Follow You Home

by Mark Edwards

‘After all this. You left it in Romania. And you don’t even know what I’m talking about do you?

stand upright. She stared at her feet, trying not to fall. As they reached the threshold of the room she heard a soft thump, like someone dropping a heavy bag, and a voice that she had heard before said, ‘Camelia?’ The old man sighed, took his arm away from Laura’s shoulders and stooped to pick up the iron bar again. ‘Wait here,’ he said.

The thief—Camelia—had taken our passports, our money, tickets and keys. There were other valuables in our bags, like the camera. Why didn’t they take that? My phone had been sitting on my chest and would have been easy to take, but they had left it.

over my logic in my head and was sure I was correct. I knew what Camelia was after. I knew what this was all about. Drugs.

In my moment of triumph, having figured out the mystery, I didn’t stop to think about the rest of it: how this connected to all the other strange and horrible stuff that had been going on. Like, what did they hope to achieve by firebombing Edward’s office? Had they killed Jake? If so, why on earth had they? Why attempt to push Laura under a Tube rather than try to get information out of her?

‘Alina? She was quite tall, skinny, pale skin. Black hair with red streaks in it. She wore a black leather jacket and black jeans. Quite attractive if you’re into that sort of thing. Why do you want to know that now?’ ‘Because I just saw Laura talking to her.’ ‘What? But—’ ‘Daniel, unless I’ve developed the ability to see ghosts too, Alina is very much alive.’

All f this has to be more than drugs. It has something to do with the app

cabal /kəˈbäl kəˈbal/ I. noun a secret political clique or faction • a cabal of dissidents. – origin late 16th cent. (denoting the cabbala): from French cabale, from medieval Latin cabala (see Kabbalah).

Alina knew he had a thing for Camelia, who had moved to London

last year, dreaming of making her fortune.

Best of all, they would never know what they had carried through customs. They would live on in blissful ignorance, while Ion, Alina and, unfortunately, Camelia experienced for the first time how it felt to have money.

It had all started with a stroke of luck. Ion knew a guy called Kris who had ripped off a drug dealer in Sibiu and had given the cocaine to Ion for safekeeping while Kris tried to convince the drug dealer that he was innocent.

He had smuggled the drugs across the Hungarian border. Was he so stupid that he didn’t know what happened

I was wrong

They spotted the English couple at Budapest Station. They didn’t look like typical backpackers: they had a more well-to-do air about them; they looked cleaner, and the guy was carrying an expensive camera. Ion nudged Alina and whispered his plan to her. It was a crazy scheme.

‘Yeah. Well, I figured they’re not going to stop to wash their underwear on the way home. I took their passports, tickets and bank cards too. I got some keys too, in case Camelia needs them, and the girl’s phone, a nice Samsung. Daniel just has a crappy, scratched-up iPhone 5 with a cracked screen so I didn’t bother. Why don’t people take care of their gadgets

As she retrieved her passport, someone stepped past her, heading in the direction of the sleepers; she just caught a glimpse of a man’s legs.

When she turned around she saw the old man whose bags she’d carried walking towards her through the carriage, presumably on his way back from the toilets, which were located just before the sleepers.

She unlaced one boot and pulled it off before pulling one leg out of her jeans.

She peered into the darkness, and heard more noises—a crunch, a rustle, something snapping—but before she could cry out there was a hand over her mouth and another on her throat, breath warm in her ear and a voice whispering that if she struggled or tried to scream, she would die.

Despite everything—all the things the monster did to her, the terrible fear that

her fate would be the same as Luka’s mother’s—while she had the baby to look after, she could endure.

She tried not to look at the Polaroids, the babies and the women who had died here. She knew that Luka’s photo was there. But hers hadn’t been added yet even though the monster had flashed the camera in her face one morning. Perhaps he wouldn’t add her to the wall until she was dead. Maybe that was how it worked.

When the monster hit her, it was as if Ion had hit her. When the monster parted her legs, she remembered how Ion had done the same, and she regretted every second she had given to him.

That night, the monster had shot the two women in this room, replacing them with her. She had watched as he dragged the bodies from the room.

Finally, he nodded and put him back in the cot, handed him a bottle of milk and watched as the baby lay drinking it. He turned to her. He appeared to be amused. Where did she know him from? She thought she had it but the knowledge slipped away. He sat down on the edge of the bed and stroked her face. He spoke to her in their native language. ‘You’ve done a good job, looking after the little baby. Well done.’ He patted her hand. ‘Luka,’ she whispered.

Alina cried out. ‘Please, no, don’t take him. He’s mine. He’s my baby. Luka!’

where she’d seen the old man

On the train. Illegal babies

Why had the policeman lied about Daniel and Laura? She had seen his expression. He had definitely encountered them. Had they tried to report what they’d seen? She could imagine them talking to Constantin, him promising to look into it, the naïve Brits trusting this corrupt policeman.

After meeting the helpful policeman, Constantin, he had gone to Bucharest to look for Alina.

Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror. She stood transfixed for a moment

With a scream that made birds rise from the trees outside, with all the hatred and fury that boiled in her veins, Alina drove the jagged spike of glass into his neck.

one crate she found a pile of paperwork. It looked like a list of transactions. She took a few sheets, folded them and shoved them into her pocket. In the other crate she found women’s clothes: twelve sets. In the cold room she suddenly became aware of their spirits, a dozen dead, and heard them whispering to her. For us.

She heard the voices of the other women rise into a chorus—for us,

for us—as she reached him and raised the thick strip of wood.

Another line of poetry came to her. All angels are terrifying. She smiled to herself. Oh yes, she thought. And I am the most terrifying of all, the Angel of Vengeance. ‘I am Mirela,’ she whispered, and around her the thirteen dead women whispered Amen back.

shook my head. ‘It was definitely a man. So I think . . . if Alina’s actually alive, and here, then it must be Ion. The guy in the video is the right height and build.’ ‘And the three of them are in together.’

‘This Ion seems like the most likely candidate for firebombing my office. Trying to stop you from talking to me.’

‘We need to talk to them, but my guess is that Alina was following Laura, spying on her, trying to find out if she had the drugs, and Laura saw her. And, believing Alina was dead, and having a track record when it comes to this sort of thing—’ I finished the sentence. ‘Laura assumes that she’s being visited by Alina’s spirit.’

I stared at them, trying to imagine their pain, knowing that this was worse than anything I’d been through. And in that moment I vowed to help them. I was going to find Laura and Oscar. I was going to end this.

Laura sat in the back of the devil’s car, baby Oscar asleep in her lap, his little head resting against her chest. Alina sat beside her, staring out the window at the cars passing on the motorway.

At about half past four, the devil had dropped her back at Erin and Rob’s house after rescuing her from the crazed Romanian woman. In

Alina trembled. Her eyes were wide open but, Laura was sure, she wasn’t seeing Laura or the interior of the car. What could she see? The inside of the house where she’d died? Had she met the devil there?

only need one of you. You would do well to remember that. I only need one of you to start again.’ Beside her, Alina began to cry. Laura was startled. Alina? Crying? She reached out instinctively to comfort the dead woman and was shocked to find her hand making contact with warm flesh.

There is always a solution that can be found through logic and clear thought.

felt absolute certainty: this fucked-up situation, this mess, this horror story, had started with me, with a single unwitting mistake I’d made back then, choosing not to buy the more expensive sleeper tickets. That decision had set everything else in motion. Now I had a chance to redeem myself.

Had someone else followed us too? Or maybe . . . Alina was here. She had seemingly escaped. And—my mind whirred through the problem—her abductor had followed her. Killing Constantin en route? The timing of the man’s disappearance was too perfect

for me to believe anything else.

There was one problem with this theory: the man we’d seen in the house had not been old, according to Ion’s description. He’d been in his thirties. But perhaps he had an accomplice. Someone who already lived here? Or someone he had sent over?

‘After abortion was made illegal after 1966, many of the children fathered by Gabor and his squad of rapists were sent to the country’s terrible orphanages where they suffered appalling cruelty.’

echoed what we had seen in that house, with a sickening twist. This time the mothers were chained up, emaciated, the babies relatively healthy and well-looked-after. The baby we had seen, anyway. We had no idea what had happened to the others, like the poor soul in that tiny coffin.

He moved to that house and carried on raping women, getting them pregnant.’