by Amy Cross
“It's me,” she said finally. “I'm here, and I was right about the building manager, he's shady as hell. So what do I do next?”
Two
As rain continued to fall, Beth made her way around the back of the building and stopped for a moment by the trash area, where the residents' garbage accumulated every week before being carted away on Thursdays.
Having spent all day playing alone, she'd begun to feel as if she was living in her own little world. Toby hadn't appeared yet, and her mother had been out all day looking for work, so Beth had been left to aimlessly wander the corridors and walkways, trying to keep herself amused. She'd had so little to do, she'd even ended up coming up with an imaginary version of Toby, to whom she'd been talking sporadically even though she knew full well that the real Toby was probably tucked up in bed.
“What should we do now?” she asked out loud, staring at the trash. “It's getting cold.”
She paused, trying to imagine Toby's reply, but after a moment she realized that the whole thing was dumb: she knew there was no point talking to a made-up version of Toby, that his 'response' was just her way of talking to herself. She figured some people could get away with fooling themselves and believing in such things, but for some reason she couldn't do the same.
“I wish I had more than one friend,” she muttered glumly.
Just as she was about to turn and head back into the building, she noticed something poking out of one of the trash cans. Heading over, she reached up and gave it a tug, and finally she pulled out a new-looking dark green suitcase. Setting it down on the ground, she opened it up and found that it was mostly empty, with just a few socks and items of underwear left inside. When she turned it over, she noticed a dark patch that seemed to have soaked into the fabric, and a moment later she looked at the palm of her hand and saw that something red had become smeared across her fingers.
Three
“Fine,” Rose said as she stood at the counter in the police station's reception area, “I'm going to say it one more time, and hopefully you'll get it through your thick head. My sister is missing. M.I.S.S.I.N.G. Missing. My aunt is also missing. They both went missing from the same bloody building, so I think there might be a link, yeah? Don't you think you guys have a duty to get off your donut-scoffing asses and go do something?”
The police officer – a tall, well-built man with very little hair – stared at her with an expression of flat disinterest.
“Are you even listening to me?” she asked.
“Donut-eating cops is an American thing,” he replied dourly. “If you're going to deal in offensive stereotypes, at least be culturally specific.”
“My sister actually came here,” Rose continued, “and tried to get you guys to help. I talked to her on the phone, she said you turned her away like -”
“I know,” he said suddenly, interrupting her. “I happened to speak to her myself.”
“You did, huh? So you were the asshole who told her to go fuck herself?”
“Please mind your language,” he said calmly.
“Sorry,” she replied. “Are you the individual who informed my sister that you would be unable to help her?”
“I told her the situation,” he continued. “She spoke initially to my colleague, who then called me in when she realized the nature of the issue at hand. I listened fully to what your sister had to say and I decided that, based on the established criteria we use in all such cases, the situation as she outlined it did not merit our involvement.”
“Huh. And what about now?”
“Have you tried calling your sister's mobile phone?”
“No, I haven't,” she replied, rolling her eyes. “It's been a few days since I realized she was missing, so I decided to come all the way up to London and search for her, but you know what? It never occurred to me to call her phone.” She stared at him for a moment. “That,” she added finally, “was sarcasm.”
“I know.”
“Jesus,” she muttered under her breath.
“You can report your sister's disappearance,” he said, reaching under the desk and pulling out a form, “and then after twenty-four hours -”
“You'll tell me to go away again?”
“We have a process.”
“A way to ignore people who need your help?”
“We have a process,” he said again.
“Are you scared?” she asked. “Is that it? Are you scared to go to Marshall Heights?”
“Please, Ms. Booth, no-one here is scared to go anywhere, but...” He paused for a moment. “Do you know how many calls we get about Marshall Heights? Take a guess.”
“Not enough to make you do anything about the place, clearly.”
“Three or four a day,” he continued. “People in nearby buildings who hear strange sounds coming from the place, or who spot strange figures on the Marshall Heights walkways. Marshall Heights has a history and we have to factor that into our approach.”
“So what you're saying,” she replied, “is that the people at Marshall Heights can't be helped, and you just wait for them to realize that and stop pestering you?”
“I'm saying that police resources aren't limitless, and that we can't afford to squander those resources on constant call-outs to a building that has a strong track record of producing bogus reports.” He waited for her to say something. “If there's nothing else...”
“My sister came here looking for help,” Rose said firmly, struggling to stay calm, “and you turned her away, and now she's missing. My aunt's missing too, and now you're telling me you can't help with either of them. So what will it take to make you act, huh? When someone comes here in a week or so and reports me missing? Exactly how many people have to vanish before you'll get your finger out of your ass?”
“Ms. Booth -”
“People are disappearing,” she continued, her voice trembling with emotion, “and you're sitting here doing jack-shit about the whole thing. You can come up with all the excuses you like, but I know what's really going on here, I can see it in your eyes. You're scared to go out to Marshall Heights.”
He shook his head.
“It's the only explanation that makes sense,” she told him. “What happened? Did you go out there once and something bad happened? Did you poop your pants one night and vow never to go back?”
“I think we're done here,” he replied. “Your tone is becoming increasingly aggressive and I'd hate for the conversation to continue to a point where I have to caution your or even arrest you for striking a threatening tone.”
“Fine,” she said, “I'll leave. Just remember that you can fool other people, but you can't pull the wool over my eyes. I know the only reason you'd staying behind that desk is that you're too chicken to come anywhere near Marshall Heights. I get it, I'm scared of the place too, but I don't have a choice. My sister's there, or she was there, and I can't walk away. So either I'll find her, or...” She paused for a moment. “Or I guess one day you'll have to get over your cowardice and actually do something.”
“Ms. Booth, you -”
“Save it.”
Turning away, she walked quickly to the door and then out into the street, where she stopped for a moment to take a deep breath. Reaching into her pocket, she took out a packet of snus and slipped one of the little sachets under her upper lip. Leaning back against the wall, she waited for the anger in her soul to pass, but she couldn't help glancing over at the station's front door and imagining all the ways she wanted to make the officer regret the way he'd treated her. Remembering her phone, she took it from her pocket and hit a button to stop the recording app. She figured that no matter what happened, at least she had proof that she'd tried and failed to get help.
Spotting an elderly lady making her way slowly toward the station, Rose headed to the door and pulled it open for her.
“Good luck,” she muttered. “I doubt you'll get much help from that bunch of wusses.”
The old lady smiled at her but said nothing as
she headed inside.
Sighing, Rose let the door swing shut.
Finally, as she felt the snus starting to work, she checked her watch and saw that the afternoon was drawing on toward three o'clock. In the distance, she could see Marshall Heights framed against the rainy sky. As she stared at the building, she couldn't shake the feeling that in some way it was staring back at her, daring her to find her sister and aunt and defiantly promising her that she'd have no luck.
“Okay,” she muttered, starting the walk back. “Plan B.”
Four
“Are you sure you don't want to come and hang out?” Beth asked, as she sat on the edge of Toby's bed in the dark room. “We could go check out the playground, maybe they've fixed the slide.”
Staring at her, he seemed to give her suggestion some serious thought for a moment before shaking his head.
“Or we could go to the corner-shop,” Beth continued, reaching into her pocket and taking out a fifty pence piece. “I got some money last night from the tooth fairy. Look!” Opening her mouth wide, she showed him the gap where her old tooth had fallen out, revealing the first sign of an adult tooth emerging in its place. “I know the tooth fairy's not real,” she added. “It was my mum, but still, we can get something from the shop.” She waited for a reply. “We can share,” she added finally, a little forlornly. “You can have half whatever we get.”
He shook his head.
“Don't you like my anymore?” she asked.
“I'm just tired,” he said quietly.
“I found something,” she replied, hoping to pique his curiosity.
“What?”
“I can't say,” she replied, shaking her head. “I can show you, though. You just have to get out of bed and actually come with me. Deal?”
“Not today.”
“Come on, it's important.”
“I can't do anything today.”
Glancing back through to the hallway, Beth paused for a moment. Toby's flat seemed so dirty and unkempt, and she'd never actually seen his parents around.
“Where's your mum?” she asked eventually.
“Out.”
“And your dad?”
“Out.”
She turned to him.
“It's a suitcase,” she continued finally, “and I think there's blood on it. I also found some other stuff near it, in the trash. Like, a toiletry bag and cloths, and even...” She paused, before reaching into her pocket and pulling out the purse she'd found. “Look,” she said quietly, opening the purse and holding it up so that he could see the various bank cards and other items tucked inside.
“Whose is it?” Toby asked.
She slipped out a card and showed it to him.
“Someone called Megan Booth,” she explained, “but...” Turning the bank card on its side, she let him see the splash of red. “All her stuff is, like, totally covered in blood.”
Five
“Okay,” Rose said as she twisted the makeshift antenna that she'd managed to hook up to her laptop, “explain that last bit to me again, 'cause it literally made no sense to at all. Plug the what into the what and activate the what?”
“You've got the program running, right?” Ben replied, his voice sounding clear over the phone's speakers. “Have you gone to the file menu and started a new project?”
“I think so.”
“I designed that software myself,” he continued, “so trust me, I know how it works. You should have two windows, one showing details of the input and the other showing details of the output.”
“Yeah,” she replied, staring at the screen. “I think so. Maybe. You know what I'm like with computers.”
“You're good with computers,” he told her, “so don't try pulling that crap on me. If you've plugged it all together the way I told you, it should be ready to go. Is the antenna blinking?”
Glancing at the antenna, she saw a white light flashing intermittently near the base.
“Yep.”
“Then it's working. You just have to be patient.”
“I'm not very good at being patient,” she muttered, watching as a graph began to form on the laptop's screen. “Especially not when my sister and aunt are missing. That goddamn prick at the police station -”
“Rose, stay focused.”
“He didn't even try to help!”
“Stay focused! The antenna is picking up changes in the local atmospheric magnetic frequency. It's not a quick job, because it needs to take samples over a number of periods before an average can be established. It's the base point that -”
“So it's going to tell me if there are any ghosts around, yeah?”
“It's going to tell you if there's an atmospheric propensity for the emergence of ghosts.”
“Same thing.”
“Not quite.” He paused. “So apart from the cops, have you had any luck looking for Megan yet?”
“Megan is the least likely person in the world to suddenly just go missing like this,” she replied. “The president of America is less likely to vanish than her, so something's wrong.” She glanced at the antenna. “Should I move around the room or something? The graph is pretty flat so far.”
“Patience, grasshopper,” Ben replied.
“Let's get one thing clear,” she continued. “I'm not looking for Megan's ghost here. She's alive, I know she is, I can feel it. What I'm looking for is some clue to help work out what's going on this place, so I know where to look.”
“I get that. She's your sister, you want to be optimistic.”
“She's here.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I don't know,” she replied, “I can just sense it. She's close, but I can't work out exactly where.”
“You know that statistically it's unlikely you'll find her alive, right?” he asked.
She sighed.
“I'm just being honest,” he continued. “I ran some numbers on missing women in the metropolitan areas, and in eighty-five per cent of cases where a woman has been missing for more than seventy-two hours, the outcome is -”
“Don't tell me this right now,” she replied.
“Sure, but you must realize -”
“I realize,” she said firmly, “I just don't wanna hear it. It's one thing to think something in the back of your head, it's another to say it out loud and discuss it like it's already decided. So far, this building seems to have swallowed up two members of my family, but I'm gonna find them. They're here, I swear.”
“What's that noise?” he asked suddenly.
Glancing over at the window, Rose listened as a train passed, causing the glass pane to shudder slightly.
“It's nothing,” she muttered. “It's just a stupid train.”
“That close to the building?”
“Whoop-de-doo, huh?”
“How many trains go past every hour?”
“I don't know. Lots?”
“Find out.”
“Sure,” she replied, turning back to the laptop and seeing that the graph seemed to have momentarily spiked. “The line went up and down,” she added. “On the screen, I mean. It went up to five and then back to zero. I guess that was just from the train passing, right? Great, you've turned me into some kind of geek train-spotter.”
“A train shouldn't affect the equipment,” he replied.
“Yeah, but...” She watched as the graph twitched again. “It moved a bit more.”
“The magnetic field is subtly changing,” he said. “That's interesting, it's sort of in line with what I expected, but there are differences. Five isn't a big reading, but... How often do trains go past that place? It might be important.”
“I don't know,” she replied, “it's a pretty busy line, I think, but... Seriously, can we get off the train-spotting and back onto working out what the hell is wrong with this place? All the equipment you loaned me is just one of the things I'm looking into here.”
“You turning into Miss Marple?”
“It's just...” Pausi
ng, she watched as the line on the graph began to rise, building a steady curve. “Okay, now it's up to fifteen... twenty... What does that mean?”
“It means there's a consistent change to the field in your vicinity,” he replied. “Do you notice any visual manifestation in the room?”
She glanced around.
“Nothing.”
“If the reading gets up to twenty-five or thirty, there'll have to be some kind of visual signal, it's not possible for that much energy to go unnoticed.”
“It's up to twenty-three now,” she told him, keeping her eyes firmly fixed on the screen. “It's slowing, but... twenty-five, twenty-six...”
“Look around,” he said urgently. “Look for something, anything that seems wrong or out of place. That much localized energy will have to have an impact on things around you.”
“Like what?” she asked, her eyes scanning the room. “Ben, you're freaking me out here, you'd better not be -”
Before she could finish, she felt something brush against the back of her neck. Turning, she half-expected to spot some kind of shimmering, ghostly form, but all she saw was the rain-spattered window. A moment later, however, she felt the same sensation again, as if the back of a soft hand was briefly nudging her shoulder. She turned, but all she saw was the laptop, with the reading on the graph having now risen above thirty.