The Town That Fell Away

I put the last equipment case in the boot at around 19:30 and slammed it harder than I meant to. The measuring wheel had jammed against my camera bag, and I was finished with wrestling either of them. Three domestic property inspections in one day, all on claims outside Aberdeen, and my back knew it. Priya Shah was already in the passenger seat, scrolling through her mobile.

She had asked for a lift two days earlier. There was a professional training course at a conference hotel in East Kilbride that she could not miss, and the gearbox in her Vauxhall Astra had failed. I did not mind. Company on a night drive was better than silence, and Priya knew when to be quiet.

Callum Reid pulled up behind us in his old Nissan Navara just as I climbed into the driver's seat.

He flashed his headlamps once. That was our signal. He was ready, and he would follow.

He would stay behind us all the way south, share the petrol costs at the stops and steer me away from any pub car parks between Aberdeen and Glasgow. That was the arrangement.

I had been sober for eight months, and Callum was not about to let me slip during a long night drive with too much time to think. I had never asked him to do it. He had simply started turning up.

"Ready?" Priya asked without looking up.

"Yeah."

I pulled out of the car park, and Callum fell in behind me, keeping roughly two car lengths back. The plan was simple. Take the A93 south through the Cairngorms, stop at Glenbrae Lodge for a meal and perhaps a couple of hours' sleep in the car park, then finish the drive to East Kilbride before dawn. I would drop Priya at her hotel, meet Sophie for breakfast at the place she liked off Argyle Street in Finnieston, and salvage what remained of the weekend.

Easy. Except it was already late, and I was already tired.

Priya finally put her mobile down when we reached the open road. The lights of Aberdeen faded behind us, and the carriageway went dark except where my headlamps cut across the tarmac, heather and peat-black verges.

She did not try to make conversation. That was one of the things I liked about her. She understood that some people did not need to fill every silence. Callum's headlamps remained steady in my rear-view mirror.

The Cairngorm moorland at night was an expanse of black, broken only when a clump of gorse or a sweep of heather caught the light for half a second and vanished again. No villages. No filling stations. Just the road winding between dark slopes.

I had driven the route often enough that I could probably have managed it in my sleep, which was a stupid thing to think when I was genuinely that tired.

Priya pulled her cardigan tighter.

"Heating working?" I asked.

"It should be."

I nudged the dial upwards anyway. The vents rattled and began pushing out warmer air. Priya nodded and returned to her mobile.

I thought about Sophie. She had messaged earlier to ask when I would arrive.

I had said perhaps 09:00 or 10:00 if I did not stop for long. She had replied with a thumbs-up and a coffee emoji. That was all. She was good about not pressing when work interfered, but I could tell she was growing tired of cancelled plans and of me arriving late.

This weekend was meant to be different. Dinner. A proper conversation. Perhaps staying until Monday if work permitted.

It probably would not.

The miles passed. Forty. Fifty.

I stopped checking.

Callum's headlamps were still there, a constant glow that made me feel as if I were being escorted. Protected, perhaps.

Or monitored.

Probably both.

Priya shifted in her seat.

"Have you ever been to one of these training courses?"

"Once. A few years ago."

"What are they like?"

"Boring. Lots of paperwork. Loss adjusters comparing property-claim horror stories."

She nodded slowly. "That's what I thought."

"You'll be fine."

"I know."

She did not sound as though she knew.

We reached the halfway point shortly after 21:00. About twenty minutes later, the road curved west, and I saw the glow above the hills that meant Glenbrae was not far away. The fictionalised route through the Cairngorms put the old coaching town in an otherwise empty stretch of moorland, and its lights usually showed long before its buildings did.

My shoulders loosened a little. Food. A toilet. Perhaps an hour with my eyes closed in the car park.

Callum could take first watch. He always did.

But something felt wrong before I saw the first building.

The street lamps along the approach began to blink. They did not go out completely. They flickered slowly and without rhythm, as if the supply were struggling.

I eased off the accelerator, and Priya looked up from her mobile.

"Is that normal?"

"Don't know."

It was not.

The road through Glenbrae was usually busy enough at that time of night. Never packed, but steady. HGV drivers and late-night motorists stopping for petrol or diesel, locals heading home, perhaps a tourist who had underestimated the distance to Blairgowrie.

The tarmac ahead was empty. Completely empty. No approaching headlamps. No tail lights.

Not a soul.

I checked the mirror. Callum was still there, slowing to match me.

A BP filling station appeared on the right. The forecourt lights were on. The pumps were illuminated. There were no vehicles.

Priya sat straighter.

"Where is everyone?"

"No idea."

I could smell something now. Faint but sharp.

Hot wiring, perhaps. Burnt plastic. The smell of electrical equipment that had been running too hot for too long. I lowered the window slightly, and it grew stronger.

"Can you smell that?" I asked.

Priya sniffed. "Yeah. What is it?"

"Don't know."

The town was too quiet. No engines. No voices. No music from the pub off High Street, which often left its door propped open even on cold nights.

There was only the hum of the struggling street lamps and the faint electrical buzz of the BP sign.

I slowed to about twenty miles per hour and coasted past the forecourt. The attached shop was brightly lit, but I could not see anyone behind the counter. The pumps appeared to be operating, but nobody was using them.

Callum flashed his headlamps twice.

Two flashes meant stop or pull over because something was wrong.

I agreed.

I turned into the BP forecourt at about 22:00 and stopped near the air pump, far enough from the shop to see the whole building.

Callum pulled in beside me and switched off his engine. Priya stared at the shop with her mobile in her hand.

"Should we go in?" she asked.

"Maybe."

I did not move. I wanted to sit there for a moment and understand what I was seeing.

The lights were on. The shop looked open. It felt wrong.

It had the same wrongness as a house where I had gone to inspect a claim and realised, despite the unlocked door, that nobody had been inside for days.

Callum got out of the Navara and walked over to my window. I lowered it the rest of the way.

"You're seeing this?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"Where is everyone?"

"That's what we're trying to work out."

He looked at the shop, then back at the empty road. His jaw was tight. Callum disliked anything that refused to make sense, and none of this made sense.

"I don't like it," he said.

"Neither do I."

Priya leant forwards so she could see him through my window.

"Do you think something happened?"

"Don't know," I said. "But we need petrol and food either way."

Callum shook his head.

"We can make it to Blairgowrie."

"That's another hour."

"So?"

I did not answer. I was watching the shop. The fluorescent lights were steady. The door looked closed, but I could not tell whether it was locked.

A pavement board stood outside, advertising tea and bacon-roll offers, though I could not read the prices from where we had parked.

The smell remained. Burnt plastic and something else. Something I could not identify.

"I'm going in," I said.

Callum stepped back.

"Your decision."

Priya said nothing. She slipped her mobile into her pocket and reached for the door handle.

I switched off the engine, and the silence swallowed everything.

Before getting out, I tapped the phone control on the dashboard and scrolled to Priya's contact. She was sitting perhaps 60 centimetres away from me, but I needed to hear her voice confirm what I was seeing.

The Bluetooth rang once before she answered. Her mobile was still in her hand.

"Hello," she said.

Then she laughed. It was strained and slightly too high. The laugh ended quickly when she looked through the windscreen at the empty forecourt, the flickering street lamps and the complete absence of movement.

"This is real, isn't it?"

"Yeah," I said.

I ended the call.

"Stupid, probably," she said, "but it worked."

The silence remained.

Priya put her mobile on her lap and said nothing else. In the mirror, Callum was still standing near his Navara. He had taken out his phone and was looking down at it, his thumbs moving.

My mobile buzzed a moment later.

A message from Callum.

Radio's dead. Just static.

I read it twice.

Callum always kept the FM radio on during long drives, tuned to classic rock or a late-night speech programme, whichever came through clearly. He had mentioned it once when we shared a car to a site inspection in Peterhead. He said he could not stand silence on long stretches of road.

I replied.

Got it. Heading to the lodge.

There was no answer. I looked up and saw him put the mobile in his jacket pocket, then lean against the Navara with his arms folded, waiting.

"Glenbrae Lodge is just ahead," I told Priya. "We'll stop there. Get some food. Work out what's happening."

She nodded without looking away from the window.

I returned to the A93 and kept my speed low, perhaps thirty miles per hour. The sign for Glenbrae Lodge appeared a short distance later, its faded red and yellow neon letters glowing above the roadside complex.

I had stopped there perhaps a dozen times over the years, usually for food. It was always much the same: a twenty-four-hour roadside hotel with an attached cafe serving toasties, chips and an all-day breakfast, and an ageing amusement arcade filled with fruit machines and quiz machines. Reception operated through the night, and rooms were available for drivers who did not want to continue.

At that hour there should have been several HGV drivers inside, perhaps a few locals feeding coins into the fruit machines, and a member of staff wiping down the cafe tables while the kitchen prepared for the late-night trade.

I turned into the car park expecting at least a handful of vehicles. I expected to hear the electronic jingles from the arcade through the doors or smell hot oil drifting from the kitchen.

There was nothing.

The car park was completely empty. Not one car, lorry or motorbike.

The building was dark apart from two exterior lamps near the entrance. The windows that usually shone with the warm light of reception, the cafe and the arcade were black.

I parked the Skoda Octavia estate near the front doors and switched off the engine. Callum pulled in behind me a few seconds later and extinguished his headlamps.

Priya got out first. She walked to the doors and pulled at the handle.

Locked.

She pressed her hands against the glass and looked inside, then stepped back.

"It's locked from inside," she said. "I can see the bolt."

I joined her. She was right. The deadbolt had been thrown, and it could only be turned from within the building.

Through the glass I could make out rows of fruit machines, the edge of the reception desk and a dark corridor leading towards the cafe.

No lights. No movement.

Callum came to stand beside us, his hands pushed into his jacket pockets.

"Have they closed?"

"That doesn't make sense," I said. "This place is open twenty-four hours. Always has been."

Priya moved to the next window and pressed her face close to the glass.

"It looks as if they shut down in a hurry. There's a mug on the desk and a jacket over one of the chairs."

I looked where she was pointing.

A chipped builders' tea mug stood near the edge of the reception desk, and a waxed jacket hung over the back of the chair behind it.

It looked as though whoever had been working there had stepped away for a minute.

Callum moved back and scanned the building.

"We should check round the outside. See if there's another way in."

It seemed the practical thing to do. If we were going to understand what had happened, we needed to get inside.

We walked clockwise around the building. On the right was a row of windows too high to see through and a commercial bin that smelt faintly of old cooking oil.

At the back, a loading bay had a metal roller shutter secured with a padlock. There were two ordinary doors, but neither moved when I tried it.

Priya remained close. The torch on her mobile swept across the tarmac and the foot of the walls.

On the left side we found another commercial bin, an LPG tank behind a chain-link enclosure and one more door near the corner. It had a small window at eye level, reinforced with wire mesh.

I tried the handle.

It turned.

The door opened about 8 centimetres and struck something inside. I pushed harder and felt resistance, as though something had been wedged against it.

"It wasn't latched," I said.

Callum moved beside me and added his weight. The door scraped inwards by another few centimetres, enough for me to angle my shoulder through the gap and see what was blocking it.

A plastic drinks crate had been pushed against the door from inside, but not squarely enough to prevent it opening altogether.

I shoved again with my full weight. The crate slid across the floor with a harsh screech.

The door swung open.

For a moment, the three of us stood looking into the dim corridor.

Low-level emergency lights ran along the skirting boards, giving off enough green-white illumination to reveal a passage leading towards the amusement arcade.

I went in first.

Not because I wanted to. It was habit more than courage. I had carried out enough property inspections where homeowners were frightened by structural damage or water coming through a ceiling. Part of the job was remaining calm so that they did not panic.

The same principle applied here. If I hesitated, Priya and Callum would notice.

The corridor smelt stale rather than foul, like a space that had been closed for too long. I passed a storage cupboard on the left. Its door stood ajar, revealing shelves of cleaning products and rolls of blue paper.

A mop bucket sat in one corner. The mop rested against the wall, its head still damp.

The corridor opened into the amusement arcade.

I stopped at the threshold.

Chairs had been stacked against the front entrance. Perhaps a dozen, piled three and four high with their legs pointing outwards. They had not been arranged carefully. They looked as though they had been seized and shoved into place in a hurry.

A heavy change machine had been dragged across the tiled floor, leaving long scuff marks, and positioned in front of the chairs to add weight.

It was a barricade.

Priya came up beside me. The beam from her mobile moved across the chairs and the change machine. She said nothing.

Callum remained several steps behind us near the corridor. He looked back towards the side door, then at me. He jerked his head towards the exit.

The meaning was clear.

Let's go.

I did not move.

I needed to see the rest.

The arcade was about 12 metres across, with rows of fruit machines, quiz machines and two worn games tables near the far wall. Most of it had no power. The normal ceiling lights were dead, and the room's main circuits seemed to have failed.

Reception was to my right. I could see the tea mug beside a dark computer monitor and the waxed jacket over the chair.

Priya raised her mobile towards the ceiling, checking for reception. The screen showed one bar, then none, then one again.

She lowered it and shook her head.

Callum made a low sound, halfway between a grunt and a sigh. He was still by the corridor, shoulders tight. He pointed towards the side door again, more insistently.

I took another step. My shoes scuffed the tiles, and the sound seemed far too loud.

I moved towards reception, looking for anything that might explain what had happened. A note. A logbook. Something somebody had left behind.

Priya followed, her torch cutting through the darkness. Callum stayed where he was. I could feel him watching and waiting for me to decide that we had seen enough.

I did not know what I expected to find. I only wanted something that made sense.

I passed the desk and moved towards the rows of machines.

They were not all dead.

That was what stopped me.

Several fruit machines still had power, despite the failed lights elsewhere. Their screens ran demonstration loops meant to attract customers: wheels turning endlessly, cards flipping, fruit symbols bouncing across lurid backgrounds. The images moved smoothly and brightly, casting small pools of coloured light across the floor.

It made the arcade feel wrong. Not abandoned. Merely paused.

A soft electronic jingle sounded from the third row.

Another answered from my left in a different pitch.

They repeated every few seconds without any pattern I could follow. It was probably the machines' demonstration mode, trying to entice players who were not there.

The sound seemed broken. Trapped in the same two-note loops.

Years earlier, when I handled motor claims full-time, I had inspected a written-off Subaru after an engine fire began in the wiring loom. The owner said he had noticed a sharp electrical smell moments before smoke poured through the vents.

The smell here was close to that. Beneath the stale carpet and old cooking fat was a metallic tang, sharper than burnt plastic and more chemical. It settled at the back of my throat.

"Can you smell that?" I asked.

Priya stood a few steps behind me.

"Yeah."

"Wiring, perhaps."

She did not answer. Her torch crossed one of the games tables, then lifted towards the ceiling, where the emergency lights threw long shadows.

I kept walking.

The marks on the floor led away from the barricade in ragged lines, showing where the change machine had been dragged. Whoever moved it had been in a hurry.

The chair legs faced outwards. Sharp. Deliberate.

It was not random panic. Somebody had built that barricade to keep something out.

Or in.

I did not like that thought.

Reception was roughly 3 metres to my right. I changed direction and went towards it. Every footstep echoed from the far walls and mixed with the trapped electronic jingles.

Priya followed. Callum remained silhouetted in the mouth of the corridor.

The desk had a wood-effect laminate top, scratched near the edge. The builders' tea mug stood beside an unlit monitor. The waxed jacket was draped over the office chair behind it, one sleeve hanging lower than the other.

I stepped behind the counter.

A spiral-bound logbook lay open beside the keyboard, the sort with lined paper and a cardboard cover softened by years of handling.

I bent over it.

At the top of the page, written in blue ink, was the date: 11 January 2026.

Below it were timed entries. Shift started at 18:00. A note about a broken ice machine. Another saying that someone called Graham had rung in sick.

The final entry was halfway down the page.

21:42 - Car park clear, no activity. Phones are

That was all.

The sentence stopped. The pen had dragged at the end, leaving a small tail on the final letter. It was not a full stop. It did not look intentional.

It simply ended.

I stared at it.

21:42. Roughly twenty minutes before we had reached the BP filling station.

If the entry was genuine. If the date was genuine.

I no longer knew what to trust.

"Found something?" Priya asked.

She stood beside me, holding her mobile so its torch illuminated the page.

"The last entry stops," I said. "In the middle of a sentence."

She leant closer and read it. She said nothing.

I examined the monitor. It belonged to a CCTV system, the sort that displayed several camera feeds in a grid. The screen was dead, but a small control unit beside it had a row of buttons and a power switch.

I pressed the power button.

Nothing.

I moved the switch off and on.

Still nothing.

Then the monitor blinked into life.

There was no startup screen and no loading sequence. It opened directly onto a grid of nine camera feeds.

Each was labelled with a location: Front Entrance. Car Park. Loading Bay. Corridor A. Cafe. Back Office. Corridor B. Side Exit. Storeroom.

Most showed empty rooms. Corridor A was dark except for the low emergency lights. The cafe contained rows of tables and chairs, perfectly still. The loading-bay camera showed the roller shutter we had examined outside, closed and unmoving.

The car-park feed showed three vehicles.

A Skoda Octavia estate and a Nissan Navara stood near the entrance. My car. Callum's vehicle. The third was barely visible at the edge of the picture, a dark shape beyond the reach of the exterior lamps.

I recognised the angle. The camera was above the front doors, pointing down across the car park. It showed our vehicles precisely where we had left them only minutes earlier.

But the timestamp did not show tonight's date.

09/01/2026 23:17.

Two days earlier.

Today was 11 January 2026.

I stared at the numbers, blinked and checked them again.

09/01/2026 23:17.

The timestamp did not flicker. It did not glitch. It remained steady and certain, insisting that we had been there forty-eight hours earlier.

"That isn't right," Priya said.

Her voice was quiet and tight.

"No."

"We weren't here two days ago."

"I know."

She stepped back from the desk. Her breathing quickened. She looked from the feed to me and then back again.

"That's your car. That's Callum's Navara."

"Yeah."

"Then why does it say..."

"I don't know."

Callum's voice carried across the arcade.

"We're leaving."

He did not shout. His voice was flat and firm.

"Right now."

I looked up. He was still near the corridor, but he had moved several steps closer. His hands were out of his pockets and his shoulders were rigid.

"There's something wrong with the cameras," I said.

"I don't care," Callum replied. "We're going."

I looked back at the monitor.

The other feeds remained still and empty. No people. No movement. Only rooms lit by emergency strips or by whatever weak glow entered from outside.

The car-park feed continued to show our vehicles beneath that impossible timestamp. The image was not entirely frozen, but it seemed to repeat the same few seconds. A faint pulse passed through one exterior lamp, then began again.

I could not understand it. I could not make it fit.

Callum took another step.

"Dan, I mean it."

I nodded.

He was right. We should leave. We had seen enough to know that something was badly wrong, and staying would not explain it.

We could return to the A93, drive south to Blairgowrie and call Police Scotland from somewhere populated. We could deal with it in daylight, with other people around.

But I wanted to try one more thing.

A beige landline sat beside the monitor, its buttons worn smooth. I picked up the handset and held it to my ear.

There was a dialling tone, clear and steady.

That surprised me. Most of the building had no ordinary power, yet the telephone line worked. The emergency lights, selected arcade machines, CCTV and laptop circuits had power, but nothing else behaved consistently.

I thought about calling 999.

I thought about calling Sophie.

I thought about calling anyone who might answer and tell me what was happening in Glenbrae.

The dialling tone stopped.

There was a click.

Soft. Deliberate.

Then music began.

It was faint at first, tinny and distant. A warped fairground-organ melody, repetitive and falsely cheerful. The sort of tune that might once have played at the abandoned fairground beside the old Glenbrae burial ground, or at the Jester's Rest, the faded funfair-themed caravan park and roadside lodge beyond it.

The melody came through the handset, but it did not sound as if it were travelling along the telephone line from somewhere else.

It sounded close.

Inside the walls.

Behind me.

Around me.

I pulled the handset away from my ear.

The music continued. It was muffled now, but still audible.

It was no longer coming from the telephone.

It was somewhere in the building.

Priya heard it too. She turned slowly, trying to locate the source.

"Where's that coming from?"

I did not answer.

I returned the handset to its cradle, but the melody continued. The same tune. The same tempo. Looping endlessly.

Then came a thump.

It sounded from the first floor, directly above us.

Heavy. Dull.

Something striking a floor or wall.

All three of us froze.

The fairground melody continued. The fruit machines kept sounding their electronic jingles.

Underneath them, I heard something else.

Dragging.

Slow. Rhythmic.

Something heavy was being pulled across the floor above our heads.

The sound began near the centre of the ceiling and moved towards the left, in the direction of the stairwell near the front entrance. It was steady and deliberate, not frantic.

Callum was already backing towards the side corridor.

"That's it. We're out."

Priya did not move. She stared upwards, the torch from her mobile aimed at the ceiling tiles.

The dragging continued.

Scrape. Pause. Scrape. Pause.

I stood listening, trying to identify what could make such a sound and wondering whether the answer mattered.

The dragging stopped.

The fairground melody continued.

I moved towards the stairwell.

I did not think much beyond the possibility that somebody was up there and might need help.

Callum caught my arm near the elbow.

"Don't."

"Someone dragged something," I said. "It could be a person."

"It could be a lot of things."

Priya had already started towards the stairs, sweeping the path with her mobile's torch. She did not wait for permission.

Callum released my arm and breathed out through his nose, the sound he made when he knew the argument was already lost.

The stairwell was narrow, with carpeted steps and a brass handrail bolted to the wall. The emergency lights gave everything a sickly green-white cast.

I went first because it felt right. Priya followed, her footsteps quick and light. Callum came last, several steps behind.

The fairground melody was louder in the stairwell. Not much louder, but enough for me to distinguish the tune. It bounced and repeated like something designed to lodge itself in your mind after a day at the fair.

It did not seem to come from loudspeakers. I checked the ceiling and walls as I climbed. There were no vents and no visible source.

Only the music, persistent and surrounding us.

At the top, a corridor extended in both directions. More emergency lights glowed near the skirting boards. Doors lined either side, most of them closed.

The carpet was the same industrial pattern as below, maroon with gold geometric shapes, worn thin along the centre.

Priya's torch swept left and then right.

"Which way?"

I listened. The dragging had stopped, but I tried to remember which direction it had taken.

Left, I thought. Towards the front of the building.

I pointed and began walking.

The first three doors were locked. I tried every handle and rattled each one to be sure.

Callum stayed by the head of the stairs with his back against the wall, watching us move along the corridor.

The fourth door stood open by about 5 centimetres. When I pushed it, the hinges gave a low creak.

Beyond it was a standard guest room. A double bed with the duvet pulled tight. A bedside table with an unlit lamp. A chest of drawers with a television fixed to the wall above it. The bathroom door was open, revealing a strip of tile and a towel hanging from a rail.

The room was empty. There was no luggage and no sign that anyone had used it.

I backed out and continued.

The fifth door was unlocked.

I pushed it open and stopped.

A security guard lay on the floor near the foot of the bed. He was on his side, one arm extended and the other trapped beneath his torso. His legs were twisted and his knees slightly bent, as if he had been walking when he collapsed.

He wore a Glenbrae Lodge branded fleece, dark trousers, a black belt and scuffed work shoes.

His eyes were open and fixed on nothing.

His skin had the grey, papery colour of someone who had been dead for some time.

For a moment I did not move. I only stood and looked at him.

Priya came up behind me and made a small sound, somewhere between a gasp and a hiss. She stopped in the doorway.

"Is he...?"

"Yeah."

Callum's footsteps approached rapidly along the corridor. He appeared beside Priya, looked into the room and became still.

"We're leaving."

I stepped inside.

The carpet muffled my shoes, but each footfall still seemed too loud. I crouched beside the body without touching it.

A white plastic name badge was clipped to his fleece.

Martin Keane.

His outstretched hand gripped a plastic card.

His fingers were locked around it. I touched his wrist.

Cold. Rigid. Like touching something that had never been alive.

I worked the card free. I had to prise his fingers back one by one, and they resisted every movement.

When I finally pulled it loose, I turned it over.

My full name was printed on the front.

Daniel Mercer.

A membership number appeared beneath it, with the faded red Glenbrae Lodge logo along the top edge.

It was a Glenbrae Lodge loyalty card.

I had stopped at the lodge for meals before, but I had never joined its loyalty scheme. I had never stayed as a guest, registered at reception or played any of the machines.

Priya leant into the room.

"What is it?"

"A loyalty card," I said. "It has my name on it."

"That doesn't make sense."

"I know."

I stood and put the card in my pocket. Leaving it with Martin felt worse than taking it, and I needed evidence.

Evidence of what, I could not have said.

Callum backed into the corridor.

"We've seen enough. Let's go."

I looked at Martin Keane once more.

There were no visible wounds. No blood. Only a man on a hotel-room floor who had stopped moving and never started again.

I left the room and pulled the door nearly closed without latching it. Locking him inside felt wrong.

We returned downstairs without speaking.

The warped fairground-organ melody was still playing. The same loop. The same tempo. I had stopped noticing it upstairs, but now it filled every space where conversation ought to have been.

Priya went directly to reception and ducked behind the counter. I heard her moving papers, opening a drawer and shifting something plastic across the desktop.

"There's a laptop," she said.

I joined her.

She had already opened it. It was an old Dell with a scuffed lid and a power cable running to a socket beneath the desk. Like the CCTV and emergency circuits, it still had power.

The screen displayed a login prompt. Priya touched the trackpad, and the desktop appeared without requesting a password. Somebody had left the session unlocked.

Callum stood near the side corridor, in the same position as before, his arms folded as he watched us.

Priya opened the browser history, scanned it, then switched to an email client that was already logged in. She checked the inbox, sent folder and drafts before stopping at a thread near the top.

The sender was Fiona MacLeod.

The subject line read: Need to document this.

Priya opened the first message.

It was timestamped 09/01/2026 23:53.

Two days earlier. The same date as the impossible CCTV footage.

I leant over her shoulder and read.

I'm writing this from the car park at the Jester's Rest because I don't know where else to go, and I need to get this down while it's fresh.

The town emptied in less than ten minutes. I was in the Caledonian Arms having a drink when the barman stopped halfway through pouring a pint. He looked towards the door and walked out. He didn't say anything. He didn't take his coat.

Four other people in the bar did the same. They stood and left. I followed them outside, and High Street was full of people walking north. Every one of them was silent. Every one was moving at the same pace.

I asked what was happening, but nobody answered. It was as though they couldn't hear me.

Priya scrolled.

By the time I reached my car, the street was empty again. I drove through Glenbrae looking for anyone who might have been left behind, but I didn't see a soul. Lights were still on in some of the buildings, but nobody was inside.

I passed Glenbrae Lodge. The car park was full of vehicles, but the building looked shut down, so I kept driving.

I'm at the Jester's Rest now. It's beside the old Glenbrae burial ground and the abandoned fairground. There are cars and caravans here, and lights are on, but I can't find anyone.

Priya opened the next message in the thread.

It was timestamped 10/01/2026 00:31.

There's a sound. A low rumble like thunder, but constant. It's coming from the old burial ground, just beyond the abandoned fairground.

I can feel it in my chest. There are clouds above the burial ground, but they aren't moving properly. They're circling slowly and tightly, like water going down a drain.

I'm hearing something else now as well. A turbine, perhaps. Heavy and rhythmic. It seems to be inside the clouds.

I straightened.

Priya scrolled again, but for a moment there appeared to be nothing more.

"She stopped writing," Priya said.

"Or stopped sending," I replied.

Callum finally came closer and looked at the screen.

"This is from two days ago."

"Yeah."

"So where is she now?"

I did not answer. I had none to give him.

Priya returned to the inbox and scanned the other messages. There was nothing recent. Nothing after 10 January 2026.

She closed the laptop and looked at me.

"We should find her."

"We should leave," Callum said. "Now. Get back on the A93 and don't stop until Blairgowrie."

I took the loyalty card from my pocket and placed it on the desk. My name, printed neatly and officially, stared back at me.

Priya looked at it.

"You've stopped here before?"

"For food, yes. But I've never joined their scheme, stayed here or used the arcade."

"Then how did they get your details?"

"I don't know."

Callum stepped closer and pointed at the card.

"That's another reason to go. None of this makes sense, and we aren't going to solve it by standing here."

He was right.

But leaving meant driving away from the answers, and the answers were somewhere in the lodge or somewhere in Glenbrae.

The emails. Martin Keane upstairs. The barricade. The fairground music still playing from nowhere.

I looked at Priya. She was staring at the closed laptop, one hand resting on its lid.

"The burial ground," she said. "Fiona mentioned it."

Callum shook his head.

"No. She said the sound was coming from there. She said the clouds were circling over it."

"I don't care what she said. We're not walking towards an abandoned fairground and a burial ground in the middle of the night, in an empty town with a dead man upstairs."

Priya did not argue. She continued staring at the laptop.

I picked up the loyalty card and put it back in my pocket. It felt heavier than a piece of plastic should.

Priya reopened the laptop and returned to the thread. At the bottom was one final message from Fiona MacLeod.

It was timestamped 10/01/2026 01:03.

The email was short, only a few lines.

Fiona said she had moved into the office at the Jester's Rest because it was the only place that remained lit when everything else went dark. She had tried three other buildings first. They still showed lights from High Street, but the interiors became pitch-black as soon as she stepped through their doors.

The office at the Jester's Rest stayed bright. She did not know why.

She had locked herself inside and intended to wait for daylight. Then she would drive south and would not stop until she reached Glasgow.

That was all.

There was no later message. No response from whoever owned the account left open on the lodge laptop.

I read it twice.

Priya stood beside me with her arms folded, her mobile in one hand, staring at the screen. Callum remained near the entrance to the corridor with his back against the wall, making no move to come closer.

"She's still there," I said.

Priya turned her head.

"You don't know that."

"She might be."

"Or she left."

"That was two days ago."

I tapped the edge of the laptop.

"Two days according to this."

"The cameras say the same thing."

"But we got here tonight."

"11 January 2026."

Priya did not answer. She looked back at the screen and scrolled up through the email thread again, rereading the part about the old Glenbrae burial ground, the tightly circling clouds and the noise that seemed to be coming from beneath the earth.

I straightened.

"We should go there."

Callum's head snapped up.

"Where?"

"The Jester's Rest. See if Fiona's still there, or if there's something - anything - that explains what happened."

Callum pushed himself away from the wall and took three steps forwards, stopping in the middle of the amusement arcade. His shoulders were rigid. His hands came out of his pockets.

"No."

"She might need help. You read the same thing I did."

"The burial ground is right beside it."

"She said the sound was coming from that direction. So we don't go into the burial ground. We go to the lodge, check the office and see if anyone's inside."

Callum shook his head slowly and deliberately.

"I'm not doing it."

I opened my mouth to argue, but his posture changed. His whole body locked. He was no longer merely tense. He was resolute, like a door slamming shut.

Priya stepped away from the desk.

"I'm with Callum."

I looked at her. She met my eyes for a second, glanced at Callum, then looked back at the laptop.

"I'm not going near that burial ground," she said. Her voice was steady but quiet. "Not after reading that. Not with everything else we've seen."

I said nothing.

The warped fairground-organ melody was still playing somewhere in the building, its thin, looping notes making my teeth ache. The fruit machines continued their demonstration loops, chiming the same two-note electronic jingle. I thought about the dragging noise on the first floor, the barricade across the front doors and Martin Keane lying dead beside it, my Glenbrae Lodge loyalty card clenched in his hand.

"Fine," I said. "We try the Caledonian Arms instead."

Callum's shoulders dropped by perhaps a centimetre.

"The hotel," he said. "Yes. It's closer."

"High Street. If people were there two nights ago, someone might still be around. Staff. Working phones. Cameras that don't show us arriving two days early."

Priya nodded. Callum did not argue. I knew it was the most agreement I was going to get.

We left through the side door by which we had entered. The displaced drinks crate was still against the wall where we had pushed it, a trivial obstruction compared with the heavy barricade at the front.

The corridor smelt of cleaning fluid with something burnt beneath it. I did not look back at the arcade.

Outside, the air struck me as wrong. It was colder than when we had gone inside. January in the Cairngorms was cold anyway, but this was sharper, biting, the sort of chill that came before a storm when the pressure dropped and everything seemed to tighten.

Yet there were no clouds. The sky was clear and crowded with stars. There was no wind.

I stopped halfway to my Skoda and breathed in. The burnt electrical smell from earlier had grown stronger, but there was something else in it now, a metallic edge like ozone after lightning struck too close. My father had told me about that smell when he worked on building sites and summer storms rolled over them. He said you could taste it in your teeth.

I could taste it now.

Priya walked past me towards the passenger side. She said nothing about the smell, but her shoulders were hunched almost to her ears and she kept glancing at the sky.

Callum was already beside his old Nissan Navara, the driver's door open and one foot inside. He looked at me across the roof.

"Are we going or not?"

"Yes."

I climbed into the Skoda, turned the key and started the engine. The dashboard lit up, and for about three seconds everything felt normal.

Then I noticed the clock.

00:00.

I frowned and pressed the button to cycle through the display: mileage, trip distance, remaining fuel range, then back to the clock.

00:00.

I left it alone, telling myself I would deal with it later. I put the car into gear and drove out of the car park, turning left towards High Street. Callum's headlamps swung into place behind me. He kept the same distance of roughly two car lengths that he had maintained since Aberdeen.

The Caledonian Arms was perhaps six blocks away. I knew the route: straight along the access road, right into High Street, then another three blocks to the hotel. I had passed it on earlier journeys. It was a tall old stone building with narrow windows and a vertical red sign on the corner spelling CALEDONIAN ARMS.

We had travelled perhaps two blocks when Callum's headlamps blinked out.

He had not flashed them as a signal. They simply failed, remaining dark for a second or two before snapping back on.

I slowed and checked the rear-view mirror. The Navara was still there, still following, but something looked wrong. Its headlamps were aimed too low, as though the suspension had dropped or the road had tilted beneath it.

Then the Navara swerved. Not violently, and not as if Callum were avoiding something. It drifted slowly to the left and then back to the right, as though the carriageway had shifted beneath the tyres and he was correcting without meaning to.

I braked. The Skoda stopped smoothly. Callum's Navara rolled on for another metre or so before stopping as well, its headlamps aimed at my rear bumper.

I put the car into neutral, applied the handbrake and got out.

Priya leant forwards in her seat.

"What's wrong?"

"Stay here."

I walked back to Callum's vehicle. His window was down. Both hands gripped the steering wheel and he was staring straight ahead at nothing, his jaw clenched.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

He did not answer at once. Then he nodded.

"Yes."

"Your lights went out."

"I know."

"And you swerved."

"I know that too."

He turned to look at me.

"The road felt wrong. Like it moved."

I glanced down. The tarmac appeared normal and level, cracked in places but free of potholes or ice.

"Wrong how?"

"It dropped for a second. Like going over a bridge and hitting the dip where two sections meet, except there isn't a bridge."

I did not know what to say. Through the open window, I looked at his dashboard. The interior light was off, but I could make out the instruments in the glow reflected from my car.

The odometer displayed nothing but zeros. Not as though it had rolled over, and not as if it had failed while fixed on a particular mileage. Six zeros stood in a row.

"Callum," I said. "Your odometer."

He followed my gaze and stared at it for a long moment. Then he reached forwards and tapped the plastic covering the instrument panel with one knuckle. The figures did not change.

"That's not right."

"No."

He turned off the ignition. The engine died. The headlamps remained on briefly before their automatic delay extinguished them. He turned the key back to the accessory position and the dashboard came alive again.

Still six zeros.

I stepped back and took out my mobile. The time at the top of the screen read 00:00. I waited, counting ten seconds in my head.

It remained 00:00.

I opened the clock application. The same time appeared there, and the seconds did not advance. The display was frozen.

I walked back to the Skoda. Priya looked up when I opened the door.

"What is it?"

I did not answer. I leant inside and stared at the dashboard clock.

00:00.

I counted again. Ten seconds. Fifteen. Twenty.

It did not move.

Priya made a small sound behind me, not quite a word. I turned. She was pointing back the way we had come, her arm straight and her hand trembling.

"That building," she said. "The one with the blue sign. Where is it?"

I looked.

The block we had passed moments earlier was gone. There had been two shopfronts, one beneath a faded blue awning advertising a motor-factors shop. Now there was nothing.

It had not collapsed or gone dark. It was simply absent. Untouched heather and gorse covered the space where it had stood, rising from peat-dark ground that looked as though no building had ever disturbed it.

I blinked and looked again. It was still gone.

Glenbrae Lodge remained behind us, its emergency lighting and illuminated signs faintly outlining the roadside complex. But the ground between us and the lodge had changed. An entire piece of the town had been erased and replaced with moorland.

"Dan."

Priya's voice was thin.

"What is that?"

"I don't know."

Callum's door opened. He climbed out and stood beside the Navara, staring at the empty ground. He said nothing. He looked at it, then at me.

I had no answer for him.

Priya raised her mobile and aimed it at the gap as if she needed proof. The screen illuminated her face. She tapped it several times, then lowered it and shook her head.

"The camera isn't working. It's just black."

I tried mine. The camera application opened, but its viewfinder remained completely black wherever I pointed it.

"We need to keep moving," I said.

Callum nodded once and got back into the Navara. I slid behind the wheel and set off. Priya fastened her seat belt without looking at me. Her hands were clenched in her lap.

The red sign of the Caledonian Arms stood ahead of us, perhaps four blocks away, its letters stacked vertically against the old stone building. It looked normal. Bright. Real.

I pressed the accelerator and we moved forwards.

Three blocks.

I kept my eyes on the sign, waiting for it to draw nearer. High Street was empty. No traffic. No pedestrians. There was only the hum of my engine and Callum's headlamps in the mirror.

Two blocks.

I glanced at the odometer. It still showed the Skoda's usual mileage. When I looked back at the sign, it remained two blocks away.

I frowned and pressed the accelerator harder. The engine revved. We were moving. I could feel it and see the white road markings passing beneath us.

The hotel did not come any closer.

Priya noticed.

"Are we moving?"

"Yes."

"Then why aren't we getting nearer?"

"I don't know."

I kept driving. The speedometer climbed to thirty miles per hour. Buildings slid past on either side: a barber's, a closed cafe, an estate agent's with dusty windows.

The Caledonian Arms stayed exactly where it was.

Callum flashed his headlamps twice behind me, our agreed signal to stop because something was wrong. I eased off the accelerator and allowed the Skoda to coast. The hotel sign was still two blocks away. Perhaps three now.

I stopped. Callum pulled alongside and lowered his window.

"You're seeing this?"

"Yes."

"We're not getting any closer."

"I know."

Priya leant forwards, staring through the windscreen at the sign.

"This isn't possible."

I did not argue. I applied the handbrake and sat there, trying to think.

Distance was no longer working properly. Time was no longer working properly. Parts of Glenbrae were disappearing.

I looked in the rear-view mirror.

Glenbrae Lodge was gone.

Heather, gorse and black peat stretched across the place where the hotel, cafe and amusement arcade had stood. There were no lights, no car park and no outline against the stars.

"Dan," Callum said, his voice flat and careful. "We need to turn round, get back to the A93 and leave."

I wanted to agree. I truly did.

But the Caledonian Arms was right there, two blocks away, perhaps less. If we could not drive to it, perhaps we could walk.

"Give me a minute."

I got out and stood in the road. I looked at the hotel sign, then at the tarmac beneath my feet. It appeared ordinary: cracks, patched surfaces and a faded centre line.

I started walking.

"Dan," Priya called after me, but I did not stop.

I kept my eyes on the sign and counted my steps. Ten. Twenty. Thirty.

The sign drew closer.

After forty steps, I stood in front of the Caledonian Arms.

It rose above me, a tall stone hotel with narrow windows and the red vertical sign climbing one corner. Its front doors were made of glass and dark wood, old but well maintained.

I turned to look back.

The Skoda was only one block away, perhaps less. I had walked for no more than half a minute and crossed what should have been three blocks.

Priya and Callum were both out of the vehicles, staring at me.

"It's here," I called. "Just walk."

They looked at each other. Priya came first, her mobile in her hand, walking quickly with her head down. Callum followed a few paces behind with his hands in his pockets. They reached me in less than a minute.

"That's not right," Priya said, breathing hard. "That isn't how distance works."

"I know."

Callum looked at the doors, then at me.

"Are we going in?"

I reached for the handle, expecting the door to be locked. It was not. The door opened smoothly and without a sound.

The lobby beyond was dark.

Then the lights came on by themselves, one after another, beginning beside the entrance and moving towards reception. They were old fittings with yellow bulbs that buzzed faintly. A recorded woman's voice spoke from somewhere overhead, bright and welcoming.

"Welcome to the Caledonian Arms. Tonight's function begins at 20:00 in the ballroom. Drinks will be served."

The announcement ended.

Priya stopped just inside the entrance.

"What function?"

"I don't know."

The lobby was small, with dark wooden panelling and a patterned carpet that might once have been red but had faded to rust. Reception stood directly ahead, its counter chest-high. A brass bell sat beside a dark computer monitor and an open guest book. The pages lay flat. The ink looked wet.

I approached and looked down.

Three names had been entered in careful handwriting.

Daniel Mercer, room 3.

Priya Shah, room 5.

Callum Reid, room 7.

Beside each name was the same date and time: 23:47, 9 January 2026.

Two days earlier.

Priya came to my side and read over my shoulder. She said nothing. She only stared. Callum remained close to the entrance.

I turned back one page. The previous entries were dated 7 January 2026 and belonged to people I did not recognise. I turned forwards again.

Our names were still there. The same date. The same time.

Three old brass keys lay beside the guest book. Each had a wooden tag, with a number stamped into the metal: 3, 5 and 7.

I picked up the key to room 3. It was cold and heavy.

"We weren't here two days ago," Priya said quietly. "We were in Aberdeen. You were carrying out property inspections. I was at the office."

"I know."

"Then how?"

"I don't know."

Callum spoke from behind us, his voice low and taut.

"We're leaving. Right now."

I looked at the key in my hand. I thought about the loyalty card in my pocket, printed with my full name despite the fact that I had never joined Glenbrae Lodge's scheme. I thought about Martin Keane on the floor of the arcade, holding that card in his dead hand.

I should have listened to Callum. I should have walked out, climbed into the Skoda and kept driving until daylight.

Instead, I went to the stairs.

Priya followed. Callum swore under his breath, but he came after us.

Room 3 was on the first floor. The corridor was narrow, with peeling wallpaper and wall lights casting a weak yellow glow. The carpet was the same faded rust colour as the one in the lobby.

I stopped at the door and inserted the key. It turned smoothly.

The room beyond was unremarkable: a double bed with a duvet, a bedside table and a chest of drawers with a television on top. The bathroom door stood open, revealing tiled walls and a basin.

I stepped inside. Priya remained in the doorway. Callum stood in the corridor.

The television switched itself on.

There was no static and no delay. A clear image of the lobby appeared, filmed from a high angle like live CCTV. I could see reception, the guest book, the three keys and the front doors opening as we entered.

There I was, walking in. Priya followed just behind me and Callum came a few steps later. The picture showed us crossing the lobby. It showed me reaching reception and bending over the guest book.

It was happening again on the screen, at that very moment.

I watched myself pick up the key.

Priya made a sound, half gasp and half something else.

On the television, I turned and walked towards the stairs. Priya followed. Callum hesitated and then came after us.

The camera angle remained fixed on the now-empty lobby, the open guest book and the two remaining keys.

Then the noise began.

It was low and deep, a rumble I felt in my chest before I properly heard it. Somewhere beyond the hotel, the warped fairground-organ melody stopped in the middle of a phrase.

The rumble grew.

It was not thunder. It was not an engine. It sounded like a vast turbine turning beneath tightly circling cloud over the old burial ground, something mechanical, enormous and profoundly wrong.

The windows rattled. The bed frame vibrated against the floor.

Callum backed into the corridor.

"We're going. Now."

The rumble became a roar, heavy and rhythmic, like colossal machinery grinding against itself far underground.

The window bowed inwards.

The glass flexed without breaking. Priya seized my arm.

The pressure in the room changed. My ears popped.

Then everything reversed.

The window bulged outwards.

Callum rose from the floor.

He did not jump. Nothing visible seized him. He simply lifted into the air, slowly at first and then with gathering speed.

He reached for the door frame and missed. His shoulders struck the ceiling. He pressed both palms against it, trying to force himself down.

I grabbed his ankle and held on. He was heavy, solid and real, but the force pulling him upwards was stronger.

"Don't let go," he said.

His voice was calm. Far too calm.

I did not let go.

The roar intensified. The pressure kept reversing, dragging him upwards. My fingers slipped against his trouser leg.

"Dan."

I lost him.

Callum passed through the ceiling. He did not make a hole. The plaster did not crack or break. He simply went through it as though it were not there.

Then he was gone.

The roar stopped. The pressure returned to normal. The room fell silent.

I stood with one arm still raised and my hand empty. Priya was pressed against the wall, staring at the unmarked ceiling.

"Where did he go?"

I did not answer.

I turned and left the room. I went along the corridor, down the stairs, across the lobby and out through the front doors. Priya followed.

Both vehicles were still there: my Skoda Octavia estate and Callum's Nissan Navara.

I climbed into the Skoda and started the engine. Priya got into the passenger seat beside me.

I did not look at Callum's vehicle. I did not check whether his keys were still inside it. I put the car into gear and drove south, heading for the A93 towards Blairgowrie and away from the Caledonian Arms, away from the vanished lodge, away from whatever Glenbrae had become.

In the rear-view mirror, the rest of the town folded in upon itself. Buildings sank from sight without falling, their stone walls and roofs giving way to untouched heather, gorse and peat-dark earth. Lights winked out one by one. The red sign of the Caledonian Arms flickered once, twice, and vanished.

By the time we reached the place where Glenbrae's southern boundary should have been, there was nothing behind us but empty Cairngorm moorland.

I reached into my pocket and took out the loyalty card.

Daniel Mercer. A membership number. The Glenbrae Lodge name and logo.

I placed it on the dashboard.

It was the only proof I had that any of it had been real.