Okay,” she whispered, with a hint of fear in her eyes. “Let's see what you left for me, Annie.”

  ***

  As the building shook, Mary's skeletal face looked up at the ceiling. The fire had burned the skin from her bones, but she'd retained just enough strength to allow herself to feed on a human victim. Stepping over Sharon's bloodied corpse, she made her way past the hyperbaric chamber and then stopped as she realized the building was shaking more and more, almost as if...

  “No,” she said finally. “You can't be -”

  Before she could get another word out, the ceiling collapsed, bringing down an entire wing of the hospital directly onto her head.

  ***

  “What the hell is going on here?” Agent Cole shouted as he climbed out of the car. Ducking under a police cordon, he flashed his ID at the nearby officers before stopping next to a series of ambulances. “When did this happen?”

  Ahead of him, the ruins of Middleford Cross were still burning. Flames had consumed the north and west wings, while the rest had already collapsed. Fire crews were starting to get the situation under control, but it was already clear that the scene was a disaster.

  “There was an explosion about an hour ago,” Agent Reynes explained, hurrying over to join him. “We were already on our way to pick up Thomas Clay Lacy when it happened.”

  “How many casualties?”

  “None, Sir.”

  Cole turned to him. “None?”

  “It seems the remaining patients were evacuated shortly before the explosion. Someone knew this was going to happen.”

  “Then it was a deliberate act,” Cole muttered, watching as flames rose up toward the night sky. “Do we have Lacy?” He waited for a reply. “Please tell me we have the son of a bitch.”

  “That's the strange part,” Reynes replied. “According to a couple of witnesses, Lacy was bundled into the back of an ambulance by one of the nurses and driven away. We assumed she was taking him to another hospital, but they haven't shown up yet. We're trying to get a fix on the ambulance's details so we can trace it, but we haven't had any luck so far. In fact, this whole operation at Middleford Cross seems to have been run under the radar. City Hall's already spitting bricks about the incident getting any media coverage.”

  “I want Lacy,” Cole said firmly. “After all this time, he can't be allowed to disappear again.”

  “At least we know who we're looking for now,” Reynes pointed out. “Before, we just had a DNA sequence. Now we have a name. I've sent some agents to go through
his apartment.”

  “Who was in charge of this place?” Cole asked.

  “Well...” Reynes paused. “This is another odd part. The facility was being run by a woman named Kirsten Winter. We checked into her, and it turns out she changed her name, she was originally known as Hazel Perry. Hazel was a nurse who suffered near-fatal injuries in an incident several years ago at a psychiatric hospital. The weird part is, when she changed her name to Kirsten Winter, she was copying the name of another woman who died in the same incident.”

  Cole frowned. “Why the hell would she do that?”

  “There's definitely something not right about her,” Reynes replied. “We're looking into it right now, but the priority has to be finding Thomas Clay Lacy. If we can get the Sobolton serial killer into custody, we can potentially wrap up a whole lot of cases.”

  “Something tells me it isn't going to be that easy,” Cole muttered, as part of the Middleford Cross building creaked and then collapsed, sending a huge cloud of ash and dust into the air. “I don't think the nurse was taking Lacy to another hospital. I think she was moving him out of the way so we couldn't get to him. Maybe she's his accomplice or something, or she's obsessed with him.”

  “Don't you think the timing's a little strange?” Reynes asked. “I mean, all of this seems to have come together tonight, almost like... Well, almost like someone was planning it all.”

  Cole took a step forward, watching as firefighters were forced back from the most intense part of the blaze.

  “Find that nurse,” he said finally, turning to Reynes. “Perry, Winter, whatever the hell her name is, I want her found immediately. Something tells me she's right in the middle of all this.”

  As he and Reynes continued to discuss the case, neither of them noticed the dark figures that were making their way across the parking lot. The ghosts of Thomas Clay Lacy's victims were going back to their final resting places, content now that they'd seen justice was going to be served. One of those ghosts, Priscilla Parsons, stopped next to one of the fire trucks and looked back at the burning building, and for a moment the flashing light of a nearby siren lit her face. If anyone had been looking, they would have seen her, but everyone was too busy.