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frowning slightly.
      ‘We’re still a while from Plymouth, aren’t we?’ she said, apparently to herself.
      Taking no chances, Gavin slumped right back in his seat and half closed his eyes.
      She craned her neck to peer up and down the line. ‘I’m sure I haven’t seen Ivybridge go by . . .’
      The train was slowing; that was what had bothered her. As it braked to a crawl, the noise of its passage grew suddenly louder, and the windows went black. They eased deeper into the tunnel and stopped.
      A group of kids at the far end of the carriage did a mock-spooky wail, ‘Oooo-ooooo.’ Gav turned up the volume on his music.
      He didn’t hear the details of the driver’s apologetic announcement. Something about a temporary electrical problem. The kids groaned in chorus.
      Abruptly the lights in the carriage all went out. At the same instant the music in Gav’s ears stopped dead.
      There was an instant of complete darkness and silence, and then the carriage filled with little shrieks and giggles and conversations starting up too loudly. There was no light at all, not the slightest glimmer. Gav felt across to his bag, wondering if his earphones had come unplugged. They hadn’t. He pulled them out of his ears. His hands felt sweaty.
      A hideous cry erupted out of the dark.
      Otototoi !
      Gavin cringed, his raised arms invisible in front of his face. The scream had been right on top of him.
      Otototoi! Otototoi! Popoi! Popoi!
      He was nauseous with terror. The hum of nervous chatter in the carriage continued, though the appalling shouts ought to have crushed it. He jammed his hands over his ears and cowered. At that moment someone further down the carriage switched on a torch. There was a mass Ahhhh as the wobbly white light appeared.
      The woman opposite was staring at him, her face in shadow.
      In the seat next to her another woman was sitting, and Gavin knew at once that it was Miss Grey. He knew her by the silhouette of her tangled hair and by the shape of her cloaked shoulders and her thin arms braced on the table in front of her. He knew her by something else as well, the intimacy of fifteen years; he felt her close to him like his own reflection. But he’d never seen her indoors before, and beyond his dreams he had never seen a word come out of her mouth, barely even a breath, let alone the full-throated inhuman howl of madness that she threw out again.
      ‘ Otototoi ! ’
      Gavin couldn’t stop himself flinching. He was acutely aware of the eyes of the woman opposite. Shame burned him. He tried to shift round in his seat and fold his arms, as if all he’d been doing was getting comfortable. It was plain that no one else had heard Miss Grey’s deranged howling. No one but him was haunted; no one but him was cursed. He had no idea what he’d done to earn this new punishment, or why she now had the power to pursue him inside and scream in his ear. He glimpsed a terrible future in which she wouldn’t stop until she’d driven him out of his mind, properly crazy, as Mr Bushy obviously thought he already was.
      He hugged himself tight and screwed his eyes shut.
      The carriage lights came on.
      Gavin tried to focus on his breathing. Don’t look up, don’t say anything, don’t meet anyone’s eyes. He was afraid that if the nosy woman asked him what was wrong, he might slap her.
      ‘Ladies’n’gennlmun,’ began an announcement, ‘thizzizr driver speakin, we dopologise for ’zshor’delay, uh faulznowbin fixt’n’ we’ll beyonrway veryshor’y than’you.’
      The train crept into motion.
      ‘Come.’
      It was Miss Grey’s voice. He recognised it from his dreams and yet he’d never properly heard it before, not the actual sound, the disturbance of the air. ‘Come.’ A woman’s voice, as rough and grey as she was, yet with a strength to it, the way her stillness always seemed alarmingly strong. It wanted to prise his eyelids open.
      ‘He comes. They