Marginal E-Book

Tom Carlisle

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 408

Beschreibung

A man returns to the cult he escaped from to bury his brother, only to discover the past is monstrous, hungry and mutating, in this devilishly gory body horror. Perfect for fans of Adam Nevill and John Carpenter. When Rob receives a call in the middle of the night, he knows it must be bad news. But he isn't quite prepared for what he hears; his brother, Marcus, has died on the Systematics compound in Scotland, where the two of them grew up. The place Rob managed to escape with his sanity barely intact, the place that hollowed out his parents and his brother. Rob is determined to go up north to the compound to see Marcus laid to rest, but more importantly, to get to the bottom of what killed him. Because Rob has been waiting for the Systematics to make a mistake, for their charismatic leader Bjorn Thrissell to show his true colours so that Rob can make their crimes public and bring them down for good. But when Rob arrives at the compound with his producer Lucy in tow, they discover a group of people coming apart at the seams and paranoia seeping through the community. Mutiny is in the air and worse still… there is something lurking under the surface, something monstrous and murderous, something that has been biding its time in the margins… Trapped and isolated, Rob and Lucy are going to have to put their trust in the community they have come to ruin if any of them are going to have any hope of survival.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Also by Tom Carlisle and Available from Titan Books

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

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53

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Tom Carlisleand available from Titan Books

Blight

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Marginal

Print edition ISBN: 9781803360744

E-book edition ISBN: 9781803360751

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: October 2024

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© Tom Carlisle 2024

Tom Carlisle asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

For Mel

I have said to corruption, Thou art my father: to the worm, Thou art my mother.

JOB 17:14

PROLOGUE

HE WAS shaken from his reverie by a knock at the door. He ignored it. They knew he had work to do. Knew he needed time to think.

The notecards in front of him, a little stack of books. The ritual, the routine. His mind was ready. He was open. But these days the thread sometimes eluded him. He tried to trace his journey, the paths that had led him here, but everything was a swirl of confusion. They’d all found such blessings in this place, such clarity and focus, but he couldn’t shake the sense it was too good to be true. There was always a price to pay.

Another knock at the door. Harder this time, almost frantic.

He made his voice as gruff as he could manage. ‘I’m occupied.’

It was Cat. Her voice a little muffled. ‘I’m sorry, Bjorn, but—’

She knew better than this. She of all people knew how difficult this could be sometimes.

He rose from his chair, irritated. ‘I need this time, Cat,’ he said, crossing the room. ‘To listen, to reflect. How am I supposed to lead these people if I keep being interrupted?’

‘It’s Marcus…’

Of course it was Marcus. It was always Marcus these days: he was a tangle of barbed wire, on whom Bjorn kept snagging himself. He sighed, his hand pausing on the door handle, hoping that there might still be a chance to get back to work. ‘You can’t deal with it yourself? Can’t talk it through with Miranda or Elliot?’

Cat’s voice was a little shaky. This wasn’t like her. ‘I just thought that…’

His irritation got the better of him. ‘No, you didn’t think,’ he said. ‘If you had you’d have gone elsewhere.’

Cat’s voice broke. ‘You need to see this,’ she said, and when he heard her begin to cry he knew something was truly wrong. He turned the handle.

‘What is it – what’s happened?’

She was standing in his doorway, head bowed, her hands in her short hair. ‘I can’t…’ she said through her tears. Her voice was tight. He couldn’t remember seeing her like this in all the years they’d been here. ‘I don’t know how to describe it… you need to come.’

He tried to tamp down his own panic. ‘Okay,’ he said, holding his hands up as though by doing so he might ward off her sorrow. ‘Where is he?’

Cat’s jaw was clenched. He could see the effort it took for her to speak. ‘He’s dead, Bjorn.’

He felt it again. The void, reaching for him. Its tendrils stretching out into the world. ‘Where?’

‘In the vault.’

He forced down the terror, fought to keep his voice calm. ‘Something got in there?’

His thoughts were already racing. The System, his life’s work, crumbling to pieces. Everything they’d built, destroyed by collapse or flood or fire. It was so fragile, so tenuous.

He heard the coldness in Cat’s voice. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘The System’s fine.’

He knew he shouldn’t rise to the bait, but he couldn’t help himself. ‘The years I’ve put into this place…’ He regretted it the moment he said it. He was getting lazy. Weak.

‘I said it’s fine,’ said Cat, with something of her usual ferocity. She wiped her eyes, brutally. ‘Come on.’

She was already striding away towards the great concrete slab that was the vault, leaving Bjorn to hurry after her. As he did, he surveyed what they’d built here: the patchwork of vegetable gardens dug alongside the bunkhouses, the renovated mess hall looming over them all. It had a stark, utilitarian beauty: a kind of sanctuary from the cruel world. For several years now he had been struck by the thought of losing it. Old age, he supposed.

When he finally reached Cat she was standing at the door to the vault. He could feel the tension radiating off her. He couldn’t leave it like this.

God, but this was the part of running this place he hated most.

‘If I seemed preoccupied before,’ he mumbled, ‘thoughtless… I’m sorry.’ It was clumsy, inarticulate, but maybe that was better. Cat knew all his rhetorical tricks.

‘Okay.’ She didn’t look at him. The tension hadn’t yet dissipated.

‘I mean it, Cat. I’m no good at these things. But I’m… I’m trying.’

‘I know,’ she said. Her voice was without emotion and she stared past him. ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘I can’t deal with this now.’

‘Of course. But we’ll talk properly. Later.’ He nodded towards the door. ‘Shall we?’

Next to him Cat closed her eyes. ‘I can’t,’ she said. She looked a little green.

‘You’re not coming?’

‘No,’ she said firmly, and then, more quietly: ‘I… I can’t go back in there.’

He felt fear prickle up his spine. ‘Will I be able to find him?’

‘Oh yeah,’ she said, swallowing hard. ‘You’ll see him.’

And so he opened the door to the vault and followed the familiar route, those steps he could walk in his sleep, until he turned a corner and stumbled across…

The stuff of nightmares.

There was blood everywhere. On the doorframes, on the floor. Splattered across the spines of every book in view, in great curving arcs. Arterial sprays dripping from the ceiling and pooling in corners; scraps of flesh on the shelves, barely recognisable as human. Even when he closed his eyes he knew it by its smell: deep, ferrous, earthy.

At a desk sat a strange, ragged stump: a man, ripped apart at the waist, his spinal column standing up from the ruin. Bjorn recoiled, tripping over his feet in the dim vault, his mind ablaze. He groped for the door, wrenched it open, stumbled out into the evening.

‘My God, Cat,’ he heard himself say. ‘My God.’

‘I know.’ Her voice was choked.

‘What could have done that to him…?’

1

THE LANDLINE’S ringing, shrill and insistent in the darkness. Rob’s eyes flick to the alarm clock: 3 a.m. At first he assumes it’s another telemarketer. That’s the price you pay for keeping your number online, however discreetly.

But in his heart of hearts, he doesn’t believe it. He’s been expecting a midnight phone call for years. That’s the only reason he kept a landline: in case Marcus needed to reach him. He throws off the covers, staggers over to the phone.

‘Hello? Is that Rob Barton?’ A tiny, Germanic lilt to the voice. Even after all these years.

‘Speaking.’ His heart sinks. He knows that voice. With it comes memories of Craigdhu, and the Pit. The darkness that makes him afraid to close his eyes.

‘Gosh. It’s been… it’s been so many years.’ It comes out as genial, as if Bjorn were talking to an old friend. Like there was no distance between them at all.

‘Who is this?’ Rob’s words are hard, curt. He knows who it is, of course. He knew right away. He just needs to hear Bjorn say it.

‘It’s Bjorn Thrissell.’ No trace of anxiety in his voice. ‘But my God,’ Bjorn murmurs, ‘you sound so much like your brother.’

Rob’s breath catches in his throat. ‘Something’s happened to Marcus.’

Bjorn sighs. An old man, regretting the intrusion of reality. ‘Yes. Yes, I’m afraid that’s right.’ Rob’s mind is already racing. Marcus, lost in the woods, calling out for help that never arrives. Or worse: Marcus in the Pit, the light in his eyes dimming as his voice plays in an endless loop.

‘You bastard.’ The words come out before Rob realises.

On the other end of the phone there’s silence. For a moment he wonders if Bjorn’s hung up on him. Then there’s the faint sound of breathing on the end of the line.

‘I know you’re angry with me,’ Bjorn says eventually, his tone flat.

‘You don’t have the slightest idea what I feel.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘You’ve no idea what the past decade has been like. Forever wondering if what I see on the news is your doing.’ Bjorn is still silent. ‘So go on, then,’ says Rob. ‘What have you done to him?’

There’s a trace of a sigh in Bjorn’s voice. ‘I assure you, we had nothing to do with—’

‘Bullshit.’ Rob cuts him off, his grip tightening on the phone. ‘If something’s happened to Marcus, it’s because of you.’

Bjorn’s quiet again and Rob feels horribly exposed, wondering if he’s walked straight into a trap. When Bjorn’s voice comes again, it’s low and weary. ‘Rob, please,’ he says. ‘Let me explain.’

But Rob’s not listening, not really. He’s thinking about how Marcus spoke to him that night in the woods: like he were a stranger, an enemy to be hunted down.

‘Your brother is dead, Rob.’

Of course. Of course he’s dead.

‘Whatever happened to him, it’s on you,’ Rob says, his voice heavy with grief and anger. Bjorn doesn’t answer. Later Rob will recount the details of their conversation and realise he knows almost nothing about how Marcus died. But in that moment he doesn’t even think about Marcus, doesn’t even care. All he cares about is hurting Bjorn. ‘You hear me?’ Rob says into the silence. ‘I hold you responsible.’

When Bjorn speaks again his voice is stronger. ‘I assure you, it was not my fault.’

This isn’t fair. Rob tried so many ways to find out about Marcus over the years, to check in on his brother, and Bjorn shot down every attempt. All that time he’d denied Rob the last chance of a relationship with his own family, and even now he’s the one in control.

‘Do you have any idea how long I spent trying to reach you?’ Rob says, his hand tight on the phone, his voice a whisper. He closes his eyes, pushes back the familiar ache in his chest. As if those years in Craigdhu had altered something fundamental, broken him in a way that couldn’t be fixed.

‘I got your letters,’ says Bjorn. ‘The phone calls, the emails. I got them all.’

‘And… nothing.’ Rob’s shaking his head now, not that Bjorn could see it. ‘Not a word. Until today, when you call me out of nowhere and tell me Marcus is dead.’

‘You deserve to know.’

He’d held on to so much about Bjorn: that shabby old cardigan hanging loosely over his wiry frame, with his grey hair brushing its collar, or his patchwork beard in a constant state of disarray. Most of all, he remembered how Bjorn took Marcus under his wing. Filled his head with ideals, convincing him he was achieving something great.

But Rob had forgotten his smug, superior air: the terrible sense of being granted charity by a person you hate. A laugh escapes his lips, a horrible, manic sound edged with hysteria. ‘Surely you didn’t really consider keeping it from me?’ He waits, but either Bjorn thinks the question is rhetorical or he doesn’t deign it worthy of an answer. Typical. ‘What happened, then?’

‘There was… an incident.’ Bjorn swallows hard, the sound distorted and grotesque through the phone’s speaker. ‘Something attacked Marcus, we think.’

‘Attacked him?’ He has an image of his brother lying alone in the wilderness, his voice growing ever fainter as his calls for help go unheard. Darkness falling, blood pooling beneath a gash in his side.

‘Some sort of animal. He was – mauled.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘I know it sounds unlikely, but this far north—’

Again comes the anger: driving out any questions, any sorrow for Marcus. ‘You’re in Scotland, man, not Siberia.’ He waits a second or two for Bjorn to snap back, but there’s no reply. ‘He wasn’t attacked by a wolf. So what killed him?’

The faintest hesitation. ‘We don’t know that.’

‘Nothing in the cards, then.’ That would definitely get Bjorn’s attention. Any mention of the System. It might have been the only thing in the world he actually cared about. Sure enough, when Bjorn speaks again his voice is cold.

‘There’s no call for that.’

‘Believe me, I could say a lot worse.’

Bjorn doesn’t bother to disguise his sigh. ‘I called to tell you what happened,’ he says. ‘Now you know.’ He takes a breath, apparently collecting himself. ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ he says with an air of finality. ‘He was a good man.’

Despite himself, Rob’s stunned. ‘That’s it?’

‘I don’t see what else there is to say,’ Bjorn says, resigned.

‘I want to see the body.’

Bjorn’s answer comes immediately. ‘Out of the question.’

Rob’s laugh is hard and bitter. ‘As if you’d dream of stopping me.’

‘This is private property. We’re well within our rights—’

‘How about the police, then? How would you feel about stopping them?’

Bjorn’s silent for several seconds.

‘I don’t like bullies, Rob,’ he says more firmly.

‘Don’t you dare try and take the moral high ground,’ Rob snarls back, startled by the aggression in his voice. ‘My brother deserves a proper burial.’

‘And he’ll get one,’ says Bjorn. ‘Here. In the community to which he gave his life.’

‘No.’ He can’t let this happen. They’ve taken Marcus’s life, taken away Rob’s best chance at a family and left him rudderless in the world. They can’t take Marcus from him in death.

‘I’m sorry?’ Bjorn sounds genuinely surprised.

‘I’m the last surviving member of his family, so that makes me de facto executor of his will, and I won’t let him rot up there. I can’t.’ Rob’s voice cracks. ‘He deserves to come home. To be laid to rest properly. I need to say goodbye.’

Bjorn’s silent for a long time. Rob imagines him seething.

‘This is a mistake,’ he says finally.

‘I’m not thrilled about it either,’ Rob says. ‘But I’m coming.’

2

HE’D NEVER forget his last day in Craigdhu, no matter how hard he tried. Hunched in the darkness, his words playing over and over in an endless loop, until he couldn’t tell what was real any more. By the time they were finished with him, his own voice sounded alien.

He remembered stumbling out into the daylight and wondering how long he’d been in there. Hours, days, weeks? Time lost all meaning in there, refracted on itself. The moments became agony, sheer agony.

He’d seen others emerge from the Pit looking broken, like walking shadows. Now he was one of them: sixteen years old and as frail as an old man. Bjorn had always insisted it was a mercy. ‘I’m calling them back to who they are,’ he’d said when Rob asked him about it. ‘They know that, deep down. They just forgot it for a while.’

So that’s what it felt like. Once upon a time he’d likened it to being cleansed, purified by the force of his own words. Instead he felt annihilated, torn apart.

*   *   *

His mother didn’t have the strength to shun him tonight. He saw her try when he entered the bunkhouse. Saw her turn away from him like she was supposed to. She couldn’t bring herself to do it, not this time.

She kept glancing back at him, then trying to occupy herself with something in the kitchen: now putting away cutlery, now drying a mug. Now leaving the room, now setting herself down on the bed. Now taking a deep breath to calm her nerves.

‘Oh, God,’ he heard her murmur from the other room. He’d not followed her: he knew what was expected of him too. Knew how this was supposed to play out. The others were expected to shun him for the next twenty-four hours. To give him a chance to reflect on who he truly was, that true self to whom he’d been forcibly reintroduced in the darkness. They weren’t to look at him, not even when they served him his meals.

Twenty-four hours of agony, of being cut off, and then the immediate re-embrace of the commune as though the exile had never occurred. There was a pattern to it, a ritual whose contours he’d once found strangely comforting.

Her voice came again from the next room. ‘Oh, Lord.’ He felt it then. She was coming to him. She’d fold him in her arms, pull him close to her, whisper that she’d protect him. That it would be their secret, and that nobody else need know. He could see it as clearly as though it had happened already – and then, without warning, the picture changed.

A slamming door, and the thud of teenage footsteps on a wooden floor. Marcus stomped past him, not saying a word, his face a steely glower. Strode into their shared bedroom and began talking in a voice that was low and furious. There was something authoritative in it, like he was speaking to a subordinate.

He’d seen some of the older men mentoring Marcus, teaching him how to manage a team and how to take on responsibilities around the camp. But this wasn’t that. There was no compassion in his brother’s voice.

‘Don’t indulge him,’ Marcus said. ‘Don’t you dare. He’s only just out of that place, and he’s vulnerable. You know that. He needs time alone. To ground himself.’

His mother was silent, and he imagined her stunned – wearing a look of disgust at this child of her own body. But when he heard her speak again she sounded cowed, tentative. ‘I… I know. I understand. It’s… it’s hard, that’s all.’

‘It’ll be a damn sight harder for you if you lose him for good, don’t you think?’ Rob wanted to go to her, to charge in and tell his brother to shut his fucking mouth, but what good would that do? He could yell and scream and the best-case scenario was that Marcus would look straight through him as though he wasn’t there. More likely he’d be sent back to the Pit, forced to listen once more to the hateful sound of his own voice, calling him back to the life he’d forgotten. ‘You know that’s what’s at stake here. If the world gets its claws into him, if it distracts him from what he’s learned here, he’s never coming back.’ Silence. ‘Say it, woman. I want to hear you say it.’

‘Yes,’ she said, faintly. ‘Yes, I know what’s at stake.’

‘So what are you going to do about it?’

Silence again. If only he could see his mother’s expression, see the way she looked at Marcus. Was she scared? Disgusted? Defiant?

He hated his brother sometimes, but that was normal, wasn’t it? Everybody hated their siblings eventually. They knew everything about you, knew how to push your buttons. They were like your doppelganger: you saw yourself in their distorted mirror. What parts of himself did he recognise in Marcus? His drive, charisma, sense of purpose. All of them were in Marcus first, perfected in him. That should have brought them closer, but it only exacerbated his brother’s cruelty.

All Rob wanted was for someone – someone – to tell him they understood. To say they knew that shunning was the shittiest way to treat a person, and this was no way to build a better world. Write it down, for God’s sake. Slip it under his door. Except that was the last thing anyone here could do. Doing so would get them sent to the Pit.

He wanted to cry. Wanted to curl up on his bed and weep. Couldn’t even do that in peace. Marcus would be there soon, on the top bunk, listening. Reporting everything back to Bjorn and Cat.

There was nowhere Rob could go to be alone: nowhere, maybe, except the vault. You could lose yourself down there, among the rows of shelves. It was vast, so much bigger than it needed to be. To make space for all that we’ll create, Bjorn had said when Rob asked about it. It had been a shooting range once, Marcus told him. That was why it was so big. Bjorn had repurposed the space when he came up here, built that maze of desks and shelves and cubbyholes and then encouraged them to let their imagination run free. It felt a bit ridiculous when there were so few of them, but even Rob knew it wasn’t a good idea to say that aloud.

‘I’ll do what’s right,’ he heard his mother say to Marcus. ‘You can trust me.’

Marcus was silent for a long time. ‘I hope so,’ he said. When he stormed out of their shared bedroom, he didn’t even glance at Rob.

*   *   *

His mother woke him in the middle of that night. Standing at his bedside. Her hand on his shoulder, a finger pressed to her lips. In the bunk above him he could hear Marcus snoring gently. In the moonlight her face was all shadows, but he could see the fear in her eyes. She pointed towards the kitchen, and he rose from his bed and padded across the room, horribly conscious of the creaky floor. What would Marcus do if he caught them? Rob had seen his aggression firsthand more times than he cared to remember. He’d never laid hands on his own mother, but it wasn’t much of a stretch to imagine Marcus doing so.

She followed him, her footsteps nimble and catlike, lifting his heavy fleece-lined shirt from the end of his bed as she went. He knew what she was going to say the moment she did that. But then he saw the supplies laid out on the table, the knife beside them.

‘I can’t,’ he said, although even as he said it he wasn’t quite so sure anymore. Down there in the Pit, he’d felt a kernel of resistance, had grasped something he could hold on to, the memory of a love that went beyond the commune’s stultifying confines, and he’d gripped it tightly as his own words swept over him again and again. ‘I can’t go without you.’

‘You have to,’ she said. Her voice was a hushed whisper, and she couldn’t stop herself glancing over at where Marcus lay in his bunk. ‘I can distract them, keep them from finding you, but to do that I’ve got to be here.’ She put a hand against his cheek then, but instead of tenderness in her voice he heard only fear. ‘You have to go without me,’ she hissed. ‘There’s no time.’

Through the window of their kitchen he could see the cloudless sky, a bright moon hanging in it. There would be no cover, nowhere to hide until he hit the treeline. If anyone spotted him, he was fucked.

‘You can do this,’ she said, as though she’d read his thoughts. ‘Everyone’s asleep. Out the door, head for the gate, and then into the trees. Keep the road on your left, and don’t stop until you see the village. When you get there, you call the police. Understand?’

It was all he could do to nod mutely. She took the knife and slipped it into his pocket. ‘I hope you don’t need this,’ she said, ‘but if anyone tries to take you back, you stop them.’ She held his face. ‘You understand me?’

Again he nodded. His mind felt slow, unable to focus, like some part of it was still listening to that recording. She took a foil-wrapped sandwich, and slipped it into his shirt’s other pocket. ‘Hey,’ she said with a new tenderness. ‘You need to be brave for me, you hear? It’s going to be okay.’

‘What should I tell them?’

‘Tell them what this place is like. Tell them about the Pit.’ She shook her head, a look of helplessness in her eyes. ‘I don’t know, Rob. The words will come when you need them. Tell them to get me out.’

*   *   *

The woods were a block of thick darkness. He hesitated for a moment at the door of the bunkhouse, feeling the silent pull of his bed behind him. A day of discomfort and he’d be accepted again. Rotas to participate in. Digging the gardens, chopping the carrots, clearing the tables. Boring, but simple. He was walking away from it all. Out there would be foster homes, interviews with social services, and the indignities of trying to join a secondary school. God only knew what he’d tell people if they asked where he’d been all these years. He wasn’t sure he’d have the courage to tell them he’d been here – how would he ever begin to explain it?

He could feel his mother’s eyes on him. Knew that if he were to turn back, to tell her he couldn’t do it, he’d be dooming her too. He owed it to her to get out.

She’d fight for him if he got caught trying to run, wrench him out of the darkness whatever it cost her to do so. He could imagine her, ragged and bloody, throwing open the door of his cell. Looking like the woman she must have been long ago, before she joined the Scriveners, that fiery postgrad who’d thrown her life away to follow Bjorn. He liked to think about what she’d been like in those days, before this place took the best of her, before it forced her into its routines and compelled her to write thousands of words on index cards.

He buttoned his padded shirt up to the neck and made for the treeline. He was nearly at the road when he saw a light click on in their bunkhouse, followed in quick succession by another, and then another. Marcus was awake. It was only a matter of minutes before he woke the others. Rob ducked into the trees, became a shadow. Slowed his pace. Moving cautiously now, his torch off. It was almost impossible – every snap of a twig was amplified, and he was groping his way through the woods like a blind man, praying he wouldn’t break his ankle in a rabbit warren or knock himself out on a tree trunk. He couldn’t bring himself to stand still – doing so was nauseating, unbearable, so somehow he managed to keep moving. He had to be in motion. Had to be heading away from this place, no matter how slowly.

It took just three minutes before he heard the truck’s ignition. It came rolling down the hill with the lights on full beam and Elliot in the driver’s seat. Marcus on his other side, leaning out the window like a dog. At the first sight of the beams Rob froze, pressed himself up against a tree trunk in a desperate attempt to remain unnoticed. He was only a few metres away from the road, had resolved to stay close to it to keep from getting lost in the dark. Now he cursed that decision. He was uncomfortably visible, he was sure of it. All they’d have to do was turn their beams on the trees and they’d see some misshapen trunk, something that looked a little too much like a sixteen-year-old playing hide-and-seek, and he’d be done for. But he couldn’t possibly move now. If he tried, the sound of cracking twigs would summon them straight to him.

He tried to stay still, tried to make his breathing silent. Tried to feel the ground underfoot, the sensation of the breeze on his face – the way his mother had taught him to when he was anxious.

If he moved, he’d be back in the Pit. Dragged there like a sacrifice by his own brother. Lights were coming closer. Washing over the trees, lengthening the shadows. The truck pulled to a stop. Then Rob heard the handbrake, the sound of a door opening, and finally footsteps. His brother calling for him: behind his left shoulder, he thought, but he didn’t dare turn and look. He closed his eyes, praying for a miracle, but when he did all he heard inside his head was the sound of his voice on that fucking tape, repeating all he knew to be true in an endless loop until it no longer even sounded like words anymore.

They searched the woods for ten minutes, although it felt like much longer. Stumbling over one another, alternating between joy and despair. He heard them growing further and further away from him – heard Elliot exclaim in delight that he’d found something, only to groan as it turned out to be a rotting stump. Heard Marcus’s calls, at first in a ghastly parody of brotherly love – come on, man, all is forgiven, you don’t need to do this – then growing progressively more irate as the time drew on.

Don’t think I didn’t see it in you, you worthless twat. The cowardice. The laziness. I lived with it every fucking night. This place is better off without you, and we both know it. If it wasn’t for Mum I’d leave you out here to rot.

And then, somehow, they were heading back for the truck, Marcus muttering fuck fuck fuck under his breath. Rob wanted to whoop in delight, but he was shaking so hard he wasn’t sure he could utter a sound even if he’d wanted to. Instead he spent the rest of the night groping his way through the trees by moonlight, melting into the woods whenever he heard the sound of a vehicle.

*   *   *

He reached the village as the sun was rising. A little before 7 a.m. Orange light on roof slates. Nobody on the street. He felt horribly exposed on that main road, certain that at any moment Elliot would roar down the hill and haul him into the truck.

He couldn’t even form his thoughts into words. Didn’t know where to start. Just wandered down the road in a daze, hoping someone would spot him, hoping they’d take the decision out of his hands. Open their door and ask him what he was doing, invite him in to sit and eat with them.

Instead he heard the sound of an engine at his back and leapt out of his skin. Turning, he saw a Range Rover reversing out of a driveway, a burly man leaning out of the window and looking embarrassed. ‘Sorry there, pal,’ he said. ‘Didn’t expect anyone around at this time of day.’

Years later Rob would realise how a normal person would have reacted. Would have raised a hand to say, ‘no worries,’ or maybe asked the guy what the fuck he thought he was doing. In the event, his reaction was probably what saved him. He said nothing, didn’t even move out of the drive, just stared slackly back at the guy. The man watched Rob for several seconds over his shoulder, then turned off his engine, stepped out of the car and walked over.

He was shorter than Rob and much stockier, with dark hair cropped closely and a visible bald patch. He had a warm, amiable face, and as he approached Rob he did so without anger. He held his hands up before him as though trying to calm a cornered dog. Rob supposed he must have looked afraid. No doubt he was emaciated, dishevelled, his clothes washed out and his face pale. When he looked at photos of himself from then he hardly recognised the kid looking back at him.

‘Are you okay, pal?’ the man said. ‘I haven’t seen you around.’ Still Rob couldn’t answer. His lips were dry and cracked, and he mostly just wanted to weep. ‘Are you here staying with somebody? Are you Lisa’s nephew? Gemma’s?’ The man narrowed his eyes. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, you’re from up on the hill, aren’t you? Did something happen?’

It was all Rob could do to nod.

‘Come on,’ said the man, glancing back along the road as though he too feared Elliot’s sudden appearance. ‘Let’s get you inside and get you some breakfast. You look half-starved.’

And he put his arm around Rob’s shoulders and led him inside.

*   *   *

Was he a fool to think it would all be better then, that it could all be fixed? When the man, who was called Andrew, sat him at the kitchen table and called the police, and when he asked again what had happened, was Rob wrong to hope that speaking the words might make a difference? For a while it looked like it might. When the police came and set him in the back of their car and listened patiently to his statement, or when they called Bjorn in for questioning; when they asked Rob about his experience for the second time and he knew they’d relay every one of his questions to Bjorn in that interrogation room; all of this had to be the first step to getting his mother back, he remembered thinking, his best chance to save her from that place. Maybe that was all they’d needed, all along: a higher authority. Somebody with real power.

All that hope. It would feel like folly, later, sitting desolately in one of his foster bedrooms, or in the bleak squalor of a children’s home. He should have known Bjorn would be prepared for this. That every one of them would deny any knowledge of his mother, that her personal effects would have disappeared somewhere into the vault’s cavernous recesses.

The police searched – oh, how they searched – but he realised as early as that first week that they’d never find her, no matter how much they promised, no matter how hard they told him they’d fight. There was too much information to sift, too many places to hide her. Nobody could have managed it, and Bjorn knew that. He’d built himself an apparatus that made him all but unstoppable.

It was Marcus he hated most. He knew the police would have asked Marcus what happened, and he imagined his brother sitting across from them, denying all knowledge of his own mother. Denying he had a family, denying he’d sent his brother to the Pit. Too many nights Rob had to block out the image of Marcus standing over their mother’s body holding a razor, his hands wet with blood. Or else strangling her, the tendons straining on the back of his hands as he pressed them around her neck, watching the flesh turn purple and not caring for even a second. It wouldn’t have been a peaceful death, he knew that, not if Marcus had anything to do with it.

3

ONE DAY the bailiffs will come back for Lucy, she knows it. She doesn’t know the date, nor the reason, not yet, but it doesn’t matter. It’s inevitable. She can’t keep working this hard forever: she’ll make a mistake. An error with her taxes, or an over-commitment, one project too many. There will be a legal battle, a point of paperwork she hasn’t considered, something that makes her liable. And all of this will crumble.

It will happen slowly, and then all at once: the first crack in the dam, the first missed deadline, and then the bills piling up. The panic, the terror, the nights with too much booze and too little sleep.

As a girl, that day felt like someone had literally torn the fabric of her world. When she closes her eyes and recalls it, she sees her posters ripped down, her furniture kicked to pieces – locking screws splintered, MDF frames bent out of joint.

And so, she keeps working. Keeps building systems, keeps logging hours, keeps tracking income and expenses. Keeps pushing doors, making connections, networking. She’s getting better at finding stable prospects, people who’ve stayed the course: no small feat in her line of work. They’re the big fish, the prizes.

She could have taken another office job, she knows that. But look at how it worked out last time – the agony of a restructure, the months of wondering, the apologetic conversations with her line manager while the HR rep sat in the corner. A kind of slow-motion torture, which she couldn’t go through again. It had been a salutary lesson, that much was undeniable: you had to find your own anchor points, no matter that the very ground in which you set them was churning, prone to upheaval. So you set them as firmly as you could, hoped for the best, and always had an escape route.

That’s what this job offered: escape routes. If it all started to topple, hopefully she’d have enough connections left to steady herself before the collapse. There were no guarantees, she knew that. This line of work was transient, mercenary, and it made little apology for that fact. But at least it was honest about it.

There were very few people pretending this was something it was not.

*   *   *

To look at Rob you wouldn’t know he’d been in a cult. Lucy hadn’t, not the first time she’d met him. He’d been advising on a documentary she was putting together about cryptocurrency. Somebody said he was good at explanations and Paul, her producer, set up a meeting. They’d met in a Starbucks, a studiously neutral choice she later realised was almost certainly deliberate.

Paul was right. Rob was good at explaining. She understood crypto pretty well, but he made it clear in the way that an audience needed. She asked him if he’d be happy to be part of the documentary, a quick talking-head piece to camera, and was startled by how forcefully he refused. He went from a mild-mannered bloke in an Oxford shirt to someone positively fierce.

She knew fear when she saw it. There was a story there.

Fortunately, she knew how to get stories out of people. Understood when to push, and when to hang back; when people needed permission, and when they needed to be challenged. Pragmatism, that’s what she called it, although more than one person had called it bloody-mindedness. You’re like a dog with a fucking bone, the subject of her breakout piece on corporate fraud had said once. You just don’t know when to let it go. It was a good job she didn’t, though, at least in his case. A couple of weeks later the whole edifice came crumbling down, and if she’d backed off when she’d been told to she’d have missed the show. Instead, she got a front-row seat to the CEO’s ignominious exit, hustled out through a fire escape while babbling to the press about the snake that devoured the world.

She’d met Rob not long after that and told him all about it at their first meeting, a deliberately provocative choice to tease out a reaction. His reaction was more than she could have hoped for. He went white, his eyes widening in disbelief.

‘What did you say?’ he asked her. ‘The snake that devours the world?’

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘You look like you’ve heard that before.’

Rob hesitated. For a moment, Lucy thought he might shut down, retreat into that mild-mannered façade. And then, to her surprise, he started talking. Told her about his mother, about the article she’d written on that very topic. How she’d written it in a cult up in the Scottish Highlands. He spoke in halting phrases, like he was weighing each sentence before he allowed himself to speak.

When he stopped talking, Lucy knew she had something here. But she’d seen what happened when she pushed Rob too hard. She needed to be careful. ‘Rob,’ she said softly. ‘I know there’s more to this. I understand if you don’t feel like you can tell me about it right now. But if you ever do, I’d like to hear it.’

Rob’s eyes searched her face. Then, slowly, he nodded. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I’ll bear that in mind.’

She kept his number once that project wrapped, knowing full well it might come in handy one day. And, to her surprise, she kept meeting Rob, every couple of weeks. He was unexpectedly good company, perhaps because he was so untainted by the same culture that everyone else had absorbed in their teenage years. He had a whole decade of childhood things to catch up on, and for some reason he seemed to have the idea that she could help with that. Be it Britpop, The X-Files or the video games he should have played as a kid, she couldn’t deny she found it satisfying to be the expert on something. Occasionally, just occasionally, she thought of him like an alien trying to understand human customs in a desperate attempt to fit in. She didn’t tell him.

So when he called her and said he needed to talk, she figured it was probably because he’d discovered that Prince had appeared in an episode of Animaniacs.

Apparently it was not.

*   *   *

She’s arranged to meet him in a Caffè Nero in the centre of town. He’s late. That bothers her, always has. Her time is literally billable. Every minute she sits waiting in this coffee shop is time she could spend writing, networking, researching. Rob ought to have the same mindset. He’s a freelancer too, although it seems to work differently if your specialism is computers. Perhaps that’s why, more often than not, he’ll let his meetings stretch out beyond the allotted time, showing up fifteen minutes late with an apologetic smile and not even offering to buy her a coffee.

She’d mention it to him if she thought it would do any good, but it didn’t work the first three times and she couldn’t imagine it’d make much of a difference now.

At a rush of cold air she looks up and sees Rob entering the coffee shop. Nine-and-a-half minutes late, and flashing her a dopey, apologetic grin. She glances down at her latte. Already half gone and cooling rapidly. She’ll need a refill before long.

He looks flustered, his hair rumpled like he’s not had time to drag any product through it, his eyes bleary. When he places his order he presses his fingers to his brow, apparently stifling a headache, and when it arrives he carries it to the table as though terrified he’ll break its surface tension.

‘I’m late,’ he says. ‘Again.’

She raises an eyebrow. ‘At least you’re self-aware.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘Something happened.’

‘Everything okay?’

Rob rubs his forehead. ‘You know I have a brother, right? Up in Scotland?’

‘Yeah. Mark?’

‘Marcus.’ Rob sighs. ‘Well, he… uh.’ He takes a sip of his coffee, burns his tongue, winces. ‘Sorry. I don’t talk about this much.’

‘It’s all right,’ she says. She tries not to glance at the clock in the corner of her screen. ‘Take your time.’

‘Yeah. Thanks.’ He takes a deep breath, stares down at his coffee for a long time. Speaks to her, eventually, with his head down. ‘So, uh… Marcus. Marcus died.’

‘You’re kidding.’ She knows enough about Rob’s history to know his family never came back from that cult. ‘Shit. That’s awful. Do you know what happened? Was it sudden?’

‘Nope. He was… mauled. Apparently. Whatever that means.’ He holds his hands up. ‘I don’t really know anything. I got a call from Bjorn last night, out of the blue, and he told me. First time I’ve heard from him in nearly a decade.’

‘Shit.’ She reaches across the table to take his hand. ‘Shit, Rob. I’m really sorry.’

‘Thanks.’ He takes another sip of his coffee. He looks bewildered, like a lost little boy. She can’t blame him: he’s all alone in the world now. ‘I told Bjorn I’d go and get the body. Not that I want to, but I… I owe it to Marcus to give him a proper farewell. To try and remember what he was like before Bjorn got to him. I’ll spend the rest of my life hating him otherwise.’

She wishes she still had some coffee left. His grief is raw, disquieting: it’s like he’s shed a layer of skin. ‘Bjorn took so much away from you,’ she says. ‘How do you deal with it?’

Rob gives a half-hearted shrug. ‘Therapy, mostly. Work.’

This is bullshit. She’s been a journalist long enough to know that. But it doesn’t really feel like the moment to press it. ‘Doesn’t it make you want to scream, though? The injustice of it all? I swear, if it was me…’ She catches herself. ‘Sorry. It’s not about me.’

‘No, it’s okay.’ He sniffs. ‘It’s not like there’s much I could do about it. I tried, once upon a time. Didn’t do a thing.’

‘You’re kidding. I never knew that.’

‘Yeah. I was so certain they’d find her and bring the whole thing down.’ He gives a bleak chuckle, then goes back to playing with his teaspoon. ‘I was young.’

‘That’s fucked up.’

‘Yeah.’

He’s silent for a long time. Shoulders slumped, rings under his eyes. He looks beaten already. Maybe that’s what makes her say it.

‘I could help you,’ she says. ‘Bring him down.’

Instantly his expression hardens, as though a whole different person comes out. He lifts his eyes and stares at her, apparently trying to determine if this is for real. ‘You’re serious.’

‘There’s a story here that could cause Bjorn some issues. If you’re willing to let me tell it.’

Rob reaches for a sugar packet. Turns it over and over, taps it against the table. She can tell he’s conflicted, and she can’t blame him, not really. He’s spent so many years trying to build a life outside of that place – why would he want to open the door to it again?

The more she thinks about it, the more it excites her. A true-crime podcast about a cult, with a personal angle. It could be the next Serial. She hates to seem mercenary: she feels sorry for Rob, really she does. Still, this is the sort of story careers are made on.

She stays quiet, trying not to come on too strong, but she can see Rob’s wavering. That brief flash of anger seems to be fading, sinking back down under his usual melancholy fug.

‘No,’ he says finally. ‘Thank you for offering. It really means a lot. It’s just… I tried to bring him down once. And nothing came of it.’ He sighs. ‘I just want to say goodbye.’

She nods slowly, watching the opportunity slip away from her, thinking shit shit shit. How exactly is she going to salvage this?

‘Listen,’ she says. ‘I’m not the police. They’ve got procedures to follow, evidence thresholds. I’m better than them. I know how to bring somebody like Bjorn down. Know exactly what to look for.’

He shakes his head, his eyes hollow. ‘I just want it to be over,’ he says.

And then she says something she’s not proud of. ‘It’s never going to be over, not while he’s still out there.’

Something of that steeliness comes back into his eyes, and it makes her wonder what he was like at sixteen.

‘My therapist would hate you,’ he says after a moment.

That’s all the answer she needs. She presses her advantage. ‘When do you leave?’

‘Tomorrow morning at seven.’ He studies her face. ‘Alone.’