by Greg James
In the bathroom, a rust stain spread across the cracked shower tiles, like someone had died in there. She wiped the remains of the day from her face and stopped to stare at herself in the mirror. She wasn’t the same as she’d been a few years ago. She wasn’t thirty yet, but she felt like she looked older – and fatter. She turned around in front of the mirror, remembering when she’d been thinner. Those days were gone, thanks to the noodles and baked beans diet unemployment had forced on her.
She remembered going to see Frank before she’d agreed to take this job. She’d ordered a black coffee and a toasted bacon sarnie in the cafe where he worked. The greasy air reverberated with shouts in brusque Polish and Hungarian. She’d sat herself down at one of the old Formica tables, rubbed it clean with the sleeve of her army surplus coat, and waited for him. The coffee arrived steaming, and the bacon sarnie running with butter and hot fat. The smell of crispy, fried pork wove through her nostrils, making her stomach rumble.
Frank had sat himself across from her at the table. His name in Hungarian was Ferenc, but everyone called him Frank. It was easier. He was short, with bright, clear eyes and clean, brown hair. He must wash it night and morning, she thought, to keep it that clean in this place. He smiled and squinted his eyes at her. She knew that Frank had a bit of a thing for her, but he was a good friend as well.
“Hey there. How’re you doing?”
“I need your advice, Frank.”
Straight to the point, no messing around. Best way to do it.
“How can I be of service?” He spoke with a slight accent, and it made the formal words sound rounder and warmer than they were.
“I got a letter today. An offer.”
“Job offer? That’s good news.”
“It is, for anyone, but I’m worrying about taking them up on it. I’m being a right dickhead. You know I perform, right?”
“Ah yes, the horror stuff. Bride of Dracula. Lady Frankenstein. Those things.”
“Bride of Frankenstein and Lady Bathory, you muff,” Daria said, smirking.
“Well, you’re the expert and I’m not into these things. So, someone wants you to do the dancing for them?”
“I guess so.” She paused. “Yes, they do, and it’s a good bit of money. The fee, I mean.”
“How much?”
“Five hundred. I can pay the rent for another month off the back of it.”
“It sounds like a bloody good thing to me, then,” he said.
“So, you think I should do it?”
“You’re worried it is not legitimate?”
She shrugged. “They’ve already paid three hundred quid for the return ticket. They’ve given me a number to call to confirm, and the address in London. It’s in Soho, where a lot of the alternative scene and whatnot goes on. It’s a very good place to be seen.”
“Can you find out anything about this place on the internet?”
She ran her thumbnail along the line of her jaw. “Yeah, it looks okay.”
Frank let out a long sigh. “But still you worry it could be one of these sex-party things. Rich men wanting you to do bad things?”
“I dunno. It’s a lot of cash, and I haven’t performed since I lost my job at the university two years ago. I’m scared, Frank.” She stopped and gnawed at the inside of her mouth. “The landlord’s still being a cunt. He comes over and has the fucking cheek to tell me to clean the place up. There’s still mould everywhere, and he’s put the rent up another fifty quid. My savings are pretty much gone. If something good doesn’t happen, I’m proper fucked.”
Frank sighed, scratched at his head, and leaned forward. “I’ll tell you what, it is a lot of money. The kind of money you need. If it is okay, you don’t want to miss out, not in these times. You call me when you get there, so I know you’re okay. If I do not get a call from you, I know something is wrong, and I will call the police. What do you think?”
Daria smiled. “I think you’re a bloody lifesaver.”
“I hope not to be,” he said. “ I just want to be a good friend. Like I have said before, my friends are my family.”
“You’re a soppy muffhead,” Daria said.
Frank shrugged, smiling himself.
“Cheers,” she said. “I’ll be in touch.” She’d kissed him on the cheek and left the cafe, her coffee and bacon sarnie untouched.
Daria lay down on the bed in the Old Lock Hotel, the mattress cold and damp beneath her. She hadn’t called Frank yet, so she tried. The phone rang. He didn’t pick up.
A few hours earlier, while walking home down Smithdown Road, Frank had been shot in the back. The Royal Liverpool hospital couldn’t do a thing for him. He had died on the operating table. One minute, he’d been walking home carrying a box of fried chicken and soggy chips, and then, a minute later, it was over. Frank wasn’t in a gang. He had no connections. He wasn’t the first, and he wouldn’t be the last. Daria didn’t know any of that, and she never would. As peace settled itself over her tired mind, she drifted off to sleep – but in the small hours of the morning, she was awoken by a sound that made it clear she wasn’t alone in the room. Breathing accompanied the easing of recently-disturbed wooden boards.
“Hello?” Daria reached out to turn on the bedside lamp. “Who’s in here? Who’s there?”
The light didn’t come on. The lamp was broken. She waited to see what would happen next, not sure why.
“I can see you,” Daria said.
She couldn’t, to begin with. It took a while for her eyes to adjust, and then she saw a man sitting in the chair by the bed, illustrated in silhouette, as dark as the chair he was sitting in, almost seeming to be a part of it. She should do something, but she waited to see what he would do first. He was just sitting there. Hands that were less than shadows rested on the arms of the chair.
I’m watching him and he’s watching me, she thought. What’s he waiting for? What am I waiting for? What’re we going to do?
The rhythm of her breathing went on, a series of wordless whispers in the dark. A car hissed by outside, its headlights sluicing through the room and wiping away the shape of the man in the chair, as if it were dirt inscribed on glass. The headlights turned and faded away. The room darkened. The man grew distinct in the chair once more. Daria felt him in the room with her, even though she knew there was no-one there. She was awake in a dream. The room was empty, but for her. This shape she was seeing was not there. It was doing nothing because it couldn’t do a thing, even if it wanted to – it had no wants, no desires. It had only this moment, this shape, and a little black substance dredged from her subconscious.
Daria tried to go back to sleep, to believe in its nothingness. She closed her eyes, slowed her breathing, and tried to count her way down to oblivion. She rolled over, turning her back on the chair and the man who wasn’t there, wishing he would go away and not stay the night.
A sound that could’ve been footsteps was followed by a movement as someone peeled away the bedsheets. Shadows from dreams do not have hands, yet Daria felt a touch from someone who could not touch, a breath from a mouth without an ounce of breath. An odour of rot stung her nostrils, and her skin felt laved by a lukewarm tongue, stroked by fingers as dry and torn as autumn leaves.
She was alone in the room. This was not happening. There was no weight pressing down upon her, keeping her still, holding her in place as those fingers wandered. There was no sound of a man gently sobbing, as the thing that felt like a tongue continued to taste her. There was no feeling of a mouth and teeth worrying her bare flesh. This was not happening. No-one was there.
A broken voice breathed in her ear, “Leave me alone,” and then it was gone.
Daria awoke to fingers of morning light groping at her eyes, and she took a shower, scrubbing and scrubbing at every inch of her body until it felt raw.
Chapter Nine
John went to a spit-and-sawdust pub called Barrett’s on the Broadway to forget about what he’d seen, and what had been said, in the cemetery. It was a
Sunday evening, and uncrowded in the main bar. A few hunched bodies sat at tables, nursing pints, their backs to him. Music playing in the upstairs room was followed by muted rounds of applause. At the bar, he asked what was happening upstairs. The barman had a deeply lined face and plenty of white stubble on his layered chin. He looked at John with tired eyes and said, “Burlesque night. Girls dancing about on stage. You want to have a look?”
John shrugged.
“Five quid,” the barman said.
He paid the man and made his way upstairs, climbing narrow, uncarpeted steps that seemed determined to slip out from under his feet. A small stage at the far end of the upstairs room was fringed by a number of tables, set up in close formation, which John had to navigate through in the gloom.
There weren’t many people in. It was nothing like Madame Jo’s , and had a stench of urine and dried vomit he didn’t much care for. The song playing could’ve been any one of a dozen power ballads, judging by its saccharine harmonies and eccentric piano vamps. A sheen of luminous glitter was smeared across the stage and over a nearby table. He found an empty chair at that table and sat. The woman performing on stage did not interest him. She was undressing functionally: undoing her nurse’s uniform, peeling the stockings from her legs and feet, flashing an overly lipsticked smile every now and then, before finishing by twirling the tassles on her sequinned pasties at the miniscule audience. John applauded as functionally as the rest. This was not what he was here for.
The lights dimmed to a temporary black-out, and the sound of soft footsteps came from the stage. The lights went back up, and a funereal figure robed in a black cloak that touched the ground stood on stage, her head concealed by a mask fashioned in the lean shape of a vulture’s skull. It caught the light, as if it were real bone. A ruff of obsidian plumage encircled her throat, laced with carved charms and small animal bones. Dark hair flowed out from underneath the skull mask. It couldn’t be Daria, not after what she’d said to him in the cemetery.
The woman on stage raised a chalice, which she supped from as the music began. It was the same wordless, droning song he’d heard in Madame Jo’s . She swept the cloak from her shoulders in a well-practiced motion, revealing a feathered bodice and girdle laced over ribs of polished bone. She moved to the front of the stage slowly, with a lewd sway to her hips that should’ve brought shouts and applause from the people at the surrounding tables, but they remained studiously quiet. Still bearing the chalice in cupped hands, she stepped from the low stage to the nearest table, farthest away from John.
It couldn’t be her , could it? Real like skin – to be able to touch her, and feel her close to him again ... no, not this time.
He shifted in his chair, resisting the urge to get up and go to her.
The man at the far table, half in shadow, raised his face to her and opened his mouth. The woman arched a leg in the air and rested her toes against his waiting lips as she poured dark liquid from the chalice, which ran over her shin and thigh and into his mouth. John watched the baptised spectator take his time sucking the last dregs of the liquid from her toes, and felt an erection begin to stir.
He watched her pass from table to table, repeating the perverse baptism with men and women alike, waiting for his turn. But she never came to him.
Why deny him?
The chalice was emptied by those at the other tables, and the woman returned to the stage, where she redressed herself in the cloak and turned her back on the audience.
Did she know he was here?
Her fingers drew the folds of the cloak out until it was raised dramatically on either side of her figure. John waited for the cloak to fall away and the next stage of the act to commence. He wanted to rush up onto the stage and tear the cloak away, reveal what was hidden from his sight – Daria Lee.
He wanted to see and wanted to know why she would turn away from him like this, before all these people. It was becoming more than he could take. John stood up and opened his mouth to call out to her. Everyone in the audience turned as one to look at him. Their eyes said no. He should sit down and wait, or he should leave. This was sacred. This was ceremony.
They didn’t understand. He had to know.
The figure on stage, those fingers, the ebony fall of her hair, the porcelain heels of her feet barely showing under the cloak. He couldn’t leave. He’d lost her before and could not do so again. To turn and leave, descend the stairs, and go back out into the world as it was, he could not do it. There was only one thing he could do.
John moved through the tables, upsetting glasses, avoiding the restraining hands of the audience, and made for the stage. It was not a large room, but his footsteps sounded deep and loud as he hurried across its wooden boards. He was almost there, reaching out for the obstructing cloak with his hand. He tore it away. A voice cried out. The lights in the room did not die, but the young woman before him was not Daria Lee, and John’s hand was on her bare breast. She recoiled from him, tears starting in her eyes. John let her go, wiping his offending hand on himself. The black cloak fell limply from his grasp as he watched her long, black hair come away as well. She was a dishwater blonde underneath.
“Where is she? Why isn’t she here? Who are you? ” he asked, weakly.
Other voices chimed in from all around.
“What the hell’s up with you, mate?”
“Yeah, what’s wrong with your head?”
“Bloody pervert’s what’s wrong with him.”
“Wanker with some funny fucking ideas.”
“Well, you can stop your game now. We don’t want you in here. There’s the door. Go on, get out before we call someone.”
Comforting arms reached for the young woman, but only hard, unforgiving eyes and shoving hands came for him. John left the scene and the pub, descending the stairs, hurrying back out into the world, not savouring the taste of it on his tongue. He didn’t want them to call the police, no. And he’d nodded that he understood not to come back, he’d promised he would never try to drink in there again. This was not the kind of thing he usually did, and he was sorry for what’d happened. They didn’t believe him or care for his words. He didn’t believe himself either, as he spoke the necessary platitudes.
He wanted her and needed her.
There was no turning his back on the truth.
John returned home, put his fingers down his throat, and threw up into the bathroom sink.
Chapter Ten
A month passed and the grey-hued winter sun shone down on nothing new. Christmas came and went. Each day was another day in life to be lived, and that was all. John Greyerson awoke. He went to work. He came home, packed a bag, and went out to London’s derelict places where the living didn’t go, hoping for a glimpse of Daria Lee. He finally understood how much he needed her. The most he tended to see was the occasional smear of alluring light – trace elements suspended in the reeking damp atmosphere. His search brought him to the London Temperance Hospital on Hampstead Road. It had been closed for twenty-odd years, but looked like it had been closed much longer than that. The white exterior had the texture of rotten teeth, and boards and scraps of tarpaulin were fastened over the windows. It was a contained space, well out of sight – the perfect place for the dead to hide.
She must be in there. John decided he had to go inside.
One evening, dressed in old overalls bought from a charity shop, he made his way to the small park behind the hospital site. A wire fence decorated with warning signs cordoned off the perimeter. John struggled over it, breathing hard, wishing he exercised more. After catching his breath and wiping his brow, he looked up at the edifice of the hospital and saw a light flicker on in one of the windows on the first floor.
It cast a faulty beige square of illumination that hummed and flickered on the rubbish-strewn ground to his left. John strode towards it, thinking it might give him a better position to look into the lit room, but at the edge of the square he stopped. Something about the rhythm of the dingy lighting concern
ed him: the lack of steadiness in it. It should have stopped flickering. Also, it shouldn’t have been on at all. John looked up at the window and saw a head framed by the erratic light. It turned away from him: a head with long, dark hair, or smothered by a long, dark covering, or it might not have been a head at all. It didn’t matter. The light went out soundlessly.
John found a rear door that was unlocked. Someone had ripped the boards away from it, leaving holes in the wood that looked like wounds. He entered the hospital and began to ascend the stairs. He took things slow, hoping to make a quiet climb up to the first floor. There could be people in here – tramps, squatters, and travellers. He wasn’t sure they’d take kindly to his presence.
The first floor landing was an open area with a number of wired-glass windows feeding onto it. No light filtered through them as he crossed the open area and turned around the corner into a hallway of decayed hospital rooms; all but one were vacant. The one occupied room showed signs of someone having slept, pissed, and eaten there. The room smelled of the living. Everything else smelled of the dead.
John listened but heard no signs of anyone else in the building as he went on, making a circle around the first floor until he came to the room he’d seen into from the ground. It was empty, dirty, and stripped bare; its light fitting dangled from the ceiling, long-dead and useless. A faint, antiseptic odour tainted the air, although no-one had cleaned in here for years.
John left the room and continued along the hallway until it became a bridge across to the next part of the hospital. He carefully made his way over it, feeling the give of old flooring beneath his weight as he took step after step to reach the double doors ahead. They looked to have been locked and boarded up at one time. They weren’t now. He pushed them open and went through, still hoping he was alone.