She was reeling, perhaps over the edge of the shaft. No, she was stumbling back into the foyer, and already less sure what she'd glimpsed. Steve was dead, and she must get out of the building; she could think of nothing else. Thank God, she need not think, for the working lift had arrived. Was there soft movement in the disused shaft, a chorus of sucking like the mouthing of a crowd of babies? Nothing could have made her look. She staggered away, between the opening doors—into total darkness.
For a moment she thought she'd stepped out into an empty well. But there was a floor underfoot; the lift's bulb must have blown. As the door clamped shut behind her, the utter darkness closed in.
She was scrabbling at the metal wall in a frantic bid to locate the buttons— to open the doors, to let in some light—before she controlled herself. Which was worse: a quick descent in the darkness, or to be trapped alone on the sixth floor? In any case, she needn't suffer the dark. Hurriedly she groped in her handbag for her lighter.
She flicked the lighter uselessly once, twice, as the lift reached the fifth floor. The sudden plunge in her guts wasn't only shock; the lift had juddered to a halt. She flicked the lighter desperately. It had just lit when the doors hobbled open.
The fifth floor was unlit. Beyond the lobby she could see the windows of the untenanted office, swarming with rain and specks of light. The bare floor looked like a carpet of dim fog, interrupted by angular patches of greater dimness, blurred rugs of shadow. There was no sign of Mr Tuttle or whomever she'd heard from above. The doors were closing, but she wasn't reassured: if the lift had begun to misbehave, the least it could do would be to stop at every floor.
The doors closed her in with her tiny light. Vague reflections of the flame hung on the walls and tinged the greyish metal yellow; the roof was a hovering blotch. All the lighter had achieved was to remind her how cramped the lift was. She stared at the doors, which were trembling. Was there a movement beyond them other than the outbursts of rain? When the doors parted, she retreated a step. The fourth floor was a replica of the fifth—bare floors colourless with dimness, windows that looked shattered by rain—but the shuffling was closer. Was the floor of the lobby glistening in patches, as though from moist footsteps? The doors were hesitating, she was brandishing her tiny flame as though it might defend her—then the doors closed reluctantly, the lift faltered downwards.
She'd had no time to sigh with relief, if indeed she had meant to, when she heard the lobby doors open above her. A moment later the lift shook. Something had plumped down on its roof.
At once, with a shock that felt as though it would tear out her guts, she knew what perhaps she had known, deep down, for a while: Steve hadn't been trying to frighten her—he had been trying not to. She hadn't heard Mr Tuttle on the fifth floor, nor any imaginary girlfriend of Steve's. Whatever she had heard was above her now, fumbling softly at the trapdoor.
It couldn't get in. She could hear that it couldn't, not before the lift reached the third—oh God, make the lift be quick! Then she could run for the fire-escape, which wasn't damaged except on the sixth. She was thinking quickly now, almost in a trance that carried her above her fear, aware of nothing except the clarity of her plan—and it was no use.
The doors were only beginning to open as they reached the third when the lift continued downwards without stopping. Either the weight on its roof, or the tampering, was sending it down. As the doors gaped to display the brick wall of the shaft, then closed again, the trapdoor clanged back and something like a hand came reaching down towards her.
It was very large. If it found her, it would engulf her face. It was the colour of ancient dough, and looked puffed up as if by decay; patches of the flesh were torn and ragged, but there seemed to be no blood, only greyness. She clamped her left hand over her mouth, which was twitching uncontrollably, and thrust the lighter at the swollen groping fingers.
They hissed in the flame and recoiled, squirming. Whitish beads had broken out on them. In a way the worst thing was the absence of a cry. The hand retreated through the opening, scraping the edge, and a huge vague face peered down with eyes like blobs of dough. She felt a surge of hysterical mirth at the way the hand had fled—but she choked it back, for she had no reason to feel triumphant. Her skirmish had distracted her from the progress of the lift, which had reached the bottom of the shaft.
Ought she to struggle with the doors, try to prevent them from opening? It was too late. They were creeping back, they were open now, and she could see the subbasement. At least, she could see darkness which her light couldn't even reach. She had an impression of an enormous doorway, beyond which the darkness, if it was in proportion, might extend for hundreds of yards; she thought of the mouth of a sewer or a mine. The stench of putrid food was overwhelming, parts of the dark looked restless and puffy. But when she heard scuttling, and a dim shape came darting towards her, it proved to be a large rat.
Though that was bad enough, it mustn't distract her from the thing above her, on the lift. It had no chance to do so. The rat was yards away from her, and darting aside from her light, when she heard a spongy rush and the rat was overwhelmed by a whitish flood like a gushing of effluent. She backed away until the wall of the lift arrested her. She could still see too much—but how could she make herself put out the flame, trap herself in the dark?
For the flood was composed of obese bodies which clambered over one another, clutching for the trapped rat. The rat was tearing at the pudgy hands, ripping pieces from the doughy flesh, but that seemed not to affect them at all. Huge toothless mouths gaped in the puffy faces, collapsed inwards like senile lips, sucking loudly, hungrily. Three of the bloated heads fell on the rat, and she heard its squeals above their sucking.
Then the others that were clambering over them, out of the dark, turned towards her. Great moist nostrils were dilating and vanishing in their noseless faces. Could they see her light with their blobs of eyes, or were they smelling her terror? Perhaps they'd had only soft rotten things to eat down here, but they were learning fast. Hunger was their only motive, ruthless, all-consuming.
They came jostling towards the lift. Once, delirious, she'd heard all the sounds around her grow stealthily padded, but this softness was far worse. She was trying both to stand back and to jab the lift-button, quite uselessly; the doors refused to budge. The doughy shapes would pile in like tripe, suffocating her, putting out the flame, gorging themselves on her in the dark. The one that had ridden the lift was slithering down the outside to join them.
Perhaps its movement unburdened the lift, or jarred a connection into place, for all at once the doors were closing. Swollen hands were thumping them, soft fingers like grubs were trying to squeeze between them, but already the lift was sailing upwards. Oh God, suppose it went straight up to the sixth floor! But she'd found the ground-floor button, though it twitched away from her, shaken by the flame, and the lift was slowing. Through the slit between the doors, beyond the glass doors to the street, a streetlamp blazed like the sun. The lift's doors opened, and the doughy face lurched in, its fat white blind eyes bulging, its avid mouth huge as a fist. It took her a moment prolonged as a nightmare to realise that it had been crushed between lift and shaft— for as the doors struggled open, the face began to tear. Screaming, she dragged the doors open, tearing the body in half. As she ran through it she heard it plump at the foot of the shaft, to be met by a soft eager rush—but she was fleeing blindly into the torrent of rain, towards the steep maze of unlit streets, her father at the fireside, his quiet vulnerable demand to know all that she'd done today.
Dead Letters (1978)
The séance was Bob’s idea, of course. We’d finished dinner and were lighting more candles to stave off the effects of the power cut when he made the suggestion.
‘What’s the point? The apartment’s only three years old,’ Joan said, though in fact she was disturbed by this threat of a séance in our home. But he’d brought his usual bottle of Pernod to the dinner party, inclining it toward us
as if he’d forgotten that nobody else touched the stuff, and now he was drunk enough to believe he could carry us unprotesting with him. He almost did. When opposition came, it surprised me almost as much as it did Bob.
‘I’m not joining in,’ his wife, Louise, said. ‘I won’t.’
I could feel one of his rages building, though usually they didn’t need to be provoked. ‘Is this some more of your stupidity we have to suffer?’ he said. ‘Don’t you know what everyone in this room is thinking of you?’
‘I’m not sure you do,’ I told him sharply. I could see Stan and Marge were embarrassed. I’d thought Bob might behave himself when meeting them for the first time.
He peered laboriously at me, his face white and sweating as if from a death battle with the Pernod. ‘One thing’s sure,’ he said. ‘If she doesn’t know what I think of her, she will for the next fortnight.’
I glared at him. He and Louise were bound for France in the morning to visit her relatives; the tickets were poking out of his top pocket. We’d made this dinner date with them weeks ago ‘as usual, to relieve Louise’s burdens of Bob and of the demands of her work as a nurse‘ and as if to curtail the party Bob had brought their flight date forward. I imagined her having to travel with Bob’s hangover. But at least she looked in control for the moment, sitting in a chair near the apartment door, away from the round dining table. ‘Sit down, everybody,’ Bob said. ‘Before someone else cracks up.’
From his briefcase where he kept the Pernod he produced a device that he slid into the middle of the table, his unsteady hand slipping and almost flinging his toy to the floor. I wondered what had happened in the weeks since I’d last seen him, so to lessen his ability to hold his drink; he’d been in this state when they arrived. As a rule he contrived to drink for much of the day at work, with little obvious effect except to make him more unpleasant to Louise. Perhaps alcoholism had overtaken him at last.
The device was a large glass inside of which sat a small electric flashlight sat on top of another glass. Bob switched on the flashlight and pressed in a ring of cork that held the glasses together while Marge, no doubt hoping the party would quiet down, dealt around the table the alphabet Bob had written on cards. I imagined him harping on the séance to Louise as he prepared the apparatus.
‘So you’re not so cool as you’d like me to think,’ he said to her, and blew out all the candles.
I sat opposite him. Joan checked the light switch before taking her place next to me, and I knew she hoped the power would interrupt us. Bob had insinuated himself between Stan and Marge, smacking his lips as he drained his bottle. If I hadn’t wanted to save them further unpleasantness I’d have opposed the whole thing.
A thick scroll of candle smoke drifted through the flashlight beam. Our brightening hands converged and rested on the glass. I felt as if our apartment had retreated now that the light was concentrated on the table. I could see only dim ovals of faces floating above the splash of light; I couldn’t see Louise at all. Silence settled on us like wax, and we waited.
After what seemed a considerable time I began to feel, absurdly perhaps, that it was my duty as host to start things moving. I’d been involved in a few séances and knew the general principles; since Bob was unusually quiet I would have to lead. ‘Is anybody there?’ I said. ‘Anyone there? Anybody there?’
‘Sounds like you’ve got a bad line,’ Stan said.
‘Shouldn’t you say ‘here’ rather than ‘there?’’ Marge said.
‘I’ll try that,’ I said. ‘Is anyone here? Anybody here?’
I was still waiting for Stan to play me for a stooge again when Bob’s hand began to tremble convulsively on the glass. ‘You’re just playing the fool,’ Joan said, but I was no more certain than she really was, because from what I could distinguish of Bob’s indistinct face I could see that he was staring fixedly ahead, though not at me. ‘What is it’ What’s the matter?’ I said, afraid both that he sensed something and that he was about to reveal the whole situation as an elaborate joke.
Then the glass began to move.
I’d seen it happen at séances before but never quite like this. The glass was making aimless darting starts in all directions, like an animal that had suddenly found itself caged. It seemed frantic and bewildered, and in a strange way its blind struggling beneath our fingers reminded me of the almost mindless fluttering of hands near to death. ‘Stop playing the fool,’ Joan said to Bob, but I was becoming certain that he wasn’t, all the more so when he didn’t answer.
Then the glass made a rush for the edge of the table, so fast that my fingers would have been left behind if our fingertips hadn’t been pressed so closely together that they carried each other along. The light swooped on the letter I and held it for what felt like minutes. It returned to the centre of the table, drawing our luminous orange fingertips with it, then swept back to the I. And again. I. I. I.
‘Aye aye, Cap’n,’ Stan said.
‘He doesn’t know who he is,’ Marge whispered.
‘Who are you?’ I said. ‘Can you tell us your name?’
The glass inched toward the centre. Then, as if terrified to find itself out in the darkness, it fled back to the I. Thinking of what Marge had said, I had an image of someone awakening in total darkness, woken by us perhaps, trying to remember anything about himself, even his name. I felt unease: Joan’s unease, I told myself. ‘Can you tell us anything about yourself?’ I said.
The glass seemed to be struggling again, almost to be forcing itself into the centre. Once there it sat shifting restlessly. The light reached towards letters, then flinched away. At last it began to edge out. I felt isolated with the groping light, cut off even from Joan beside me, as if the light were drawing on me for strength. I didn’t know if anyone else felt this, nor whether they also had an oppressive sense of terrible effort. The light began to nudge letters, fumbling before it came to rest on each. MUD, it spelled.
‘His name’s mud!’ Stan said delightedly.
But the glass hadn’t finished. R, it added.
‘Hello Mudr, hello Fadr,’ Stan said.
‘Murder,’ Marge said. ‘ He could be trying to say murder.’
‘If he’s dead, he should be old enough to spell.’
I had an impression of bursting frustration, of a suffocated, swelling fury. I felt a little like that myself, because Stan was annoying me. I’d ceased to feel Joan’s unease; I was engrossed. ‘Do you mean murder?’ I said. ‘Who’s been murdered?’
Again came the frustration, like the leaden shell of a storm. Incongruously, I remembered my own thwarted fury when I was trying to learn to type. The light began to wobble and glide, and the oppression seemed to clench until I had to soothe my forehead as best I could with my free hand.
‘Oh my head,’ Marge said.
‘Shall we stop?’ Joan said.
‘Not yet,’ Marge said, because the light seemed to have gained confidence and was swinging from one letter to another. POISN, it spelled.
‘Six out of ten,’ Stan said. ‘Could do better.’
‘Shut up, Stan,’ Marge said.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Stan said. ‘You’re not taking this nonsense seriously’ Because if that’s what we’re doing, deal me out.’
The glass was shuddering now and clutching letters rapidly with its beam. ‘Please, Stan,’ Marge said. ‘Say it’s a game, then. If you sit out now you won’t be able to discuss it afterward.’
DSLOLY, the glass had been shouting. ‘Poisoned slowly,’ Stan translated. ‘Very clever, Bob. You can stop it now.’
‘I don’t think it is Bob,’ I said.
‘What is it then, a ghost’ Don’t be absurd. Come on then, ghost. If you’re here let’s see you!’
I felt Marge stop herself saying ‘Don’t!’ I felt Joan tense, and I felt the oppression crushed into a last straining effort. Then I heard a click from the apartment door.
Suddenly the darkness felt more crowded. I began to peer into the apartment
beyond the light, slowly in an attempt not to betray to Joan what I was doing, but I was blinded by the glass. I caught sight of Stan and knew by the tilt of his head that he’d realised he might be upsetting Louise. ‘Sorry, Louise,’ he called and lifted his face ceilingward as he realised that could only make the situation worse.
Then the glass seemed to gather itself and began to dart among the letters. We all knew that it was answering Stan’s challenge, and we held ourselves still, only our exhausted hands swinging about the table like parts of a machine. When the glass halted at last we’d all separated out the words of the answer. WHEN LIGHT COMS ON, it said.
‘I want to stop now,’ Joan said.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll light the candles.’
But she’d gripped my hand. ‘I’ll do it,’ Stan said. ‘I’ve got some matches.’ And he’d left the table, and we were listening to the rhythm he was picking out with his shaken matches as he groped into the enormous surrounding darkness, when the lights came on.
We’d all heard the sound of the door but hadn’t admitted it, and we all blinked first in that direction. The door was closed. It took seconds for us to realise there was no sign of Louise.
I think I was the first to look at Bob, sitting grinning opposite me behind his empty bottle of Pernod. My mind must have been thinking faster than consciously, because I knew before I pulled it out that there was only one ticket in his pocket, perhaps folded to look like two by Louise as she laid out his suit. Bob just grinned at me and gazed, until Stan closed his eyes.
Heading Home (1978)
The Collected Short Fiction Page 53