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<h2>18</h2>
<p>Castlebank Distillery is one of the few places in Levenford
which has night-shift working in winter. The demand for the export
scotch whisky blend always soared before Christmas. There were
orders to be shunted out and stacked onto the big containers that
came and went at all hours heading for the docks in Glasgow for
worldwide distribution.</p>
<p>Latta's yard just south along the bank was still noisy with the
eerie buzz of the welders and sapphire lightning flashes sparked
and flared along the length of the growing pyramid and steel which
would be towed out of the estuary and up to the north sea before
the summer, all things going to plan.</p>
<p>The distillery is a square set, brick built eyesore of a
building which towers over the south of the town, next to the tidal
basin on the river. What it lacks in grace and style and visual
appeal is more than made up for by the fact that it pays the wages
of one in every four families and that alone helps generate most of
the other business in the town. For that, the Levenford folk could
put up with the stale-towel smell of the maltings and the cloud of
steam which rose in a plume day and night. They could put up with
the fact that ten percent of the men had a drink problem because
when the business involves millions of gallons of high-voltage
amber liquid it is impossible to account for every drop. Without
the distillery, Levenford could have rolled up its pavements and
turned off the lights like many a similar sized town in Scotland
had done in previous years.</p>
<p>It wasn't until much later that Elsa Quinn remembered seeing the
woman in the corridor when she'd taken a break from the bottling
line to get a drink of water from the fountain. She hadn't been
paying much attention, mainly due to the fact that she needed the
water to swallow the tablets for the headache which had been
building up for the past hour. Elsa was prone to migraines and when
one of them started screwing its way in behind her eyes, her vision
would waver and her tongue would feel thick and numb. She only
recalled the woman in a vague way and couldn't put a name to
her.</p>
<p>"I wasn't paying much attention," she was to tell Jack Fallon.
"I had a splitting headache, but we don't get much time off the
bottling lines, because they go too fast. I had to wait until a
supervisor stepped in."</p>
<p>The incident she was a witness to happened two hours after Jack
had left Lochend Hospital and less than an hour before he'd woken
up with a sudden and certain knowledge clanging alarm bells in his
head. Then the phone had rung, two calls, one after the other.</p>
<p>Down in Castlebank Distillery the tea-break bell had rung, a
harsh jangle of sound that grated on everybody's nerves. In the
staff canteen, the plastic chairs were scraped back from tables,
cigarettes stubbed out into overflowing ashtrays. The dregs of
strong tea were quickly swallowed or left to go cold as the
lineworkers made for the exits and back to work. In seconds, the
hubbub of noise had faded to the relative silence of the canteen
girls clattering cups and saucers and sweeping the floor tiles.</p>
<p>Sixteen-year-old Carol Howard had worked in the building since
August when she'd left school with a diploma in typing and cookery.
She was a pleasant girl with long dark hair which hung down her
back in a tidy and quite elegant plait. She worked on the floor
above the bottling plant, in the store-room where the pallets of
cardboard whisky cases were laid flat in library-stack lines and
where boxes of bottle-tops and labels lined the walls, almost
twenty feet high. Normally the store-room workers and the bottling
women had staggered work-breaks, but on the night shift the stores
department operated on an emergency basis. If a box of labels was
needed somewhere, or a fresh carton of tops, Carol would take the
call, mark in the request on her terminal, and get one of the men
to carry the delivery down to the floor below.</p>
<p>She'd spent the twenty minutes in the canteen with a crowd of
girls her own age, three of whom had been in the same class at
school. The talk was all of discos and boyfriends and how they all
hated the job already, although Carol was quietly pleased about the
fact that she'd landed an office job and didn't have to wear the
sky-blue overalls which marked the rest of the girls as bottlers.
Her nails were never broken, nor her hands scadded from the
constant use of the washers and the incessant drip of whisky. The
girls on the lines might have been paid more for their manual
labour, but to Carol, working in an office give her the edge.</p>
<p>When the bell had jangled, they'd all moved to the corridor,
surrounded by the raucous laughter of the older women as they
trailed back up to the third floor by the west stairs. Carol stood
for a moment at the turn of the stairs, talking to two of the
girls, making tentative arrangements for Friday night, when one of
the supervisors called down to the two others, telling them to get
a move on. One of them shrugged and both of them turned to follow
the rest along the upper passage. Carol continued up the stairs and
was about to enter the store-room when she realised she'd left her
bag slung over the back of her chair in the canteen.</p>
<p>"Damn," she said under her breath, turned, and headed back along
the corridor. As she passed the service elevator, she saw the woman
leaning against the wall and continued past for several steps,
before she turned. There was something about the woman's posture
that caught her attention. She seemed to be sagging, as if she'd
taken ill. Her face was familiar, but Carol couldn't place it. The
girl came back towards the junction. The light on the ceiling
beside the broad grey door had gone out. This part of the
passageway was in shadow.</p>
<p>"Can I help you?" Carol asked the woman. There was no response.
The woman turned her body a little, facing away into the shadow.
The girl noticed there was a rip on her tights and scuff marks on
what looked like sensible walking shows. There was also a dark
smear on the back of the woman's coat, as if she'd leaned against a
wall.</p>
<p>"Are you alright?" she persisted, but still there was no
response. The woman mumbled something, but it was too soft and low
to make out.</p>
<p>The girl took another two steps forward, about to ask again,
when the door at the far end of the corridor, round the bend from
the elevator, swung open. One of the storemen popped his head
out.</p>
<p>"Hey Carol. They need some export labels on line six."</p>
<p>"Right Jim," she called back. "I'll be with you in a
minute."</p>
<p>The woman hadn't moved at all. Carol hesitated a moment, torn
between concern for the stranger and the need to get down to the
canteen for her bag before it disappeared. She also had to get back
up and make sure the lines got their labels or she would get the
blame for a break in production. She turned away and went down the
stairs two at a time. As she did so, all the lights in the corridor
went out.</p>
<p>She hurried to the canteen and opened the door. One of the
cleaners was sweeping up close to where she'd been sitting at the
far end. The woman was just reaching out for the small bag on the
chair when Carol got there.</p>
<p>"Oh thanks. I knew I'd left it somewhere," the girl said. A look
of disappointment flitted across the cleaner's face. She shrugged
and handed the bag over. Carol thanked her again, slung it over her
shoulder and walked quickly back to the door, her heels clicking
staccato on the tiles. She started to take the stairs again, then
remembered the lights had gone out up on the fourth floor. The
corridor up there was long and narrow, and at this time of night,
there was little activity, Carol was not scared of the dark, but
she had a healthy regard for it. Instead of taking the stairs, she
walked the ten yards to the service lift, hit the up button and
listened to the whine and clank as the carriage lowered iself to
the second floor.</p>
<p>There was a metallic thump and the doors accordioned open with a
breathless hiss. Carol stepped inside, pressed button four and
watched as the wall on the other side of the passageway shrank to a
rectangle, a slit, then disappeared. The lift kicked under her feet
and rose, rumbling upwards. She opened her bag to make a quick
inventory, just to make sure nothing was missing.</p>
<p>Then the lights went out and the lift juddered to a halt so
suddenly that Carol lurched off-balance. Her bag dropped to the
floor and her knuckle rapped painfully against the side of the
cabin, causing her to let out a little high squeal of hurt and
surprise. Her voice echoed tinnily on the inside of the cage.</p>
<p>She was alone in the dark.</p>
<p>For a second, the fact of it failed to register as her mind
tried to understand what had happened. Then the impact of it
swooped in on her. The lift had stopped and the lights had gone out
and she was in the dark. There was not a sliver of light. Her eyes
widened automatically as apprehension swelled to fright and then
soared up to panic.</p>
<p>At the age of three Carol had crawled into the cellar under the
house in Whiteford Road and got stuck behind a jammed door in the
dark cobwebby darkness. She'd been there for two hours until her
mother had finally heard her panicked screams, and the nightmares
had gone on for weeks after. Time had eventually healed the trauma.
Yet the memory had lain dormant.</p>
<p>Thirteen years and five months after the childhood scare,
something in Carol Howard's mind unlocked and the memory woke up
and came racing like a black express train out of a tunnel,
shrieking all the while.</p>
<p>Her heart did a jittery dance inside her, all out of step and
her breathing was suddenly all too fast, backed up as her lungs
gasped for more air than they could hold.</p>
<p>The darkness was complete. The lights on the buttons had failed
along with the overhead panel. She could hear her own breathing
bounced back at her from the bare metal walls of the cage. Inside
her ears, the fast pulse was a dizzying throb. Carol stepped
forward and her foot snagged on the strap of her bag. She gasped as
she tripped forward. For the second time her knuckle hit something
solid, sending a shard of pain up to her elbow. She twisted and a
long fingernail caught on the head of a rivet and ripped off to the
quick. Underfoot something crunched. It sounded as though she'd
trampled on a large insect.</p>
<p>Fear swamped her. Carol's mouth opened in an automatic scream
but no sound came out. In her mind, she could hear herself
screaming, but her ears heard nothing, and that made the terror
balloon. <em>She was stuck in the dark and she couldn't call for
help.</em></p>
<p>With no visual point of reference she was completely
disorientated. She took one step and something else crackled under
her shoe. She lurched to the left and slammed against the wall of
the hoist, sending a bolt of pain across her shoulder. The force of
it unlocked her breathing and the girl screeched as she had done in
the cellar. Her outstretched fingers found the buttons and she
stabbed and scrabbled at them, hitting none out of the ten.</p>
<p>Nothing happened.</p>
<p>Carol shrieked as loud as she could, hearing her cry shatter and
fragment as it spanged between the walls and roof. She groped until
she found the slit between the two sliding doors and hooked her
nails in and tried to prise the edges apart. Another nail gave,
pulling backwards with a burning twist of pain. The door remained
shut.</p>
<p>The girl's scream played itself out, leaving her breathless and
panting, both hands planted against the wall. In her mind she saw
the women leave at the end of the shift. If the lift was slow in
coming, they would just walk down the stairs. She didn't know if
anyone could hear her from the outside of the double safety doors.
There was no window on to the corridor.</p>
<p>The thought that she could be stuck in the dark all night, all
alone in the lift shaft of an empty ten-storey building sent
another jolt of panic through her and galvanised her into another
fit of hysterical shouting. She battered at the door with the palms
of both hands, a rapid urgent timpani which shook the metal cage
and sent it clanking against the guide rails. The noise boomed up
the shaft. The darkness squeezed at her. It felt tangible and
thick. She couldn't see the walls, only feel the doors in front of
her. The sides of the cabin could have been yards away, miles away,
but in her fright, Carol could sense them close and getting closer,
shrinking down to squash her in the dark. Her dread inflated,
gripping her stomach, making her heart pound uncontrollably.</p>
<p>Then, miraculously, somebody shouted.</p>
<p>"Anybody in there?" The voice was muted, coming from some
distance, or though several layers, but it was enough.</p>
<p>"Oh yes!" Carol squawked, suddenly flooded with gratitude. She
still couldn't see a thing. She was still trapped in a metal box
eight feet by eight feet, all on her own, but the very fact that
somebody <em>knew</em> where she was enough to swamp her with
relief.</p>
<p>"Down here. I'm stuck. Please help."</p>
<p>"Where are you?" the thin voice called out.</p>
<p>"I'm in the lift," she yelled.</p>
<p>"Which floor?"</p>
<p>Carol stopped to think. Her heart was still beating fast. She'd
come in on the second floor. She'd pressed for four and the lift
had risen. <em>How far</em>? She couldn't recall. People had faith
in modern lifts. They pressed the button and waited for the bumpy
stop and the swish of doors, trusting the machinery. Now it had
failed and Carol realised she did not know whether she had gone up
one or two floors. Or six.</p>
<p>"I don't know. Just get me out of here," she called out in a
jittery voice.</p>
<p>The instant balm was fading fast. It was still dark and it still
crowded in on her as if it had weight.</p>
<p>Then up above, there was a thump and a heavy ringing vibration
which shivered the floor of the cab and sent it rocking again.</p>
<p>"What?" Carol cried. The floor lurched under her feet and she
tripped forward again, arms out groping for the wall.</p>
<p>"....the hell was that?" the unseen man shouted. It sounded as
if he was above her.</p>
<p>"What's happening?" Carol yelped.</p>
<p>Another booming vibration resonated down to the cage. It
shivered as if it had been struck a heavy blow, and the cables
thrummed like deep bass strings. Carol slipped to the floor and
landed on her handbag. Something sharp dug into the back of her
thigh and her teeth clicked together with a snap.</p>
<p>"Who's in there?" the man called out.</p>
<p>"Me. Carol Howard. Can you get somebody to get me out of
here?"</p>
<p>"Alright love, we'll get the serviceman."</p>
<p>She sat in the dark, hoping the engineer would come quickly.
There was always one or two men working on the lifts. She didn't
know if there was anybody on standby at night. The thought of
spending much longer in the narrow dark squeezed her panic
tight.</p>
<p>Then right overhead, something hit the top of the cabin. The
whole cage jerked and shuddered, rocking Carol on to her back. The
sound was like a huge hammer blow. Carol squealed in fright.</p>
<p>"What's going on?" the man called.</p>
<p>Carol didn't reply. Above her, on top of the cage, she could
hear movement.</p>
<p>"Must be the engineer," she thought, grateful for the speed of
the rescue. She knew there was a trapdoor somewhere on the top of
the lift. That's how they'd get her out. She wondered if they would
put a ladder down or just reach down and haul her up. She hoped the
shaft wouldn't be too dirty or filled with spiders and cobwebs.
They made her shudder, but she could bear the sight of them as long
as she could get out of the dark.</p>
<p>The lift quivered violently again. Overhead there was a scraping
sound on the cabin roof, then a screech of protesting metal.</p>
<p>"Hello?" she called out. "I'm down here."</p>
<p>There was no response.</p>
<p>Something moved. There was another metallic squeal and a thump.
A splinter snapped off and clanged to the floor, followed by
droplets of dust.</p>
<p>"Can you put the light on?" she asked.</p>
<p>The cables thrummed again and the lift lurched. Close by, she
heard a grunt, then all of a sudden, the cage was filled with a
foul, choking smell. Carol coughed, shuddering, and then for some
reason her panic expanded on a bubble of dread. She felt the hairs
on the back of her neck twist and shrivel as the skin puckered. A
truly cold sweat soaked out of the pores under her arms and on her
back. She felt her bladder give.</p>
<p>Above her, something snuffled like an animal scenting the air
and then let out a low growl.</p>
<p>"Who's there?" Carol whimpered. She crawled backwards until her
shoulder blades were against the door.</p>
<p>Something came down from the roof.</p>
<p>In the tight claustrophobia of the service lift, she could sense
its presence. It forced its way through the hole in the roof,
scraping against the metal sides. She could hear the grating sound
as it reached against the metal sides. Something metal whirred in
the air and tinkled on the floor.</p>
<p>She could see nothing, but her fear-heightened senses could pick
out the presence like a biological radar. The putrid stench
engulfed her, making her gag.</p>
<p>Something rasped again on the wall. She got a mental picture of
a big scaly spider, then without warning she was hauled from the
ground.</p>
<p>Just in front of her, whatever it was snarled, so low and
menacing she felt the vibrations shiver through her.</p>
<p>Carol tried to scream. She tried to shout and holler, but as
before, no sound came out. Something had lifted her with shocking
force from the ground and she could not make a sound.</p>
<p>Dimly, far off, she heard the voice: "It's alright love. The
engineer's on his way."</p>
<p>The unseen thing wrenched her upwards. Her shoulder hit off the
edge of the trapdoor and she heard something crack under the skin.
There was no pain, but there was an enormous pressure on her other
shoulder. It felt as though it was trapped in a huge vice.
Everything had happened so quickly that she didn't even have time
to think, to consider what had come down in the dark and snatched
her from the floor. The tremendous fear had driven her mind into
shock overload. Dimly she was aware of her blouse snagging on a
jagged piece of metal, then, even more dimly realised it was not
her blouse, but the skin of her left breast. Warm wetness flowed to
her waist.</p>
<p>The shape snuffled and grunted, the sound of a bloodhound, or a
pig in a trough. It heaved her through the narrow opening with a
violent jerk. She felt the skin of her leg peel off right down the
outside of her thigh to her ankle. The sensation seemed very far
away, as if it could have been happening to someone else.</p>
<p>The girl felt herself dragged upwards, swinging like a rag doll.
Whatever held her leaped from one side of the well to the other.
Her feet banged against the brickwork, sending off clouds of dust
and pieces of loose concrete to rain on the roof of the elevator.
For a second the motion stopped. Carol hung suspended in the void,
her feet pointing down. She was lifted up slowly and something
turned towards her. Two eyes opened and flared a poisonous
yellow.</p>
<p>At that moment, Carol plunged through the other side of the
shock paralysis. She saw the great eyes glare at her and suddenly
she could see and feel and breathe. Enormous pain rampaged through
her shoulder where the thing held her in an incredibly powerful
grip. Her leg felt as if it was on fire and the side of her breast
was a sunburst of agony.</p>
<p>The eyes glared at her with such hunger and hate and malevolence
that Carol simply screamed.</p>
<p>Her ear-splitting screech cascaded and resonated all the way
down the lift shaft, on and on and on.</p>
<p>Out on the corridor on level four, Peter Cullen shrank back from
the door.</p>
<p>"What in the name of Christ was that?" Beside him, a crowd of
women in their overalls instinctively reached for each other,
moving close together.</p>
<p>The terrified screams came reverberating down the holeshaft,
magnified and amplified in the enclosed space.</p>
<p>Outside the door on the fourth floor, everybody heard the sound.
It was more than a girl afraid of the dark. The shattering wails
came crashing down from above, an incessant torrent of pure
terror.</p>
<p>In the lift shaft, the thing moved and flexed. The girl felt the
grip on her shoulder abruptly loosen. There was a popping sound as
her skin puckered outwards and whatever had been holding her pulled
out. Warmth drenched her back in a stream and under the noxious
stink that filled the gallery, she could smell her own blood.</p>
<p>Suddenly, she felt herself fall, and just as instantly, she was
jerked back. This time, the grip was on one thigh. She felt hard
points drive into the thick muscle and a fresh pain detonated in
her hip. The darkness swooped alarmingly. One second she was
dangling feet down, and the next she was upside down in the shaft.
The thing stated to climb again, jerking from side to side on the
walls of the duct, moving with ferocious speed. Carol's piercing
screams followed it up into the dark heights.</p>
<p>Down by the lift door, they heard the ululating, echoing cries
diminish. One of the women crossed herself.</p>
<p>"What's going on out here?" somebody barked from along the
corridor. The stores supervisor, a stout man with thick bottle-end
glasses came waddling briskly towards the group.</p>
<p>"It's wee Carol. She's stuck in the lift," Peter Cullen told
him.</p>
<p>"So call for service and get her out, for goodness sake," his
boss said impatiently. Despite his officious appearance, George
Hill was a kind enough soul.</p>
<p>"But she's not there any more," Peter continued as if he hadn't
heard.</p>
<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
<p>"Something happened in there, one of the women said in a
tremulous voice. "We heard her screaming. It was
<em>awful."</em></p>
<p>Hill pushed his way through the crowd, leaned forward to put an
ear at the line where the door edges met. He banged the flat of his
hand on the panel.</p>
<p>"Carol. Are you in there? Are you hurt?"</p>
<p>A faint noise vibrated the door, a distant bang. The lift
clanked against the rails.</p>
<p>"I can't hear anything," he said.</p>
<p>"She was in the lift alright," Peter Cullen declared. "We could
all hear her. Then there was a lot of noise. I thought it must have
been the engineer going down the shaft. Then she started to scream.
I think something's happened."</p>
<p>"Right. Get some of the men out here and get these doors open,"
George Hill snapped.</p>
<p>"Shouldn't we wait for the engineers?"</p>
<p>The portly little man turned towards the storeman and glared at
him, magnified eyes widening impossibly.</p>
<p>"I don't care about the damned door. I'll take the
responsibility. Just get in there and get that girl out."</p>
<p>Peter Cullen and two of his workmates arrived with packing case
crowbar just as the engineer came panting up the stairs. The four
men wedged their way through the throng of women and George Hill
had to tell the bottling line workers to clear a space. The
serviceman used a punch-key to trip the door mechanism and he and
another of the men managed to force one side open. The lift well
gaped blackly. The engineer directed his flashlight into the void.
Hawsers and cables dangled past the open door and disappeared into
the murk. He swung himself carefully out, and shone the beam
upwards.</p>
<p>"I see it," he announced. "It's between floors. I'll have to go
upstairs and in through the top." he turned to George Hill. "Keep
everybody away from here. It's a fifty foot drop."</p>
<p>Everybody stood back to let the man get upstairs. About fifteen
minutes later, the serviceman was easing himself down to the top of
the cabin, five feet below the fifth floor. In the beam of the
flashlight, he could see the hatch was missing. There was some
damage around the edges of the rectangular hole, but he didn't
consider that then. His feet boomed on top of the cage and it swung
under his weight, but that was normal. He squatted down then dipped
his head in through the opening, angling the light inside.</p>
<p>The box was empty.</p>
<p>He let himself through the hatch and hung by his hands before
dropping the few inches to the floor.</p>
<p>The place stank. Later he remembered the smell and described it
to the police.</p>
<p>"It was like something had been dead a long time. It was pretty
bloody awful. I could feel it at the back of my throat. It made me
want to boak."</p>
<p>It was only once he'd cranked the elevator down to the fourth
floor, and he stepped out into the corridor that he realised what
the other smell had been, the warm and metallic scent that had
thickened the air in the shaft. Both his knees were dripping with
rapidly congealing blood from where he'd knelt on the top of the
lift.</p>
<p>There was no sign at all of Carol Howard.</p>
<p>Somebody called for an ambulance. Somebody else called the
police.</p>
<p>Jack Fallon had dozed off. He was tangled under the eiderdown
when something snapped him completely awake, his mind suddenly
alert.</p>
<p>"Shit," he said.</p>
<p>He put both hands to his head, trying to hold the thought before
it faded and fragmented. He'd been dreaming, or half dreaming, and
something had come to him. He kept his eyes tight closed and tried
to recreate the dream.</p>
<p>It had started quite normally. He'd been down at the quayside,
at the stairs on the river end of Rock Lane, watching as they
hauled the body of the woman out of the river. It didn't matter
that he hadn't actually been there when it happened. He'd seen
grey, clay-featured cadavers raised from the water before. It was
not unusual for him to flesh out events in his dreams. He'd done
that with little Julie, picturing her over and over again in the
shop window in nightmares so vivid he could see every minute detail
in clear focus, though he hadn't seen his daughter die. The dreams
had come on the back of guilt and horror and shock and despair and
whatever else lurked inside his head to spawn the black
nightmares.</p>
<p>This dream had seemed real. The mist was spiraling off the
surface as if it was heated by underwater pipes. Upriver, the
rigging of a small boat's mast clanged against crossbeam. Cold
water slapped against a hull and up in the clear air, early
seagulls wheeled and wheedled. The body was hauled out on two ropes
which had been fed underneath. The woman was bent and rigid. One
leg was sticking out, granite coloured, grotesque. Jack walked
away, thinking about the grey foot without a shoe. He walked into
the mist of the lane and came out round on Bankside Road, a
geographical impossibility, but exactly the way things happen in
dreams. Bankside Road was on the far side of the town centre,
beyond the maze of alleys and vennels. Here the old shunting yards
were hidden behind the green doors where Neil Kennedy had played.
Though the snow had turned to ice on the pavements and crackled
underfoot, in the dream, the snow was fresh and unmarked.</p>
<p>Two pairs of footprints led away from the green door.</p>
<p>There was something odd about them, though in the rationality of
the illusion, Jack did not question them. The larger set, both left
and right narrow like a woman's foot, were different in one
respect. The left gave an imprint with wavy lines of a walking
shoe. The right was a clear shape of a naked foot.</p>
<p>Alongside them, a small trail of a child's footprints were
embedded. The left one bore the tyre-track marks of wellington
boots. The right was a child's bare foot, each toe clearly
delineated.</p>
<p>He followed the lines, his own feet making no noise. The air was
suddenly quiet. The wind had stopped. No seagulls shrieked. It was
as if he was in a cocoon of his own consciousness. He walked
on.</p>
<p>The prints halted maybe three hundred yards along the curve
where Bankside Street joined Artizan Road, close to the old engine
works. There was an old building here. The red-brick Victorian
railway style construction of the warehouses.</p>
<p>They'd been closed even when Jack was a small boy. He remembered
exploring every inch of them with Tom Neeson and Paul Hamilton when
he was eight or nine. They'd been littered with broken glass then.
The old shutters had been locked and barred, but there was always a
way in through a window at the back, or the old cellar at the
basement where a coal-hole gave access. They used to climb the
stairs then scale up to the rafters where the pigeons had their
nests. Tom Neeson's father had been a pigeon fancier and Tom
himself had started his own loft with the young birds they'd stolen
from the line of dirty shit-ridden scoops along where the ceiling
sloped down to the rafters.</p>
<p>In the dream Jack walked inside, still on silent feet. He went
along the narrow passage, turned and looked up.</p>
<p>There it was.</p>
<p>Bold letters in the old fashioned fonts.</p>
<p><em>STEW</em>.</p>
<p>Despite the dust on the glass and the rime and grime of decades,
the letters still stood out clear. Seen from inside, that's how
they read, although the S was turned backwards.</p>
<p>He'd seen it before, all those years ago, and now it had come
back to him.</p>
<p>He took the stairs slowly, one at a time, though the glass did
not crackle and crunch under his feet. He scanned the whole
lettering from just underneath, mouthing the words right to left,
like a child.</p>
<p><em>West Highland Railway Company</em>.</p>
<p>He stood staring at the antiquated window sign for some time,
then turned slowly, retraced his steps, and walked to the rear of
the building where the stock-room ran the length of the warehouse.
From here, almost the whole of the gable wall was visible. At the
far west end, heading towards the river where it curved on its way
down to the estuary, there was a gaping rectangular hole in the
wall.</p>
<p>The day they'd stolen the pigeons, they'd clambered down the
rope which hung from the block-and-tackle pulley. As Jack stood in
the echoing silence, the mist billowed in through the space on the
wall.</p>
<p>Something moved in the mist, just out of sight, a dark outline
obscured and hazy. Jack felt his breath start to back up in his
throat.</p>
<p>And he woke up hauling for breath, with the image of the
swirling mist still reeling in the front of his mind.</p>
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