by Various
He reached the thirteenth floor before remembering Dennis. The guy was an idiot, but he’d told Sean the number he lived at.
What the hell was it again? 44? No, he was pretty sure it was 42.
When he got to the twelfth floor, where Dennis lived with his mother, he pushed the door open, staggered through it and helped it to shut more quickly than it would have by leaning against it. He heard footfall out on the landing; boots on concrete echoing through an otherwise silent night. They were just beyond the door. Sean crouched so that his silhouette wasn’t visible through the frosted glass. He listened as they mumbled incoherently to one another as they raced past the door and continued down the stairs.
Without waiting for complete silence, Sean made his way down the hall, passing 48 on the left, 46 on the right, 44 on the left, and the final door—of course it would be—was where Dennis and his mother spent countless hours together, no doubt playing draughts and eating cucumber sandwiches. He looked the type.
He knocked, gently at first and then, when there was no answer, a little harder.
The lights on Twelve buzzed even more than his own floor. It almost sounded like a generator. Sean didn’t know how they slept with that thrumming all night long, though after what had just happened to him, he doubted the slightly quieter lights up on his own floor would help him to sleep ever again.
‘Who is it?’ a voice asked, and unless Dennis’s mother had smoked a hundred a day for the last fifty years, he was pretty sure it belonged to Dennis.
‘It’s me,’ Sean whispered, realising how silly he sounded almost immediately after speaking. ‘Sean. We met on the stairs this afternoon… yesterday afternoon… whatever.’
There was an unnerving silence, which gave Sean the perfect opportunity to glance down the hallway. The creepy-ass royals were nowhere to be seen; probably on the ground-floor, now, smoking cigarettes and laughing about how they had frightened the shit out of the new guy up on Fifteenth.
There was a clicking sound as Dennis unlatched the door. Sean turned to find Dennis peering tentatively through a one-inch crack. ‘Do you have any idea what time it is?’ he asked, groggily, rubbing at his sleep-filled eyes as if to further press the point.
‘You have to help me,’ he said. Dennis yawned, which made Sean angry for some reason, as if this guy should be all wide-eyed and terrified, just like he was. ‘Please, can I come in and call the police from here? There’s a gang out here, I don’t know whether they’re just kids playing… or if it’s real, or what.’
‘Who is it, Denny?’ a woman’s voice asked from inside the apartment.
‘Guy I met on the stairs earlier,’ Dennis said, speaking across his shoulder into the darkness. ‘The new guy from up on fifteenth.’
‘Does he know what time it is?’ the woman asked.
‘Says he’s being chased by some people,’ Dennis said, sounding bored and tired and more than a little perturbed. ‘Is it okay if he uses the phone, Mom?’
Sean waited; they both did. When the woman finally answered, Sean could have cried with relief. ‘Sure, Denny. Let the poor guy in just in case they come down here.’
Dennis stepped aside and gestured for Sean to enter. He didn’t waste any time and rushed forward, immediately feeling the terror subside.
The apartment was nothing like Sean could have prepared for. He would have gone so far as to say it was in worse condition than his own. There was a stale tang to the atmosphere, as if the toilet was broken and they hadn’t bothered to get it fixed, and a rusty bicycle with only one wheel filled the majority of the hallway, making it almost impossible to get past without taking off your shins.
‘Through there,’ Dennis said, jabbing a finger towards a paint-stripped door. ‘You’ll have to excuse the mess. Mother’s been ill, and I just haven’t had the time to do anything.’
Sean took the door at the end of the hall. The first thing he saw was the old woman, propped up on her bed like a porcelain doll. A lamp with a low-wattage bulb lit the room just enough for Sean to make out the woman’s dark, sunken eyes. Sitting on the floor beside the bed was a potty, full to the brim with liquid and dark, floating morsels. It was all Sean could do not to upchuck right there.
The woman grinned to reveal a solitary tooth as if a piece of popcorn had been wedged into her lower jaw. ‘You say people are chasin’ ya?’ she asked.
Sean, choking back the urge to gag, said, ‘They were. I… I don’t know, anymore. Can I use your phone anyway?’
The woman shrugged. Her parchment skin creaked. ‘Denny, show the boy where the fuckin’ phone is,’ she said.
Sean turned to find Dennis looking perplexed. As soon as he realised he was being watched, he said, ‘Sure. It’s just on the side through here.’ He took a step back out onto the hall, back into the semi-darkness.
Sean thanked the old woman, even though she had done nothing but terrify him further.
‘No problem,’ the woman said, cackling like a fairy-tale witch. ‘Can’t have any of that nonsense on our own doorstep, can we?’
Sean followed Dennis into an adjacent room, where it was even darker than the hall. He felt around on the wall, trying to locate the light-switch, and only succeeded in finding a hole in the plaster where one should have been, and a collection of exposed wires. He snatched his hand away, fearing electrocution, and followed the sound of Dennis’s laboured breathing deeper into the darkness.
In all honesty, he wanted to go back up to his own apartment now. He’d convinced himself that it was just kids, a gang of little bastards having a bit of fun at his expense, that was all. There was no need to alert the police; the last thing he needed was to have to provide a statement, or go down to the station for the sake of some ill-judged prank.
‘Dennis?’ Sean said, realising that he couldn’t hear the guy breathing any longer. When he was met with silence, he spoke with a little more assertiveness. ‘Hey, you still in here?’
Fuck!
Sean’s head was pounding as a result of not having long enough to sleep off the cider, and he felt so disoriented that time had become irrelevant, or had stopped completely.
He remembered that he had his lighter in his pocket, and grabbed for it. Loose change fell everywhere, clunking on bare floorboards and rolling away in all directions. Sean lifted the lighter and flicked the spark-wheel.
The room suddenly filled with light, and Sean didn’t know where to look first. Dennis was nowhere to be seen, and the side—where the woman had said there was a telephone—was completely bare except for a thick film of dust and decay. Sean raised the lighter higher, and it was then that he saw the thing hanging on the wall.
A rubber mask, made more grotesque as it hung loosely and folded. Sean knew who it was, though, from the thick blonde hair. It was a mask of Diana, Princess of Wales. ‘Shit!’ Sean gasped, taking a short step back.
It was then that something hit him hard on the back of the head. He dropped the lighter and the room descended, once again, into complete darkness. He, however, went down into an even deeper darkness, the stickiness of blood already beginning to matt his hair.
‘Did you get him, Denny?’ the old woman cried from her deathbed.
Dennis peeled off the face of Prince Charles and smiled. ‘Sure did, Mum.’
They all stood at the elevator, watching as Prince Philip and Prince William dragged the body in and propped it up in the corner.
‘He won’t wake up, will he?’ Sharon asked. She was the only one who had removed her mask, and looked nervously towards the others for a response.
‘Doubt it,’ Prince William said, stepping over the prone man’s body. ‘Old Charlie over here clunked him good an’ proper.’
Dennis—Charles—pressed the button at the bottom of the panel, the one which had no number on, and stepped out of the elevator to join the others. They all watched as the doors slowly closed; it would be the last time any of them saw the drunken bum from up on fifteen, for when the elevator reached the level be
low the basement, the doors would open and the thing would take him. Sure, they would have the not-so-pleasant task of cleaning the elevator up in the morning, but it was a small price to pay to keep the thing sated. A body would be enough for about a month, and the residents of Campion House could rest assured that the thing wouldn’t come up in the lift to take one of them.
The man wearing the Prince Harry mask peeled it off. It was the landlord, who was now tasked with finding a replacement for room 72.
‘I’ll put a fresh ad in the paper first thing in the morning,’ he said, wiping sweat from his brow. ‘Shouldn’t be a problem.’
They walked away from the elevator as it descended into the ground beneath the building, making their way back to their respective apartments, where they would once again sleep the sleep of relieved tenants.
The End
The Ghosts of my City Walk
Ren Warom
It wasn’t Jude’s idea to go in to The Romney, it was mine. That’s what I’ll always remember. I saw it there, crumbling against the slate sky like some horror videogame set piece and, you know, I just had to go inside. You could say it called to me, but buildings don’t speak. Especially not condemned buildings. All they do is rot in slow motion until the day comes they’re reduced to hulks of rubble and clouds of dust.
Except this building. The Romney. It was the last of these really old early 1960’s high rises in the area. There was a whole village of them. Seven ugly buildings on the edge of the scrubland next to the estate where me and my buds lived. They stood around this sad looking playground, just a roundabout, a dodgy looking see-saw and a spider climbing frame with a smiling face, that no one climbed on.
Scab land. Skank land. Shit land. We’d called it all of those things. And kids unlucky enough to live there? Shit landers. Skankers. Fucking scabs. Poor little bastards. Emphasis on poor. They lost their homes starting seven years ago, the year I left junior school. Some inspector or other found unstable asbestos in the buildings. Enough of it to kill a city full of shit landers, or at least that was the rumour.
Shabby flat by shabby flat, the council started to re-home the skankers. Some of them going real far afield, all the way across the city to estates we’d never heard of and weren’t really interested in. It was all a big joke, wasn’t it? Stupid little skankers chucked out of one piss-soaked hovel and likely into another. We weren’t lots better off, but from a good estate with gardens and well-kept houses. Working class with pride, my dad liked to call it. But everyone’s got to have someone to piss on, innit. Innit?
Anyway. Three of them were emptied within the first five months. Dad said the council elections was soon, so they tried to look busy. But after, when they got back in, it all slowed to a crawl, and those empty ones got a bit fucked up. Windows smashed and graffiti sprayed by Gaz’s crew growing like some jungle vine all over the lower levels, and then Ollie, Gaz’s best mate, sprayed his name in what looked like twenty foot tall letters in black and red right near the top of all six towers. Like he learned to fucking fly or something. I was dead impressed. Jude, too.
He was all like: ‘Shit, man, when I’m in senior school, I’m joining Gaz’s crew and that’s gunna be me. You’ll look up and see Jude written in mile high black and red. Fucking epic.’
I punched his arm: ‘Yeah, you wish. Gaz is never gonna have you on his crew.’
‘Well, he ain’t ‘avin you neither.’
‘Fuck off, I ain’t gonna ask ‘im, am I?’ I punched him again, because he pissed me off. I wanted to be in Gaz’s crew as much as he did but I was a little more street wise than Ju. I knew Gaz weren’t interested in little shits like us. His gang was all fifth years. We didn’t have a hope in hell.
But neither did them tower blocks. The council put up a notice saying they’d be empty before the new year, but them six was gone sooner, a lot sooner. By the end of our last summer before senior school. It was Ollie’s fault. He was a bit of a fucking lunatic. Well he had to be to get his name that high, innit? Anyway, he thought it’d be a right laugh to make molotov cocktails with his dad’s whisky. His dad was a bit of a drinker, like. Few bevvies every evening. Thirty or so. I lost count of the times my nan would tut and say to my mum:
‘You should see it, Cath. Mountains of cans and empty bottles of whisky. Filthy habit.’
Nan lived next door to Ollie’s folks. She sent dozens of letters to the council about cans tipping into her front garden from their bins. Ollie’s dad was a tosser. He got wind of my Nan’s complaints from his sister Shell’s best mate Ann who worked for the council, and started pissing in them cans and lobbing them at her windows, but only when he was good and drunk. So Ollie made these molotovs, and took them with him to shit land. Gaz and them lot were probably egging him on, but he didn’t need that. Ollie was fucking bonkers, just like his dad.
I think he meant to hit the empty high rises, though. I really do. But he’d drunk some of the whisky, hadn’t he? And I guess the three on the right of The Romney looked pretty much the same as the three on the left in the dark, when you’re a bit drunk. I suppose if the council had kept the security lights on it might not have happened. But that costs money, and them buildings was a fucking money pit as it was. Bottom line is, he hit the wrong buildings, and they burned. With everyone inside.
No one could figure out how the fire burned so hard or so fast but it did, and the three towers… they was gutted. Black ruins. Not all the families was still in them, cos most of them had already been re-homed, but at least two hundred flats was still occupied all in. Some 400 people, probably more, all dead. Burned in their beds most likely, before they even knew they was gone. We all saw the fires and, even though the scrubland was on the edge of the estate, you could hear the flames crackling and roaring. They sounded hungry.
We all went there after school the next day, even though some asshole from the fire department came round the classrooms with a copper and warned us all to stay away. You couldn’t even see Ollie’s tags on the three burnt buildings, they was that covered in smoke damage. And the smell. It was weird. Stuck in your throat for days after. I kept hawking up and spitting, and there was always black in it. Like I’d breathed in soot, even though the air had looked clean.
Council got on the problem quick smart after that, sending in Ollie’s dad’s crew to bring them six empty buildings tumbling and we all sat to watch with Gaz’s lot. We’d been invited cos we was out playing on our bikes that night and saw them on the way there. We saw them bottles in Ollie’s hands and, well, two and two makes tower blocks on fire don’t it? Dunno why Jude felt it necessary to tell Gaz what we’d seen. Guess he thought Gaz’d let us in his gang, and maybe I did for a second or two when they invited us to watch with them.
We went to Ollie’s and sat on his roof. They gave us fags and vodka, laughing and chatting like we was best mates or some shit. Then Gaz leaned over, his lip raised like a fucking Doberman, and he told us if we ever grassed he’d shove Molotov cocktails up our arses and set us off like fireworks. Jude damn near shat himself, silly bastard, but it felt to me like growing up. Our first proper threat. And we got to see one hell of a show. Except for this one thing. When the buildings collapsed, they sounded like they was screaming.
After that The Romney emptied in record time, my dad reckoned it was in case some other stupid fucker got any ideas. But it made no sense. The Romney tenants, they’d all been up in arms about moving. It’s why they was last. They had some union going on, keeping the place nice, and safe. Way I heard it, off Sharon, one of Gaz’s boy’s sister’s mates, there was a lot more in them deciding to move than the chance of their block going up in flames. She said they scarpered after them other buildings was brought down. Said they couldn’t get out fast enough.
And The Romney? Instead of demolishing it, the council walled it off and left it to rot. There was a local meeting where the council insisted it’d be dangerous to bring it down, but that’s not what Ollie’s dad told mine. My dad drank with him
a lot and said he was talking fucking nonsense. Saying The Romney was evil, like Salem’s lot in the movie. Saying there was things in there that wasn’t right. Whatever it was, no one wanted to touch that building. Most people wouldn’t even look at it. I reckoned it was a bit over the top to go that stupid over a building, but what happened to Ollie though, I guess that was weird.
He went a bit sideways. I mean, not that he was ever straight, but he weren’t right. Twitchy, and too pale, like he wasn’t sleeping, and he wouldn’t go near The Romney. It looked like guilt, but it wasn’t. I know what it was now, and I don’t blame him for what he did, I admire him in a way. He was smarter than me. He escaped, even though his route was different than the one I’d have taken. He got on the Horse. Dead by seventeen of an overdose in some ratty little squat by the railway, his arms like fucking road maps. We used to say the shit landers got him. Fuck, that makes me laugh. We had no idea.
The Romney sort of bled into our lives after that. It became part of everything we did during those first years of senior school. We used to tell such stories about it, we’d all but crap our pants and we’d dare each other to climb the wall, too, laughing like we wasn’t scared enough to shit. Once I climbed up to the top, right where there was this vicious spiral of razor wire and stood up, shouting some shit about claiming The Romney. Funny shit, until I got stuck in the wire and I fell off the wrong side.
I caught the top of the wall and started to haul myself back up, but there was this weight on my legs, like something was pulling at me. I looked down, kicking my feet, but there weren’t nothing there. It must have looked like I fell on purpose, though, cos my mates all thought I was the big man. I let it slide, because I wanted to be that brave. I wanted them to think I was a fucking maniac, and it worked. It was Micky’s gang every junior kid wanted to join in senior school. Micky, not Mark, though mum still called me Mark.