The Stolen Child Read Online Free PDF

 Something trapped in shadow.  An emptiness, sucking her in.
    White paint, flaking on her fingers as she rubbed them together.  The door, slightly ajar.  Bass-line pulsing in her skull.  Thudding, like a heartbeat.  Like the feeling you get as the headache first begins to settle in.
    The door creeping open.  The gap widening.  The emptiness sucking her in.
    What was she doing here?
    The last door in a line of grey doors, creeping open.  She knew.  She knew what was behind that door.  She should have closed it then.  Should not have let herself look back and see that door, half-open.
    She should have close d it.  Her feet were like lead.  Her heart pounding in her throat.  The bass-line, thudding in her head.  One foot, then the other.  Closer to the opening, the darkness, the emptiness.  She held out a shaking hand towards the handle, but it continued to swing wider, moving just beyond her grasp .  She reached out , a desperate whi mper escaping from her lips as she leaned in closer.
    And then the door frame was no t a frame, but a vast archway, growing higher, wider.  The darkness came rushing forwards.  Her feet could not hold her, and t he whimper became a scream.  She was falling, falling down through that vast opening, falling into the darkness that rushed up to swallow her.
    Rachael woke to find herself surrounded.  Bodies pressed in all around as a thunderous sound bellowed in her ears.  The carriage swayed violently as it swept around a bend in the tunnel.  The clamour of voices could barely be heard over the constant rumble reverberating from the tunnel walls.  They rode through total darkness, buried deep within the earth.
    Slowly, her breathing calmed.   Rachael checked her bag, the contents apparently untouched.  She had little enough to steal, but the thought still nagged at her.  The woman in the next seat glowered at her from the corner of one eye, before returning to her sudoku puzzle .
    For the price of a single ticket, you could ride the C ircle line until midnight.  The underground was warm and dry, t he trains rattling on through the same dark tunnels as they had for a hundred years , smelling of oil and grime.  After the encounter on the rooftop the day before, she had retreated down into the tunnels, somewhere safe, hidden away.  Curled up in a corner seat on the train, she kept her bag hugged to her chest and her hood down low, doing her best to simply shut out the sound of the other travellers.
    T he hours ticked by as the train pulled into one station after another, the crowd in the carriage shifting, changing shape, but never really seeming all that different.  Sometimes she sketched, picking a face at random and letting it flow out onto the page.  She liked drawing people on the underground.   T hey tried so hard to block out everything around themselves, to become completely disengaged, and yet they allowed so much of themselves to flow to the surface.
    She drew, and sometimes she dozed, head tucked against the corner of the window frame.  Days on end o f huddling in doorways and alleys had left her exhausted, and it was easy to nod off in the warmth, rocked to sleep by the gentle but insistent swaying of the carriage.
    Somewhere half-way between dreaming and waking, she noticed that a man was watching her from across the carriage.  He had steel grey eyes, tanned skin and a buzz-cut .  He wore a patched black leather jacket.  There was a tension in him that unsettled her.  Still groggy, she clutched her bag tighter, ready to slip out at the next station.  The train slowed, coming to a stop with a hiss as the doors opened.  For a moment she couldn't move, trapped by the press of bodies squeezing past.  She was ready to slip into the crowd when she glimpsed the empty seat where the man had been sitting.  As the carriage began to fill again, like a tide coming back in, she searched the crowd but saw no sign of him.  Uneasily, she stayed where she was.  Most