by Helen Grant
Veerle knew how this went: it was putting as much space as possible between yourself and the monster; it was knowing when to forget the heroics and run.
She was half a dozen paces from the door when she realized that she would give herself away immediately if she left it open. When she had come along this landing there had been nothing to see but the vaguest ghost of a doorway, an outline sketched faintly in the darkness by the muted light on the other side of it. Now there was an amber rectangle stamped into the blackness and she was outlined in it like a silhouette portrait in a frame – like a target.
Precious moments were slithering out of her grip but Veerle made herself turn round and go back anyway. She trod as softly as she could and she drew the door closed very gently, but still she gasped silently at the audible click as it shut. Her heart was thumping violently now, a savage tattoo that bawled RunRunRun. But he would hear her if she did that, his ears would detect the staccato rhythm of running feet on the boards. Veerle forced herself to move slowly and silently, schooling the lungs that wanted to scream and the limbs that wanted to sprint like a harsh taskmaster disciplining a terrified animal. There was a flat metallic taste in her mouth. She felt for the wall to her right, and when her hand connected with it she let her fingers skate along the surface, feeling for a doorframe.
Two floors below, a board creaked under the weight of passing feet, and she froze.
It was after she had resumed her stealthy progress along the landing that she heard a second creak and paused again, fighting down panic.
Are there two people down there?
No, no, she said to herself. There can’t be.
She listened again. Silence.
The sound was identical, I’d swear to it. That wasn’t one guy stepping on two different floorboards, it was two people stepping on the same one.
The implications of that were too appalling to consider. Two people sharing the same hideous delusion . . .
Veerle’s fingertips touched vertical ridges. A doorframe. She felt for the doorknob, found it, tried to turn it. Nothing.
Locked. She was almost faint now, light-headed with adrenalin, her limbs strangely loose, as if each joint were a mechanical hinge and the screws had been undone. She was afraid she would fall, and then she would be heard. Stay calm. The next one might be unlocked. Just because you can’t open this one doesn’t mean the next one is locked too.
Veerle kept moving down the landing until she was almost at the head of the stairs, and she was able to see more of her environment in the light that filtered up from the floor below. She could see now that there was one more door in the wall. After that she had run out of options: there was only the staircase down, and someone was coming up to meet her.
She grasped the doorknob and turned it, and was almost shocked when the door opened easily. Inside was only uninviting blackness, but there was no time to debate the matter, and no other choice. Veerle slipped into the dark and pulled the door to behind her.
The shutters must be down in this room too: the darkness was absolute. She thought the room was empty: the air was cold and the tiny sounds she tried so hard to stifle – the scuffle of her feet on the boards, her own breath shivering in and out – had a flat hollow quality to them that suggested echoing nothingness. The room also stank, an evil mixture of mildew and stale urine and some sweetish rotting thing that might be food waste.
Veerle pulled her sleeve down over her right hand and pressed it to her mouth and nose. Now her stomach was roiling and it wasn’t just the smell; it was the sound of those footsteps ascending the stairs. Even with the sound muffled by the closed door she could tell that more than one person was coming up. It wasn’t just some kind of reverberation she could hear; now she could pick out two distinctive sets of footsteps.
Suddenly her mouth was so full of saliva that she had to swallow.
Please, she prayed silently, don’t let me actually throw up.
The only hope was that they – the old man and his unknown companion – would go right past the door of the room without suspecting her presence; once they had passed it and gone into the room at the end she could make a break for it and hope that she reached the bottom of the stairs and the yard before they did. With one person, there was always the faint possibility that she could talk her way out or shove her way out. With two, there was no chance.
Veerle pressed her ear to the door, the wood cool against her cheek.
Now she thought she could hear voices. She held her breath, straining to hear the words that would tell her they had realized they had an intruder, but they were speaking in such hushed tones that she could make nothing out, not even the gender of the speakers.
Veerle could not imagine what they could be saying to each other. What did people who shared such a monstrous secret say to each other at all? Imagination failed; it was like going up to the heavily fortified border of a strange country and peering in, trying to recognize some landmark in the unknown.
The footsteps were on the last flight of stairs now, ascending slowly and furtively. Veerle listened to that careful progress, to the creaks that were followed by watchful silence, and the horror welled up in her so that she bit down on the knuckles she had pressed to her mouth, grinding them painfully between her teeth to stop herself crying out.
Do they know I’m here?
Veerle couldn’t think why else they were moving so cautiously, as though they were stalking a reclusive animal. She was terribly, mortally tempted to wrench the door open and confront them, to get it over with, to end the appalling suspense. She forced herself to remain still and silent.
Now they were on the landing. Veerle could feel the floorboards vibrating under their feet.
All that separates us is a couple of metres of space and a door that isn’t even locked.
The footsteps stopped. Silence.
A voice said, ‘Veerle?’
55
For one terrible fleeting moment Veerle thought, The old man, he knows it’s me.
Then she knew the voice.
A second later she was fumbling for the doorknob in the dark. Some instinct urged caution even though she knew who was out there. She opened the door a crack and saw the flash of a torch moving across peeling walls like a searchlight.
Veerle opened the door a little wider and said, ‘Kris.’
‘Veerle?’
He turned towards her, torch in hand, and the right side of his face was briefly lit up, showing one sharp cheekbone, a dark eye.
Veerle came right out of the room onto the landing. She did not waste time saying, Thank God it’s you not him. She said, ‘We have to go. Right now.’
There was a movement behind Kris, the scuff of shoes on the bare floorboards. Kris half turned and the torchlight moved across the person behind him. It gave Veerle a fleeting glimpse but it was enough.
‘Oh shit.’ Her voice was rising, amplified by horror.
No, she thought. No. Of all the people – all the people in the world.
‘Why the fuck did you bring her?’ she screamed.
She kept staring into the dark, staring at the place where the other person stood, even though she could barely see her, until her eyes felt as if they must bulge out of her head.
Hommel. He brought Hommel here.
She couldn’t believe it – she didn’t want to believe it.
Hommel. Here.
If the old man came back and found Veerle here, that would be very bad, she knew that. But if he came back and found Hommel here . . .
He’d do anything, literally anything, to kill her. He wouldn’t care if he killed himself in the process, he wouldn’t care if he killed half a dozen other people. He’d go for her, and he wouldn’t be stopped.
She felt sick with horror thinking about it.
Every single minute she’s here she’s in danger – every single minute could be the minute when he comes back.
‘Why, Kris?’ she demanded again. ‘What the hell were you thinki
ng?’
‘She wouldn’t stay at the flat on her own,’ snapped Kris, firing up at the accusatory tone in Veerle’s voice. ‘She was scared.’
‘Don’t talk about me like—’ began Hommel behind him.
‘Anyway,’ finished Kris, ‘you said the guy wasn’t here, and he was old.’
Veerle stared at Kris.
Old, yes, but not harmless. Not harmless at all.
Panic was filling her, it was putting her on like a glove. All she could think about was the urgent need to get Hommel down the stairs, out of the building, out into the street and as far away from here as possible.
‘We have to go, Kris, we have to go now.’
She grabbed at his arm, trying to pull him along with her, back towards the head of the stairs.
‘It’s not safe here, not for any of us, but especially not for her.’
Kris was resisting; he was standing his ground, refusing to be harried into moving.
Veerle was almost weeping with frustration. ‘Come on, we have to go!’
‘Wait a moment.’ Kris put out a hand, and now he was the one holding her, grasping her upper arm so that she couldn’t escape.
‘You left a message telling me you were here. You said there was some old guy and you thought he was the one who attacked Hommel. So I came here, and now you want me to just leave, just like that, without any explanation?’
‘Kris – he was the one who attacked her. I know he was.’
‘How?’ said Kris bluntly.
‘Because . . .’ Veerle stopped trying to pull away. She tried to make herself stay calm, to explain enough to make Kris and Hommel leave with her. ‘Because I’ve seen – he’s squatting in one of the rooms up here and there’s this thing on the wall – it shows the whole thing.’
‘Up here?’ repeated Kris grimly. ‘Show me.’
‘Kris, I told you, it’s not safe, especially not for Hommel. Let’s get out of here and then I’ll explain everything. Please.’
‘I want to see,’ said Kris flatly.
‘Oh . . .’ Veerle didn’t say it; she didn’t hurl any more curses his way. A horrible resignation was settling over her. Of course Kris wasn’t going to leave without seeing the room for himself, and the vast diagram of death that it contained. He wasn’t going to turn his back and walk away now. She began to think that the best option, the inevitable one, was to show him the room and its contents as quickly as possible, so that she could convince him of the danger and they could leave.
‘All right,’ she said finally, although the word was leaden in her mouth, unpleasant as biting on metal. ‘Give me the torch.’
When it was in her hand she said, ‘And be quiet. If he comes back while we’re here . . .’ She didn’t bother to finish. She turned away and began to retrace her steps, back along the landing to the closed door with its chamber of horrors within.
With the torch it was very much easier to negotiate the landing than it had been in the pitch dark. Veerle was relieved to see that all the boards appeared to be sound, and all the banisters whole; a foot through the floor or a fall down the stairwell would have been catastrophic. She was also surprised to see something she had not been aware of before – how could she have been, in the dark? The door to the room was not the only thing at the end of this passage; there was also a short flight of steps going up to a drab-looking door that almost certainly led up onto the roof. Veerle let the torch beam linger on it for a few moments. She couldn’t see a padlock or chain or anything else to suggest that it was secured. A way out, if it came to it? She didn’t think she and Bram had ever explored the rooftops of this particular block.
Veerle let the torch beam drift back to the door of the room – that room. She paused for a moment, listening. She could hear Hommel’s shoes on the floorboards; she heard Kris exhale slowly like a sigh. There was not a sound from below.
Veerle opened the door. When they were all inside the room, she turned to the others and said simply, ‘There.’
Kris went right up to the wall. He said, ‘What is this?’
‘It’s the altarpiece,’ said Hommel. She looked at Veerle. ‘Isn’t it?’
Veerle nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘What does it mean?’ demanded Kris.
Veerle had her head on one side, listening, straining to pick up the slightest noise that would indicate that someone had entered the building by the fire escape storeys below. There was nothing. So far.
She said, ‘I think he believes he’s Joos Vijdt.’
‘Joos who?’
‘Look, this is a kind of copy of the altarpiece, right? The Mystic Lamb or whatever they call it. Joos Vijdt is the person who commissioned it.’
‘Isn’t it really old?’ asked Kris.
‘Nearly six hundred years,’ said Veerle.
‘Then—’
‘I know it sounds insane. I spoke to the guy – in the cathedral. I was supposed to meet someone and I was standing looking at this painting and he came up behind me and said, Eva.’
Veerle saw Hommel give a start at that. She was afraid that the pair of them, Kris and Hommel, were going to start asking dozens of questions, that the explanations would keep them all here far longer than was safe. She spoke swiftly, trying not to give either of them time to interrupt.
‘That’s how I knew it must be him. Look, there’s this legend about the altarpiece, though most people haven’t heard it; only people whose families have lived in Ghent for ever. Supposedly all the people in the painting were real ones – I mean they had real-life models – and as long as the painting is in existence none of them can die, except by violence. I know it sounds nuts,’ said Veerle, seeing that Kris was preparing to say something. ‘I’m just telling you what I think this old man believes. According to the legend, if any of them do die, their souls can’t rest while any of the others are still alive. And the demons that people say live up on the rooftops of Ghent – they are there to stop any of them dying, if they can, because it’s their punishment. They wanted never to die so now they can’t die.’
She paused to draw breath, and now Kris did interrupt.
‘Veerle, what are you talking about? This is crazy.’
‘Look,’ said Veerle, ‘he thinks that for everyone in the painting someone has to die.’
‘And how many people is that?’
‘A hundred and seventy.’
‘And how many are already dead, supposedly?’
‘A hundred and sixty-eight. The ones that are left are Joos Vijdt and Eva. The old man thinks he is Joos Vijdt and he thinks Hommel—’
‘Is Eva,’ finished Kris.
‘Yes,’ said Veerle grimly. ‘And he thinks once she’s – gone – he can rest too.’ She couldn’t look at Hommel’s face. Instead she gazed at Kris desperately, pleadingly. ‘Look, this is why we have to go. We can’t be here when he gets back – we really can’t. Especially not her. He’s very dangerous.’ She licked her lips nervously, looking past Kris at that wall with its myriad monochrome faces. ‘I don’t think he just counted those deaths. I think he caused some of them. And anyone who gets in his way – he thinks they’re a demon and he kills them too.’
Silence.
Then Hommel said, ‘Shit. I want to go. Right now.’
Thank God, thought Veerle.
‘Wait,’ said Kris. ‘If we’re going to the police with this, maybe we should take a couple of photos.’ He slid a hand into his jacket, feeling for his phone.
‘Let’s just go,’ said Veerle. She was shifting her weight from foot to foot, desperate to get away; a delay at the last moment was almost more than she could stand.
‘It’s going to take ten seconds. If we don’t have anything to show them they’ll think we’re mad or messing them about. Six-hundred-year-old serial killers? Right.’
‘I think we should go,’ insisted Veerle.
‘Ten seconds,’ said Kris. He had the phone in his hand.
‘I’m out of here,’ said Hommel suddenly. She pushed b
etween them and headed for the door, her footsteps hard and brittle on the bare wood. She didn’t make it to the doorway.
They all heard it. It froze Hommel in her tracks; it froze Kris in the action of raising the phone to take a photograph.
Three floors below, someone had closed the fire door. A moment later they heard a series of heavy creaks as he began to ascend the stairs.
56
Time stretches when you are subjected to intense fear, but not enough. Not enough, say, to search an unknown room for something you can use as a weapon, or to barricade yourself inside it, put up all the shutters and scream for help from people below you in the street. Not enough to phone police who can’t possibly get here in time.
All those options pass through Veerle’s mind with lightning swiftness, like images on a filmstrip, and she rejects them. She thinks about the room at the other end of the landing, the darkness that stinks of filth and rot like an oubliette. The room is nearer to the head of the stairs than the one they are in, but if they can reach it before the old man does, and enter it unseen and unheard, they might escape notice.
She looks at the others, and although they both look shocked – Hommel looks as though she is about to faint – they have the sense not to make a sound. Veerle tilts her head at the doorway, and when she moves they follow her. On the landing, as Veerle is drawing the door closed behind them with infinite care, she can hear those footsteps labouring up the stairs. The old man is vigorous and he has a single-minded objective to drive him on, but he is still carrying the weight of years. Veerle thinks they can get to the room at the end of the hall and shut themselves in long before he gets here. She thinks that she can risk switching the torch on for a moment, that it is worth it to get everyone into the room at the end as quickly and silently as possible. She is feeling for the button with her thumb when her mobile phone begins to ring.