The Return Docket

Eamon left us at the county road, where the West Parish vehicle could turn back without entering Lough Aven. He gave me his folded parish map and said he had warned the people he could warn. Then he shut the door and drove away, keeping his eyes on the road ahead.

The infirmary was less than a mile on foot. Rachel walked beside me, and Declan followed with one hand pressed to the sore place on his shoulder. The sky had begun to pale, though the road lamps were still on. Every few minutes I checked my watch. The ticket from West Parish had given the route a departure time of 05:10. I had no reason to believe the printed time mattered to a living person. I had seen enough to know it mattered to the route.

At the infirmary, the public entrance was locked. A bell button sat beside the glass doors. I pressed it once and heard a small chime somewhere inside. We waited beneath the covered entrance while a figure crossed the lobby, stopped, and looked out at us through the glass.

She unlocked the door but left the chain on. “Are you here for a patient?”

“We need to speak to whoever’s on the switchboard,” I said. “There’s a telephone route coming through your exchange. Don’t answer any call from West Parish, and don’t trust a voice that says my name.”

The woman studied me, then Rachel and Declan. She was wearing a grey cardigan over her uniform. “You’re Mark Alder?”

I felt the answer gather in my mouth and held it there. The question was ordinary. That was what made it difficult.

Rachel stepped forward. “Who’s asking?”

“Night switchboard. Nora Keane.” She glanced down the hall. “I heard your name on the line a few minutes ago. I didn’t answer it.”

The chain came off.

Nora led us to a narrow office near the entrance. The switchboard was an old manual unit with rows of sockets and cords, polished smooth where hands had worked it for years. A grey printer sat on a shelf. The room smelled of paper, disinfectant, and warm dust. I could hear a refrigerator motor down the corridor and the intermittent, evenly spaced click of a clock.

“Nothing rang,” Nora said. “The board light came on. I thought it was a fault. Then I heard a man speaking through the receiver while it was still on the hook.”

“What did he say?”

She looked at me. “That he’d come to record the old songs before they were lost.”

I knew the sentence. I had said some version of it to Rachel when I first told her about Black Hallow. I could remember saying it. The particular song I’d meant to record—the one that had first convinced me to take the job—was gone from my mind. I’d learned that I had holes. It was different hearing one of them used as a route marker.