Page 49 of The Vanishing Place

Effie stood in front of the hut, the evening light pulling long shadows from the surrounding trees, and let her backpack fall to the ground.

She felt it—a tingle down her neck and spine—before she saw anything. The sense that something was wrong. The presence of someone else.

“ Hello ,” she shouted.

But there was nothing. Just air and birds and the soft rustle of branches. Just a line of trees, watching in quiet anticipation.

She shouted again.

Then, at the side of the hut, a figure appeared. A man. Tall and strong across the shoulders. His head and face were hidden, his hood up despite the lack of rain, and he had his back to her. Effie stepped forward, but he disappeared behind the building.

“Wait.”

She hurried after him, but when she turned the corner, he was gone.

“Shit.”

She looked from left to right, desperately searching for any sign of life. She cursed herself, wishing she’d thought to bring a weapon, and lifted a heavy stick from the grass. Her heart raced as she walked around the hut, the sound of her footsteps cracking like whips in the silence.

Then he was there. A mass stood still. Twenty meters away.

The man’s features were concealed behind a camouflage balaclava—a hunter’s mask—with nothing exposed but the two dark hollows of his eyes. There was a knife swinging from his right hand.

Run, Effie. Run .

Heat seized her muscles—not fear, but anger—and she forced herself to move. Not away. But toward him. The figure watched as she neared, an obscured shadow, and Effie held his gaze. Her legs numbed and her stomach burned, but she stepped across the covering of leaves, moving closer to him.

There was a rush of movement. Something behind her. Then pain. An intense consuming pain that flooded her head, raking through the bones of her skull.

Effie tried to scream. But there was no sound in her.

She tried to move. But her body was lost.

Then the pain stopped.

—

When she woke, it was to darkness.

Effie groaned and stretched out her arms, trying to place her limbs in the liquid black. She was on her back, lying on something solid and man-made, with her legs out straight. Traces of warm fabric covered her skin, meaning she was still dressed, but her feet were bare.

Bending her arms, Effie tried to lift her head, but the pain sloshed like vomit behind her eyes, and she blinked away specks of white. Then she lay back, her head lolling on her neck, and the dark spun around her. Around and around, making her want to throw up.

She covered her mouth with her palm, swallowing back bile, and sucked in air through her nose. Mercifully, the sharp pain had eased. But it had been replaced by a constant pulsing, a hot throbbing in her skull and at the roots of her hair.

Effie reached her arm above her head, trailing her fingers through the endless black.

There was nothing. No edges. No shapes. Just the far-off noise of the bush.

As she listened, the minutes slipped by and the fog in her head thinned.

Eventually, she pressed her hands into the hard surface and pushed herself up.

The insides of her head swirled, leaking dots into her vision, but slowly the swell settled.

“Small movements,” whispered Effie. “Just one step at a time.”

She went to stand, but something pulled on her leg. Something hard and cold bit into the skin around her ankle. Effie frowned as she slid her hand down her legs, trying to locate the new pain. Then her fingers brushed against the links of metal.

“Oh god.”

Effie tugged at the length of steel, violently and desperately, but it was futile. She was chained up.

She slumped back, her tongue suddenly too large and too dry for her mouth, and nausea washed through her. A sob escaped her, the contents of her stomach threatening to follow, and she tasted salt on her lips. But she didn’t scream out.

Screaming was pointless.

Instead, she curled up in the dark, unable to make out the shape of her fingers or the links of the cold chain, and a wave of fear washed down her back like ice.