by Alex Smith
He ran his finger down the other row of numbers, pressing them all. After a couple of seconds he heard the door buzz, the lock disengaging, and he pushed through. There was a small lobby, mailboxes on one side and a sofa on the other. Straight ahead were the stairs and the lifts. He went for the former, pushing through a fire door and running up them. The knife bounced in his pocket, a comforting weight.
He was panting hard by the time he got to the seventh floor. He stopped for a moment, pacing, pain radiating outward from his lungs. Behind the wall, he could hear the muffled clunk of the lift as it descended, but other than that the building was mausoleum still.
Taking another ragged breath, he eased open the fire door and stepped into the corridor. It was deserted. To the right were the doors for 701 and 702 so Blake headed left, into the guts of the building. There was a T-junction ahead and he took the right-hand turn from memory, heading past two more doors towards the dead-end ahead. Adam’s was the last door on the left.
It was open.
Blake put a hand on the cool plaster of the wall, rooting himself there. Something was wrong with the air here, like a binbag had been left too long. His nose was telling him what he already knew.
They were here.
He looked back, wondering if he should call out and cause a stir. There must be people behind these doors, they’d come running if he needed them, right? But something in the dead silence of the building made it impossible for him to draw breath, made it impossible for him to utter a single sound.
He took a step, peering through the door. It was only open a crack, and there was nothing visible beyond but darkness. It seemed to radiate from the apartment, leaching into the corridor—long, spider-like fingers that felt for Blake.
He screwed his eyes shut, blinking sweat out of them. Christ, it was humid in here. He pulled down his hood and wiped his brow. He was drenched in it. Why was it so fucking hot?
Another step, close enough now that he could reach out and touch the chrome numbers that made up Adam’s 707. He pulled the knife from his pocket and gripped it hard, taking another step, feeling like a man walking up to a cliff edge. He clenched his teeth together so fast that he caught the edge of his tongue between them.
He cocked his head, trying to stretch himself into that darkness, trying to get a sense of what lay inside.
Somebody sniffed, and Blake’s heart almost exploded. The noise had come from the apartment, he was sure of it. Was it Adam? Should he call his name? What if it wasn’t him?
Blake glanced back, feeling something crawling up his spine and wishing he could just bolt. He wiped his brow again and almost stabbed himself in the face with the knife. He was a wreck, there was no way he could go in there now. One more step, he thought, and he’d shatter like glass.
Just wait for the police. They’ll be here in minutes. They’ll—
His pocket exploded, blasting out its ringtone at full volume. He almost stabbed himself again as he grabbed the vibrating phone. It was even louder outside his pocket, loud enough to bring the building down.
A withheld number. The police, maybe. Or British Gas.
He pressed the call decline button and switched off the phone. The darkness up ahead was still absolute but he thought he could see it smiling at him, that lunatic, shit-eating smile they all seemed to wear.
We know you’re here.
Blake took a step back. He couldn’t bear that awful, grinning nothing, he couldn’t bear it burning into his head.
Then he thought of Adam, Adam sobbing on his shoulder on Brighton beach, Adam walking up the path into the woods yesterday to meet him, to help him. He couldn’t leave him in there, not with them.
Besides, the police would be here soon. He wasn’t alone.
Crushing the knife in his fist, he pushed open the door and walked into the dark.
Forty-Five
Blake groped for the lights, but he couldn’t remember where they were. He expected his fingers to brush up against a grinning face, to feel blunt, yellow teeth lodge themselves in his flesh. The corridor’s dim, yellow glow seemed to hang back, refusing to cross the threshold. Blake swiped the knife in front of him, cutting nothing.
There. He flicked the switch, the small entrance corridor taking shape around him, coats hanging there like corpses. It led into the body of the flat ahead, utterly dark and still. There were another couple of switches there and Blake tried them, but no more lights came on.
“Adam?” he said, so quietly that he wasn’t even sure he’d spoken. He walked hunched and slow to the end of the corridor, the apartment opening up to his left. With the blinds closed the living space was a mess of writhing shadows. Blake could just about make out the open kitchen ahead, separated from the living room by a raised counter. Everything else was drained of form, it might as well have not existed at all.
He crept forward.
“Adam? It’s me. Are you in here?”
His hip collided with a table and something rocked on it, toppling, deafening. Blake reached down, trying to remember the layout of the place, trying to remember how to turn on the lights.
“Blake?”
He flinched, a tingling pain radiating from his chest, through his shoulder and into his jaw at the shock of hearing the voice. It came from up ahead, from the opposite corner of the large room. Blake squinted into the inky darkness, the blackout blinds keeping all but a wash of bruised light from entering. Was that a figure standing there? It couldn’t be, could it? It was too tall.
“Adam?”
“You came,” he replied, and he sounded disappointed. “You fucking came.”
“You okay?” Blake asked, easing his way forward. His fingers felt the back of the sofa and he navigated his way around it. “Where are the lights? What’s going on?”
“You told the police though, didn’t you?” said Adam. “They’re on their way?”
“Yeah,” Blake said. The shape ahead was definitely a person, and it was definitely too tall—eight or nine feet, standing almost as high as the elevated ceiling. Blake remembered that Adam had a punchbag in the room, was that what he was looking at? “Yeah, they’re on their way. Where are you?”
“Just go, Blake,” he said. “Get the fuck out of here.”
“What?”
He stumbled across the room, bypassing the too-tall shape. He waved his arms in front of him until he found cloth. The blinds. He pulled at them, ripping at them until light flooded in. It hit him like a punch and he screwed his eyes shut. When he forced them open, trying to ignore the pain in his retinas, all he wanted to do was turn away.
Adam was there, standing on a stool. Thick plastic wire had been wound around his neck, the other end stretched tight to the ceiling and secured to the metal bracket that had once held his heavy bag. His hands must have been tied too, because when he wobbled on the stool, almost losing his balance, he didn’t stretch them out to his sides. He was gaunt, sweating, but he didn’t look injured.
“Oh shit,” said Blake.
He walked towards him, ready to cut him down, but Adam just spat out a laugh.
“Don’t bother,” he said, staring at the floor, his face full of quiet fury. “They’ll never let you.”
“They?” Blake said.
Adam looked down at him, looked right into him.
“They’re still here.”
Somebody burst out laughing, spraying it out through his nose like he’d been holding it for an age. Blake swivelled on his heels, looking past the kitchen to the corridor that led to the bedrooms and the bathroom.
“I’m sorry,” said a voice, thick with humour. “It’s just funny.”
The delivery guy from that morning stepped into view, playing with his Arsenal cap, twisting it from side to side. He was still wearing that smile, laughter pouring out of it. Blake held up the knife, his arm so heavy it might have been made of concrete. The way the apartment was laid out meant that the delivery guy was now between him and the only way out.
; Somebody else walked into the living space, a man that Blake had never seen before. This one had to still be a teenager, lanky and awkward, skinny wrists poking out of a puffer jacket. Grease pressed his hair flat, his face pocked with spots and dirt. He was wide-eyed with wonder, like he couldn’t believe he was here.
The locksmith was next, short and hunched and hungry-looking. He glanced nervously behind him as he walked, like a rabbit with a wolf on his tail. He ducked into the kitchen, almost doubling over as he kowtowed to the next person to walk out.
The man.
The devil.
He stepped from the darkness like he was part of it, like he had grown from it. His body—so tall anyway—seemed to expand further, stretching up towards the ceiling. He met Blake’s eye as soon as he appeared, trapping it, skewering it, and Blake couldn’t look away, he could not look away, as the man strode across the apartment, each step too big, too fast, his hulking body flooding the room like a tsunami until he towered overhead, that cruel face bearing down, cracking into a knife-edge smile. Those eyes seemed to burn, they blazed into Blake’s skull and he cried out at the sheer psychopathic horror of them.
He staggered back, hitting something and falling awkwardly onto his arse. He scooted away but the man was too fast, he was suddenly everything that Blake could see, blotting the room from sight. His smell poured down onto him like liquid, like he was drowning in it.
Kill him kill him kill him.
He thrust the knife up, blinded by fear. Something knocked his arm out of the way, as hard as a hammer blow, and he lost his weapon. Then there was an iron grip around his throat, lifting him back onto his feet as if he was a child. He grabbed at it, at the arms that held him. He slapped them, kicked out, hitting nothing. He couldn’t see past the flashing panic in his eyes, past the tears that filled them.
“No!” he tried to shout, someone else grabbing his hands and twisting them into chicken wings behind his back. Those fingers still held his throat, squeezing, ready to rip it out in one wet fistful. Through the haze he could see the devil leaning in. He breathed, his nostrils hot against the skin of Blake’s neck, smelling him, inhaling him.
Then he was gone, light finally finding the courage to fill the space where he had been standing. Blake coughed, feeling like his lungs were going to explode up his throat. He struggled against whoever held his arms, craning left and right to see the delivery guy and the teenager behind him. One of them planted a foot in the back of his leg and he dropped. His right knee landed on the handle of the knife and the pain was unbelievable. He cried out, but the sound of it was drowned by the delivery guy’s shrill laughter.
Where were the fucking police?
“You get off him, you fuck!” Adam was shouting, the effort of it rocking him on the stool. “You think you’re fucking brave? You think you’re all that? Come on, cut me loose, fight me like a man you fucking—”
The devil kicked the stool out from under him, sending it crashing across the room. Adam dropped, his whole body snapping as the wire went taut. He kicked out, swinging hard. He was making a noise that Blake didn’t think was possible, a wet, howling, bestial groan, his tongue a slab of dark meat that pushed from his lips.
“No!” Blake yelled, fighting against the men who held him.
Adam swung to the side, almost managing to get a foot on the sofa. His eyes were bulbous, his face so swollen that it didn’t look like his, it didn’t look human. He turned in a circle, his body bucking, his wrists bleeding from where he strained at the wire.
“No! Please!” Blake was screaming now. “Please, help! Somebody help!”
The devil watched Blake, no interest in Adam. His nose flared and he breathed in again, his whole body seeming to inflate. He was smiling, for fuck’s sake, not with his mouth but with his eyes. They were full of rancid, cruel, unbearable joy.
Blake felt something claw its way up from the deepest part of him, something base, something ancient. A roar spilled from his lips, guttural, unstoppable. He pushed up with everything he had, not quite managing to get onto his feet but enough to make the guys behind him lose their balance. He half fell on them, twisting loose, falling again. But he was free.
He struggled up, stamping the palms of his hands into the nearest guy—the locksmith flailing back, falling, his head hitting the glass of the window hard enough to crack it. The delivery guy was laughing and Blake threw a punch at him, missed, spinning around.
He ran for Adam, wrapping his hands around his friend’s waist and hoisting him up. He was fitting now, his skin waxy and purple. A dark stain spread across the front of his trousers, warm against Blake’s chest, but he just held him, trying to keep the wire loose.
A fist connected with Blake’s kidneys and he let go, grunting. One of the men hit him again, on the back of his head, and the world lurched to the side, knocked off its axis. He staggered, fell, pulled himself up. The delivery guy was strolling calmly across the room, grinning. He stopped next to Adam, grabbing his twitching body and holding it still. Then he jumped onto him, hanging off his torso, swinging and whooping like a monkey. There was a crack from somewhere deep inside his friend—soft but at the same time as loud as a pistol shot, as loud as a continent breaking in half.
Blake staggered forward but the delivery guy let go, backing away, taunting him with his fingers. Somebody loomed up to Blake’s side and he felt an explosion in his ribs—the teenager, a wicked uppercut. He stumbled, found Adam’s hanging body, tried to lift it. But there was no strength left in him, his body made of paper and straw.
A foot in his knee again, from the side this time. Pain clawed up his leg into his crotch and he fell like a snapped sapling, grasping at the air, at anything he could find, but finding nothing. Feet thumped into him, kicks raining into his stomach and back. One found his head and he gagged as the room tilted wildly into night. Suddenly there was no pain, and it terrified him. He tried to crawl across the carpet, but he couldn’t make his body work. He felt like he was inside his own grave, dirt pouring in.
Hands grabbed him and turned him over so that he was looking at the ceiling. Adam was there, perfectly still other than the pendulum swing of his body. Blake’s twitching fingers snatched at the floor, trying to find his knife. Then somebody was standing on his arm, grinding bones. He heard a weak groan, the whimper of a dying dog, and understood it was coming from his own throat. Blood dripped down the back of his mouth, choking him. He coughed it out, a spray of colour against the day.
One of the guys grabbed his other arm and trapped it beneath their knee. The teenager was on his legs, straddling them like a kid on a fairground ride. He was giggling, and trying to hide it behind a big hand.
Then he leaned in, the devil. He squatted beside Blake, that smell just pouring off him, out of his open jacket, out of his mouth, pulsing from his skin. He was holding Blake’s knife—ohshitohshitohshit—spinning it in his dirt-caked fingers like he had never seen one before. He turned his eyes to Blake and put the knife to his mouth, a long, beef-brown tongue sliding out and licking its way up the blade.
“Don’t,” said Blake, too weak to struggle, too weak to do anything but lie there and wait. “I called the police, I called them. They’re on their way.”
It made them all laugh even harder, a nightmare chorus of giggles. The man’s tongue wormed its way up and down the blade, savouring it.
Where were the fucking police?
Blake closed his eyes, because he couldn’t bear his last sight to be of him. He let Julia enter his head, saw her carrying Connor, the two of them—
“Blake,” the devil said.
No. Saw them laughing, saw them sitting in the living room—
“Blake, look at me.”
Saw them growing up together, walking to school together—
“Look at me, Blake.”
He opened his eyes and bared his teeth. The devil breathed in and out through his nose, grinning.
“This is what comes of talking,” he said, lifting t
he blade. His sleeve fell back, that 666 tattoo poking out, covered by so much dirt that it was barely visible.
Blake opened his mouth and spat.
“Fuck y—”
The knife dropped, hard, punching into Blake’s shoulder. The man ripped it out then stabbed it down again, the blade glancing off the outside of his collarbone. And again, the blade puncturing the top of his arm, in and out in a flash of glinting steel—so quick that the pain was only now boiling inside his skin, white-hot. He opened his mouth but no sound came out. A hand pushed down on his head, twisting his neck, forcing him to look at his ruptured skin, at the blood that flowed from him.
The knife thumped into his side, sliding below his ribs, ice cold. No pain there, just the awful sensation that something had been irreparably damaged. His vision was growing dark and he felt tired, too tired. He railed against it, trying to pull his arm free, the effort sending a fresh gout of blood from one of the wounds. Was there a faint siren there? His ears were ringing so much he couldn’t be sure.
The devil lifted the knife to his face again, that tongue sliding up the blade, droplets of Blake’s blood staining his teeth. Then he tossed it to the side and pushed himself up, the tails of his coat brushing over Blake’s face like a funeral shroud. He stepped over Blake’s body and strode across the room, speaking over his shoulder.
“Your time is nearly up, Blake Barton.”
Blake felt the weight lift from his arm, he saw the teenager climb off his legs and scamper across the room. The delivery guy gave Adam’s body a shove, the ceiling creaking as his dead friend swung back and forth. All four of them walked through the apartment, disappearing around the corner without a backwards glance, leaving Blake alone, dying, in a pool of his own blood.
Forty-Six
For a terrible moment, Blake fell out of the world.
He tried to roll over and the ground just dissolved beneath him, matter scattering into dust and air. He fell into it, into a cold and unfathomable darkness. This was his end, he realised. He would fall forever.