Trap Door: the creepiest psychological suspense you will read this year

by Dreda Say Mitchell

  WTF is going on in this place? This underground world that no-one else knows is here? Right, that’s it. I’m furiously messaging Keats to stop this outrage. Now.

  Me: Have you seen what this guy in front is doing?

  He clears the message and ignores me. Can you believe this guy? I refuse to go away.

  Me: HAVE YOU SEEN WHAT THIS GUY IN FRONT IS WATCHING????????

  I don’t give Keats a chance to delete me this time. I lean over and tap his message box with insistent fingers. He grunts lightly behind that ridiculous bandana, which I swear to God I’m in the mood to rip clean off his face. His stone-flat black shades give me the eye, then jump to check out the zombie’s computer screen.

  Seconds later he’s typing away so I hurry back to my screen, impatiently waiting.

  Keats: He’s watching a video. So what?

  I’m on the point of slapping someone silly myself.

  Me: You think that’s acceptable behaviour in the workplace, do you? Some creep watching a video of a woman being beaten black and blue?

  Keats: Dunno. Isn’t in my job description.

  Me: You’re supposed to be in charge down here, aren’t you?

  Keats: Not correct. I’m only meant to boss you.

  That makes me mad. So mad. Leaves me feeling the sensation of a slave collar biting into my neck.

  Me: What are you going to do about it?

  Keats suddenly flicks his head to the side, staring me down. I don’t have to see it to know it’s hard, pissed, drilling with utter displeasure. I stare him down too. Two can play the bring-it-on game. He turns away in a swift single motion. His fingers flash at his keyboard.

  Keats: Nothing. Now leave me alone.

  The rustle of whispers in front of me draws my attention. The zombie watching the video talks below his breath to the other zombie who was playing computer games. They both turn to the offending video. Watch with rapt stillness as the woman is kicked and punched on the floor by her assailants.

  The zombie sharing this disgusting scene must sense my distressed eyes on them because he side turns and notices me watching. With a gesture of his thumb, he warns the other guy that I can see them and their viewing habits. He in turn moves his chair so I can no longer see his screen.

  The images of the woman on the floor, attacked, battered, bruised, crying out for her life, claw into my headspace, painting a permanent grotesque picture that won’t let go.

  Attacked, battered, bruised.

  Attacked, battered, bruised.

  Trapped. Trapped. Trapped.

  I feel the sick rising. I have to get out of here. Now.

  I don’t remember how I make it to the door; it’s the goosebump coolness of the tunnel outside that brings awareness streaming back like a slap of water to the face. I run with trepidation until I reach the stairs. I’ve never been so glad to see that trap door. My fist bangs it open. I nearly tip backwards in my dash to scramble out. The emotions bloating inside bend me double, palms flat on my thighs, the sound of what only a wounded animal would make rasping past my lips.

  I’m done. Defeated. Can’t do this anymore. Even for Philip… For Philip… A thrum of solid heat beside me comes out of nowhere. Still panting, I lift up my head and look. It’s Philip. Standing right there. Smiling. I know this is manufactured by my brain cells, that he’s not really there. He’s as dead as he was… ten years ago? Four weeks ago? I don’t know. I do know I can’t live without knowing. Have got to capture the truth.

  And that’s what makes me straighten. Vow not to let those abusive bastards beneath my feet get into my head.

  ‘If you ever have any problems you come to me.’ That’s what Joanie had promised earlier. With backbone straightening determination, I march towards her office.

  The story’s barely there in Joanie’s office before she startles me by erupting out of her chair and heading towards the door, accompanied by a hot rage that clenches her hands by her side.

  Somehow – I don’t know how I manage it – I’m at the door before her, barring her exit. ‘Please don’t make things worse for me.’

  ‘Worse?’ Joanie’s a growling tigress, me back in my guise as her defenceless cub. She slaps her balled fists onto her hips. ‘What they’re doing is wrong. I’ll give them a tongue lashing they won’t forget and drag them by their ears to Michael’s office.’

  Joanie knows I won’t allow that to happen so she retreats with tight fury and heavily retakes her chair. I remain by the door as she shifts with unsettled tension. She informs me with a scowl, ‘I thought all you young girls were into this Me One thing. Standing up for your rights and burning your Victoria Secrets thongs.’

  I don’t correct her on Me Too, mainly because she looks so hurt and frustrated. Helpless behind the enforced barrier of her desk. I don’t picture her in her heyday as one of the women willing to burn their bra, but I do see, in a way I hadn’t before, that she must have been a force to be reckoned with. Joanie The Destroyer.

  ‘I’ll speak to Michael about this video—’

  The shake of my head stops her. ‘Please don’t. I just needed to tell someone. Another woman.’

  I don’t give Joanie a chance to respond and exit her office. I feel better. A problem shared…

  But the situation boomerangs back on me less than twenty minutes later when the steel door to the basement bangs open against the wall. Michael comes in, legs braced in the doorway, the spitting image of a man on the warpath. The room shudders still in a way I’ve never witnessed before. I swear even the beating heart of the walls stop. He looks at me, eyes glazed with blistering temper. Then gestures with a finger at the two zombies who were watching the film. I have to nod in agreement but don’t want to. Obviously, it was too much to ask Joanie not to inform him about what I’d told her. Or maybe he found her still brimming with outraged distress. Whatever happened, the cat is well and truly out of the bag.

  Michael’s hiss is a whiplash across the room. ‘You two. In my office.’

  They look at each other in alarm. Good. That’ll teach them to think moving images of women being brutalised is entertainment. The two hurriedly follow Michael out of the basement. There’s murmuring from the other zombies who clearly realise something is up.

  Minutes later, the faint echo of shouting rings dully down here as if the basement has become a tin can. It’s Michael. He’s bawling out the two zombies about the film. This violent dressing-down is going on two floors above but we can all hear it. The volume rises.

  It ends with Michael yelling, lungs fit to burst, ‘And if I ever, ever find out you’ve been watching that kind of filth on my premises again, I’ll give you a beating worse than anything in any film. Do you understand?’ There’s a pause. Then, ‘This is your one and only warning. Now get out of my office.’

  My head drops. I suppose I should be grateful to Michael for taking such prompt and effective action. Still, I was hoping he’d dismiss them on the spot.

  The door to the basement opens and the two zombies, heads bowed, I hope in everlasting shame, shuffle in and go back to their desks.

  But as they do so, one of them looks at me with something approaching hatred.

  Seventeen

  After finishing an exhausting day, I end up a twenty-minute brisk walk away at Liverpool Street train station, sitting on a bench. Tiredness tempts me to lie on it to catch some much-needed shut-eye. I resist, instead watch the tumbling mob of commuters thin out as the sun and daylight drift away, replaced by the chilly darkening late evening.

  A member of the station staff gives me the eye. I know what she thinks – I’m homeless, looking to bed down on the bench for the night. But she’s wrong. I have a new home. It’s all mine come the fall of dark. No landlord, no housemates, no neighbours. Nobody, but me.

  I wait another hour at the station and then walk with a purposeful stride until I’m standing back outside the building I work in.

  It looms over me in the dark, like the wicked uncle in a fairy s
tory. A Dickensian tenement that’s survived bombing and developers as if daring anyone to take it on. The streetlamps don’t shine enough light to tell, but it’s clear there’s no-one in there now. Michael has gone home. The place is firmly closed for the night. Hushed and shaded in night-time ink. I nod a respectful goodnight to The 22.

  I head down the street, turn left and left again, into a lane until I’m at the rear of the building, stealing furtive glances as I go. The last thing I need is to be caught breaking and entering. I stop at the rusty iron grill that guards pedestrians from falling into the narrow courtyard below that leads to the room I discovered during my frantic effort to escape during the lunchtime I was locked in the basement.

  After I left Jed’s houseshare, I briefly considered going to my home, but the reality is there are no facilities there, it’s inhospitable, a shell that widens the bleeding hole already in my heart when I think of how that house and I started with such promise.

  I do one more snap glance behind me before removing the grill, from which my rope dangles. I swing with one hand down, use the other to shift the grill back into place. It’s a bit of a balancing act, like a monkey trying to get the grill back into its correct position and shuffling to the centre of one of the bars when it is. Then I drop, easy-peasy, onto the smooth Victorian cobbles below. Tonight, the courtyard puts me in mind of a prison cell. Newgate come back to life.

  The back door to the storeroom is unlocked. Originally that was so I could get out in a hurry. Now, it’s so I can get in. In the blackness, I feel my way along the wall until I find the light switch and put it on. My new home lights up with the sepia brown of a fading old photograph. I’m free in here. No-one will ever find me in this storeroom. In fact, I’m probably the only person who knows it exists.

  All the things I brought with me last night from Jed’s place are neatly laid out. There’s a mat with a tatty duvet on it. An Aran jumper, a sixteenth birthday prezzie from Mum, that serves as a pillow. A bag full of clothes. A battered clock with illuminated hands that are out of alignment. Sachets of wipes to keep me clean, toothbrush and a two-litre bottle of water. And, of course, my faithful bucket of filled water.

  I lie down on my mat. Wrap the duvet’s softness and promised warmth around me, keeping, as best I can, the frigid air from the storeroom floor seeping into my limbs. I try to figure out how to get the password to get inside Keats’s computer but sleep keeps washing my thoughts away.

  I wake up a few times because I think I can hear noises but of course I can’t. My imagination is so scrambled.

  I jump awake. Sit up, skin trembling, teeth on the verge of chattering. What was that? I extend my neck slightly to hear. Wait. Relax. It’s the sound of a drunk outside. His feet clang on the metal grill above. He sings, in a broad mournful Irish accent, I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen. It’s stirring, comforting, haunting. I want to join in but don’t know the words. I ease back down, allowing the lullaby lament of a man high on spirits, the most beautiful thing I’ve heard in a long time, to lull me back to sleep.

  Something wakes me up again and it’s not a man singing for his ladylove this time. My clock tells me it’s either five past two or five past three.

  There’s the noise again. Of course this is a building in a city so no surprise that there’s an accompaniment of sounds through the night. I’m on extreme alert when I hear it again. It’s long, thready, high pitched. A cry? Whining? It passes over my body like ice-tipped fingers. For the first time I don’t feel so free, so secure in my new night-time home.

  A few minutes later I understand what it is.

  A dog.

  It’s keening softly as if it’s standing over the body of a well-loved owner. Then it’s gone. Nothing. Comes back again, distinct but distant, not a gentle lullaby but a bitter wailing of death. The words from the website blaze through my mind.

  For years after the fire, Scrap sat outside the tenement, keening and howling for his lost friends. Residents and neighbours claim that on stormy nights, he can still be heard keeping a lonely vigil in the darkness.

  Is that what this is? A dog raised up from the dead? I climb out of my duvet, shaking, and put on the brownish light. I shove off nonsense thoughts of ghostly doggy spirits. This is real. It must be. What, like the times you kept hearing the whispers of, ‘Rachel, Rachel, Rachel,’ in the tunnel beyond the basement? They’re not real. It’s the paranoia brewing in your head.

  Whatever’s happening here, I proceed to the back door, press my ear against the woodwork and listen. The wail of death rises again. My eyes go skyward, my heart lurches out of rhythm. It’s not a stray on the street. It’s coming from above. My flesh creeps and the skin on my arms grow cold beyond the freezing room temperature when I think of Scrap desperate to save his sweatshop girls in the basement next door. There’s definitely a dog in this building. Real or unreal, he’s here.

  Above, I hear movement but it’s much too heavy for an animal. I scoot away from the back door, move deep into the storeroom. Wood creaks above my head. That’s not the sound of a dog, it definitely isn’t. I pull open the door that divides the storeroom from the basement. The room’s a strange canvas of black with dots of colour from the watchful flashing lights of routers and servers. My vigilant ears become attuned to the infernal hum that seems to be built into the brickwork.

  I hurry over to the steel door, bumping my legs into desks along the way. Press my ear up against it. Not only is there the muffled sound of a distraught dog, but another animal joins in too. This newer sound is higher, hurting. Horrible. I wouldn’t be surprised if tears start weeping down the walls. Is it a wounded sick frightened cat? A dog and a cat dying together upstairs? The dog repeats its mournful cry. Another ragged wail joins it. I listen hard. Goodness me. That’s not a cat or any other type of animal crying a bereaved lover’s lament along with the dog. It’s a human being. A woman. Crying. Weeping so eerie it makes me want to hide. These laments run through me like chilly electricity, unearthly, not of this world.

  The girls were trapped! Scrap’s frantic warnings had come to pass! As the lights went out and they were plunged into darkness, the girls screamed and howled for help!

  Are the dead sweatshop girls weeping now? I’m imagining this. Or dreaming. It’s a thin line between this side and that side of sanity. I’ve crossed it. Too many bad things have happened over the years. Too much stress, too much strain, too much guilt and too much pain. Too much everything. More than I can bear. I’ve crossed that line without realising it. Or perhaps I’m in that place where things are true without being real.

  Except I know for certain that I can hear a woman’s wails upstairs echoing through the pores of this building. The sobbing cries of a woman – girl? – who’s also known too much pain.

  Abruptly it all stops. Only the chaotic heavy huff of my breathing disturbs the silence.

  I wait, listening by the steel door for a long time before going back to the storeroom on my toes. Shut the door tight. Wrap the duvet over me from head to toe. I came to this place because I knew it would be deserted at night. Checked the windows outside to ensure everything was black and empty. To make sure that I was the only one haunting this building.

  Now I discover there’s another tortured soul in here with me.

  Or the spirit of one.

  Eighteen

  Oddball

  That’s password number three I’ve typed into Keats’s computer trying to get into the ‘P Funeral Service’ file. Another big fail. It’s approaching eight in the evening, Monday, the start of a new week. I’m in the basement alone. I’m doing Michael’s version of a million and one Hail Marys after confessional to make up for the professional sin of producing work that Keats has whispered in Michael’s ear is shite. After the others were gone, I did spend about an hour or so watching some of the online training videos, trying to transform Rachel muck-up into Michael gold.

  Then I’d turned my attention to finding Philip. My heart seizes despite doing my
hardest not the dwell on his name. Being dragged into our traumatic yesteryear isn’t going to help me find him. That’s if he’s here at all. So it’s emotions ruthlessly battered down, active do-do-do in place. It was easy enough to get into Keats’s computer because he doesn’t seem to have a main password. Instead there are individual passwords for the files he’s working on. Clever boy. Hopefully not too clever for me.

  I’m surprised I haven’t been going stir crazy down here, underground, all on my own. There’s an intensity, a thickness to the light as if the darkening evening outside is seeping through the cracks in the walls and ceiling. And floor. But I don’t feel that trapped sensation, probably because knowing Michael is upstairs means I’m not alone in the building. I type in another possible password.

  Weirdo

  The computer gives me the digital finger yet again. Frustrated to high heaven, my fingers jerk off the keyboard and contract into my palm. So tight my nails leave cutting tracks in my skin. I flatten my lips to hold back the curse words jumping furiously behind them. I want to SCREAM in this room. My head flops back, mouth open, sucking in the stale air to regularise my breathing. This is where most would put their head in their hands and admit defeat. Not me. I’m going to keep going until this bloody file goes open sesame.

  But I’m tired, so very tired. Sapped by… by what? Being me? My head crashes forward with the crushing weight of that damning question. Why can’t I be like everyone else? Forget the past by kicking it under the carpet? Maybe I’m the honest one and everyone else just pretends they shoo-shoo the past with the throwaway flick of a hand? Philip comes back to me in that instant of weakness, smiling with the glow of the best day of his life, hair rustling in the wind in the garden he tended so well.