Forever Black

POV: Roberta 

Rain didn’t fall from the sky so much as materialise from the air itself—as though the universe had been turned upside down and emptied of every cold, wet thought it had ever held. It lashed the trees with spiteful intensity, stinging my skin like a swarm of glass bees.

Out of that grey chaos, I staggered.

I caught myself against the trunk of an oak, fingers pressing deep into the wet bark. The solidity of it was a shock, a physical insult to my senses. The wood beneath my palm felt too certain, too heavy, after the shifting, treacherous textures of the place I had just left. I drew a breath that felt like a handful of gravel in my lungs: sharp, cold, and undeniably real.

My hair was a sodden weight, plastered across my face in a tangled curtain. When I pushed it back, a jolt of something like electricity ran through me.

It was white.

Not the midnight black it had always been, but a luminous, moonlit white. I stared at the strands, my breath hitching. How long? I forced my mind to click into gear, fighting the fog that threatened to pull me back under. I wasn’t just a woman lost in a storm; I was a detective again, back on a crime scene. Assess the variables. Identify the objective.

My objectives were simple: avoid capture, then find a way back to Anton. I wouldn’t let his promise be a eulogy. I needed to get back to him, to save him, and I couldn’t do that while bleeding out in the mud.

A crack echoed through the trees—a branch giving way, perhaps, or a footfall belonging to the thing that had been breathing down my neck since the clearing. I turned, my heart doing a frantic, stumbling dance.

Nothing. Only shadows that seemed to have their own intentions.

Yet the air held a presence—the vanishing warmth on a chair just vacated by someone who didn’t want to be seen. I had been followed to the very edge of this world. I had only just slipped through the closing of the teeth.

“Who’s there?” My voice was a hoarse, rusted thing. The storm caught the words and tore them away.

A memory flickered, painful as a flashbulb. A hand gripping mine—Anton. I could still feel the callouses on his palm, the desperate heat of his skin. A doorway carved from darkness and light. A corridor of screaming air.

I will find you, his voice had promised. Then, a push.

The memory shattered. I didn’t have time for dread; I had a mission. I needed a world that stayed still. I dragged myself free of the treeline, my thin white dress clinging to me like a second skin made of ice. Through the blur, a smear of yellow appeared.

A porch lamp.

It was warm, fixed, and blessedly human. I blinked hard, certain it would dissolve into silver dust, but the light held. It was stubborn. It was boring. It was beautiful.

Each step toward the building was a negotiation with a gravity that felt far too heavy. It was a squat brick station, its sign obscured by rain. A door with fogged glass. A place of paperwork and bored men.

I pressed a trembling hand against the glass. The cold grounded me, pulling me back to reality—a world of taxes and bus timetables. My reflection wavered. I looked like a stranger with hollowed eyes and hair the colour of a dead star.

Inside, a shadow moved. Someone was approaching.

Stay sharp, I told myself. Don’t let them label you a loony. You need them to listen if you’re going to get back to him.

“Please…” I whispered, pleading with the building, or perhaps the man whose hand I’d lost in the dark.

From the woods behind me, a sound rose. Low, patient, and unmistakably hungry.

The door opened. A voice gasped. Hands reached out to steady me before I could hit the tiles.

Warm air rushed out to meet me. Dim lights buzzed from the ceiling—a sharp, sterile hum that set my teeth on edge.

A uniformed man in his fifties stared at me. His face was a battleground between professional detachment and shock. “Oh… God. Are you all right?”

He stepped aside, guiding me in. The floor was cold, but at least the tiles were solid under my bare feet. They didn’t try to breathe when I stepped on them.

“Sit down. You’re blue, love; you must be freezing.”

He helped me into a scuffed plastic chair. A younger officer appeared from the back, his expression shifting from annoyance to alarm.

“Found her in the doorway,” the older man murmured.

The younger one disappeared, returning with a threadbare wool blanket. He draped it around me. “Can you tell us what happened?”

I tried to speak, but my mouth was a desert. I watched the older officer. His eyes catalogued my mud-smeared legs and soaked dress. He was a copper; he was looking for a narrative. I knew the look—I’d given it a thousand times myself back when I had a badge and a reason to wake up in the morning.

Fine, I thought. Give him what he wants. Get him on your side.

“Where did you come from?”

I looked toward the glass door, toward the wall of trees beyond the rain. I felt the pull of it—an immense, magnetic power calling me back to the man I’d left behind.

“Somewhere…” The word scraped out of my throat like glass. “…I never should have been.”

The officers exchanged a look. The older one crouched to meet my gaze. “Can you tell us your name?”

My breath caught. My reflection in the glass looked like a borrowed shape. I knew what I was—a detective, once upon a time, before the disciplinary board and the long walk into civilian life. I had a name too, but at that moment, it lay somewhere just beyond reach, buried under years of dead leaves.

“Where were you before you came here?” the younger officer asked, his pen hovering over a notebook. “Did someone take you there?”

“No one took me,” I said, my voice growing stronger. “I was pushed. Through a door.”

I saw the labels he was pinning on me: Victim. Section 136. Possible drug involvement.

No, lad, I thought. I’m the one who should be holding that pen.

“Was anyone with you?” the older man asked.

“Yes. A man. He’s still... back there.” The grief hit me then, a cold wave. I forced it down. Don’t grieve, organise! That was what my mother always said—back when she was marching to some picket line or other. Union woman to the core.

I needed an anchor. I needed a contact.

“I need you to contact a student at Manchester University,” I said, a name finally surfacing like a buoy in a dark sea. “Ian Anderson.”

The older officer rubbed his hands together. “Let’s get you into the back room. There’s a heater and a kettle.”

He offered his arm. My legs wobbled, but the ground stayed solid. No breathing soil; just linoleum.

He guided me into a small office. There were two desks and a corkboard, but my eyes locked on something else. A machine on the desk.

It was sleek, impossibly thin, and glowing with a resolution that made my head spin. Where was the beige box? Where was the clunky monitor with its flickering green text? This looked like a sheet of pure, frozen light. An uneasy feeling crept through my mind, a feeling I refused to acknowledge.

I sat, the officers moving around me with practiced calm. A mug was pressed into my hands.

“Drink slowly,” the younger said.

I looked at the older man. He was the key. I needed to claim my space in this new, thin world so I could begin the hunt to get back to the other one.

“You’re safe,” the older man said. “Now, let’s try some basics. Do you remember your date of birth?”

I blinked, apparently I did. “Fifth of November… 1947.”

The younger officer stifled a laugh—a sharp, cynical sound.

I didn’t flinch. I looked him dead in the eye, using the stare that used to make hard-cases in the cells look at the floor.

“I am former Detective Sergeant Roberta Black,” I said, and the words felt like iron. “And I have a man to rescue. Now get me Ian Anderson.”

The older officer whispered, his voice cracking, “...as in the missing Roberta Black...?”

On the window glass, one single bead of water stayed perfectly still while the rest of the rain slid around it. Then, slowly, impossibly, it began to rise.

The night was two places now, overlapping. And I was the only bridge left between them.