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

by Dreda Say Mitchell

  I feel a twist of anxiety that the woman who is prepared to help me isn’t there. I don’t know where this comes from – she’s plainly stated she doesn’t want to become buddies – but Keats has that certain something, the very French je ne sais quoi, I believe will do battle for me in a heartbeat against the malevolence ingrained in this tomb. How can I ever forget the way she took on Michael in his office kingdom, a masked assassin who slayed him with mere words.

  I take my seat and bury my head in the latest report Michael has tasked me to do. My head may be buried but my mind’s somewhere else. The cannabis oil does its work, loosening my brain cells enough for me to run through possible ways to try to unlace the lock of the relationship between Dad and Michael.

  Speak to Dad: No go – the Frank Jordan I heard here frightens me. ‘She’ll feel my claws across her face and they’re razor sharp as you know. As for you, don’t make me break you, Michael.’ That level of violence leaves acid bile corroding inside my throat. If someone had told me my dad, my loving gentle dad, would behave like that I’d have called them a bold-faced liar. No, I’m the liar. I’m deluding myself. I know the level of violence Dad is capable of from incidents in my own life. Jed’s broken nose is testament to that. Besides, Dad would probably turn the tables, get me on the back foot and somehow make me believe it was all stuff ‘n’ nonsense. At some stage I know I’ll have to confront him, but the time’s not right, not yet.

  Put Michael on the spot: He has no allegiance towards me so why would he cough up the truth? I can see the scene now, him dismissing me with an aloof wave of his hand and sour cut of his eyes. Worse still is, he may send me packing and how will I then find out the truth if I’m no longer here?

  Joanie.

  My mind skids to a stop. Now that’s a definite possibility. Sure, she’s loyal to her boss but she’s gathered me under her wing too. Maybe…

  Something on the computer in front of me captures my attention. I can’t believe this, that bastard zombie is up to his video tricks again. He’s re-running the same film… No, this one is different. The air stalls in my chest, hot and burning, at what I see. It’s a different woman this time. No way… Can’t be… But it is. Oh God, she looks like me.

  The spit of me is terrified. Back pressed against the wall, mouth wide, eyes bulging, fingers clawing the air as a masked man advances in deliberate menacing slo-mo towards her. My pulse picks up speed when I see the blue lights strung out across the wall above her head. My gaze bolts away from the screen to the blue lights in the basement. Back to the screen. Are they the same lights? Has a woman been brutalised in this basement? A woman who’s the double of me?

  Shivers plunge down my spine, my breathing ragged, erratic. The zombie’s chair creaks and squeals as he slowly turns to me. Seizes my horrified gaze with his smugly smiling own. Move, Rachel, move. Get out of there. But I can’t. I’m frozen in the nastiness of his stare.

  He wheels his chair towards me. Tilts his head to the side as he sizes me up. Pungent garlic on his breath, no doubt from what he ate the day before, skins over my face as he whispers, ‘Have you got a problem?’

  I might be scared but no way am I going to let this moron see me shaking in my charity shop shoes. So I tell him, with the bravest voice I own, ‘Are you hurting women down here?’

  His smile spreads as greasy as rancid oil. ‘And what if I am?’

  ‘Michael has already warned you to stop doing this.’

  The zombie’s face wiggles into my space so closely that the faint splat of freckles on the bridge of his nose must surely be the mark of the devil. ‘Say anything to anyone and you better be ready to have eyes in the back of your head on the way home. No telling what type of accidents may be waiting to befall you in the dark.’

  That’s it. I’m up and out of my chair. Beyond the steel door.

  Clutching the tunnel’s damp unfriendly walls, the jump of my lungs and fear leaving me breathless and in a fog of sweating cold. I don’t want to be scared but I am. I see it, me leaving work, walking, walking, not checking behind me and, in the moment it takes to click a finger, he’s there, a man-monster materialising from the shadows. Dragging me down through the trap door. Along the tunnel. Into the basement. Donning his macabre mask.

  Stop. It. That isn’t going to happen. Because you’re marching upstairs right now to demand Michael sort this crap out once and for all. Then the thought of Joanie comes to me. Any problems, she emphasised, I should come to her.

  I find Joanie in the kitchen, pouring milk into a steaming cup of tea. Immediately my tongue itches with the remembered sour taste on my first day.

  Joanie is alert to my distress immediately and puts the carton down. ‘What’s wrong, Rach?’

  I’ll be her ‘Rach’, her anything, if she can put this right for me. I let rip about the scene I left downstairs.

  Her eyes widen. ‘But I thought Michael told them to knock it on the head or he was going to show them the door.’

  I nearly respond that he should’ve shown them the door the first time. The furious words die behind my lips. I inhale deep and steady instead so I can make what I utter next really matter. ‘It’s not right that anyone should be threatened in their own place of work. And I think it was filmed here.’

  ‘Here?’ I’m glad she’s as horrified as I am. ‘How can that be? The building is locked up and secured tight at night. There’s no way of getting in.’

  I draw back my next words, stiffening with a new alertness. There are times in life when you’re on one road but then, out of nowhere, a more promising pathway opens up. And the door that Joanie has pulled back reveals the world of this building at night. Secure and locked up she calls it. What more can she tell me?

  Tightly controlling my emotions this time, my tone sure and super friendly. ‘We wouldn’t want more tragedy happening in this building. It already has a terrible history.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Her question is hesitant, alarm lengthening her neck.

  ‘The plaque outside.’ Stage whisper. ‘The sweatshop fire.’

  Her eyes swim around, then widen with understanding. ‘Oh, that fire. Awful. Can you imagine it, Rach, being stuck in that basement filling with raging fire with no way out?’ A shudder visibly ripples through her.

  I’m sure she sees the bob of my throat as I swallow heavily at the image her words dump on me. ‘What if the building weren’t so secure and there was someone living here—?’

  ‘What? You mean at night?’ Her mouth finishes with an O shape of disbelief.

  I step closer. ‘In this day of homelessness, it’s not unheard of.’ I shrug. ‘Or a member of Michael’s family might be living here at night.’

  I know, way too close to the bone, but as much as I like this woman, I don’t think she’s clever enough to pick up on where I’m leading her. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not stating that Joanie’s stupid, it’s more like she’s a woman who takes pride in not deep thinking too often, a connoisseur of living on the sunny side of the street.

  Her nose twitches slightly as she glances at me quizzically. She clears her throat. ‘Why would anyone in Mr Barrington’s family be living here?’

  I’m in there quickly. ‘So, who’s in his family? A dad… mother—’

  She gets there before me, doing that strange shoulder shift of hers that tells me she’s going into professional Joanie mode. ‘Mr Barrington’s father was the best person I’ve ever worked with. A caring gentle soul who – God rest his long-departed soul–’ ah, so Michael’s father has died, ‘would do anything for me.’

  Keep going. Tell me about his mother.

  But Joanie picks up her cup and over her shoulder says, ‘I’ll tell Michael what you told me. He won’t be back until later this afternoon.’

  And with that she’s gone, leaving the milk carton on the counter. I know no more about Michael’s mother than I did before.

  Thirty-One

  For the remainder of the afternoon, I expect – hope – Michael will d
o a repeat performance of appearing to demand the zombie who threatened me come to his office, but the performance will be different this time – Michael will give him his marching orders. I know Michael is still my enemy, but in this situation with the zombie, he’s my knight in shining armour. No way will he tolerate this type of behaviour towards a woman. At least Keats is back with no explanation of where she’s been. Still, I feel safer in this room of men now she’s here.

  So I wait. And wait. Then I hear a steady click-click-click coming from the tunnel outside. Footsteps that kick up their own echo along the way. A secretive smug smile warms my face; finally, Michael to the rescue.

  Then the door moves. The silence of its opening is somehow more unsettling than if it had made a blood-curdling creak. It’s not Michael.

  Joanie.

  She just stands there. Doesn’t move. Remains a statue, Madame Tussauds waxwork still. Something’s wrong. This is not the same Joanie I spoke to this morning. The Joanie who’s so animated, full of life, threatening to hug me. Her eyes are faintly bloodshot, smudged mascara deforming their shape. They’re piercing doll-like eyes. Fixed, with laser intensity on one person.

  Me.

  Instinctively, I look behind me, reasoning she must be staring at something – someone – else. No, she’s staring at me. And staring. And staring. My body stiffens in disconcerted confusion. An electric dizzying silence seizes the room as the zombies and Keats also look upon the strange situation. No-one utters a word.

  ‘Joanie?’ My voice is hesitant, so quiet I barely hear it myself. ‘Is there a problem?’ Stupid, stupid question. Of course there’s a problem. It’s as if she hasn’t heard me. Suddenly I become more aware of being in a room beneath ground level with no window to escape through. Trapped.

  Joanie finally picks up the click-click-click of her robotic walk, grisly glare never leaving me. WTF is going on here? She keeps moving. Getting closer to me.

  Click-click.

  Closer and closer.

  Click-click.

  Joanie’s not a large woman but from my seated vantage point, looking up, she seems to inflate, up and across, the nearer she gets to me until it feels like she’s blocking out all else in the basement. I’m ready to jump out of my seat when she reaches me. Mercifully she walks right past me.

  Before I can start the business of breathing correctly again, she turns, folds her arms and keeps her malevolent gaze locked to me again like a jailer keeping watch over a death row inmate. And she’ll be personally carrying out the execution. Her face is a mixed palette of washed-out colour and the unnatural blue light above. The background hum of the wall rises to an irritating drone drilling deep into my head. I’m frigging freaked out.

  Hurriedly, I message Keats.

  Me: Why’s Joanie standing there like I’ve just mugged her? She looks like something out of a bargain basement horror movie.

  Keats: Dunno.

  Keats stops and then types away but not a message to me. Joanie click-clicks to stand right in front of me. Good grief, she looks like she wishes she had a chainsaw buzzing in her hand. The heat coming off her reeks of something I can’t identify. I see her chest rise up and fall. Hear her breathing. Short, sharp and as jagged as mine. Her fingers flex and claw at her side as if… as if… Joanie’s not going to attack me, is she?

  I’m not waiting around to find out and jump sideways out of my chair with a squeal. Yes, squeal. I know I’m an imitation of something that sounds like it needs feeding at the zoo but, you know what, I don’t care. Whatever’s happening here leaves me on the edge. Creeped out more than full-blown fear.

  Seconds later, the overlapping thud of running feet in the corridor beyond the steel door crashes through the silence.

  Michael, breathing laboured, bursts into the room. He nods brusquely at Keats and I realise that Keats must’ve been messaging him after she answered mine. The stretch and pull of Michael’s mouth shows he’s battling with something… I peer harder. Is that anger? Anguish? A twisted blend of both? Whatever it is soon dissolves behind a neutral expression. Michael moves towards the woman who won’t let me go.

  He drapes his arm over her shoulder and gently tries to coax her out of the basement. ‘Come on, Joanie. What are you doing down here? We’ve got work to do, haven’t we.’ He ends with a light laugh that sounds like shattering glass. His dimples don’t come out. ‘Invoices don’t type themselves.’

  A violent flick of her shoulder shakes him off. Then she’s still again. Except for those eyes, alive with the power of a blowtorch scorching into the centre of me. I’ve had enough of this and open my mouth, but Michael’s calm palm in the air freezes the words on my tongue.

  He tries again, more firmly this time, with a gentleness that takes my breath away. ‘Let’s get a nice cuppa down you. And those chocolate fingers you love so much.’

  Joanie rocks, her shoulders slump as she finally allows herself to be steered away. Then, as she stands there with her distorted shadow on the gloomy tunnel wall for company, she sends me a final look. It seizes my breath. It’s a look of blistering hatred. Isn’t it?

  Or has the horror of this situation polluted my mind?

  In the aftermath of The Stare, my hand trembles around the glass of water I gulp unevenly from as I stand in the basement’s tiny dingy kitchen. I can’t understand what just happened. Why was Joanie staring at me like that, as if I’d personally wronged her?

  Before I can delve deeper, Keats appears. Slams the door shut with the sturdy heel of her Dr Martens. Pulls down her bandana and whips off her shades.

  ‘What did you do to Joanie?’ is Keats’s brusque question.

  I slam the glass down. ‘Nothing. All I did this morning was tell her about the zombie doing “camera, action” with that disgusting film of his again. And him threatening me.’ Keats already knows this, I gave her chapter and verse when she put in an appearance at work just before eleven.

  Keats demands, ‘And what else?’

  I flick my nervy gaze away from her. ‘What do you mean?’

  Keats steps closer which means her breath’s coating my face because this is a very small room. ‘I know when you’re holding out on me.’

  With a resigned heavy sigh, I make eye contact. ‘I asked her, very subtly if any of Michael’s family live here at night—’

  Keats rolls her eyes, her go-to style of showing when she’s very irritated. ‘Are you crackers? She’s the last person you should’ve asked.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She’s too close to Michael. And very loyal. What if she tells him you were nosing around? That’s going to get you fired—’

  ‘Will it?’ I lean into the edge of the sink. ‘We know he wants me here. Why that is, I – we – still need to find out. So, he won’t send me packing.’

  Keats stews in her silence for a time. Then, ‘But if she’s told him, it means you’ve showed your hand to him…’

  The ping of her mobile cuts her off. She pulls it out. Reads.

  Turns her face back to me. ‘That was Michael. He wants you in his office. Now.’

  My heartbeat stalls. What if Keats is right? That Joanie told him. That he realises I’m on a quest to find the truth.

  I hesitate outside Michael’s office. Is this how Daniel felt going into the lions’ den? A sense of pure dread laced with a determined will to survive.

  ‘You can come in now,’ Michael’s strong voice beyond the door calls.

  It startles me. How does he know I’m here? Did I make a noise? Did he hear my footsteps coming up the stairs? My jumpy gaze suddenly searches, low and high, as it occurs to me that there may be camera lenses trained on me, mechanical eyes doing Michael’s dirty work. Why didn’t I think of this before? If he lured me here, the obvious next step is to spy on me. Does he know I’m living in the building at night along with his mother? Is he tracking every move I make? I find nothing that suggests there are cameras watching me, but still I store it in a corner of my mind to dissect later.
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br />   For now, I level my shoulders, straighten every vertebra in my back and go inside. Michael’s standing, poised, apparently casually, by the window. The natural light frames him, bringing to the surface every imperfection on his face I’ve never noticed before. The circles of barely there darkness peeping under both eyes, the tiniest bump in the bone of his nose, a tightness about his skin that… I look with deeper intent… The tightness has nothing to do with a high-quality moisturiser. It’s the strain of holding himself together. And that’s when I realise something else. He’s upset. Holding on to his anger too.

  Joanie sits in a chair, her back to me. She’s so still, so unmoving, it appears unnatural.

  Michael’s lips spread in what he thinks is a smile but to my flickering gaze appears more like an enforced grimace.

  I continue to act the faithful employee. ‘You wanted to see me?’

  He points at the empty chair next to Joanie. Offers me an invitation I can’t refuse. ‘Please. Take a seat.’

  As I move, I hear the planks of the floor creak and cry, depress and dip beneath my tread. Strange how I’ve never noticed that before. Then again there’s so much about this building that only reveals itself when it wants to.

  I sit down and turn to the woman next to me. Her hands lay flat in her lap, her head slightly down. Finally she looks at me and I can’t help the gasp that escapes. She looks terrible, pinched and drawn, drained and so very tired. She reminds me of a portrait of Elizabeth I I saw once. The one where the ravages of age are painted for all to see.

  Joanie lets out a long drawn-out line of air and says, ‘I’m really sorry, Rachel. I don’t know what came over me.’ Her remorse is relayed in a rasping croak.

  I think about offering the usual phrases of conciliation – it’s okay; don’t worry about it; no point sweating the small stuff. I don’t. There’s a compulsion to make her understand how I felt. ‘It shook me up. I genuinely thought you were going to do something to me.’