‘You can’t seriously expect me to–’
Charlie Raven tapped the notepad. His long, slender index finger pressed against Harry Shaw’s initials. ‘You work for Raven and Skull now, Shaw,’ he said, crisply. ‘I expect you to adhere to your side of the bargain.’ With a sniff that suggested he had dismissed the matter, Raven gestured towards the door and said, ‘Mr Black will take you down to your new accommodation in the basement. I trust you’ll be very comfortable there. He’ll show you where everything is and I expect you’ll be pleasantly surprised to discover that the kitchen is of a gourmet standard.’ Laughing, he added, ‘The freezer is already well-stocked with a good supply of meat.’
10
‘I don’t believe it,’ Becky muttered. One of the ceiling lights fluttered. It spat a series of shadows into the corner of the room before settling back to its dull, forgotten glow. Becky wrapped her arms tight around her ample chest. ‘That’s just a story. That’s just a silly, scary, made-up story.’
‘It drove poor Harry insane,’ Shaun said, softly. ‘Raven kept him living in the basement of this building. He was trapped. He was away from his family and sunlight. He was eating corpses. Of course, it didn’t take him long to get an appetite for his work. He got so passionate about eating human flesh they say he filed his teeth so that they were sharper, pointier, more easily able to tear through skin and muscle.’
Becky shook her head.
‘And they say,’ Shaun continued, ‘now that Raven is no longer keeping him supplied with all the meat he wants, Harry has to prowl the corridors of the basement and grab what he can, when he can–’
‘Stop it!’ Becky insisted. ‘You’re making this up!’
She flinched – startled – when the door burst open. It was only a mild relief to see Nicola and Chloe returning to the office. The earnest expressions on their faces looked contrived. Dancing behind their serious frowns Becky could see grins of the wickedest malice.
‘There’s a rat in the ladies loo,’ Nicola told Shaun.
‘We thought it might be one of your relatives,’ Chloe added. ‘But it didn’t have a weight problem.’
Nicola giggled.
Shaun glared at them both. ‘A rat?’ he repeated. ‘Why didn’t you just hit it with one of your broomsticks?’
‘Fuck you,’ said Nicola.
‘Why didn’t you just go straight to janitorial and tell them about it?’ Shaun pressed. ‘Why come all the way up here to tell me?’
Chloe shook her head. ‘We didn’t want to be late back. We know how important it is to you that we don’t spend too long away from our desks whilst working your overtime shift.’
Wearily, Shaun dragged himself from his chair. ‘Are you serious? A fucking rat in the ladies’ bogs? Couldn’t you have done something about it?’
‘Not our responsibility,’ Nicola said, airily. Glancing at Chloe she added, ‘Plus, when we saw a rat in there, we both thought of you straight away.’
‘We were going to name it after you,’ Chloe told him. ‘But then we thought that would be cruel to the rat.’
Shaun glowered. Reaching for the jacket from the back of his chair, he rolled his eyes and said, ‘I’m going to have to go and deal with this, aren’t I?’
‘Ladies loos in the basement lavatory,’ Nicola said. ‘You know where they are, don’t you?’
Shaun had the good grace to blush.
‘Be careful,’ Chloe said. ‘It had really big teeth.’
‘Rats don’t scare me,’ he grunted. Not bothering to discuss the matter further, he pushed out of the office doors and disappeared from their view.
‘Oh-mi-God,’ Becky whispered. ‘That must have been so scary. You really saw a rat in the ladies’ loos?’
Chloe laughed.
Nicola shook her head. ‘That was just a story to get Shaun to go down there,’ she explained. ‘Chloe’s boyfriend is waiting there to kick seven shades of shit out of him.’ She smiled darkly and said, ‘With any luck, Kevin might finally teach that little fucker a lesson.’
11
Becky went back to her desk. Coils of nausea, like fat, slimy worms, writhed and untangled in her belly. She didn’t like Shaun. She felt uncomfortable with his prurient interest in her breasts. She disliked the nasty story he had told her about Charlie Raven, Roger Black and Harry Shaw. Most of all, she was still furious that he had put a webcam beneath her desk.
But she didn’t like the idea of him receiving a beating for his faults. The whole idea seemed cruel and barbaric. Chloe and Nicola’s decision to have Shaun punished seemed almost as though they were appointing themselves judge, jury and executioner. Remembering Nicola’s concerns about how severely Kevin might punish Shaun (I’m serious, Chloe. Your Kevin could genuinely kill someone like Shaun. Genuinely.) Becky was suddenly swathed in a clammy cold sweat. She glanced towards the door where Shaun had disappeared. Less than two minutes had gone since he left. He was probably still hurrying to the basement’s toilets to deal with a fictitious rat. Becky wondered if there was a chance she could get there ahead of him and warn him that he was in danger.
‘You look freaked out,’ Nicola observed.
Becky glanced up, startled that the two women had crept up on her so quietly. She was suddenly aware of the darkness of the office. There was now no light outside the windows. The fluorescents cast a disconcerting hue over the office that made the landscape strange and alien. Shadows fluttered in the wrong direction. The darkness of open doorways seemed to stretch forever. The overhead lights, always too bright, now seemed to be edged with encroaching darkness.
Chloe extended a carton of water for Becky.
Nicola studied Becky with sisterly concern.
‘You look sickly,’ Chloe said. ‘D’you need an aspirin or something?’
Becky reached up for the water. She didn’t know whether to be grateful for the sympathy the two women were showing, or disquieted by the fact that they could behave so normally after arranging to have Shaun beaten. Torn between responses, and still wondering if there was time for her to warn Shaun before he met with his fate, she missed her grip on the water and watched it fall to her desk. The carton upended, splashing its contents across the keyboard.
Nicola and Chloe blinked with surprise.
‘Shit!’
‘Fuck!’
Chloe acted swiftly. Dropping to the floor, she slipped into the kneehole of Becky’s desk and snatched the keyboard’s USB connector from the back of the PC.
‘Quick thinking,’ Nicola marvelled. She and Chloe turned. As one, they stared expectantly at Becky.
‘Sorry,’ Becky mumbled. She didn’t feel particularly apologetic. Chloe had dropped the water, not her. But she could see an apology was needed. Because both women were staring at her, she figured it had been her fault. ‘I mustn’t have been concentrating,’ she said weakly.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Chloe said. ‘It’ll be easy enough for someone to clean up the spill if you go down to janitorial and tell them what’s happened.’
12
The corridors of the basement were like something from a forgotten catacomb. Too narrow, and badly lit, they stretched endlessly into the distance. Hollow acoustics reverberated each of Becky’s footsteps into an ominous echo. There was a lingering mustiness in the air, the vague scent of something damp, forgotten and rotten.
It was subtle.
The smell was only slightly more powerful than the faraway perfume of pine-fresh toilet chemicals. Becky didn’t know whether those lavatory smells were coming from the basement’s loos or the janitorial department. In an ideal world, she knew she would never have had to find out.
Becky had argued against Chloe’s decision. She had said she didn’t want to go down to the basement. She had no desire to visit janitorial after hearing Shaun’s tales about Harry Shaw. She had even offered to use her own supply of tissues and hankies to clean up the mess but Chloe and Nicola had insisted that she had to go, especially as electrical equipmen
t had been damaged in the incident.
Apparently, it was part of the health and safety policy.
In hushed tones they also said, if Becky didn’t go down to janitorial, it would look suspicious. Becky knew they were talking about the plan to have Shaun beaten by Kevin. She felt ill when she saw that her actions were now a part of that diabolical scheme. Raising every protest she could think of – she had never been to janitorial, she didn’t know where it was, she was feeling a little sickly, she needed to get her blouse wiped clean – Becky eventually relented and took the lift down to the bowels of the building.
She had been painfully aware of the ancient machinery clattering and clunking as it lowered her slowly downwards. She could hear the grinding of something rusty and something that sounded like metal shearing against metal.
Her heart had been racing before.
Now it thundered. Her stomach folded with unexpected pangs of nausea. It felt as though a large, cruel fist clutched her intestines.
When the lift came to a shivering halt the carriage rocked and trembled so violently she thought it was going to fall apart or send her plummeting to some deeper floor below. The idea made beads of nervous sweat break across her brow. The lift door drew slowly open to reveal the basement’s long, narrowing corridor. Summoning all the courage she could muster, inhaling the unpleasant fragrance of the basement, Becky stepped out of the lift and walked into the corridor.
‘I’m never doing overtime again,’ she muttered, softly. ‘Never again.’
The words were whispered back to her as a mocking echo.
never again… never again… never again…
Common sense told her she should be shouting for assistance, calling someone from janitorial to rush to her aid. But the idea of boldly breaking the basement’s stillness made the muscles of her anus clench tightly.
The walls were a drab olive. The carpet was worn and the colour of rain-starved grass. It was barely thick enough to muffle the clip of her sensible heels with each step she took. She walked steadily towards a sharp bend at the end of the corridor and then paused.
Her mind was playing tricks, telling her that the route was getting darker and more oppressive. Another mile-long corridor stretched out before her. It was broken by doors labelled NO ADMITTANCE, OUT OF SERVICE and MAINTENANCE STAFF ONLY. As she crept hesitantly along the corridor, Becky felt sure there would be a sinister figure lurking around the corner – ready to pounce as soon as she stepped into view.
Her heartbeat pounded at a deafening roar.
Her throat closed tight as she tried to swallow down her nervousness.
‘Hello?’ she murmured.
lo… lo… lo…
Aside from the dwindling echo of her own cry, there was only silence.
Bravely, she stepped around the corner. Seeing another length of empty corridor should have allowed a wave of relief to wash over her. Instead, because this seemed like another mile-long stretch that diminished into faraway gloom and darkness, she groaned.
‘No way!’
way… way… way…
The echo of her sigh came back to her.
Becky flinched from the sound.
Who’s there?
She strained her ears, not sure if she had heard the words. Standing as still as a brittle ice sculpture, not daring to tremble, she clasped a hand against her breast and called again, ‘Hello?’
‘BECKY!’
The cry came from behind her.
She glanced back over her shoulder and screamed. A bloody figure lurched towards her. She briefly recognised Shaun. His familiar bulk was the canvas to a painting of battered brutality. Although she only looked at him for an instant, the image of his torment was immediately imprinted on her retina.
One eye was closed and circled with dripping crimson. A spray of blood had been slashed across his chest. The colour was so dark it shifted from meaty red to slick black in the basement’s dim lights. Shaun lurched towards her, dragging behind a leg that was obscenely twisted. Through his head, a long and bloody knife entered the left side of his skull and came out through the right.
‘Oh-mi-God!’
‘BECKY!’
Her shriek was deafening in the confines of the corridor. Becky tried to run, but for one heart-stopping moment, her legs refused to move. Groaning miserably, dimly aware that a hot gush of piss had rushed through her panties, she started to fall away from Shaun.
Only then did she find herself running.
It took a moment to work out what she was doing. Her need to distance herself from Shaun had her banging into the corridor wall. Almost falling. The impact was so hard she thought she heard the crack of breaking bone when she slammed into the wall. And then she was able to run and run and run.
‘BECKY!’
Shaun’s final cry was followed by a cackle of girlish giggles. Becky was rushing into the darkening gloom of the corridor by the time her mind had told her there was someone with Shaun. She half turned, still terrified that Shaun would be lurching after her.
Behind him, she saw Chloe and Nicola were standing and laughing.
Shaun had removed the comedy knife-through-the-head gag. He held the prop in one hand. He was laughing as helplessly as Chloe and Nicola. All three of them were bent double as the mirth racked through their bodies.
Becky mentally replayed the events as she continued to stumble down the corridor away from him. Shaun had told her his ghost story of a nefarious janitor. Chloe and Nicola had told her their own contemporary horror story of boyfriend brutality. Becky had stupidly believed them all. And now they had jumped out and scared her.
They had scared the piss out of her, she thought miserably as the liquid at the tops of her thighs began to cool. She was suddenly so conscious of the damp garment at her crotch that she wasn’t sure if she had yet managed to stop peeing.
A sob lurched from her chest as she saw they were enjoying a cruel laugh at the expense of the new girl on overtime.
Her legs continued to run down the corridor even though she now just wanted to stop, collapse and weep at the way they had embarrassed her. She had been made to look foolish. She had believed their stupid stories. And she had pissed her knickers in fright.
She continued stumbling down the corridor away from them.
‘Come back,’ Shaun called.
‘Yeah,’ Nicola shouted. ‘We were just ragging on you.’
Chloe called, ‘We do this to all the newbies.’
She reached the end of the corridor. Another blind bend. She stared incredulously back at the trio. Hate, anger and relief were all vying for control of her emotions. She didn’t want to face them. She couldn’t bring herself to talk to the wretches that had induced such a terror. The idea of just running away from them, even if she was only running down a darkening corridor, was far more appealing.
She turned to stare down the new stretch of corridor.
From the shadows, there was a glimpse of a face. A tall man. Gangly. He wore a suit that was too big for him. His face was made ferret-like by an old-fashioned beard and moustache.
When he smiled, she saw his yellow teeth had been filed to points.
13
‘Do we have to talk about the office all the time?’ Cindy demanded.
Becky fell silent.
The air round the table turned chilly as everyone glanced at Cindy. She remained on Richard’s lap, one hand behind his head, the other stroking his chest. Fixing the group with an expression of cold contempt she said, ‘It’s bad enough spending forty hours a week in that shithole, as well as ten hours a week travelling to the place and another ten travelling away from it. That office dictates the clothes I have to wear, the price of the house I have to live in, the cost of the food I have to eat and the way I end up living my shitty little life.’
Her voice was in danger of rising to a strident shriek.
Richard placed a soothing hand on her arm but she shrugged it away with a vicious jerk.
‘Can�
�t one of you think of something to talk about that doesn’t revolve around that godforsaken office? Don’t any of you think that going there, existing for that place, and talking about it incessantly, is like a living hell? Why can’t someone talk about something that has nothing to do with Raven and fucking Skull?’
‘What did you want to talk about, Cindy?’
Tony spoke in his diplomatic voice. This was the voice they had all heard him use to calm the angriest outbursts. ‘What would you prefer we talk about this evening?’ he urged. ‘The floor’s all yours, Cindy. What do you want to talk about?’
Cindy hesitated for a moment before opening her mouth.
14
Cindy always thought of Melissa as the woman who had everything. Melissa lived in a huge and magnificent manor house. It had been bought using her über-rich parents’ resources. Melissa had good looks that would not have been out of place in the celebrity pages of Heat magazine. Melissa had horses and free time and hobbies. And, most maddening of all, she had Richard.
It was an idyllic summer’s evening. A lazy sun nudged its way towards the horizon, taking the time to illuminate Melissa Mansion in all its ostentatious splendour and glory. A snow-white bastion, set in its own grounds, surrounded by landscaped greenery and looking like a stately home, Melissa Mansion was a huge and imposing reminder to Cindy that the hateful bitch had everything. High walls circumnavigated the grounds of Melissa Mansion, securing the property and keeping the real world well away. The driveway was paved and polished. A snake of glossy Yorkshire stone that sat well against the manicured greenery of the lawns. The driveway was long enough to make a car drive a necessity to get from the front door to the wrought iron gates. The entire estate gave an impression of enviable excess that was gratuitous enough to make Cindy seethe.
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