by Stephen Laws
“No, not falling apart,” said Rohmer, raising his voice over the groaning, cracking, straining noise as it now became so loud that surely it must burst apart like a bomb, killing them all in the process.
“Get back . . .” behind the reception desk, Cardiff started to say, to get some kind of cover before the thing blew apart. But then the noise became so unbearable, he was forced, along with the others, to clap his hands over his ears. The agony of that sound in his head was the same as he and Pearce had experienced in the basement. Jimmy had dropped to his knees and was hugging his head, when the noise suddenly snapped out of existence.
Reeling, Cardiff saw Rohmer standing stock still, hands fastened to his ears in an almost business-like fashion, still staring straight ahead at the wall. Duvall was leaning against one wall, bent double and gagging for breath. Now realising that his gloved hand was touching a wall, he snatched it quickly away in alarm. Gilbert had joined Jimmy on his knees, clutching at his head and shaking it madly, even though the noise had ceased.
But Cardiff ‘s attention was drawn back to the wall. The crawling light and shadow had gone. There was no incredible bulging at the centre; no cracks, no jagged patches where plaster might have fallen under the strain. The wall was as it had always been . . . but at the centre was a black smear, like the blackened smear that might be left by some kind of fire; as if a blowlamp had been held there. The stain was perhaps three feet in ragged circumference and Rohmer took a step towards it as the others began to recover. .
“Re . . .” began Gilbert, and his voice dried. He swallowed hard. Cardiff could see that Rohmer was looking back at Gilbert, almost hopefully. “It’s a . . . Returner.”
And then something was coughed out of that blackened spot with a sound like liquid choking; coughed out from a hole where there was no hole, with such force that the jumbled shape landed with a slap on the corridor floor, five feet from the wall.
“Jesus Christ . . .” said Jimmy.
And then lightning flashed outside again, and now they could all see what it was that had been ejected, impossibly, from that plaster wall and into the corridor.
It was a girl.
She was about seventeen years old, with long dark hair in disarray around her face. She was wearing a white blouse with frills at the cuffs, and a plain black miniskirt. A jade-green pendant on a chain was hanging around her neck. She was obviously in distress, raising herself on all fours, snatching the hair from her face as she looked back in terror at the plaster wall from which she had just come. She began to crawl hastily away from that wall, head turned back over her shoulder to look at it, apparently unaware of their presence. The blackened spot in the centre of the wall had vanished.
“Stay where you are!”
The girl cried out in alarm at the sound of Rohmer’s shout, swinging back to see them at last. Her hands flew to her face and she stopped, huddled in the centre of the corridor. She began to weep, burying her face in her hands.
“Please . . .” she sobbed. “Please help me.”
Rohmer stepped forward purposefully, reaching inside his coat again as he did so.
“Please . . . please . . .”
“Sometimes they come back,” said Rohmer, and now he had drawn the automatic and raised it. The girl could see what he was doing, but lowered her head again, sobbing.
“It’s just a girl!” shouted Cardiff. “You can’t!”
“Stay out of it, Cardiff. You saw that thing outside. You saw what happened to Pearce.”
“It’s a Returner,” mumbled Gilbert. “My God, it’s . . .”
The girl’s distress was doing something to Cardiff. It was making him feel emotions that he didn’t want to have again. The sound of that distraught weeping brought that June afternoon back to him in a stabbing flash of inner pain. In that split-second, he saw the car speeding towards him, heard Lisa’s scream, saw Jamie leaving his arms in slow motion. That weeping was his weeping; the grief that had overwhelmed him for so long. The horrors of the night had somehow resulted in this bizarre inner focusing.
“She’s just a girl!” he shouted again.
And saw Rohmer levelling the automatic directly at the girl’s head.
Cardiff was not going to allow it. Rohmer was not going to turn a gun on him again, and he was not going to allow this to happen. He lunged forwards, hit Rohmer hard with his shoulder in a rugby charge and grabbed his gun arm. Rohmer was surprisingly strong, but the impetus of Cardiff’s lunge spun him away from the girl. They collided with the corridor wall, Cardiff still hanging on to Rohmer’s wrist. The girl cried out, shrinking away from their struggling figures. Rohmer tried to hit Cardiff in the face with his other free fist, but Cardiff was expecting it. He kept his head down so that the knuckles grazed over his head. He slammed Rohmer back against the wall again hard, and felt the breath go out of him. “
“Cardiff !”
He looked back from their struggle to see that Duvall had stepped forward. He had drawn his own weapon, and the automatic was levelled at him. They stopped struggling.
“Let him go and stand back.”
“You can’t do this!” snapped Cardiff, feeling Rohmer trying to break his grip now with a hand that felt like a vice. “You can’t!” Cardiff heard Duvall chamber the gun with a ratcheting click! “So you’re going to shoot me if I don’t let go, right? Where’s the fair play in that, then, Duvall? Learn this trick at Eton?”
“Harrow, actually,” said Duvall grimly.
“Duvall . . . ?” said Jimmy in a quiet voice, sidling up to the man in a curious, almost apologetic way. His head still down, fingers tracing on his brow as if still in pain from the noise they had just heard. Duvall turned to look at him. “I think it’s best . . .”
And then Jimmy straightened, stepped quickly forward and grabbed Duvall’s arm . . . headbutting him with a loud smack! Duvall’s hands flew to his face as he collapsed to the tiled floor with a thick grunt. Jimmy had the gun in his hands now, and levelled it with a cool and grim purpose at Rohmer.
Cardiff clung to Rohmer’s gun hand. “Alright,” said Jimmy. “Drop the gun on the floor, Rohmer.”
“Put the bloody thing down, Devlin,” hissed Rohmer. “You don’t know how to use it.”
Jimmy adjusted the gun so that he was holding it with both hands.
“It’s easy. Seen it done on the telly lots of times. Now throw it down.”
They were all in a frozen tableau. Jimmy with the gun on Rohmer, as Cardiff held him against the corridor wall. Gilbert somewhere behind, keeping out of the way, trembling with fear. Duvall, semi-conscious and moaning on the floor. And the girl, this distraught seventeen-year-old girl from nowhere, still sobbing and watching this insane drama playing out before her eyes. And outside, the omnipresent hissing of the rain; like the very breath of the watchful storm.
“Better drop it,” said Cardiff at last as thunder boomed in the sky and the reception glass lit up again with the flash. “That could be another Darkfall strike, couldn’t it? Sure that there aren’t any tears in your coat, Rohmer? Sure you don’t have any flesh contact with this wall?”
Hissing angrily through clenched teeth, Rohmer’s fingers opened. Cardiff quickly took the gun and stood away from him, towards Jimmy. Rohmer staggered away from the wall, eyes blazing with fury, hand massaging his wrist.
“Nice trick, Jimmy,” said Cardiff as he drew level with him. “You learn that one at Eton?”
“Local pub, actually,” replied Jimmy. “After closing time.”
EIGHT
Outside, in the rain, it turned what had once been its head up to look at the storm. Rain swilled and foamed in its open mouth as it looked at the churning black clouds and the eruptions of fractured lightning. It knew somehow that it belonged there, not here, and when thunder boomed in the sky it heard that thunder in its newly transmogrified body. It felt the thunder although its hearing faculties had been destroyed by the absorption process. It cried out in response; a bellowing gargle of pain
and hate and recognition. Rainwater and petrol gushed from the corners of its mouth. The wind whipped the rags of burned and sundered clothes on its greatly enlarged body.
It turned from the storm and from those inside the office block; its need focusing on the ruined corpse that lay on the pavement next to it. The body was lying face up in the rain.
At first only crudely aware of what its new body needed to survive, it had taken the man crudely. Now it knew what its transmogrified form could do; knew instinctively how its own powers of absorption and reconstitution could be used to feed that terrible need.
It scooped the corpse from its crimson res-ting place on the pavement. A tide of rainwashed blood swept into the gutter. With rain hissing all around it, flowing on its ravaged and transmogrified new flesh of steel and wire and windscreen and rubber, the thing embraced Pearce’s bloody corpse; crushing the flesh tightly to its chest; feeling its own new flesh swarming around him, absorbing him, taking him into itself. . . and growing even larger.
Even when Pearce’s innards had been completely absorbed and digested, the thing’s need was still strong. It strode through the black rain to the car wreck in the forecourt, sensing the presence of more food. Stooping to fasten an encrusted claw under the bottom of the car beside the ruined driver’s door, it straightened again and heaved with incredible strength. The car rolled over on to its back with a grinding crash, exposing beneath it the bloodied meat of the two policemen who had been supervising the cordon.
It fed.
NINE
Duvall groaned and sat up, holding his forehead. There was no blood since there had been no cut. But his forehead was already swelling blue-white where Jimmy had butted him.
Rohmer took a step towards them, still massaging his hand and then looked back at the girl. Her sobbing had stopped. Hands still held to her mouth, tears glinted in her frightened eyes. “Look, Cardiff,” said Rohmer, turning back to them. “Devlin . . . you don’t know what you’re doing. She may look normal. But none of those who come back are ever really human again. That thing outside . . . that was human once, and look at it.”
“Shut up, Rohmer,” said Cardiff. “And get over there beside Duvall.”
Rohmer moved past them and stood beside his henchman. Cardiff walked over to the girl. Still keeping an eye on the two men, he glanced down at the girl.
“Was he . . .” she said in a trembling voice. “I mean . . . was that man going to shoot me?” She seemed on the verge of weeping again, but regained control.
“What’s your name?” asked Cardiff.
“Barbara . . .” said the girl. “My name’s Barbara Harrison. Can you tell me . . . where I am? And who are you people?”
“Can’t you remember anything? You were here . . . in this office block. It’s Christmas Eve. You must have been at a party.”
“A party . . . ? What are you talking about? I wasn’t at any party. Who are you? What’s happening to me?” She began to weep again, struggling to rise. Jimmy was beside her now, and took her arm, helping her to stand.
“Don’t . . .” hissed Gilbert. “Don’t touch . . .”
“Why don’t you shut up?” replied Jimmy. “There’s nothing wrong with her.” She was shorter than Jimmy by a foot; perhaps five foot three, and her long dark hair was cut to fall around her face in an old-fashioned sixties manner. There was plaster dust on her miniskirt and bruises on her legs; apart from that, her dizziness and obvious distress, she looked to be physically all right. Jimmy looked back at the plaster wall incredulously.
“Now listen, Barbara. We need to know what happened to you . . .”
“Ever the policeman, Cardiff,” said Rohmer as he helped Duvall to his feet. “Won’t you believe anything I tell you?”
“We need to know what happened to you,” continued Cardiff.
“You were at an office Christmas party, here in this office block: Fernley House. A storm came. And everyone . . .”
“Why do you keep saying that?” said the girl, leaning against Jimmy now. “I told you, I wasn’t at a party. Oh, my head hurts so much . . .”
“You weren’t at a party? Then tell me, come on . . . what can you remember?”
“We . . . we were driving.”
“Driving?”
“John, my brother . . . he’d just got his new car. And he took me out in it for a test drive. Yes, that’s it. We were driving . . . driving, and . . .”
“You mean you weren’t here in the office block?”
“I told you! We were out driving! The weather began to turn bad, and we drove . . . drove straight into this storm, or something. And John turned to say something to me, something was happening . . . oh God, something was happening and John shouted to me, told me to cover my head or something because the road was full of light and a roaring thunder and lightning. I couldn’t see. The windscreen was full of horrible light, and I knew we must be crashing because I could see the wheel spinning in John’s hand . . .” The girl staggered against Jimmy’s side, near to collapse.
“Come on Cardiff! Let’s just get everyone safe, and then you can go out there and do your Lone Ranger impression if you still want to. I won’t stop you.”
“Alright . . . but uncock that bloody gun before you hurt somebody.”
Jimmy carefully lowered it, just as the girl fainted. He swept her up. Cardiff gingerly touched the basement door handle with his gloved hands, still watching the others. When nothing seemed to be happening, he yanked it open.
“Alright, Jimmy. But be careful. We may be protected . . . but she isn’t. Watch her hands, face and legs when you pass through there.”‘
Jimmy carefully stepped into the threshold while Cardiff kept the door jammed open with his foot, reaching in to try the lights again. They were still dead.
“Christ, Cardiff. I can’t see a bloody thing.”
“Gilbert, come here.”
The scientist shuffled uneasily, looking back and forth from Cardiff to Rohmer.
“Come here, damn it!”
Gilbert shuffled to him.
“There’s a wooden plinth screwed into the wall, just on the inside of this door by the light switch. There are torches hanging on it. Go ahead of Devlin and the girl, take one of the torches and lead the way down the stairs into the basement. We’ll be safe there, remember? Just like you said.”
“Yes, yes,” said Gilbert eagerly, stepping gingerly into the darkened doorway while Rohmer and Duvall watched, and Cardiff carefully watched them.
“Now what?” said Rohmer as Gilbert fumbled at the plinth and found a torch. Spirals of light danced on the walls of the basement as he started down. Jimmy followed and was gone.
“Now we all go down there and wait out the storm?”
“You must be joking,” said Duvall. Even in the darkness, Cardiff could see the swelling on his forehead. “Go down there? With that thing?”
“Just a girl.”
“You’re a bloody fool,” replied Duvall. “Some of them look normal enough, Cardiff. But we’ve seen these things up close. They can change. I’ve seen a grown man torn to pieces.”
“Come on, let’s go.”
“So you’re not leaving to warn the others?” said Rohmer. “You’re not going to play the policeman after all?”
“So that you can overpower Jimmy, or talk him into giving you a gun back? No, I don’t think so.”
“That’s not a girl!” snapped Rohmer. “lt’s a monster.”
“I’ll make a deal. I’ll stay with you and hold on to the guns. If she sprouts a second head or grows fangs—I’ll shoot her. Okay?”
“You’re going to be sorry for this,” said Rohmer in a quiet, tight voice. Lightning flashed in the reception windows behind them, and it seemed to be a reflection of his own brimming anger.
“Humour me,” said Cardiff, waving the gun at them.
When Rohmer and Duvall had stepped down on to the top of the basement landing, Cardiff followed them, carefully letting the door close behind h
im. Down below, he could see the single torch beam which illuminated Devlin, the girl and Gilbert. Jimmy had laid the girl down on the rough floor. Cardiff took another torch from the wooden plinth as they descended the stairs into the basement, shoving it into his jacket pocket; taking another and switching it on as they descended. In the darkness, he could barely make out the wooden boards that had been nailed into place over the shattered window vents at street level, but even down here they could hear the hissing of rain on the pavements outside and the grumbling of thunder in the sky.
“Gilbert,” said Cardiff as they reached the ground level. “Get that machine of yours, or whatever it is, working now. I don’t want to have to go through those hellish noises for a third time.”
“But I can’t see . . .”
Cardiff kept his distance from them, so that the torch beam had a wider angle to illuminate the scene. He took the second torch out of his jacket pocket and tossed it to Jimmy.
“Stick this against the wall over there and turn it on. That’ll give us more light to see by. When you’ve done that, go get all the other torches up there, bring them back and do the same.”
Jimmy skipped away up the stairs towards the plinth, just as the girl began to sit up, with Duvall and Rohmer keeping as far away from her as possible. Rohmer’s face betrayed no further anger, but Duvall, with his swelling bruise, looked about ready to deal out some serious damage if Cardiff was to drop his guard. The girl sat up again, and began taking in deep breaths. She looked around the basement, and seemed to recognise Cardiff.
“Oh God, it wasn’t a dream, was it? I’m still . . . still . . .”
“Alright, Barbara. Take it easy,” said Cardiff. “You’re safe. We’re all safe here, and no one is going to hurt you . . . least of all these gentlemen in the corner.”
“Where are we?”
“We’re still in the office block. In the basement. It’s safe here.”
Jimmy returned with arms full of torches, switching each on and positioning them in the brackets of the huge copper boilers, or on the floor so that surreal fans of light were cast against the dirty plaster walls.