Echoes of Darkness

by SIMS, MAYNARD

  When she had come here in the past she had never really been aware of such details, but then before she had always been here with Hugh. Now he was no longer here she realised the office had always been tatty, she just hadn't noticed before because it was always filled with Hugh's presence, his dominant personality and his infectious ebullience. Without him here it was as if someone had stripped the varnish from a fine piece of furniture to reveal the pockmarked, worm-eaten wood beneath.

  Despite the shabbiness, the agency was one of the three top theatrical agencies in the capital. Their list of clients contained stars of television, film and theatre, and the list was growing each year. It was successful and it was making money. Hugh could have afforded to have the place decorated every year if he wanted. Instead he insisted that the office was clean but unchanged. Unchanged from the way his father had last seen it when he died and bequeathed the agency to Hugh. Sentimentality was one of Hugh's more appealing, and irritating, aspects. The very drabness of the offices had become a byword within the theatrical world, and added to the Hugh Phillips myth.

  A large, dark mahogany desk, empty apart from two telephones, dominated the office, a white blotter filled with ink doodles and scribbled messages, and the leather desk tidy Joanna had given him three Christmases ago. She sat down in the high-backed swivel chair behind the desk and breathed in the atmosphere. "Oh God, Hugh, I miss you so," she said, out loud, feeling the tears pricking at her eyes. She fought them back; he hated her crying.

  She hoped she would see Hugh, smiling, perhaps slightly drunk, cigar in one hand, the silver tipped cane he used for effect in the other. The cane was another little affectation he used to laugh over with her, saying it was what some of his clients expected. She hoped she could see Hugh, even the Hugh she had seen in the mortuary, even the dead and lifeless Hugh, because she had a dread that without him her life would always be this empty.

  To distract herself she pulled open the top drawer of the desk and sorted through the contents. There was little of any interest, mostly tax forms and other official documents, a bottle of aspirin and some postcards from clients. She came to the bottom drawer and found a picture frame, lying face down in amongst the boxes of staples and paper clips. She took it out and was surprised to find it was a picture of herself, taken on holiday several years previously when her hair had been longer and lighter.

  "No wonder he kept this one hidden away," she said, unaware she was speaking aloud, but the discovery bothered her slightly. She remembered that he usually kept the picture on the top of his desk, facing him. Why would he have put it into a drawer? Why didn't he want to see her?

  Out in reception a phone began to ring. It rang twice then she heard Hugh's voice. A recorded message on an answer machine, nothing more, but hearing his voice broke down the dam she had built around her emotions and the tears finally came. She laid her head down on the desk and sobbed, mourning the loss of more than just a husband and lover, mourning her own life that would never be the same again.

  When she finally regained control of herself the office was in darkness, lit only by the streetlights filtering in through the begrimed windows. It was time to go. She had come to the office seeking solace and found only heartbreak.

  Locking the door, she walked out onto the landing. The whole building seemed deserted. She found the door to the stairs had been locked, which left her with no alternative but to take the lift, even though she hated the things. A stillness seemed to hang in the air, as if waiting for something. The only sound to break the silence was the whirring of the lift mechanism. When she pressed the call button the mechanism grumbled into life, the sudden noise making her move away from the lift entrance, in apprehension. She was aware of being alone in the darkened building, she could feel her heart beating faster, her breathing tight and uncomfortable.

  The lift seemed to be taking an age to rise from the ground floor, and as she waited her unease began to grow. Whether it was weariness or whether she was just emotionally drained and feeling vulnerable, the effect was unpleasant. As the counter-balance dropped and the snaking cables hauled the lift up to her floor, she started to get the strangest feeling that when the lift finally arrived, it would be occupied. She sensed a presence, caged in the wooden and metal box that was inching ever closer to her floor, and she was convinced that whatever was rising from below was hostile. No matter how hard she tried to persuade herself she was being foolish and hysterical, she could not dispel the growing sense of panic. She found herself edging backwards until she was standing on the opposite side of the landing, her back pressed against the wall, ready to run if she saw anything occupying the lift.

  Finally it reached her floor and she could see through the gates that it was quite empty, but still she had to brace herself to walk forward, pull them open and step into that confining little box. She shut the gates and pressed the button for the ground floor.

  Whoever had used the lift last must have bathed in perfume as it hung in the air, heavy and cloying. It was a rich, heady scent, and as the lift descended the smell seemed to intensify, filling her senses, making her feel slightly nauseous. She started to breathe shallowly, cupping her hand over her nose and mouth, using her fingers as a filter, but the perfume was insidious and crept into her nostrils, filling her lungs and making her head swim. She felt sick and giddy and she clutched at the lift gates for support as her legs buckled beneath her. It was then that the lights went out.

  The panic she had been holding at bay swept over her, overpowering, as the lift was plunged into darkness. Along with the panic came the unshakeable feeling that she was not alone in the lift. The lift continued its descent, but in inky blackness, which made it so much worse. She pressed herself into the corner, listening to the steady whirr of the lift's motor, and the clank and grind of the pulleys, praying for the descent to end. She wanted nothing more than to escape from the confining boundaries of that tomb-like box. In the blackness the insidious perfume was permeating into her clothing, seeming to soak into her skin.

  When something brushed against her cheek she cried out. It felt like fur, warm and soft, but the touch was so fleeting, the memory of the actual texture was fading from her mind as quickly as the sensation vanished from her cheek.

  At last the lift juddered to a halt and she threw back the gates and tumbled out, catching the heel of her shoe. She rushed through the foyer, yanked open the door and ran out into the street. She bent forward, taking deep lungfuls of the carbon monoxide tainted London air. She half expected someone to follow her out of the building but no one did. If someone had been in the lift with her then they stayed inside.

  She had the presence of mind to lock the outer door behind her, then started to walk towards Kings Cross station. Spring sunshine had given way to night and the road seemed deserted. There were few cars, even fewer pedestrians, and she quickened her pace as the emptiness started to feel oppressive. Already frightened, she was bordering on panic. A couple of times she glanced behind, trying to quell the uneasy feeling that she was being followed, but each time she saw nothing but an empty expanse of pavement, stretching back towards Holborn.

  An elderly man, walking a cocker spaniel on a lead, emerged from one of the tenement blocks. Dull eyes in a lined and care-worn face regarded her incuriously as she passed him, but the dog growled deep in its throat and, after she had gone three paces past them, exploded in a fit of ferocious barking. Something had frightened it. The old man was having trouble subduing the spaniel, yanking on the lead as the dog twisted and pulled, yapping and snapping at the empty air as if trying to attack someone. The man uttered several oaths then, using the end of the lead as a tawse, caught the animal a stinging blow across its hindquarters. The dog yelped and settled, and allowed its owner to tug it back on course.

  A waft of perfume played at her nostrils, the same sickly scent she had smelled in the lift. It was less intense in the open air but its familiarity taunted her. She walked on quickly, her high heels clicking on the e
mpty pavement. For a while she concentrated on the sound, letting the staccato beat fill her mind, driving out less pleasant thoughts. Ahead of her the lights of Kings Cross beckoned, whilst all around the buildings seemed to close in, giving the impression that she was walking through a dark, gradually narrowing tunnel. The click click of her heels was amplified in the silence, echoing from the buildings, increasing in tempo as she walked faster.

  The feeling she was being followed intensified and, despite her constant backward glances, she could not shake it off. The echo of her heels had taken on a more definite substance until she was convinced that there was a separate set of footsteps keeping pace with her. She stopped abruptly, listening fiercely. The other footsteps stopped also, but a beat after her own. She turned slowly and for a moment, less than a blink of an eye, she was sure she saw something, a shadow, no more, an amorphous shape hewn out of the darkness. Then a car sped past, headlights blazing and the shadow vanished. She started to run.

  The smell of the perfume was swirling about her, making breathing difficult, making her chest feel like it was encircled by a metal band that was slowly being tightened, cutting off her air supply, making her heart pound. She was running, looking back over her shoulder, the other heels clicking at the paving a yard behind her own. Then the echoing footsteps stopped, and for a moment it was only her own insistent heels that sounded on the pavement. Then there was a different sound behind her. A single tap, tap, as if something sharp was being tapped on the ground.

  By the time she took her seat on the Cambridge train, and sat there in the half-full carriage she had almost convinced herself that the panic stricken rush from the office to the station was nothing more than the product of her overwrought emotions. Still confused and numb from the news of Hugh's death she had allowed her mind to play tricks. She almost smiled at the way she had run the length of the Grays Inn Road. Nevertheless, it wasn't until the train got underway that she felt calmer.

  Over the next few days preparations for the funeral occupied her thoughts, and the memory of the episode faded until it was like a half-remembered dream.

  The funeral was not the sombre affair she feared it might be. It was helped by the choice of music. Hugh was a jazz fan, and had once told her that when he died he wanted to be sent off with the music he loved. Scott Joplin and Bix Beiderbecke might not be everybody's choice for a funeral, but they were Hugh's, and the lively ragtime set the mood for the day.

  After the funeral everyone came back to the house. Luckily the weather was fine and they were all able to spill out into the garden, sparing a crush in the house. A jazz band was able to play continually from within a small marquee that had been set up in the garden. Joanna could not remember seeing so many famous people gathered together in so confined an area before. Hugh's agency played host to some of the most sought after names in the acting world and, had it been under different circumstances, it would have been fun to watch the interplay between them all. Clash of the Egos, Hugh would have called it. But as things were everyone was on their best behaviour, all genuinely mourning the loss of an agent who many also considered a dear and precious friend.

  Then she smelt it. The same exotic, slightly musky scent she had smelled in the lift. She walked around the garden, ignoring people who spoke to her, nearly knocking over the girl serving the drinks. She had been scared in the lift and in the street afterwards, but now she felt angry that whoever it was had come to her house. She could find no one wearing the perfume.

  Somehow the decision was made, over the next few days, for Joanna to take Hugh's place on the board of the Phillips Theatrical Agency. John Rosen and Peter Seymour, the other two partners were adamant they wanted her. They arranged, discreetly, for several key clients to contact her and persuade her she was needed. And of course Hugh's mother gently pleaded for her to join. "It's always been the Phillips Agency, it really should have a Phillips as its figurehead." She insisted, adding a little less tactfully. "You don't actually have to do anything."

  Joanna knew that to do something was the best therapy for grief and she couldn't think of anything better. John Rosen was the accountancy partner and he shared the figures with her in a way that Hugh never had. They made impressive reading, business was good. And John was more flattering about his reasons for wanting her to join. "You must know the business inside out. You shared Hugh's life, we all know he never made a business decision without talking it through with you first."

  Peter Seymour was the lawyer and he was even more persuasive when she met with him. "I've been to some of your dinner parties don't forget. I've seen hard-bitten producers reduced to behaving like infatuated schoolboys when you've turned on the charm."

  The other member of staff was Michelle Buckley who had started as Hugh's secretary but had seen the role evolve into that of office manager. It was she who welcomed Joanna into the office on her first morning. Once John and Peter arrived they indulged in the decadent delight of a champagne breakfast before going to their separate offices.

  Someone had replaced Hugh's nameplate with one that read `Joanna Phillips' and a surge of emotion threatened to overwhelm her. Before the tears could flow Michelle called in to ask if she wanted a cup of coffee.

  "You're a life-saver. The champagne's gone straight to my head."

  "Mine too," Michelle said with a grin.

  Joanna remembered the photograph. "Was it you who tidied Hugh's desk? Only I found this in one of the drawers." She reached in to fetch the photograph, but when she pulled it out she could only stare at it in disbelief. The frame had been bent, twisted out of shape, and the glass was shattered, starred and broken.

  Michelle patted her on the shoulder. "It was on the desk when I saw it last. It certainly wasn't broken like that."

  Joanna dropped the frame into the waste bin. It was only as it fell away from her hand that she noticed the photograph itself. It had been deliberately torn, not into pieces, more carefully than that. The head had been removed, and so had a tiny piece from the body, corresponding exactly with where the heart would be.

  The day went well after that, and the early evening found Joanna and John sitting in the audience at an all woman mime act to watch one of the performers as a possible signing. After a brief meeting backstage they came away with a new acquisition for the agency, and they celebrated with a drink at a local bar. By the time Joanna got home she was feeling tired, but pleased with the way her first day had gone.

  She was cleaning her teeth when the telephone rang. She picked it up in the bedroom wondering who it could be so late in the evening. She said her name and number, and repeated them, but there was no reply. All she got in return was static. She pressed the earpiece closer and realised the noise was changing. It began to sound like rushing swirling air, the sound you get when you press your ear against a sea shell, only, very faintly, she could hear voices. Male and female, high and low cadences, but no distinguishable words. It gave her the distinct impression she was eavesdropping on a couple engaged in a furious argument.

  Assuming it was a crossed line she almost hung up but something, probably just curiosity, stopped her and she continued to listen. After a minute or two she could still hear nothing more and so she put back the receiver.

  Seconds later the telephone rang again. This time there was a voice before she could speak.

  "Hugh?" It was a female voice, querulous, close to tears. "Hugh, please speak to me if you're there. I know you're there."

  Anger swept through Joanna's body. "Who is this? Is this your idea of a sick joke?"

  "Hugh?" Fainter now as if the caller was speaking some distance from the mouthpiece, and in the background was the same swirling noise, loudly rushing air as though the woman was in a speeding car with the windows open.

  Joanna dropped the telephone and sat on the bed. The static noise amplified, filling the room. The noise was increasing in volume, a rustling, hissing crackle threaded through the other sounds, and then cries and whimpers, shouts of anger from
both a man and a woman. Then, with crystal clarity Hugh's voice shouting above the screaming roar of a car's engine, "Get your hands off the wheel you stupid bitch!" and the animal like screech of skidding tyres. Then the sound of metal crashing through a fence, and she could see in her mind Hugh's car sailing through the air before landing upside down in a ploughed field.

  Suddenly it all stopped and the bedroom was silent. Joanna pulled the telephone socket out of the wall and let the wire drop to the floor, where it lay like a thin white worm. It was nearly dawn when she finally slept and a woman's voice entered her troubled dreams, a despairing, pathetic cry, the voice of grief, her own voice.

  When she awoke after a few hours sleep she felt tired and drained. The past few days were taking their toll. Peter Seymour was in a state of agitation when Joanna arrived at the office. He was sitting at Michelle's desk, pulling open drawers and rifling through them. As Joanna entered he looked up expectantly, then his face dropped and he went back to searching the desk. "Sorry," he said. "I thought you were Michelle." He yanked open another drawer and examined its contents. With an explosive, "Damn!" He slammed the drawer shut and got to his feet.

  "Problems?" Joanna said as she hung her jacket on the coat rack.

  "Rebecca Tanner's file. I was working on it yesterday. I had it on my desk when I left last night, thinking I'd get in early this morning and finish it. Now the bloody thing's vanished."

  Joanna switched on the coffee machine. "Why the panic?" She said. "Surely it can wait until John and Michelle get in. One of them will know where it is."

  His face was flushed. It was unusual to see him so worked up. "I have a meeting with Rebecca's solicitor in just over an hour, and I have to have all the figures ready. He contacted me weeks ago asking for a run down of all the monies owing to her so he can finalise her estate. I don't want to go there unprepared. It would look bad for the agency."

  Joanna left him to it and sat at her desk. Her head felt muzzy and there was a dull ache behind her eyes. She remembered the aspirin she had seen in the desk drawer. She shook three into the palm of her hand and tossed them into her mouth, washing them down with coffee. In the second drawer down she came across a pink cardboard folder which she was sure was not there yesterday. She opened it up on the desk. The face that stared back from the glossy ten by eight photograph had a quality of haunting, ethereal beauty. Dark almond eyes set in an exquisitely carved face, translucent, flawless skin, a small, straight nose in perfect proportion to the full and sensuous mouth, with lips that parted seductively in a half-smile.