The Man Made of Smoke

The narrative changes to John’s perspective. After finding the ID in the wallet, John drops the wallet to the ground and heads to the address to investigate the woman’s murder. John’s stomach has butterflies, but in a good way, indicating that the lead he’s following is solid. Just then, Dan calls John to check up on him. John assures his son that he’s well and hangs up, keeping his recent discovery a secret. Although he may be driving into danger, John’s gut tells him that Field isn’t the person who murdered the woman. Killers don’t usually leave a straightforward trail to their homes.

At Field’s house, John asks Marie for privacy to speak to him alone. The good-looking Field seems oddly familiar to John. When John asks Field about the woman in the woods, Field pretends indifference, but the sudden change in his demeanor tells John that he has touched a nerve. John assures Field that he’s an ex-police officer who only means well. Field begins to sob as he recounts his connection with the woman.

Field tells John that he was smoking outside a bar after work that day before he fainted, possibly because someone had spiked his drink. Recently, he has often visited bars for “just a little me time” before heading home since Marie tends to be overtly possessive (107). However, she has no reason to be suspicious of Field, as he would never cheat on her.

Field woke up to find himself gagged, strapped to a gurney, and being pushed into the woods by someone until they reached a well-lit clearing in a forest. The man, wearing a blank white mask, pushed the gurney upright so that Field could see a woman ahead of him, chained to a post in an animal pen. Field began to thrash against his restraints when he saw the man approach the woman with a knife and a can of kerosene. The man forced Field to watch as he tortured and killed the woman, and Field fainted from the trauma at some point. When Field woke up, he was in his car, with his wallet and phone gone. Field returned home but told no one what he had witnessed. When John suggests that Field go to the police, Field reveals that the man had warned him that he would be killed if he reported what he witnessed.

At a dead end after the visit to Field’s house, Dan goes to Sarah’s bar to distract himself. The old friends fall into an easy conversation, with Sarah revealing that she broke things off with Fleming because of his possessive, domineering nature. Sarah takes a break to sing a song, doubling as an entertainer. Dan is impressed by her vocals, but when Sarah asks Dan for a duet, he refuses. Dan has trouble opening himself up to criticism or showing his vulnerable side. Afterward, Dan walks Sarah to her mother’s house before heading back to John’s cabin, where he runs into a jealous Fleming. Fleming warns Dan against cozying up to Sarah.

The unpleasant encounter with Fleming fills Dan with a renewed sense of purpose. Inside John’s house, Dan racks his brain for clues that his father may have left him about the woman in the woods. He imagines his father’s voice in his head, asking him to figure things out. Dan sounds out the last words that John left him, “Notify my son” (28), in John’s voice. The intonation makes him feel that John stressed “notify.” Dan has an epiphany, turns on John’s computer, and types “notify” on the password screen. The screen unlocks, and Dan can see the tabs that John visited the last time he was on the computer. One tab leads to a website about the Pied Piper.

The narrative flashes back as Dan describes how the Pied Piper was finally discovered. One night in August 2001, Officer Andrew Sanderson is on his way back from work on a lonely country road when he sees a camper van stopped right in the middle of the road. Sanderson gets out of his car with his torchlight and examines the van. It’s dirty and rusted, and its windows obscured with black paper. An unpleasant smell emanates from the vehicle. Sanderson walks over to the driver’s side and sees a dead man with a burned, festering face, an expression of rage and hate on his features.

Sanderson calls for backup and opens the rear door of the camper. A hole has been dug in the floor of the van, and in the pit are the remains of a child, flies buzzing around them. The ensuing investigation reveals that the boy is 10-year-old Robbie Garforth. He was abducted a few weeks ago and is the same boy whose photo Dan found at the service station. DNA traces of three other missing boys are found in the camper van, leading the police to believe that they were also killed. However, their bodies are never located. Using witness accounts, including Dan’s, the police determine that the man in the camper van often whistled a peculiar tune. The man is dubbed the “Pied Piper” because of his characteristic whistling. The police hope that the boys’ parents find solace in knowing that the Pied Piper himself died in agony from an infection from his burn wounds. How he got the wounds remains a mystery.

Back in the present, Dan looks at the primitive website in front of him; it consists of a single page with a long chunk of text, including bits from news reports and several passages from The Man Made of Smoke, as well as occasional scans of photos and documents. One photo is the terrifying image of Robbie Garforth as Dan found him. The passages deal with the four victims, particularly Robbie, described as a chess prodigy who never got to realize his potential. Dan remembers that he spent years agonizing over Robbie’s fate, blaming himself for not saving him. He also recalls reading The Man Made of Smoke over and over again as a teenager, much to John’s dismay. Since John thought that Dan’s preoccupation with the book was unhealthy, Dan would hide the book whenever he heard John’s footsteps near his door.

Now, as Dan reads a bit about him discovering the photo of Robbie, the boy at the service station, a sense of unease fills him. The unease is because Dan knows that the boy he saw at the service station was different from Robbie, the boy in the photo. He had told the police as much in repeated rounds of questioning. Dan had helped the police sketch the boy in the oversized clothes, and the sketch was visibly different from Robbie’s photo. However, the police’s persistent questioning made Dan begin to question his memory, grow confused, and identify the boy in the photo as the same child he met. The truth is that the boy he saw at the station is a fifth, unidentified child.

Dan looks at the screen again and reads another passage, this one about the eyewitnesses at the service station. His body goes still when he comes across the name Darren Field, referring to a teenager working at the hotel next to the parking area of the service station. Dan realizes that this is the information his father meant for him to find.

The narrative switches back to John’s perspective. Two days after meeting Field, John has yet to report what happened to the younger man. As he mulls over the unfolding events, he has an epiphany about why Field seemed familiar to him when they met. John recalls his notes on the eyewitnesses at the service station. One of them mentioned an unnamed teenager whose two cigarette breaks coincided with the camper van’s arrival and departure. The description of the teen reminds him of how Field described himself smoking outside the pub the night he was abducted. John goes to his computer and turns it on. A search leads him to a webpage with passages from The Man Made of Smoke, listing the names of the eyewitnesses in the case. One name is Darren Field. The familiar butterflies begin humming in John’s chest again, telling him that he’s following the right hunch.

In the present, as Dan continues to scroll through the website, he reads about another witness, Rosemary Saunders, then 23, who recalled watching the man in the long coat pass through the arcade, muttering to himself. As far as Dan can recall, Rose was the only female eyewitness in the service station. A chill runs through Dan when he considers that Rose may have been the woman in the woods. As if confirming his hunch, on his father’s computer is a search tab with Rose’s address, directing him to a place in Rampton. Dan switches tabs and looks at the supposed photo of Robbie Garforth. He feels a shadowy presence around him, like he felt on the crag. Dan lets his subconscious give the figure a voice. The voice tells him that Dan is right; the presence does want to be seen—by Dan himself.

The man who abducted James takes him to a compound deep inside the woods. It has a run-down house at the end, with pens on the side that contain chickens and other emaciated animals. A generator runs constantly to supply electricity. At first, the man keeps James chained to a post in one of the pens. James expects to be killed each day. However, after a while, the man moves James indoors, keeping him locked in a pitch-dark room. Weeks pass in this room, with James losing track of time.

One day, the man opens the door and orders James to come outside. James obeys. His heart sinks when the Pied Piper hands him a shovel and asks him to dig. James thinks that the man is asking him to dig his own grave. James begins to dig, his head growing dizzy. Aching to go home to his mother, he pictures her in the light streaming between the trees. While James digs, the man keeps whistling his tune. Before James can look up, the man drags in a little boy. Relief floods James as he realizes that the grave he’s digging is for the boy, not himself. However, James feels shame at the relief. The vision of his mother disappears.