Dark Shadows

by Sibel Hodge

  10/4/19

  Today was really strange. I sat in a lecture and couldn’t remember anything about it afterwards. I’m having trouble concentrating. Precious asked me to go for a drink tonight, but I don’t think I will. Just feel like… like… I’m going crazy.

  15/4/19

  It’s been happening more. I keep losing time and forgetting things. Nightmares are getting worse. It must just be a virus. Or something. I had a talk with PK, and everything seems okay.

  19/4/19

  Right, this is REALLY strange. I keep hearing voices. It’s like they’re in my head but not. Like it’s my voice but not. I’m really scared now because you know what that means, don’t you? Rachel’s sister in high school… she had schizophrenia. Everything’s okay in my head—he said so—so it could be I’m turning crazy, couldn’t it? But I don’t want to find out. I do, but I really don’t. I keep telling myself it’s nothing. It’s got to be nothing, right?

  21/4/19

  I think someone’s following me. I haven’t seen anyone yet. It’s just like there’s this shadow… you know that feeling, when you think someone’s watching you? The hairs go up on the back of your neck and you just feel really uneasy. But when I look around, I can’t see anyone. I’m imagining it, aren’t I? Like I’m imagining the voices and the blackouts? It’s not real. None of it can be real.

  30/4/19

  Practice run. Just do it. I tried to stop it. It doesn’t feel right. Is this to do with PK? The more I think about it, the more I know it all happened after I started this. But who do I go to to find out? He says no problem. Who can I ask? Who will help me? Am I right or wrong? I don’t know. I’m SO confused. But I need to talk to someone. I really do. Things are getting worse.

  That was the last entry, dated one week ago. I stared at the pages, unease gnawing at my stomach. Was Marcelina suffering from some kind of mental illness? Was she really being watched? What was supposed to be a practice run? Who was PK, and what had she been doing with him to earn money? Had he hurt her somehow?

  Something definitely wasn’t right in her life, but what she’d written was pretty vague. I needed to talk to her friends and see if they could shed any light on what Marcelina had been going through.

  I glanced at the clock. It was gone 10.00 p.m. Too late to go tapping up any of her fellow students. That would have to wait. There was one thing I could do, though.

  I delved into my bag, retrieved my mobile, and dialled Mitchell’s number. I swallowed the last of my beer and paced the tiny kitchen as it rang four times.

  ‘Hi,’ he answered. ‘Is everything okay?’ That was always the first thing he asked me these days. Every single time. Is everything okay? After what had happened with the kidnapping, maybe it wasn’t surprising. But with my mum being so overprotective, too, sometimes it felt like I was suffocating.

  ‘Yeah, everything’s fine, thanks.’

  ‘Were you trying to get hold of your mum? She’s out with her work mates for a drink.’

  ‘No. It’s you I need to talk to.’

  There was a pause on the line, like his antennae was on high alert. ‘What’s up? Has something happened?’

  ‘Yes and no. Nothing’s happened to me. I’m fine.’ I told him about Marcelina’s visit to the counselling session, the accident, and the journal entries. Yes, I was breaking client confidentiality big-time, but I knew it wouldn’t go any further. Mitchell knew all too well about keeping classified information quiet.

  ‘Poor girl,’ he said.

  ‘I want to help her, and that means getting the bigger picture. I think someone might’ve hurt her somehow. Or maybe she’d been threatened or stalked.’

  ‘She could just be suffering from mental health issues. You said she mentioned voices. Maybe she is schizophrenic. Or maybe she’s got something physically wrong with her if she’s blacking out.’

  ‘She could, but I think there’s more to it than that. What she wrote… it’s quite sinister.’

  ‘I understand you feel bad about the accident, but it wasn’t your fault. And if she does have mental health issues, then that’s something the medical staff will help her with when she wakes up. She’s in the best place.’

  ‘I know, I know, I just…’ I rubbed a hand over my forehead. ‘She said something else, after she’d been hit by the car. She said a shadow man was watching her.’

  ‘Shadow Man?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Sounds off the wall. She could’ve been confused. You said she had a head injury.’

  ‘I don’t want to write her off as mentally unstable. She seemed genuinely terrified of something or someone. And those journal entries are a bit disturbing. I’m worried that there could be some guy here who’s hurt her.’ I told him about the recent sexual assault survey. ‘The memory loss she’s been having could be some kind of post-traumatic amnesia.’

  After another pause on the end of the line, he spoke again, his voice filled with worry. ‘You know what happened the last time you started investigating something disturbing.’

  A memory flashed into my head. A locked cell. Blood. My screams. Goose bumps crawled over my skin. I took a deep breath and concentrated on a vibrantly coloured hamsa print on the wall to block it out. ‘I think she might need someone’s help.’

  ‘So what are you asking me to do?’

  ‘Lee could do some digging,’ I said, referring to his friend who’d been in the SAS with him. When Lee left the military, he’d set up his own private cyber security and intelligence company, and he was considered one of the best in the business. He could hack his way into anything, and he’d been instrumental in finding out who had taken me and where I was being held when I was kidnapped. ‘I want to get hold of Marcelina’s medical records and see if there were any substance abuse issues, or if she was on any medication. Whether there was a history of mental illness. Also if she’d ever reported an assault to the police or anything like that.’

  He hesitated. ‘Are you sure you want to get involved?’

  ‘I feel like I owe her something. Come on, just a quick look. That’s all. If there’s nothing obvious, then I’ll leave it to the doctors at the hospital.’

  He sighed. ‘And if I say no? That your mum and I don’t want you to get dragged into someone else’s problems again?’

  ‘Then I’d say I’ll do it without your help.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of.’ He blew out a breath. ‘Okay, I’ll speak to Lee and get him to see what he can find. But promise me, if there’s nothing obvious, you’ll leave it alone.’

  ‘Promise.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ He snorted, not believing me.

  ‘Thanks, Mitchell.’

  ‘Is there anything else you need?’

  ‘No, I’m good.’

  ‘Made any friends yet?’

  ‘I’ve got friends.’

  ‘Books don’t count as friends, I’m afraid. Any boyfriends?’

  ‘Don’t have time for boyfriends.’

  Although I’d had relationships with guys, they’d always been casual on my part, because I wasn’t good at small talk. I didn’t have time for meaningless chatter. I felt things on a deep level, and so I wanted to connect on all levels with someone—spiritually and emotionally, not just physically. I hadn’t found anyone with the whole package yet, and I couldn’t even be bothered to look. It had to be something real or nothing at all.

  ‘You don’t have time for boyfriends because you’re so busy with your inactive social life with no friends? It’s not—’ Mitchell stopped abruptly.

  I knew what he was going to say. It’s not normal. It’s not healthy.

  I got in there first with a chuckle. ‘Because you’re so normal, right?’

  After leaving the SAS, Mitchell had set up his own private military company and made enough money to be more than comfortable for the rest of his life. After he’d wound the company up, instead of getting a regular hobby, he now caught paedophiles online, where he posed as different
kids in chat rooms until he had enough evidence to pass onto the police to arrest the people trying to groom them. Catching child abusers had become his obsession after a VIP paedophile ring killed his son many years before.

  ‘I’m normal,’ he said. ‘I’m with your mum now, and things are great. The episodes of PTSD are getting better. My life’s moving on. Finally.’

  ‘And I’m really happy for you both. But my life is great, too, so don’t worry. Look, I’ll let you go. Get back to your daisies or something.’ I laughed.

  ‘Oh, your mum told you about redoing the garden, did she? Anyway, they’re not daisies. They’re pansies.’

  I laughed. ‘Love you.’

  ‘Love you, too.’

  I hung up, stripped off the shirt that had smudges of Marcelina’s dried blood on it, stuffed it in the kitchen bin, and headed towards the shower.

  As I scrubbed and soaped and rinsed, trying to wash away the horror of the day, I repeated mindful positive affirmations to myself.

  You’re not a failure.

  You didn’t let her down.

  It wasn’t your fault.

  By the time I’d finished, I almost believed myself. But not quite.

  Chapter 17

  Detective Becky Harris

  I grabbed a pint glass from the empty communal kitchen, filled it with water, and headed back to my room. Yawning, I picked up my laptop and notebook from the desk and sat on the bed. I made myself comfortable against the headboard, opened the laptop, and pulled up the uni’s internal intranet site to search for information on Professor Cain.

  I found his staff profile and studied his photo. He looked to be in his mid-fifties, with gunmetal-grey hair cut neat and short. He was good-looking in a Richard Gere kind of way. Malcolm Cain had graduated from the University of Sheffield twenty years earlier and had gained further PhDs. He’d taught cadaveric anatomy for St Albans University’s Faculty of Medicine for fifteen years to both undergraduate and postgraduate students.

  I scribbled those details in my notebook and then made a list of everything I’d found out about the three students. When I finished, I stared at it, chewing on the end of a biro. So far, I’d found no evidence of bullying, hazing, or a possible cult in operation. But all three of them did have things in common. They’d distanced themselves from their friends shortly before the tragedies occurred, but they hadn’t isolated themselves completely, and when they’d disappeared, they were actually on their own and later found in trance-like states. They also all had what seemed like memory loss. Had the students been lying about their actions and whereabouts to cover for a cult? Or had they genuinely been in a fugue state? Had they been brainwashed? That was still a possibility.

  I considered again whether they could all have had their food or drinks spiked with something like ketamine or Rohypnol, which could account for memory losses, but Jess and Millie had said Natalie was careful not to leave her drinks unattended. Her standard blood test after the car accident hadn’t been positive for drink or drugs. One of Natalie’s weird episodes had occurred after she’d been drinking, so it could’ve been simply alcohol on an empty stomach, but that didn’t account for the other times she’d been acting oddly. Ajay and Vicky hadn’t had any drugs in their system when they’d killed themselves, either. Ajay punching his fellow student had occurred after only one drink. Even if there was some new and strange drug knocking around campus, it was also highly unlikely all three of them had had their food and drink tampered with at different times at different locations. Based on all that, I had to discount the possibility of drugs.

  Then there was the money they’d all had shortly before they’d died. Plus, Ajay had a connection with the medical block because of his course, and Vicky had been seen going into the Watling Centre after hours. Natalie was possibly in a relationship with Professor Cain, who was on the medical staff. Had someone really been following Natalie like she’d told her friends? And if so, who and why?

  It was just gone midnight by the time Sutherby called me back.

  ‘I didn’t wake you up, did I?’ he asked.

  ‘No. I was just going over everything I learned today.’ I filled him in.

  ‘Sounds like you’ve done a lot of work already. I’m impressed.’

  Even though he wasn’t in the room with me, I still sat up a little straighter, pleased with the praise. ‘It could be that Vicky was possibly having an affair with Professor Cain and sneaking into the medical block at night to see him, but then he ended things, and maybe she was upset about it. Love does strange things to people. Especially young, impressionable girls, but there’s no indication she was unduly worried or stressed about anything in particular. And why take her life like that? Dive off the stairway when she was scared of heights? Even if Natalie was also seeing Cain, I can’t see any reason why he’d be responsible for her hitting and killing a pedestrian. It’s also highly unlikely that the same professor would’ve been having an affair with Ajay, too, and Ajay’s only possible connection to Cain is that he was studying medicine. The faculty’s huge here, though, and there are several people who teach the same subject, so Ajay might not even have known Cain well at all. Nothing really fits together yet, but I’ve discounted the drug and sleepwalking angles, and I believe something strange was going on with all three of them.’

  ‘I’ll do some background checks on Professor Cain and see if anything pertinent comes up. But all members of staff would have had criminal records checks to be working there, so I don’t think there’ll be much to find. Anthea certainly didn’t mention to me any allegations of sexual harassment or misconduct against any tutors.’

  ‘Great, thanks.’

  ‘So there’s no obvious sign of any sinister societies or cults?’

  ‘Not yet, but it would take weeks—maybe months—to try and infiltrate all the clubs here. Vicky did go to a Buddhist meditation group before, and Ajay had been interested in it in the past, so I’m going to try that tomorrow.’

  ‘Somehow I can’t see you sitting still long enough for that.’

  ‘No. Me, neither.’ I took a gulp of water and set the glass on the floor beside my bed.

  ‘Well, I looked into the RTA outside the university earlier. A student called Marcelina Claybourn ran out into the road and was hit by a vehicle belonging to a Greek national who’s here visiting a relative. She’s suffered a traumatic brain injury and is in Watford General Hospital’s critical care unit at the moment. The driver wasn’t under the influence of anything at the time. He said she came out of nowhere and he didn’t have time to stop. Several witnesses interviewed at the scene confirm that. It looks like it’s unrelated to what you’re looking at, but I’ll email over the witness statements we’ve taken so far and the traffic officers’ preliminary reports anyway.’

  ‘So the driver has absolutely no connection to the university or Marcelina?’

  ‘None. Okay, that’s it for now, then. Get some sleep.’

  I hung up and got ready for bed. It felt weird being away from home. Weird but kind of liberating. I could reinvent myself as anyone here, where no one knew me. Were Vicky, Natalie, and Ajay even who they appeared to be on the surface?

  DAY THREE

  “The general population doesn’t know what’s happening, and it doesn’t even know that it doesn’t know.”

  ~ Noam Chomsky

  Chapter 18

  Detective Becky Harris

  The alarm on my phone went off at 6.15 a.m. I groaned and turned over, dislodging the notebook that had been on my chest when I’d fallen asleep and sending it flying onto the floor. Even though the window had been open all night, it was one of those British spring days where the humidity takes the pleasure out of finally getting some decent weather, and the air was still muggy and stale, like an electric storm was on its way.

  I went into the en suite, hoping to wake myself up with a cool shower, but the water blasted out boiling hot, even on the cold setting. I shrieked and turned off the tap as my skin scalded,
then adjusted the lever on the shower to hot in case the plumbing connection had been fitted the wrong way around. Nope, that didn’t work, either. Hot gave me a temperature equivalent to a nuclear blast as steam filled the air.

  I quickly soaped up, braced myself again, and turned it to a trickle on the cold setting for as long as I could stand, just to get the suds off while I gritted my teeth. I grabbed a towel I’d brought with me from home off a hook on the wall and dried off. I was just rubbing down my arms when I noticed the now steamed-up mirror above the sink. There were two words written in the condensation.

  Help me!

  Cue Twilight Zone music and pumping heart rate. My first thought was someone had got into my room while I’d been in the shower to scare me, so I checked the door, but it was still locked, and my keys were in it, just as I’d left it the night before. No one had been inside. That left the only possible explanation. Someone had written it on the mirror with their fingertip prior to my arrival here, and the steam had adhered to the grease and sweat, highlighting the word in relief.

  So the question wasn’t how. It was who had written it? And it wasn’t too much of a stretch to imagine it had been Vicky, the previous occupant. The room had obviously been cleaned before I’d arrived, but it was very possible the cleaner had missed out the mirror, not even noticing what was written on it because it would’ve been all but invisible without any condensation. I hadn’t noticed it while doing my hair in front of it the night before.

  What did it mean? Was it the ramblings of some kind of disturbed mind? Or something more sinister?

  I didn’t have time to think about that, though. I was going to be late for the Buddhist’s Society’s 7.00 a.m. meditation if I didn’t get my arse into gear.