by Mauro, Laura
Alessa dragged herself into the bathroom, holding onto the shower caddy as hot water prickled against her skin. Every part of her seemed to hurt, a dull ache radiating outwards from the smallest of follicles. She’d make another appointment with Moira. Perhaps she’d go back to the trauma group, meet new people. Talk things over. If Shannon had been right about anything, it was that her own stubbornness had put her here. She had to accept the help offered to her.
Her clothes were puddled on the bathroom floor. She scooped them up, intending to dump them in the wash basket. Something fluttered from the pocket of her jeans. A scrap of paper. Frowning, she retrieved it from the floor. It was a folded-up receipt, print faded with age. She stared at it for a long time, hardly daring to breathe, turning it briefly sideways to be sure she knew exactly what she was looking at. It was just a stupid piece of paper, but in that moment it meant everything. It changed everything.
The receipt was faded from washing, but she could still see the date: almost a year previous, from the ticket machine at Manchester Piccadilly train station. Which meant the jeans bundled in her arms could not possibly have been the brand new ones she’d worn the night before.
Which meant Casey had deliberately switched her jeans. And that meant Casey had something to hide.
Alessa’s laughter was utterly silent, vibrating like a marble inside of her skull.
This time, when her mobile rang, she answered.
EIGHT
T he sandwich shop was located off Borough High Street, a few minutes’ walk from the market, which was almost done packing up for the night. Alessa ordered a hot chocolate, unable to cope with even the thought of solid food, and sat by the entrance. The sun had set, leaving only a bright smear of fuschia on the western horizon. She wondered, with a detached horror, whether her existence really had become nocturnal. Whether she’d be unable to leave the house during daylight hours, if she ever tried. She imagined herself a skittish fox, scuttling through dark streets, shying away from car headlights.
The overwhelming sweetness of the hot chocolate sent a dizzy spiral shooting straight up into her brain. She almost gagged on it, struggling not to spit it back out into the cup. It settled hot and uncomfortable in her empty stomach.
“Oi.”
She looked up sharply. There was Casey, standing in the doorway, a huge rucksack strapped to her shoulders. The lighting was harsh on her face, highlighting bruise-dark shadows beneath her eyes. Despite everything she was smiling; there was a brightness in her eyes which suggested it was genuine.
“I know what you did.” Alessa said. She wished she had mouthwash, or water, anything to rid her mouth of the cloying, sugary taste. “I found the jeans. The torn ones you tried to get rid of.”
“Ah. Yeah. I’m sorry about that.” Casey slipped into the seat opposite, dumping her bag on the floor. Close up, she stank of cigarettes and, strangely, of something like rust. “You sort of backed me into a corner there. I didn’t want to lie, but…” she shrugged. “Look, we both know your sister would never have believed it. She’d have freaked out, probably. It sounds mental, Alessa, that’s why you can’t just go round telling people about it.” She paused for a moment. “Did you really go rooting in the communal bins? I’m not sure if I’m disgusted or impressed.”
“You lied to me.”
“You didn’t leave me a lot of choice.”
“I thought I was going insane.”
Casey sucked in a breath through her teeth. “I said I was sorry,” she said, folding her arms sulkily across her chest. “I did it to protect you. To protect us both. Can’t you see that? Don’t you know what happens when you tell outsiders about this kind of thing? Imagine your sister told you she’d been abducted by aliens, or seen the Loch Ness Monster swimming down the Thames. Would you believe her? No, you’d think she was a fucking fruitcake. What makes this different? And don’t say ‘because I know what I’ve seen’.”
Frustration welled up inside of her. She pressed her palms against the too-hot mug, savouring the burn. “Even if you backed me up?”
“Please, Alessa, she doesn’t know me from Adam,” Casey snorted. “I could be anyone. You could’ve paid me to corroborate your story. Christ, I could be the one who put the idea in your head in the first place. I mean, your wounds basically healed overnight, and it’s not like we’re swimming in proof.” She lowered her voice, as if she’d only suddenly become aware of the presence of everyone else in the shop. “It sounds fucking mental, Alessa, because it is fucking mental, and if I hadn’t seen the Shades firsthand myself I wouldn’t bloody believe you either. I did what I had to do to keep us both safe and I’m not going to apologise for it any more than I already have.”
“What about Tom?”
Her eyes darted wildly in her skull like pinballs, gauging the number of people within listening distance. “Not here,” she said, which confirmed all of Alessa’s worst suspicions. The spilt blood on the concrete, the slick ribbons of tissue spilling from the Shade’s wide-open mouth - all of it was real. Nausea rose in her throat and it was all she could do just to shut her eyes and pray that she wouldn’t vomit. When she swallowed, she tasted bile laced with sugar.
“I asked to meet you here for a reason,” Casey’s disembodied voice seemed to be coming from somewhere very far away. If Alessa squeezed her eyes tightly enough, would Casey disappear completely? If she clicked her heels three times would this strange tangle of lies and unbelievable things suddenly make sense? But Casey just kept talking: “I’ve had a breakthough, Alessa. I think we really have a chance to end this for good…”
Alessa opened her eyes. “Stop,” she said. Casey visibly recoiled at the force of her command, shrinking back like a startled cat. “Enough. I’m not playing anymore, Casey. I’m finished with all of it. If you’ll excuse me, I need to speak to Shannon. I need to let her know that I’m okay before she calls in the bloody flying squad or something.”
“Oh, she knows you’re okay,” Casey said.
Alessa blinked. “What?”
“I told her you’re doing better now.” She was utterly nonchalant, almost airy, leaning back in her seat. “I called her a little while after I left. I said you’d agreed to let me come back, and that I’d make sure you were fine. She wanted to talk to you but I told her you wouldn’t come to the phone. Don’t worry,” she added, evidently sensing Alessa’s mute anger. “I didn’t say you were pissed with her or anything, and I didn’t mention anything about…well, you know, this business. I just said you weren’t feeling up to talking right now, and she said I should get you to call her when you’d had a good rest. I mean, it’s only sort of a lie. I can see you wouldn’t be up to talking to her. You still look like death, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
“You had no right,” Alessa said. It was difficult to speak through clenched teeth, but somehow she managed it. “No right at all.” Every nerve in her body was alive with rage. How could she ever have invited this person into her life so readily? How could she have fooled herself that Casey was her friend? She wanted to get up and walk out but the sudden rise in blood pressure left her brain numb at the edges; her legs trembled at the mere thought of standing.
“I’m really sorry,” Casey said. She sounded solemn, contrite. Alessa knew she felt neither. “But in all honesty, I’ve probably done you a bit of a favour. You can go back to your sister and make out like it was all the fever talking. Tell her you don’t remember saying any of it. She doesn’t need to know what really happened. She’d never believe you anyway. People like that can never understand these kinds of things.” She smiled encouragingly. Her teeth looked sharp between her thin lips. “Me, though, I mean, I get you. I know where you’re coming from. And all I want is to help you. Help us both, I’m not totally unselfish.” She gave a small laugh. It sounded nervous to Alessa’s ears. She leaned forward, grasping Alessa’s sleeve gently with her fingertips. Her eyes gleamed like seaglass in sunlight. “I’ve found them,” she whispered. “I know whe
re they hide. I found their nest, Alessa.”
It was as if something inside of her had suddenly burst. She felt herself slowly deflating, her spine slackening; she wanted to get up and leave, to lock herself away and pretend Casey never existed but that fierce optimism, that bright spark of energy so similar to the Casey she met just a few days ago had turned her hard-won resolve into powder. Finally, she had the chance to end this. Not just bury her head in the sand and avoid the shadows for the rest of her life, but end this.
“We have to stop them then, don’t we?” Alessa said. The words were madness, but it was too late to worry about that now. “Because we can’t live our lives pretending they’re not real. We’ll go insane. We have to stop them. We go in with fire. We burn them out.” She swallowed hard. She could barely believe what she was suggesting, and yet it made perfect sense. It was the only thing that did. “And then this all ends, doesn’t it?”
Casey nodded. “I think so, yeah.”
One thing was true: Casey did ‘get’ her. She’d blown her opportunity to explain everything to Shannon, and that made Casey the only person in the world who understood her. It was an awful, cold realisation, like waking to discover she’d been locked in a dank, empty basement and only Casey held the key.
“All right. Fine.” Alessa said. “Where are they?”
“Underground,” Casey said.
*
T he moon was a faint yellow thumb-smear beneath a blanket of cloud. The shopping centre was shut; wide, unlit corridors stretched out behind long panes of glass, closed shops lining either side, darkened windows like black mouths. It looked as though things were moving in there - amorphous shapes slipping between doorways, curled beneath the benches - and although Alessa told herself it must be cleaners, or stragglers from the top-floor Bingo hall, she still found herself looking resolutely away, as though to stare too long might make them real. As though eye contact alone might draw them to her.
Casey led her round the back of the centre, where the old railway arches now hosted an unlikely assortment of Latin American food shops and cafes - closed, now, shutters pulled down and secured. A few people lingered, lit cigarettes glowing bright in the dark. To their left was the uplit carcass of the former Heygate development, still beset with workmen getting ready to clock off for the night. Their shouts echoed across the empty, rubble-strewn expanse. It was a strange comfort, knowing they were there. A human presence that wasn't Casey.
The shadow of the railway bridge loomed. Alessa held back; shadows were full of things which could hurt you. Black things with lamprey teeth that hissed and coiled and tore out your entrails with horrific ease. She thought of Tom then, skin smeared with black blood, mouth wide and silent even as they tore him to pieces. She pressed her lips together hard, fighting back the whimper that crept up her throat.
They passed beneath the railway bridge. Alessa felt herself reaching instinctively for Casey and forced herself to stop, shoving both hands deep in the pockets of her parka. Despite the cold a thin sheen of sweat coated the back of her neck, sticking her shirt to her back. Even at this time of the evening the street was relatively busy. Car headlights cut through the night, illuminating worn brickwork. They came to an advertising hoarding, a huge board against the wall of the railway bridge, ancient poster sunbleached and peeling. Below it stood a tall wooden fence, a barrier protecting something unseen. A set of padlocked doors sat in the centre, bordered on either side by a fleur-de-lis of faded blue graffiti.
"We’re going in here," Casey said. She placed a hand flat against the fence, affecting such convincing casualness that Alessa almost thought they would stroll through the doors. Until a sudden gap in the traffic when Casey hissed “Over the fence!” voice low and urgent, and Alessa found herself scrambling up, hands and feet scrabbling for purchase. Splinters snagged her jeans as she climbed, sharp against her flesh. She wriggled up and across, pausing briefly atop the fence, breathing hard. When she tried to lower herself down, her hands slipped; she landed in a sprawled heap at the foot of the fence, the accumulated detritus of neglect and rainfall soaking through the seat of her jeans. Casey followed, irritatingly nimble despite the hefty bulk of her backpack, a perfect landing on all fours, cat-graceful.
She pulled herself halfway upright, back resting against the wall. The rusted scaffold anchoring the advertising board to the railway bridge seemed suspended above her, a stark metallic skeleton half-hidden in the shadows.
"See here?" Casey said, straightening up. Set into the moss-slimy wall was a door, somewhat rusted, bearing the legend 'Danger: Do Not Enter.' “They used to hold illegal raves down here, back when raves were a thing. Doubt anyone’s been here for a while though. Bad vibes, maybe. Good thing about that is once the ravers moved on, everyone sort of stopped paying attention to this place.” Casey placed something solid and heavy in Alessa's palm. "Here," she said, flicking her own torch briefly on and off. The sudden glare burned Casey's illuminated face into Alessa's retinas, green and ghostly. "They don't like light, remember? Apparently these have the power of a million candles or something, so it should hold them off for a little while at least. Enough to buy us time to leg it, if nothing else."
Alessa blinked repeatedly, trying to disperse the eerie afterimage. "What if there are too many of them?"
I’m not afraid anymore, she told herself, though she knew that wasn’t entirely true: the fear was hollow, an empty terror she felt inside of her like a gaping hole. And Casey was no longer a comfort. Brave Casey, clever Casey, the woman who never seemed afraid of anything. Who'd left Tom to the mercy of the Shades. Who'd lied to Alessa to keep the secret hers for just a little longer. No, she was still afraid, but it was masked by a bone-weary anger. And that was good. The Shades would not taste anger as easily as they did fear. If she could hold onto that anger, make it her shield...
"I suppose we'll be screwed," Casey replied, shrugging. "It won't come to that, though. I know it’s scary, Alessa. You just have to trust me."
"Yeah, well..." glancing over her shoulder, car headlamps casting spotlights against the wall "...you'll have to forgive me if I'm finding it a bit difficult to trust you right now. You've not set much of a precedent."
"I didn't mean to lie to you," Casey said. She edged up to the wall, pressing her palm against the rust-streaked door. "It wasn't supposed to happen that way. None of this was. I didn't mean for anyone to get hurt." She turned to Alessa, profile sharp, betraying not a trace of fear. "Least of all you. If you don't believe anything else I say, at least believe that. You matter to me. What we're doing here tonight is to help you heal. Help us both heal. Because we're survivors, right?" She squeezed Alessa's arm with her free hand. "You and me, we'll look back on this someday and piss ourselves laughing at how stupid it all was."
Alessa wasn't sure she'd ever be able to laugh at any of this, not with Tom's desperate begging still so loud inside her head. "Yeah," she said, and the dullness of her tone must have gone unnoticed because Casey nodded towards the door and gestured towards a padlock, severed and discarded in the corner.
"Bolt cutters are amazing things," she said, voice low. "I did that earlier. It's right where I left it. Judging by the all the rust everywhere nobody's been here in a long time. Now, listen, lights on once we're inside. And whatever you do, don’t lose this rucksack, because in here...” she patted the canvas. “In here is everything we need to burn the fuckers to cinders. Right? Jesus, I can already smell them."
Her stomach lurched as Casey eased the door slowly open. A high-pitched whine emanated from the ancient hinges, quickly swallowed up by the roar of a souped-up engine out on the main road. Thank god for chavs, Alessa thought. She tried to ignore the ache of her knee joints as she stood.
Casey pulled the door open fully, and Alessa recoiled as the smell of the air inside hit her full in the face; the rich, sweet stink of meat spoiling in a hot room. She fell back on her haunches, turned her face to the side and retched up the meagre contents of her stomach. T
he hot chocolate tasted every bit as sweet on the way back up.
Casey eyed her with dispassionate interest. "Yeah, I did say you could smell them," she said. "Foul, innit? You can tell when they’re around just by the way the air smells. Like binbags left out in the sun."
Alessa said nothing. The acid burned bitter in the back of her throat. She wiped her mouth on her sleeve.
"There’s no light at all down here." Casey angled the torch beam inside. Alessa followed its trajectory, keeping her sleeve close to her nose to block out the odour. The walls and floor seemed to disappear entirely a few yards in, quickly turning dark, like the depths of a huge throat. They edged inside, the door swinging shut behind them. "I'm not sure how deep it is. All I know is, this is where they come from. It all radiates from here. The Heygate, the station…I’ve seen them coming in and out, melting through the door like they’re made of nothing. We’ve got to take a punt on this. Either that, or we spend the best part of forever shitting ourselves at every shadow."
For the first time, she looked thoroughly impatient, and Alessa sensed that there would be no arguing anymore. She'd made up her mind. And somewhere inside of herself, beneath a thick veneer of resentment and apprehension, Alessa knew she was right. Above ground, the Shades were scattered, skittish, and that made them dangerous; down here, in their lightless sanctuary, they might be worse still. But they had to go direct to the source. They had to find the nest and burn it to cinders.
The stairwell smelled of rust. Years of accumulated limescale crusted the brickwork like thick white sores. "Where the hell are we?"