Danuta Reah - Only Darkness

She jerked awake in the chair, the image shattering, the rushing of the river becoming the hiss of the gas fire. It was time she was in bed.

Early next morning, in the small hours, after the storm had blown itself out, a freight train taking a load of scrap from Leeds to Sheffield slowed a bit as the train approached the junction near Rawmarsh, in response to the signal. As it speeded up again beyond the junction, the driver noticed something slumped against a post by the rails. It could have been a sack of rubbish. He radioed through and the call went to the local police to investigate.

‘Where exactly did he say?’ Kevin Naylor walked along the track side and shone his torch along the line towards the bridge. The railway was particularly inaccessible here, and they’d had to bump the car along a muddy bridle path and walk to the bridge.

‘Just beyond the junction.’ His partner, Cath Hill, was fed up. It was cold and wet and she didn’t want to push through the thick undergrowth alongside the track in search of somebody’s dumped rubbish. They’d been heading back for a break when the call had come through. She poked around in the bushes. ‘Enough condoms here to start a factory. It’s along the line, he was coming through the junction, he said. He hadn’t stopped but he’d slowed right down, so it’s probably not too far along. He said something about a post. Let’s get this done and get back to the car.’

As they walked back along the line, playing their torches ahead, the light from the steelworks faded behind them. Cath shone her torch against the bushes. The wet leaves glistened back at her, but the light hardly penetrated the shadows in the thick foliage. Gravel crunched underfoot, and something rustled and moved in the undergrowth. She shone her torch at the sound, but it wasn’t repeated. The wind was getting up again, and Cath had to brace herself as it rattled the leaves, releasing a sudden spatter of rain water. Ahead was a cutting where the track ran into darkness. Cath didn’t fancy going into that narrow space without knowing what was ahead. The hairs on her arms were beginning to rise, and she looked back along the track to make sure she wasn’t alone.

She shone her torch through the gully, playing the light up and down the wet stone. She could see the post now, just beyond the far end, and, yes, there was something bulky lying against it. Her fatigue had gone, and she felt apprehension tightening her stomach. Her senses sharpened. She called to Kevin who was shining his torch into the undergrowth further back along the line. He started in her direction. Cath walked towards the post. She didn’t hurry now because she knew what was there. In the torchlight she could already see fair hair, and as she got nearer she could see the woman’s face oddly shadowed, her eyes great pools of darkness. She moved up to the woman and crouched down in front of her, shining the torch directly into her face.

‘Oh Christ, oh shit!’ She pulled the torch back as Kevin’s shone over her shoulder. She heard his exclamation as he turned away. The lower half of the woman’s face was covered with black tape that had made it appear shadowed from a distance. Her eyes were – not there. She stared at them from bloody sockets, her head held back against the post by the wire twisted tight around her neck.

Rob Neave turned over in bed, woken up by his radio. Half past five, just time for the shipping forecast and Farming Today. He usually woke at this time, early shift or not, and either listened to the radio as he got up, or lay in bed listening as the shipping forecast became the farming programme, and then Today. The farmers were worrying about pigs again this morning. He was getting to be an expert on pigs – the price of pork, anyway. He’d never seen a real pig in his life.

He decided to go in for the seven-thirty start again. There wasn’t too much to be at home for, and if he didn’t have to go to work, he found it hard to get out of bed at all. Didn’t seem much point really. He hadn’t got in until gone ten the night before, listened to some music, drunk a couple of beers. It had been a long day, so he’d made himself something to eat and gone to bed. Sleep hadn’t come easily. He’d turned on the radio in the end and listened through close-down and then the World Service.

He was coming out of the shower, towelling himself when he caught the end of the first news bulletin … The body of a woman was found on railway lines early this morning in South Yorkshire. A police spokesman commented that it is too early to say how the woman had died. Three women have been killed in the South Yorkshire region in the past eighteen months and their bodies left on or near railway tracks …

He listened to the end of the bulletin which just recapped on the killings, but gave no more information about the dead woman. He could see Deborah Sykes in her light mac, struggling to hold her umbrella straight as she had disappeared into the storm the night before. He decided to leave breakfast, and started pulling his clothes on, looking round for his keys and cash. Ten minutes later he was braking for the first set of lights that held him on red in the middle of an empty road.

City College, Moreham, is so called because it stands in the centre of the town, five minutes’ walk from the train and bus stations, and just a stone’s throw from the fine medieval church and the chapel on the bridge. The college buildings display a selection of twentieth-century architecture. The North building, the most modern, nearly twenty years old, presents a face of smoked glass to the world; its entrance is hard to find and the casual visitor can get lost in a confusing maze of corridors. The Moore building, the middle sibling, is a box of glass windows and concrete, nearly forty years old, and shabby and depressing. Inside, it is more comfortable. On the other side of the road stands the oldest, and the most beautiful despite its run-down appearance, the Broome building, an elegant art-deco construction with an oak door in its curving facade. Its windows watch you like eyes.

Debbie had overslept, and had arrived at the station two minutes before a train was leaving. She usually read the paper on the journey, but as she hadn’t had time to buy one, she stared out of the window instead. The track side was overgrown with weeds and the high walls were covered with graffiti – mostly incomprehensible and, to the uninformed eye, indistinguishable, tags, and the occasional word. Joke was written in letters about two feet high across a wall covered and over-covered in spray paint. When Debbie had been at college, the graffiti had been political: anti-government slogans, ANC slogans, comments about the Gulf War, even some left over from the bitter miners’ strike – Coal not dole, Thatcher out, Save our pits. Now it seemed to be tagging, a meaningless cry of, I’m here! or the inevitable, Fuck you, Wogs stink, Irish scum.

The train ran on through the industrial East End of Sheffield where the skeletons of the great steelworks were gradually disappearing and the streets and houses looked decayed and defeated. The toy-town dome of Meadowhall shopping centre stood among sprawling acres of car parks, already full. People struggled off the train, other people got on. They looked anxious and tense. The bridge that took the shoppers over the road was seething with people. To the shopping, a sign said. Joke … The train pulled out, past some tumbledown buildings, through areas of green where the canal ran sluggish and black close to the line. Fisto was spray-painted on a stone building, and again on a derelict shed. It looked quite decorative. The spire of Moreham church came into view, and Debbie picked up her bag as the familiar platform ran past her window.