Sparkles paced across the kitchen and hopped up onto one of the counters, investigating Ulrich's dinner with a careful sniff and then hopping back onto the ground when he rushed over to shoo him away. “Don't go messing with my food, you mongrel,” he warned. “If I don't get a new job soon, my cash flow's going to dry up and I'll be stealing kibble from you just to get by.”
The day left him feeling awfully tired. He hadn't done a whole lot, but the sleep of the prior night hadn't been deep enough to restore him. He was toying with the idea of doing a quick trip around the building and then turning in early when a sudden clatter arose from somewhere in the apartment and nearly caused him to inhale the slice of turkey he was chewing.
The cat had begun darting about the living room, hopping past furniture, digging his claws into the rugs and sliding about the floors as though in hot pursuit of something.
Trouble was, there was nothing to be seen in the room.
Frowning, Ulrich watched Sparkles for a time. There was a definite pattern to his mad dashes; he was hot on the trail of something only he could see, and seemed unwilling to relent until it was captured. It may as well have been a dust bunny or the shadow of his own tail he was chasing. When the cat didn't stop, but barreled into the kitchen and bedroom, Ulrich stepped out of the way. The smacking of its paws continued to resonate throughout the place as Sparkles fought and galloped across the room.
Ulrich kneaded at a temple and sat down at the pristine-looking kitchen table. It was a table with four chairs, a dark, stained wood. He hadn't used it yet, and found the chairs stiff and uncomfortable. Reaching down he picked up his bag and drew out a notepad and pen.
It was about time he got down to business. If he didn't make something happen, and fast, he was going to be out on his ass. He needed to take decisive action to right the course before he sailed straight into poverty, and decided he'd write out an ad for the papers. Rapping against the table with the cap of his pen, Ulrich started to think about what he'd write, how he'd make his services seem like the most attractive in the way of private investigation, despite the existence of more respected outfits in town. When that was through, he'd make his evening rounds and get some sleep, setting an early alarm so that he might drop off the ad personally. Even if forced to do some boring or embarrassing job, it would be far better to work than to end up on the streets.
A loud scratching caught his attention as he scribbled down a few awkward lines. Crumbling the paper and starting afresh on a new sheet, he cursed at the cat. “Knock it off, you little beast. Can't you see I'm trying to work here? Go chase rats elsewhere.”
Still, the scratching persisted. Sparkles must have been going at it like mad, his claws digging deeply into the wood of a nearby door. Standing up, Ulrich peered at the front door, where the sounds seemed to emanate from, but found no cat standing near it. Narrowing his gaze, he glanced back towards the bedroom, only to find Sparkles accounted for and staring at him intently.
Still, the scratching persisted.
It grew louder, in fact.
His shoulders stiffened and his arms went slack. He felt like there were weights fixed to his wrists and ankles, and could scarcely summon the strength to step past the table and inspect the matter further.
Something was scratching at his door, feverishly, and it wasn't a cat. All thoughts surrounding the night's work were gone in an instant and sheer panic filled the gap. If this was some sort of prank, then he didn't much appreciate it. Perhaps one of the gang members he'd seen idling near the building earlier in the day was behind it. Slowly, he took a step towards the door. Then another. His nerve was wavering as he closed the distance.
Whatever it was working over the outside of his door, it seemed large. Without even having seen the culprit Ulrich could already begin to assign it certain characteristics. Large hands tipped in thick, sharp nails. Other noises entered the mix from the space beneath the door; wheezing or panting, the squealing of the hinges as they bore the onslaught.
Arriving before the door and staring it down with cold fear, Ulrich wished that there was a peephole, for some way for him to know what he was getting into before simply throwing open the door and leaving himself open to an attack.
Grasping the knob, he gulped and prepared to disengage the lock.
Chapter 12
Before yanking the door open, Ulrich took hold of a worn broom handle that'd been left propped in the corner nearest the door.
With a sharp breath and the makeshift weapon in his grip, the investigator opened the door.
It was just as the first glimmer of light from the hall reached his eyes that the scratching suddenly ceased. The cessation was so startling, in fact, that Ulrich idled for a time in opening the door the rest of the way, guessing only that the thing on its other side had either fled, or had stopped its scratching because it'd gotten its way.
The former, apparently, was true, because a careful examination of the hall from the edge of the door showed no sign of anyone. Ulrich's gaze scanned the carpet, the walls, the ceiling and, finally, the very door whose surface had been plagued by a heavy, relentless scratching. The longer he looked, the more he fancied he saw in the scene; fine lines in the thick, wooden door appeared as though they might have been hewn by jagged nails, spots in the carpet that looked slightly depressed, perhaps even damp, where someone may have stood only moments prior.
Pulling the door open all the way, Ulrich stared out across the hall confusedly. He knew he'd heard the scratching. Working over an earlobe with his palm, he stifled a shudder and tried to think up a rational explanation for the disturbance. Maybe, he pondered, the scratching had come from near the door; a rat, perhaps, had been scratching at the inside of the nearby wall...
No, he thought. You heard the scratching coming from the door. You saw the door itself moving, heard the hinges squeak. There's no doubt about it...
Still, there was no sign of the curious visitor. Whoever, or whatever, had paid him a visit that night and scoured his door, was gone now.
He was very nearly about to close the door and return to his unit when an object caught his eye just a bit further down the hall. It was across the way, a bright red color that contrasted against the grey carpeting. It was small, so small he'd nearly missed it the first time around. Stepping into the hallway, Ulrich stooped down to pick it up.
An inhaler.
Turning the object over in his hands and studying it, he felt the hairs on the back of his neck perking up. To begin with, the thing on the other side of his door had been heard to wheeze and cough. Had it been an asthmatic in the middle of an attack, looking for help? Ulrich gulped, teasing out the curled, faded sticker on the thing. Nothing but the patient's last name could be gleaned from it, however. It belonged to someone with the surname “Price”. The rest was too smudged to make out with any certainty.
What bothered him most at this find was that, in all the trips he'd made down this very hall-- and they were not few-- he hadn't seen this inhaler. The reason was plain; it hadn't been there before, had only been dropped there moments ago, before he'd opened the door. Who had left it? He gave it a little shake, wondering whether some ill squatter wasn't clawing his way through the building in search of the medication that Ulrich now held in his hands.
The scratching, though... it hadn't seemed like the kind of noise made by someone looking for help. It'd been wild, animalistic, almost malevolent. “Where did you come from?” he muttered at the inhaler before slipping it into his pocket and looking towards the winding concrete stairs to his right.
That was when he saw her.
She announced herself with a sharp, wheezy cry and a shuffling of limbs against the upper stairs. It was a soupy vocalization, and the slapping of her palms as she struggled to climb up the final steps to the fifth floor was like the sound produced by stomping in a shallow puddle. That was the thing, though; the figure, with her mane of water-soaked, black hair, crawled, as an animal might, around the final bend and craned
her neck so that she might peer down the very hall where Ulrich now stood. She did so with a bestial ferocity, head bobbing and senses attuned to his exact position as though she were a blood hound on his trail.
And then, like a rabid dog, she pounced.
Clambering down the hall in a cacophony of inhuman cries, the figure dashed up the stairs and bounded down the hall, straight towards him. It carried its thin, dripping frame across the carpet with the deftness of a centipede, clad only in a white slip, and pawed its way onto the wall, where it perched perpendicular to the floor, just as an insect might, to appraise the pallid investigator. From behind the veil of matted hair it wore, came a snarl, along with a few glimpses into its hateful visage. A single, ghastly eye entered into view as it clung to the wall, seeming to defy gravity, and the color of that eye was a putrid and glowing yellow. The skin surrounding it was pale as bone and severely fractured, looking not unlike white, peeling wallpaper. Thin limbs that called to mind those of a diseased animal were tipped at their furthest extremities by thick, cracked nails.
It dropped to the floor and snaked its way across the carpet on its belly towards Ulrich.
Dropping the broomstick, the investigator shut his door and fumbled with the lock, pressing his back to it as a few hard smacks sounded from its other side.
The monstrosity, whatever it was, wanted in.
It wanted him.
Gasping, wheezing cries sounded through the hallway. The lights flickered overhead as a sharp wind washed over the building, and Ulrich looked up to the wooden rafters, glimpsing ominous shadows churning in their unlit recesses. Backing away from the door, the yowling of the cat entered into the commotion. The animal paced about the living room, mewling discordantly and stopping now and then to observe the door.
As quickly as it'd arisen, the noise at his door abated and the whole of Exeter House was plunged into silence. This was the silence that had been supposed to reign at all times. Ulrich was supposed to be the only person in the building.
Of this thing that had just rushed his door, Ulrich could say only one thing.
Whatever it was, it wasn't a person.
Chapter 13
The encounter in the hallway had chased off any hope of sleep for Ulrich, and he spent the night pacing in his apartment, waiting for daylight. Even as the sun rose and an agreeable light poured in through the gaps in the blinds, he was still reticent to open his door. All night he'd considered calling the police, having someone patrol the building.
But he knew it would have been pointless to do so.
The thing that had come to his door, whatever it was, wasn't human. At least, not in the normal sense. Maybe, once, it had been human. In another life, perhaps.
Since his time poking around in the Sick House of Moonville, Ulrich's views on the existence of the paranormal had begun to change. It was with no little readiness that he approached the matter of the late-night visitant from a paranormal angle. No human being, squatter, gang member or otherwise, could move the way that thing had moved. It wasn't physically possible. And then there'd been its appearance. He was thankful to have only glimpsed a bit of its face; should he have seen the whole thing, he might've lost his nerve and fainted at the door. Still, even the slightest fragment had been sufficient to cement one thing in his mind, and that was the fact that this thing, with its cracked, porcelain skin and putrid eye, was not a living creature.
The cops hadn't taken him seriously the other night, when he'd been convinced of an intruder in the bar. Had he called them to report a hideous ghost, they might've led him out of the building in cuffs.
Glancing around the furnished apartment, the scene tainted by the night's events, he wondered if a Toledo jail cell wouldn't have been a more welcoming place to pass the night.
It was past noon when he finally found the nerve to open the door, and even then, he only emerged long enough, at first, to take a fast, shaky look around the hall. First to the right, then the left. There was no one there, and no sign that anyone had been there.
Inside his pocket, he felt the ponderous weight of the inhaler he'd found in the hall just hours ago.
It was the fly in his ointment, the inhaler. The tangible bit of proof that connected him to that nightmarish visitor and made its appearance at his door impossible to deny. His legs tensed and he wobbled out of his room, scanning the hallway and waiting for the black-haired thing to dash towards him from the shadow.
Though he stood for some minutes in the hall, shoulders stooped and gaze darting about, nothing emerged. The concrete stairs were lit by the window above, the mural brought to life in the hues of rainbow stained glass.
Retreating into his room, Ulrich took a few moments to make himself look presentable and then fled down the hall, down the stairs, and to the bar, which had only been open a few minutes. Callum, the barkeeper, arched a brow as Ulrich shambled in, greeting him with a curious smile. “All right, mate?” he asked, leaning on the bar.
Thankful for the company, Ulrich melted into a smile and dropped down onto a barstool, shaking his head. “Hell of a night,” he muttered. “I don't even know where to begin.”
Callum eyed him curiously, lifting a box onto the counter from the floor and then slicing it open with a pocket knife. “Must've been,” he grunted, lifting a sack of fresh lemons and limes from the box. “Don't look like you've slept a wink all night.” Carrying the produce into the back, Callum returned a short while later with a cold glass of Perrier in hand and offered a bowl of cocktail peanuts as well.
Ulrich ate them nervously, his eyes wandering up and down the bar as though he might glimpse something in its highly-polished surface at any moment. Here and there he could spy a handprint where the barkeep had missed a spot in his wiping, and the investigator was reminded of the damp prints that'd marked the carpet in the upstairs hall. He gulped his mineral water and smiled sheepishly. “This old building,” he began. “It plays tricks on your head sometimes--”
Callum wasn't paying attention to the investigator, however. He'd turned around at some point after returning from the kitchen, and now had his sights fixed on the nearby closet, whose door was sitting ajar. Ulrich knew that closet; it was the very same from which a commotion had arisen the other night; the very one he'd called the cops to investigate. The look on the barman's face gradually changed; first there was confusion, but in time it melted away, giving way only to red anger. Glancing back at Ulrich narrowly, Callum pursed his lips and pointed over at the door.
Ulrich leaned forward, giving a little shrug. “What?”
“The door's open,” said the Scotsman, his face contorted into a scowl like he'd just gone in back and sucked on one of those fresh lemons. “Ain't supposed to be open, though.”
Ulrich nodded slowly. “That's, uh... strange.”
This set the barkeeper off, and he slammed a meaty fist into the bar, sending Ulrich's glass of water rocking. “Don't fuck around with me, mate,” he blurted, scrambling through his pockets for his keys. He rounded the bar and peered inside, having a look at the dim space before slamming the door shut and hurriedly locking it. “What were you doing in there, eh?” he demanded, turning to face Ulrich.
Ulrich reared back on his stool. “Whoa, now. I wasn't in there, scout's honor. I have no reason to be in there. I didn't even come down into the bar last night, so--”
“Bullshit,” replied Callum, wielding a pointed finger like the tip of a sword at Ulrich's neck. “You been coming down here to dip into the merchandise, have you?”
That was quite the leap to make.
“Mr. Reed's going to be furious if he finds out you've been coming down here to get drunk, fella,” continued Callum, his blonde brows knit fiercely.
“No, you're mistaken,” said Ulrich, standing up. “I don't drink. I never have, in fact. You know that-- all I ever ask for is mineral water, Callum.” He looked up at the furious Scotsman and continued. “My father was an alcoholic, died a delirious drunk. Because of that I've neve
r cared to touch the stuff.”
It wasn't something the investigator much liked to revisit. Early in his childhood, his father had been a fairly caring and successful man, employed as a security guard at a local hospital. When an economic downturn had seen him laid off, however, Ulrich's father had turned to doing odd jobs around the city and, ultimately, drinking. The man had never held a proper job again and had spent the last decade of his life soaked in alcohol and wandering the city, so that, during some instances, he didn't even recognize his only son. Ulrich had lived a fairly stable life with his mother, and had only found out about his father's death in the newspaper before going off to college. As a result of his father's addiction, he'd been scared off from ever abusing alcohol, and had never dared more than a sip of the stuff. He found the taste off-putting and had never been successful enough to afford such a habit, anyhow.
Callum, however, didn't seem to buy it. He looked over Ulrich closely, bearing down on him till the investigator couldn't help but back away. “Sure about that?” he asked. “Looks to me like you might've had yourself a bender last night.” Callum sniffed at Ulrich's breath, giving a shake of his head. “Don't you go in there again, mister. I mean that.” He smoothed out the front of his apron, sucking in a deep breath and backing up a few paces.
Ulrich remained firm, however. “I promise you,” he said, “I didn't go in there. Didn't touch that door. I won't be taken for a liar, Callum.”
Swallowing hard, the barkeeper nodded and returned to his spot behind the bar. The color left his cheeks and he donned a sheepish smile, rubbing at the back of his neck. “It's... it's all right, fella. Maybe... maybe you're right. Maybe I just forgot to lock 'er up last night before I left.” He hesitated, catching the door in question in the corner of his eye, but then glanced up at Ulrich. “Sorry about that. Really sorry. Just don't want nothing going missing in there, you know? A theft could bottom out the bar's profits, and then me and Mr. Reed would be in a bad way. Sunk a lot of time and money into this place.” He cleared his throat. “Can I fix you something?”
Medicine For The Dead: An Occult Thriller (The Ulrich Files Book 2) Page 7