The figures in the rows of old black and white photographs looked on grimly as he passed. The exterior doors were all tried, and all of them were found to be locked. He looked out onto the street from each briefly before setting off for the next, and within the space of a few minutes he found himself rounding the corner towards Oliver's Bar once more.
There was nothing remarkable to be found on the first floor. Callum had locked up the bar, and unless Ulrich heard something issuing from within, he wasn't keen on reentering. If he did so and the barkeep discovered something out of place, he was liable to end up in a fight.
Turning to the winding stairs, Ulrich felt a bit relieved. Nothing had reached out to him; the building, in fact, seemed almost normal, without the slightest trace of aberrancy to be found. He smiled, wondering if, just maybe, he hadn't imagined it all. No, he knew better than that; he'd certainly seen things in Exeter House he was at a loss to explain, however it was possible that he'd misjudged the intent of the apparitions, had unfairly considered them threats to his safety. Starting up the stairs, the investigator felt a strange sense of peace wash over him.
That is, until he stepped in the puddle.
At the end of the landing which led to the second level, Ulrich stepped into a shallow puddle. Studying the floor by the light of his phone he puzzled over the wet spot and wondered where it had come from. He'd walked along this very landing some minutes prior and hadn't noticed it then. A knot materialized in his chest, making it a bit harder to breathe. Then, it moved up into his throat.
Perhaps things weren't hunky-dory after all.
The water was clear, clean-looking, but a smell drifted through the air just then that called to mind images of flotsam or fish left to rot on a blistering shoreline. “Now, don't lose your head over a puddle,” he said to himself. He looked upward, searching for the source of the water. Had there been a leak somewhere up above? Ulrich continued trudging up the stairs, leaving the second floor behind him and coming up on the third.
Water.
This time, though, there was more of it.
Significantly more.
The landing to the third floor was almost wholly covered by a thin layer of water, and a few of the steps leading up to it had been dampened. Stepping through this, Ulrich caught sight of something in the glow of his light that chilled his blood. The stairs were dripping with fresh, cold water. It seemed to be issuing from above, spiraling down the stairwell as though it were a massive drain. With every step the wetness grew more profound.
It was when he reached the top of the stairs and looked out across the fifth floor hallway that he realized where it was coming from.
One of the lights along the hall dimmed eerily while, at the opposite end of the hallway, directly across from the door leading to the alternate stairwell, he heard the creaking of a door. Seemingly of its own volition, the fifth and final door along the hall swung open, the hinges groaning.
A trail of water marred the carpet. As he pressed on towards the newly-opened door, his shoes sank into the moist fibers. Water squished and gurgled beneath his every step; the carpet had been thoroughly soaked by something. The trail led all the way into the unfurnished apartment at the end of the hall, and the closer he got, the more intense his fear became. Every fiber in his being protested at his shuddering march down the hall. He passed the door to his own unit and it was with no little force of will that he denied himself the luxury of holing himself up in bed for the night.
Someone had left this trail for him to find.
Veronica, perhaps.
There was nothing to do now but to follow the mess to its fountainhead.
Chapter 24
He didn't want to go in solo. Before stepping into the room at the end of the hall, Ulrich decided to try his luck. “Sparkles, come here,” he muttered, looking through the hall for the cat.
The cat, however, stood at the stop of the stairs and merely looked on, its yellow eyes reflecting the light from his phone in the dense shadow. It wouldn't budge no matter how many times he called it over, seemed to know better than to follow him inside.
Ulrich shook his head. “Even the damn cat knows better than to go in here.”
Looking into the unlit unit and finding an abundance of water pooling on the wooden floor of the living room, the investigator thought to call out to Veronica. His voice betrayed him, however. Somehow, he didn't want to call out to her. He didn't want to draw her out of the shadows. He could feel something lurking nearby, watching him from the darkness, but to see it with his own eyes would push him to the limits of his sanity. He wasn't sure he could bear such a fright again.
Ulrich reached for the light switch.
Flipping it did nothing.
The power in this unit was evidently out.
“Of course,” he muttered.
Pursing his lips, he stepped inside, onto the wet, wooden floor, and brought his light around to illuminate the entryway. The layout was exactly like that of his own unit, except that there were no furnishings to speak of. He'd been in this room once before, had found the door mysteriously open on his first night when it should've been locked and shut. The last time he'd been in it, however, there hadn't been all of this water on the floor. He wondered whether a pipe had broken, or if the roof had leaked. Studying the shadowy rafters, however, he found no sign of a leak.
He continued, passing through the living room and into the kitchen. The trail of water only grew more significant, taking up a greater share of the floor, the further he went. It seemed to issue from the bathroom, and before he could convince himself otherwise, he stormed past the kitchen counter and pushed open the door to the bathroom.
What he found there was frightening beyond description.
Going solely by the scant light of his phone, it took him a few moments to elucidate the whole scene and a few moments longer before he could comprehend it. By the time it sank in, however, it was already too late.
The bathtub was overflowing with water, the tap on full blast and water rippling over the edge in great waves. Slumped over in the tub, hands bound and head wholly submerged, was a woman. Her mound of black hair floated atop the water as she knelt beside the tub, unmoving. No bubbles broke the surface of the water, no effort was made to stand, to draw breath.
She was very clearly dead, drowned.
Her limbs, pale and long, were covered in bruises like she'd been brutally beaten, and her wrists and ankles had been bound in duct tape. Something about her limbs seemed off; the joints looked swollen, broken, perhaps, as if she'd strained too hard against her restraints and dislocated her knees and elbows.
He rushed towards her, grasping her shoulders and pulling her from the tub. His phone clattered to the floor, splashing in the water and suddenly powering down so that the room was plunged into darkness. The woman's body was limp in his arms; in those final moments of light, he'd glimpsed a bit of her face beneath the matted mane of black hair and had spied something familiar in her features.
It was Veronica.
Her body was cold, her skin pruny from having stewed so long in the bath. The tap continued to sputter with fresh water as Ulrich tried to find his phone. “Veronica, who did this to you?” asked Ulrich, his hand slapping blindly against the wet floor.
Then, from the darkness, came a noise he hadn't expected to hear.
His heart seized in his chest as a loud moan, followed by a wheeze, erupted from the mouth of the dead woman in his arms.
At least, he'd thought her dead.
Before the initial shock had even begun to subside, he felt her bound limbs spasm against him. Another wheeze, this one closer to his ear, waxed dominant. Ulrich couldn't see a thing; in the pitch black bathroom, he felt like he'd been stricken blind. The smell of dying fish, of sun-baked flotsam struck him with almost dizzying effect, issuing from the mouth of the cadaver which now twitched and jerked in his arms.
Ulrich dropped her onto the floor with a splash and staggered to his feet when
she began to laugh.
The dead woman was laughing. It was a slow, wheezy laugh, the single most horrific thing he'd ever had the misfortune to hear.
As he stumbled blindly through the bathroom, he stepped on his phone, and the light was temporarily restored. In the moments that followed Ulrich saw a few things. The first was the dead woman. She was inching across the floor on her belly, her limbs still bound and broken, and her face upturned towards him. Though the sopping mass of black hair kept the bulk of her visage from view, he could still see her yellow eyes in the light, wide and staring, along with her cavernous maw opening in a taunting laugh.
Then, from behind, came movement.
Ulrich saw only the edges of a familiar-looking, olive-colored vest as the blow was struck. Someone hit him in the back of the head, hard, and his vision started to go forthwith. As he fell to his knees, the dead woman still inching towards him and cackling in her throaty, wheezy fashion, Ulrich looked upward and saw Callum grabbing the collar of his shirt.
Ulrich felt himself dragged across the bathroom floor towards the tub. Unable to resist, he kicked his feet feebly, the soles of his shoes skidding and slipping against the wet tiles.
With one swift movement, Callum forced Ulrich's head under the water.
The blow had left him too dazed to fight back. His limbs thrashed, his lungs ached for air, but as the seconds passed he found himself unable to break free of the Scotsman's iron grip. Gurgling in the water, he felt his consciousness fluttering away.
This was it.
Death had come for him.
Chapter 25
Ulrich was being dragged.
He felt his arms being tugged on, felt the damp carpeting passing beneath him.
The light coming from the hallway fixtures was blinding. His shoulders felt like they might pop from their sockets at any moment. He couldn't move, couldn't speak.
Was this death? To be permanently frozen in one's body?
His body was dragged down the concrete stairs, his head bouncing on one concrete step after another. There was the carved, wooden bannister. There was the figure of Major Oliver, grinning at him demoniacally as he passed. Floor by floor, Ulrich was dragged until the sound of a door opening registered in his water-filled ears. The dark shapes of bar stools, of glass bottles and stacked chairs, entered into view.
And then the closet.
Ulrich was thrown inside like a rag doll, his body striking the floor with a squishy thud. In the dark doorway he saw the Scotsman looming, drying his hands off on his vest and grinning. He was pleased with the work he'd done, by the looks of it.
In the moments before Callum slammed the door shut and bolted it, Ulrich's dead eyes found other shapes nearby; crumpled heaps of limbs. He spotted a limp figure propped up against the wall, his face contorted in a silent scream.
It was Tobias.
His bare body was covered in furtive, twitching things possessed of coarse, brown hair.
Ulrich took these to be rats.
Small chunks had been ripped from Tobias' flesh, the impressions of rodent teeth visible on his arms, legs and face.
There were others laying in the closet, arranged in a tottering heap near where Ulrich was stretched out.
He could hardly make out their features in the darkness; and besides, the swarm of rats feasting upon their bodies made it so that scarcely anything could be seen beneath the wriggling heap.
Beside him, tucked against the wall and staring blankly, was a broken woman with black hair. Her skin had turned bluish, and her vacant eyes had begun to glaze over with the color of egg yolks.
Ulrich felt something furry brush against his arm as the door was shut and the light was cut off.
He wanted to scream, to fight, to run out of the closet.
But he couldn't.
Chapter 26
He bumped into a stack of cardboard boxes, the thing falling on its side and a bottle within it shattering against the ground.
Ulrich sat up, his mouth parched as a desert and his body achy. It was like waking up out of a fever dream. He was sitting somewhere dark, and the ground beneath him was hard.
He had control over his body, though, and that was the important thing.
“I'm... I'm alive?” he mumbled, rubbing at his neck and trying to remember how he'd ended up in the closet.
That was when he remembered the bodies that surrounded him.
And the rats.
He scrambled forward, positively terrified, and clawed at the door. It gave way without much resistance and he fell out into the bar.
It was apparently late in the morning, because a warm glow filled the windows and flooded the seating area. Ulrich turned around, peered into the dark closet at his back, and found there were no bodies or rats to be found there. Just pallets of liquor and the bottles he'd accidentally broken. Panting on the floor, he slowly stood up and glanced around the room. There were no customers, but the door was sitting open and noise reached his ears from the kitchen.
Callum walked out to the bar and then stopped dead in his tracks, looking first at Ulrich, and then to the open closet door. He stood near the sink, his dark eyes brimming with annoyance, and nodded in Ulrich's direction. “The fuck you doing here?” He pointed at the door. “I thought I told you to stay out of there. What don't you understand, eh?” He walked over quickly, rolling up his sleeves and preparing to throw down. “I'll teach you a lesson about fucking around in my bar, you miserable drunk. Come over here, you--”
“You... you're the one who put me in there!” shouted Ulrich, his voice cracking and his throat feeling dusty. “You dragged me down there, tried to kill me!”
Callum came to a halt, narrowing his gaze. “What the hell are you talking about? I just got here a half hour ago, you imbecile. How in the hell could I have brought you down here?”
Ulrich steadied himself against one of the nearby tables and slowly edged his way towards the door of the bar. “You brought me here, just like you did the others...” He pointed at the barkeep, keeping his distance. “You killed them, you goddamn monster. You killed them all. Put their bodies in that closet like they were animals. You drowned Veronica in that tub and dragged her down the stairs, all the way to the bar. I saw it. I saw it with my own damn eyes, don't you dare try and deny it!”
Callum's face had gone white. He tugged on the sides of his green apron, his fists trembling. “No... now, you listen up, you drunk prick. I did no such thing, and... and it won't do you any good to try and cover up your drinking with these... these lies! I just got here, wasn't here all night, as a matter of fact. You snuck in there again just to tap into the goods. I warned you. I warned you not to do that. But you didn't listen. Now that you woke up in there you're trying to pin your addiction on me... you're making shit up, eh? Well, it's not going to fly. I've already let Mr. Reed know about your behavior, about your theft, and he's going to toss you out of here. Might even press charges.”
Ulrich continued sidestepping towards the door. Backing through the doorway, he tried to make sense of what'd happened. He was alive. After all he'd been through, he shouldn't have been. Maybe the entire experience of being drowned in the tub was just a bad dream, a memory that Veronica or Tobias had shared with him. Perhaps Callum hadn't actually dragged him down there, but he'd simply been led there in the night by the spirits of Exeter House.
Could've fooled me, he thought. It certainly felt real.
There was no forgetting all he'd seen. Tobias and Veronica, among others, had been killed in the building. Callum, by the looks of it, had been the murderer. Why he'd decided to kill those people Ulrich was unsure. Perhaps they were squatters, and in the interest of launching a successful business, Callum had seen it fit to kill them off. Maybe he had some sort of personal beef with Veronica and the rest.
Whatever the case, that would be something for the police to sort out.
Ulrich had been convinced by the spirits of Callum's guilt. The barkeep could deny it all he w
anted; the pallor of his face was as good as a confession in Ulrich's eyes. All he needed now was to inform the police, to find proof of Callum's involvement and to get him locked up for good.
Callum rushed towards him, grabbing him by the arm and pushing him up against the door. “Gimme your keys, asshole. You're out of here.”
Ulrich broke free of the barkeep's grasp, falling back a few steps and entering the foyer. “Get your hands off of me. You killed those people, Callum. And I'm going to prove it. I knew something had happened in this building, and I knew, all along, that you had a part in it. You were never willing to broach the subject, but I knew you were hiding something this whole time. And now your secret's out. They've shown me, Callum. The spirits of Exeter House have shown me what you did to them.”
With a grunt, Callum reached out and slugged Ulrich across the face. The investigator fell, hitting the bottom of the stairwell with a thud. His face ached, and as he grit his teeth, he noticed a couple had been loosened.
The bartender loomed over him, red-faced. “Shut your goddamn mouth. Ever since you came here you've been nothing but trouble. You should get out of here before the police haul you off for stealing alcohol. Mr. Reed is going to see to it that you're tried for your theft, and I'll drag you all the way to the police station myself if I have to.”
Palming his swollen jaw, Ulrich stood and backed his way up the stairs. “Fuck you,” he said through the swelling. “I don't know why you did it, Callum, but this whole thing's about to blow up in your face. Bet on it. When I'm through here, it's you who's going to be rotting in jail, you disgusting murderer.”
Leaving Callum fuming at the foot of the stairs, Ulrich ran up the flights to the fifth floor, dashing across the hall to the unit at the very end, where he'd made the grisly discovery in the bathroom. As he traversed the hall, the carpet still sopping wet, he felt sure he'd discover something there. Some clue linking Callum to the crime, something that would incriminate him and see Ulrich vindicated. Police detective Richardson hadn't given him the time of day before, but now that the end of this case was within his grasp, Ulrich was going to show him a thing or two.
Medicine For The Dead: An Occult Thriller (The Ulrich Files Book 2) Page 13