“You are, son.” Rosemary leaned close to him, becoming more animated. “And you're doing a fine job.”
“I didn't come here for compliments,” he said. “I came to ask you: Is there anything else you haven't told us?”
“About the tunnels, and the route to London? No. The dogs attacked me, I escaped, and the rest of my journey was uneventful. But about London itself? Yes, there's plenty I haven't told you. Some amazing things, and some horrible.”
“Like the Nomad?” Jack asked, fishing for information. “We heard about that. A thing haunting London from before, untouchable and tortured. A legend, I suppose, but it sounded amazing and horrible.”
“A legend?” Rosemary said, shrugging and glancing aside. “Perhaps. London is full of them, now. There's so much you'll have to find out for yourself.”
Jack looked across to Emily and Jenna, then at Sparky dragging the last dog's corpse across the ground. Lucy-Anne sat against a stone pillar, looking at the knife Sparky had let her keep, its reflection travelling the room as she turned it slowly in her hand. He considered what Rosemary had said, and nodded.
“That'll do for now,” he said. “But you know the trust is damaged, don't you?”
“I know. And I wish I could do something to repair it.”
“Tell us the truth from now on,” Jack said, standing. “That'll do, for a start.” He walked away, but paused a few steps from Rosemary. He turned around and patted his hip where the dog had chewed into him. “Rosemary. Thanks for…”
The old woman nodded and smiled.
On their way into the tunnel from which the dogs had emerged, Rosemary pointed out the evidence that this basement had once been below a church. In the corner beside the tunnel mouth stood a font, its water bowl cracked and covered in moss. The little water that stood in there was so black that it could have been blood.
“I wonder if the church is still up there?” Jenna said, looking up at the ceiling. “And if it is, maybe someone's in there right now.”
“We're in a different place now,” Lucy-Anne said, her voice was low and quiet. She felt haunted. She wondered just how close she'd come to dying, and she thought about asking Rosemary the next time they had a quiet moment. But on the other hand, she wasn't sure she really wanted to know.
It wasn't exactly the same, she kept thinking. But dream memories are deceitful things, and the more she thought about it, the more reality and dream had begun to merge.
“This tunnel's another reason I think this was a church,” Rosemary said. “It's long, and there are a few places where it used to branch off. I think it might have been an escape tunnel between churches hundreds of years ago.”
“Escape from what?” Emily asked.
“Persecution,” Jenna said. “People of one religion not liking people of another. Hunting them. Sometimes killing them.”
Emily snorted. “That's just stupid.”
They left the basement room splashed with droplets of their own blood and the promise of rot. Sparky and Rosemary went first this time, Lucy-Anne walking on her own behind them, the others following her. Jack approached her a couple of times, but she gave him a distant smile and shook her head. Not yet, she thought. I need to get things square in my own mind first.
As she walked, she tried to remember the other strange dreams and nightmares she'd been having. But though she knew they were there, they kept themselves hidden well away.
Underground for a couple of hours, and already we've all nearly died, Jack thought. The tunnel was so narrow that in some places they had to go in single file. In these places Rosemary insisted on going first, perhaps some small penance for what they had been through.
Emily walked just ahead of him, filming again. He could see the viewing screen of her camera, and noticed that much of the time it was focussed on Lucy-Anne's back. Good, he thought. My little sis knows where the mystery is.