by Stephen Laws
“What in God’s name made those noises?” blurted Edgar, looking around, as if expecting to see some scene of carnage.
“You heard them as well?” asked Pearce. “Up there?”
“Bloody horrible. All around us. Sounded like a bloody slaughter. What’s going on, Cardiff?”
Cardiff turned to Pearce as the elevator doors slid shut again, pausing only briefly to see that Rohmer was standing almost nonchalantly with his back to the corridor wall and with that infuriating half-smile on his face again. He struggled to contain his burgeoning resentment. “Alright, Pearce. I want everyone out of here before there’s a panic. Get the computer people to clear out as quickly as possible. Edgar, I don’t know how far your people got upstairs . . .”
“Nothing. Just minor bloodstains on the carpet where you found the hand. That was it.”
“Okay. Then you don’t need a second telling. I want you all out.”
Rohmer pushed himself away from the corridor wall, smiling.
“Very sensible, Cardiff. You second-guessed me.”
“Don’t patronise me,” said Cardiff tightly. “I still want some answers.”
“Maybe you will get them after all.”
Cardiff turned back to Pearce. “I want the whole building cleared. These people are taking over. But I want the roadblock maintained . . .” Cardiff turned and looked squarely at Rohmer, “. . . and I’m staying.”
Pearce gestured to Simpson, still trying his best to restrain Jimmy Devlin. “Come on, you heard him.” Simpson started forward, pulling Jimmy by the sleeve.
“He’s staying,” said Rohmer calmly.
Cardiff turned back. “What?”
“Jimmy Devlin. Twenty-three years old. Petty thief. Robbed Hanson’s jewellers in 1988.”
“Always wanted to be a celebrity,” said Jimmy. And then to Cardiff: “And who the hell is blondie, anyway?”
“Maybe you do know more than I’m giving you credit for, Cardiff,” said Rohmer. “He stays.”
“Like hell I do,” said Jimmy, pulling away from Simpson’s grasp.
“He’s assisting with enquiries,” said Cardiff. “He’s not under arrest.”
“So he can stay and assist me with my enquiries.”
“Get fucked,” said Jimmy.
“In that case, Mr Devlin,” said Rohmer, “you’re under arrest.”
“On what charge?” asked Cardiff.
“Bad language in a built-up area.”
Cardiff looked long and hard at Rohmer as Duvall drew level, reinforcing his authority.
“Okay, Simpson,” said Cardiff. “You join the others. Looks like you and I are staying, Jimmy.”
Duvall moved to take charge of Jimmy while Simpson slipped resentfully away, dabbing at his nose. Jimmy slouched back against the wall, and Cardiff was surprised to see a look of real concern on Rohmer’s face as he moved forward and pulled Jimmy away from it. The concern melted into humour again, when Rohmer saw that Cardiff was watching.
“Bad posture,” said the blond man. “Not good for the health.”
“When the building’s cleared,” said Cardiff, “we talk.”
Rohmer smiled . . . and nodded.
FOUR
Cardiff watched as the three policemen on the cordon-barrier lifted the wooden pole and the last of the police cars slid past and vanished into the storm. No matter how much he wiped at the condensation on the window, he could still barely see what was going on out there. The storm was reaching a savage pitch. The snow was driving down now but even through that whirling vortex of frozen city detritus, none of it seemed to be making any impression on those glistening black pavements or the tarmac. Cardiff couldn’t help but remember Beaton’s words: Nothing white ever sticks here. Visibility was severely restricted and the policemen still on duty at that cordon were dim blurs, as indeed was Pearce, who was out there now, supervising the departure of what had become, in essence, a rather ineffective investigation team.
Thunder rattled the windowpane through which Cardiff was looking and the strobe lights fizzled and flickered yet again.
The effect unsettled him, and he found the fact that he could still be unsettled somehow curious. He recalled the incident in the boiler room when both Pearce and he had-been assailed by the same noises that Beaton had heard. A lightning strike? Well, yes . . . it must have been. That was the obvious answer. But why did he feel that there was something more, and why wasn’t he acting on that instinct, the way that he’d always acted? Why did he want to hold his peace? Why had he kept Pearce quiet about their experience? And what the hell had happened when he’d first met Rohmer?
Is it you?
The depth of semi-recognition, even though they’d never met, was puzzling and disturbing. The potency of that question and those three words had affected Cardiff profoundly.
Is it you?
What the hell did it mean? And had Rohmer really felt the same thing?
“Maybe not,” Cardiff said to himself. “Maybe it’s all part of the process of cracking up.”
Cardiff had supervised the clearance of the office block, noting wryly that it seemed easier to clear everyone out than it had been to get his original team established.
The noises . . . the screaming. had unnerved everyone.
Pearce had given the necessary instructions to a depressed, disillusioned and just plain pissed-off police cordon outside that the “block” had to be maintained. Two men would remain “on shift”, to be relieved by two others when all of the team had returned through this furious storm to Central Headquarters. The two men already there had been on duty now for two hours. Even their police greatcoats had been insufficient to keep out the chill and the wet of this storm. The waiting outside in the wind and the snow had been too much for a majority of the newsmen who had shown up originally. As the storm had increased in strength, so it seemed that the enthusiasm of the pressmen on the ‘public’s right to know’, coupled with the fact that the pubs were still open in town, had. served to weaken their resolve somewhat. Only a smattering of perversely conscientious newsmen and women remained outside the cordon . . . and their resolve seemed to have paid off when the police began to leave the building, climbing hurriedly into their cars and vans.
The policemen on the cordon had lifted the barrier-pole to let the small convoy of police cars and vans past, ignoring with more than a little impatience the fusillade of questions thrown at them by the remaining newspeople.
“Why are they leaving?”
“Who are the new people? Have they found out What’s happened to everyone inside yet?”
“There still seem to be others inside. Can. you tell us what’s . . .?”
Anxious to get news of this latest development back to their own offices and realising that there was unlikely to be any more to be gleaned from this unpleasant vigil, the remaining newspeople departed as the small convoy of police traffic vanished into the maw of the blizzard.
They were to be the last to escape from the Teeth of the Storm.
Cardiff turned away from the rain-streaked window as the policemen on cordon-duty lifted the wooden pole and the last of the cars slid away into the night.
His attention was drawn away from the rain-streaked windows by the sound of Gilbert’s voice, again nervously asking questions of Rohmer.
“Are you sure, Rohmer? You must be sure that it’s over . . . ?”
Cardiff turned back and when Gilbert saw that he was watching, he became instantly silent. He returned to assist Frye, who was standing now with a frown of concentration on his face. Cardiff could see that he had attached a microphone of some kind to the metal container which still rested on the chair and which had been giving the so-called mysterious “readings”. Now, he was holding that microphone up to the nearest wall and scanning it, adjusting his headphones. Cardiff watched him scan the wall, and then hold it up to the ceiling. Instantly, the metal container began to emit a clicking sound.
A Geiger counter? Is that what he�
�s doing . . . registering radioactivity?
Rohmer seemed to be reading his mind. He had been watching Cardiff, and now that infuriating secret smile registered again. He shook his head. .
“No, Cardiff. Not a Geiger counter . . .”
“Look,” said Jimmy. “How long do you intend to keep me here?”
Since Simpson had left the building with the others, Duvall seemed to have acquired the position of Jimmy Devlin’s personal guard. While Jimmy stood at the reception desk counter, both arms spread out on it backwards in the same pose that he had adopted at the bar counter earlier that evening, Duvall simply stood two feet by his side, watching him. For all the world, he reminded Cardiff of some kind of Gestapo officer. Well dressed, well groomed with that clipped, perfect accent . . . but enough about him to make anyone realise that Duvall, whoever in hell’s interest he represented or whatever in hell he was doing here, was a dangerous man. Jimmy seemed aware of that too, and kept a wary eye on him while he addressed Cardiff.
Rohmer turned his attention back to Jimmy as Gilbert and Frye continued taking their mysterious readings. Cardiff noticed that they had turned the microphone towards the floor now, but the clicking from the metal container had stopped.
“Those screams,” said Rohmer. “You’ve heard something like that before. Haven’t you, Jimmy?”
Jimmy had been shaken by those sounds, more shaken than the others, for good reason, but Cardiff could see that he was unprepared to show it as he pushed himself away from the reception counter. Cardiff remained silent. It seemed that Cardiff ‘s curious patchwork quilt of instinct and gut feeling was about to be sewn together by Rohmer.
“Yeah,” said Jimmy. “I’ve heard something like it before. Same kind of . . . echo. Same kind of bloody pain—like people being torn apart. Except that time it was . . . my friends.”
“MacAndrews and Flannery,” said Cardiff simply.
“Yeah. Like I’ve been trying to tell everyone from the beginning.”
“You heard those noises on the night you were robbing the jeweller’s,” continued Rohmer. “On the night your friends . . .”
“Look,” said Cardiff impatiently. Rohmer was spreading this game out too long. “Where are they, Rohmer? There were eighty-four people in here two hours ago. Apart from Saville and Mrs Parkins, who turn up bloody miles and miles away . . . the others have just vanished. So where the hell have they gone?”
“So you do know about those two? I thought that information had been suppressed.”
“Suppressed? Suppressed? Just what the hell are you talking about?”
The reception doors banged open again. Cardiff started, turning in alarm to see that it was Pearce, now pushing into the comparative warmth of the reception area from outside. He was soaked. Angry at the interruption, Cardiff turned back to Rohmer.
“Answers, Rohmer. Answers! Where the hell have they all gone?”
“You know, don’t you, Jimmy? You’ve told them all what happened to your friends in the jeweller’s. You’ve told Mr Cardiff and Mr Pearce before. Tell them again.”
“Bit of a bastard, aren’t you, blondie?” said Jimmy and Duvall moved forward threateningly. Without moving or even looking at his new escort, Jimmy said: “If he wants to start a fight in here, I’m ready to oblige.”
“Tell us again, Jimmy,” said Rohmer in a gentle voice.
“Want the truth? Well, I’ll tell you.”
Duvall settled back against the reception counter as Pearce continued to shake water from his greatcoat, but the others were silent. Even Frye and Gilbert had stopped their “scanning” to listen. Somewhere in the sky, thunder groaned. Jimmy looked up at the ceiling when he heard it.
“There was a storm on that night. Just like this one. I was working on the safe. The others were leaning against the wall, just waiting for me to finish. Then there was a sound, like an explosion. The whole building seemed to shake. It must have been a lightning strike. They were leaning against the wall when it started to happen . . .”
Thunder crashed again. Black and white sizzled at the windows. It sounded now as if the storm must be directly overhead.
“They began to scream,” continued Jimmy. “As if something was . . . killing them. I was frozen there, I couldn’t move—just watching them. They were . . . sort of . . . writhing around . . . struggling . . . trying to push themselves away from the wall.
“But they were stuck there. They were stuck to the wall—like flies on a flypaper.”
Cardiff could see the sweat on Jimmy’s brow. “Mac started to scream at me, yelling ‘Help me, Jimmy! I’m stuck!’ But I couldn’t move. I could only watch as the lightning lit up the windows and they struggled to get off that wall.”
“Bollocks,” said Pearce at last.
Jimmy glowered at him in hate. “The wall swallowed them up. I saw it happen, and I couldn’t do a thing to help them. It just sucked them in as if that wall was made of . . . mud or something. They thrashed around, kicked and screamed and begged me to help . . . but I couldn’t move. Flannery was the first to go completely. His face was stuck to the wall. When it sucked in his head he couldn’t scream anymore. It took him quickly. But Mac was fighting harder. His arms had sunk in and he was twisting around, thrashing his head to keep it away from the wall—but it still sucked him in.”
“Just like the tar baby, eh?” said Pearce.
“Shut up,” said Cardiff, and Rohmer was smiling again when he saw Cardiff’s grim expression. “Go on, Jimmy. Then what happened?” At last, Jimmy was telling the story that had first prompted Cardiff to seek him out and bring him here. Pearce’s words when the six policemen had vanished had reminded him about Jimmy Devlin and his bizarre story of what had happened two years ago.
They’ve just vanished into the woodwork, Pearce had said.
“I ran,” continued Jimmy. “I just broke and ran—with Mac screaming for help. I burst out through that jeweller’s door and back into the shopping mall. Behind me, I could hear Mac’s screaming turn . . . muffled . . . must have been when . . . when his face was sucked into the wall. Then it sort of . . . gargled away . . . and I kept on running.”
“But it started again, didn’t it?” said Rohmer.
Jimmy eyed Rohmer carefully. “Know all about me, don’t you?”
“Everything.”
“Yes, it started again while I was running to get out of that place. Mac and Flannery, screaming my name, screaming for help. They were in agony—and the sounds . . . kind of . . . echoed.”
“And where were the screams coming from, Jimmy?”
Jimmy paused, swallowing hard.
“From the walls, from the floors . . . from the bloody ceiling. Like the noises we’ve just heard.” Jimmy stood back again. “That’s it. That’s all there is.” .
“Bloody stupid,” said Pearce.
“No, it’s not,” said Cardiff quietly. “That’s why I wanted Devlin here. God knows why I should have thought of his crazy story again. Maybe something about the way he told it, as if he believed it . . . maybe the disappearances . . . or the storm . . .”
“Or maybe you’re just a better policeman than you think you are,” said Rohmer. “A man of instinct, eh, Cardiff? And here’s me thinking you knew more than you do.”
The Nightmare had taken further shape. His gut instinct about Jimmy had been right—even if none of this made any real sense yet.
“You see, Cardiff?” said Rohmer, apparently pleased with himself. He ran a hand through his blond hair, turning to look at Gilbert and Frye. “You see? It’s the same.”
“Am I missing something?” asked Pearce.
“The people in this office block,” continued Rohmer. “All eighty-four of them. They never really disappeared, because they’re still here.” Rohmer spread his arms wide, turning to encompass the entire reception area with a kind of mad glee. “In the walls, the ceiling, the floor. They’ve been absorbed . . . and we heard their screams—because they’re still here!”
&n
bsp; Gilbert now seemed even more agitated than before. Plucking at his gloves again, he said: “What are you doing, Rohmer? This is all classified information and I know that these people haven’t clearance.”
“Gilbert, Gilbert . . .” said Rohmer, as if pacifying some nervous child. “You worry too much.”
“But I don’t understand why . . .”
“Trust me, trust me.”
“Explanations?” said Cardiff tightly.
Rohmer looked over and smiled his infuriating smile again.
“Very well.”
FIVE
“Fernley House is not an isolated incident,” said Rohmer.
He was sitting on the edge of the desk used to interrogate Jimmy Devlin earlier, having retired to that room for explanations. Duvall, Gilbert and Frye had remained in the reception area on Rohmer’s instructions. Cardiff, Jimmy and Pearce sat on uncomfortable plastic chairs while Rohmer talked. “There have been disappearances like this before.”
“I knew it,” said Jimmy quietly. “I knew I wasn’t going out of my head.”
“Just recently,” continued Rohmer. “A similar thing has happened at a school in Norfolk and a factory in Leeds. But this has a history stretching as far back . . . well, to tell you the truth—to when records began. There’s been an acceleration of incidents in the last five years. But prior to that . . . all the famous disappearances you’ve read about in the Sunday tabloids are all part of the same phenomenon. The Marie Celeste in 1852, when an entire ship’s crew vanished. The disappearance of Flight 19 just off Bermuda . . .”
“Come on,” said Jimmy in disdain. “You’re not saying this is Bermuda triangle stuff.”
“It happens there, yes. Frequently. But the phenomenon is not restricted to that area. It’s been happening all over the world for quite some time.”
“Who are you, Rohmer?” asked Cardiff.
“The Ministry of Defence and Central Government established a team ten years ago when the disappearances became too frequent and too alarming to be ignored. That team is split into three Divisions and I’m in charge of one of them. Gilbert and Frye are scientists involved in analysis. The rest of the team are on their way . . .”