He was at the entrance now, and pointed the viewfinder at the cracked stonework above him. He took another shot, and entered.
It was dark inside. Much darker than he had anticipated.
He set his pack on the floor and opened the side pocket. The sound of the Velcro exploded into the silence, and he winced in response.
From the pack, he pulled a Maglite, switching it on and pointing it into the darkness. He shook it, the batteries rattling back at him as they echoed from the surface of unseen shapes. The beam did not improve, and he realised that the problem was not the torch, but his eyes—they had not yet adjusted to the gloom. He reached back into the pack and pulled out the light meter instead, aiming it into the shadows.
F3.07. Not bad. Perfectly workable with a wide aperture and a high ISO.
He stood inert, waiting for his eyes to adjust.
As they did, the entranceway began to take shape around him. Each wall featured a mosaic of tiny, coloured tiles, creating broken isometric patterns stretching far up into the central column above him. Below, the floor was a mixture of stone, plaster, and fallen tiles, which lay strewn across the windblown ridges of sand throughout. He shuffled his foot from side to side, but could not see the building’s true topography.
Lifting the camera, he framed his first interior shot. It showed the staircase before him, curving upwards and then back in on itself, splitting into two luxurious arcs and disappearing high above his head and out of shot.
He pressed the button, heard the shutter fall, and tilted the camera to see the 3 x 4.5-inch display.
It was okay, but it wouldn’t win him the Pulitzer. He turned one-eighty and framed the desert between the grand stone arches instead.
There was a thud from somewhere above him. His muscles tightened and he froze, his finger poised above the Big Black Button.
One of the things he learnt from his work for Derelict—a magazine covering exactly what you’d expect from the title—was that abandoned places never stayed that way for long, and he still remembered the day he had slowly backed out of a room in which he had found a homeless man masturbating.
That was the kind of thing you didn’t forget.
No follow-up sound came, and he brought the lens back up to his face with a sigh. This was the middle of the desert, not the inner city, and judging by the amount of crap surrounding him, it was probably just another chunk of plaster coming loose, giving up its place on the wall for a new life on the floor.
He adjusted the focus through the viewfinder with a trembling hand, re-framing the shot and pressing the button. He looked at the results.
Not bad.
He took a deep breath, steadying nerves that he would not admit had been un-steadied, and began to explore.
Fifteen minutes later, and he was back at the bottom of the stairs.
He had spent the time doing a lap of the ground floor, bringing the shutter down on anything that might interest the folks at Anthropology Quarterly. From his limited experience, they especially seemed to like the little things—the way a window was clasped; the construction of walls; closeups of any ornaments or vases. And, with a hundred and twenty-eight gigabytes of storage on his camera—and another sixty-four on a memory card in his pack—he did not need to be frugal.
But he did need to hurry up. He took out his phone.
After quickly scrolling through hundreds of pictures of Amy in various stages of undress, he found what he was looking for: the screenshot of the website he had taken before leaving. It told him that the sun would set in or around the next thirty minutes or so, and that gave him just enough time to give the second floor a quick glance to see what he was working with tomorrow.
He slipped the phone back into his pocket and began to move up the stairs, testing each one with the press of a toe before transferring his weight. They seemed stable enough, and he continued to move up them, running his arm along the curve of the wall as he went.
At the top, the tattered fragments of a rug hung listlessly over the first few steps, and as he approached them, saw that the carpet stretched all the way to the far side of the building, the tiled floor visible through its holes.
He stood in what was clearly the central corridor. From it, several rooms branched off, dusky sunlight the colour of fire streaming through each of the arched doorways, casting shapes onto the rug, like inverse shadows.
It was beautiful, and Noah took his opportunity.
Click.
He titled the screen once more, and, pleased he had taken his first award-winning photo of the trip—he usually took around thirty that he believed truly deserved accolade, something that the people at Hotten & Holder had so far failed to recognize—he moved into the first room.
It was decorated with the same ornate tiling as the entrance hall, and was larger than his entire flat back home. Through the windows, he saw that the sun was little more than a slither of light resting on the top of the mountains.
Not a bad place for a final cigarette before setting up for the night.
He lifted himself onto the ledge of the open window and let his legs dangle towards the sand. The sun grew smaller as he watched, and he pulled out an already battered cigarette carton, lighting one up and inhaling deep.
The air was cooler now, and the money for the shoot was pretty much in the bag. He felt good. Free. The best part was, he wasn’t thinking of Amy. Not one bit.
Which was good. Because she’d ditched him. Moved half way across the country. And for what?
A pointless degree in Computer Sciences, that’s what.
She must have known. She must have known.
The thought played itself on a loop over and over in his mind, a bad mantra for a bad situation. Getting into college—especially at thirty-two—takes time, and she must have applied long before she had ever broached the subject with him.
Maybe she was trying to spare his feelings.
If so, it didn’t work, because the worst part of all of this, the most gut-wrenching and soul-destroying bitch of the whole situation, was that she must have known. She must have known and kept planning anyway, letting him believe that she wasn’t about to dump his ass and leave him with an apartment he couldn’t afford on his own, a group of friends he never much liked in the first place, and a housecat that, quite frankly, he hated a little more with each passing day without her.
He took another drag of the cigarette, letting it rip at his throat.
Well, fuck Amy. What did she care anyway; she was probably blowing some guy in her dorm room just for the goddamn fun of it. The college experience, she called it.
His emotional pain manifested itself in his fingers, and he looked down to see that the cigarette was nothing more than an orange stub pinched between two smouldering fingers. He flicked the butt up into the air and shook out his hand, watching the ember perform a dancing arc across the night sky.
Amy wouldn’t’ve approved, but fuck it. Anyway, what harm would one more cigarette butt do in a world where turtles choked to death on beer can wrappers?
He sighed and took one last look out at the mountains. The sun was nothing more than a glow behind them, and he looked back into the room to see that it was black. The archway he had entered through had disappeared into the darkness, and he could no longer see where the debris on the floor lay.
Stupid. What did he think was going to happen if he watched the sunset? Goddamn it.
He swung his legs back over the ledge, catching his calf on something sharp in the process.
“Shit,” he whispered, hopping from the ledge onto his good foot and lifting his damaged one to look at it.
Whatever was on the ledge had sliced through the material of his pants and cut a deep groove into the meat of his leg. The wound was painful and was already bleeding, the warm wetness running down his calf and gathering in his sock. He held the cloth of his pants against it for a few moments, waiting for it to congeal.
The pain was getting worse, and his pant leg was
now fully damp with blood. He stood, pondering the benefits of travel insurance, wondering exactly what the benefits were if you’re bleeding to death in the desert, and then straightened out suddenly. If he didn’t get going soon, he might be stuck here for the night, and although he’d been considering it earlier, the sudden darkness combined with the loud noise above him had made the tent sound much more appealing.
Before he could do anything, he needed light, and with a horrible sinking feeling in his stomach, realised he couldn’t remember where he had left his pack. Was it at the top of the stairs or somewhere in here?
Shit.
From somewhere in the darkness of the corridor, there was another sound. It was unlike the thudding from before, but had the same effect. He felt the hair on his exposed neck rise.
He waited.
This time, no dust motes were visible dancing in the light, and in fact, Noah couldn’t see anything. He lifted his foot gently and placed it a few centimetres in front of him.
The sound came again, and once more, he froze. It was a soft patting noise, like fingertips tapping cardboard.
He lifted his other foot slowly, bringing it in line with the first one. When he placed it down, he gritted his teeth together, already forgetting how bad the pain in his leg was.
Pat . . . pat . . . pat . . .
Stepping further into the darkness with his arms outstretched, he suddenly felt the cool firmness of the doorway.
Pat . . . pat . . . pat . . .
Closer now. He would check the landing for his pack first, try to avoid doubling back on himself if he didn’t need too.
Passing through the arch, he slowly bent down and began running his hands over the floor, caressing the ragged and sand-swept carpet in search of his bag.
A shuffle from behind him. This time, it was the sound of a cadaver dragging a twisted foot along the smooth tiled floor beside the carpet.
He closed his eyes against the image and began to move his hands quicker. Where the fuck was this goddamn pack?
The sound came again. It was still light, almost unperceivable, but it was there. Whoever or whatever it was, was close now, and did not want him to know about it. There was a smell now too, familiar yet ugly. He was about to make a run for it, pack or no pack, when he lay his hands on the blessedly familiar touch of fabric.
Got it.
He undid the flap and groped for his light, the noise of his fumbling sounding uncomfortably loud in the isolation. His fingers touched metal, and he swung the pack over his shoulder, whipping the torch out of the pocket and switching it on.
In front of him were three sets of eyes, so blindingly bright in reflection that they obscured whatever creature—or creatures—they belonged too. Two of the pairs were high above his head, and seemed to be looking down on him.
He dropped the torch and ran.
He was in darkness again, but enough of the torch light reflected from the walls of the space to illuminate the stairs beneath him as he took them two at a time, gliding his arm along the wall as a guide.
Behind him, he could hear the unseen creatures give chase.
He kept the pace up, each step causing his leg to scream out in agony, his mind searching through the hundreds of hours he had spent watching those Attenborough documentaries with Amy and trying to recall an animal that tall that could possibly be in the desert.
He came up blank. But it didn’t matter. He was on the ground floor again now, bolting towards the small portion of night sky that signified the doorway. He made it through, but kept running anyway, the large and angular pack digging into his back with each frantic step.
A sudden dip in the sand caused him to lose his footing and fall. His face connected with the sand.
After a moment’s dizziness, he sat up suddenly, digging his backup torch from his pack and directing it into the gloom of the building.
Three domestic-sized cats were circling the entrance.
Their fur was mangy, and one of them was missing an ear. All three stood looking at him, not seeming to want to come any farther into the sand. They circled the doorway for a few more seconds and then retreated into the darkness.
Cats!
Noah spat out the sand and threw his head back to the stars. He laughed, long and deep and uncontrollably, until tears formed in the corners of his eyes. For the first time since he had arrived, he was glad Amy was not there.
It was morning again, and the sun illuminated the walls of his tent, making them glow ethereal around him. He wriggled out of his sleeping bag, his body already clammy in the morning heat.
He pulled out a cigarette and tried to light it up, but the sand had infected the gears of his lighter when he fell, and the wheel grounded to a dissatisfying halt. He threw it into the corner of the tent and pulled out a box of matches instead, striking one against the strip. He lit the cigarette and inhaled. The warm air of the tent made it taste stale and unpleasant, and he only smoked it to about halfway before opening the flap and stubbing it into the sand.
He sat this way for a while, letting the sun beat down on his naked legs, careful to keep his wound from going the same way as the lighter.
Last night, even after his embarrassing feline revelation, the experience of the chase had still unsettled him, the panic of the moment leaving a coppery taste in the back of his throat.
The abandoned palace had loomed large in his dreams, too; encounters with Lovecraftian horrors tainting his subconscious. It was stupid, sure, but even in the light of day, the building was somehow ominous, eternal, a solitary rebellion against the desolate landscape that surrounded it.
That’s good, he thought with a grimace, I’ll use that in my acceptance speech.
It was a sour thought.
Well, whatever. He was here now, and he had a job to do. Five grand went a long way towards the grocery list, especially when it was just for one.
He pulled out his phone and checked the time. His taxi would be picking him up for his return flight at four, and the trail back to the city took at least three hours, which, all in all, left him with two hours to pack away, get his photos, and get the hell out of dodge.
Which was fine. The sooner he was out of here, the better.
He began to pack.
For the second time, he crossed the threshold and waited for his eyes to adjust.
The entrance was the same as he had seen it yesterday, albeit slightly brighter. There were no cats in sight, which was just fine by him. He re-took a few of the shots he had taken last night—now in better lighting—and then ascended the stairs, passing by where he had watched the sunset.
Along the top of the hallway, lining both sides, was a ridge just about wide enough for a cat. He shook his head and continued.
As he moved through the rooms, he became aware of the trail the feral cats had left, and wondered just how many were living here. Droppings lined most of the corridors, and increased in quantity each time he moved up a floor. They were accompanied by an increasingly unpleasant smell, and although he hadn’t seen any cats since last night, they were obviously still here. Sometimes, he could even hear them moving through the walls.
By the time he reached the fourth floor, his T-shirt was sticky with sweat, and he smelled almost as bad as his surroundings. He considered pulling the spare out of the pack, but decided to push on instead.
He lifted the camera, framing a window and the desert beyond.
He heard a soft thud behind him and turned.
It was one of the cats, a different one from the three he had seen last night. This one was missing an eye, a pale fluid oozing from the socket where it had been. On its body, only a few barest patches of fur were present, making its grey skin visible beneath. Noah took a step back.
The animal stood and looked at him with its head to one side, and then took a casual step towards him.
“Shoo,” he whispered, waving his arm as if brushing dust from a table.
The creature flinched, paused, and then continu
ed. Noah took another step backwards, holding his camera like a shield.
It ignored his flailing arm and approached him, extending its neck and trying to nuzzle his bad leg. He pushed it away gently with his foot.
It began to walk back towards him almost immediately.
He gave up and turned back to the window, letting the animal perform figures of eight between his legs. Great; now he’d have to check his vaccination book when he got back, see what was overdue. Probably have to get Larry sorted too, lest the stupid animal caught anything he brought back on his clothes.
He brought the viewfinder up to his eye and pressed the button, hearing the familiar and satisfying click. At the same moment, he felt a rough tongue lick his wound through the gash in his cargo pants.
He dropped the camera so suddenly that it swung on its strap and smashed against his solar plexus, knocking the air out of him. He looked down to see the cat grinning up at him and licking its lips.
In a moment of reactive horror—his motor neuron functions bypassing his brain completely—he kicked out with his foot, connecting with the animal’s ribcage and sending it in a low arc through the air. Its legs scrambled as it flew, and it landed with a thud, hissing at him before scampering away.
He stood for a few seconds in disbelief, half for the cats behaviour and half for his own. No matter what happened on this trip, he could never tell anyone that he had kicked a cat. That kind of thing just didn’t look good on your resume. He shook his head.
“This place is fucked,” he mumbled.
Just one more floor and he could get out of here.
The final stairway was shaped like a spiral, with a high-sided balustrade following the curve. Here, even more faeces lined the walls. Most were in the form of hardened lumps that buzzed with flies, but every now and again he would see one that was more like liquid, sprayed in obscene arcs across the wall.
Hinnom Magazine Issue 001 Page 2