by Walker, Luke
“He’s heard his son here somewhere,” Simon explained in a mutter.
“You get out; call the police or whoever. I don’t care, but I’m not leaving here without Yang.”
Dao’s heels connected with the first step. He pictured the landings, corridors and offices of the floors above, all presumably as empty as the rest of Greenham Place, all one big hiding place for his terrified boy.
“Listen, Dao.” Simon raised his hands in a calming gesture. Probably the same movement he made in business meetings when things got heated.
“You get out and get help. I’m finding Yang.”
Dao didn’t give Simon or the others chance to speak or try to stop him. He whirled and ran for the next floor, aware of their eyes on his retreating back, hearing them cry his name and unaware of the sound as entreaties to stop and come back.
Above, the empty floors waited for him.
Chapter Six
Despite the majority of Willington’s population viewing Greenham Place as familiar a part of the city as the cathedral half a mile away, it was not an old building.
Growth through the late nineties and beyond, and rapid expansion of the population, meant the town hall, now seen as a quaint throwback rather than useful, wasn’t up to the job of operating the city council’s services. The city needed a new base of operations, somewhere to direct the working processes of a city embracing the twenty-first century—or so said the council when they had to demolish a long row of shops that, in turn, had once been Victorian houses, as well as destroying a small woodland forming the city centre’s perimeter and the first of Willington’s suburbs. The protests, the letters to the local paper, the complaints from nearby businesses that they’d suffer with all the noise—not to mention the roadworks as a result of putting in a new system—didn’t make a bit of difference. Willington was growing. People needed to have the service they expected of a developing city and the elected officials were the people to give them that service.
So the shops were purchased, closed and demolished. The woodland was cleared; the trees hacked down and the grass, at least two hundred years old, was crushed by the heavy weight of concrete as the land became a smooth, flat canvas. Then the builders and their machinery moved in.
The complaints died away because they were doing no good for the people unhappy with the work; the building grew, a hulking mass of brick, glass and steel with scaffolding encircling it and the dozens of men in their hard hats and hi-vis jackets coming and going while the sun shone and the wind grew stronger as autumn closed in and the clocks changed and the council kept the name of the new development under wraps. The construction grew beyond the tallest buildings in Willington’s centre, its wall of windows and its roof seeing the backstreets, the snaking roads, the people passing by on foot and in their cars; gazing on all while the sun turned the glass into white pools and the rain dribbled down its new gutters to sink into the pipes below the foundations and into the dark under the city.
All the while, the structure saw the city and came to know its people.
Days and months passed while the people of Willington grew used to the noise of the work. It seemed to most of them that the building had always been there. The memory of the pretty wooded area and the relative peace of walking through it, while knowing the takeaways and pubs were still nearby, became an image they might have been told about years ago. It belonged to their parents; it was as dated as the seventies and eighties and didn’t have much place well into the second decade of a new century.
Progress, they thought. Times were changing, so they’d change, too.
And as the building developed, third floor growing into the fourth, then the fifth, the land under its base slept and dreamed. But its dreams were not restful.
In the pitch-black vacuum below the earth, where even the storm of machinery moving tons of bricks couldn’t reach, a tiny light shone, its illumination cold and sharp.
It dreamed.
It waited.
When the last of the machinery was removed and the mayor gave Greenham Place its name in an opening ceremony, the icy radiance like a little star in the earth gazed upwards to its sky and saw the realm above. It saw where people walked; it saw through the eyes of the building to the country and beyond. It heard anger and fear and savoured both.
Men and women filled Greenham Place. They worked. They laughed and argued. They left in the fierce red sunsets of the winters. They came in the dampness of spring mornings, and they ate their lunches in the good days of July when the air-conditioning battled the summer.
Below, the light listened.
Watched.
Waited.
When, far from the city fewer than two hundred thousand people called home, another city was turned into fire, the light in the dark earth began to make its slow way to the surface.
And while the majority of the people trapped in Greenham Place descended the silent flights of stairs and the one who’d gone in desperate search for his child heard only the hollow tap of his own shoes on the floor, the light broke through the pavement directly outside the building’s main entrance.
Nobody saw it. Nobody commented. Willington had again become the shell Kelly saw from the foyer. Even the wind had deserted the roads, streets and parks.
The light spread in a small pool, too hot for human flesh to take without burning, and closed in on the remains of the ruined body.
With one smooth motion, the legs of the crushed man slid around, bone and torn sinew making no sound as they turned in an impossible manner. The remnants of a shattered hand pushed at the ground, slipping through the wide circle of blood, smearing it into the knuckles and nails.
The light drew closer to the moving body.
While the exposed bone of a kneecap glowed in the new light, the body rose to a standing position. Above the waist, the stomach and chest were not recognisable as human. They’d become a cave-in, a mid-section smeared with ruptured organs while relatively whole innards attempted to squeeze their way through the giant gash running the width of what had been the man’s ribs. On a dangling piece of flesh, loose skull still contained one unseeing eye. The other eye had landed on the window and stuck there.
The boiling light crossed the gap between it and the pool of blood. Its touch on the red liquid acted as a scour, wiping the blood clean and turning the slight grey of the paving slab a bright white. A moment later, it fell upon the body’s feet, then streaked higher, swallowing torn skin, bone and muscle, catching the remains of the man’s shape as it dropped. The last to be burned into nothing more than ash was the open eye. As the roasting white took it, the eye closed in a slow wink.
Body removed and pavement now a smooth, unmarked surface, the illumination raced to the great smears of blood coating the windows.
They were wiped from existence in less than five seconds.
The scorching light eased back to the ground and vanished as silently as it had come.
On all sides and further out to the streets and roads not visible from Greenham Place, Willington was as hushed as the deep pocket of earth living underneath the building’s feet.
A moment later, the same doors Rod had eased open before encountering Kelly parted with slow, frightened care.
Chapter Seven
After Dao legged it up the stairs and the noise of his sprint faded, there didn’t seem to be any point in hanging around. The old guy who’d come up with Kelly (Alex remembered his name was Rod) said they should go after the lad, but Alex wasn’t having that. Letting the guy go and not making more of an effort than shouting after him surprised her. Alex considered herself caring and decent, without going overboard. A few quid to the homeless man who always sat between her branch of HSBC and Starbucks; calling on Mrs Jenkins who lived next door, alone since her husband died last year; a few standing orders for charities. There was more to do, always more to do, but she had to focus her energy on what really mattered and that was her family: the girls and Carl. But mainly her twin da
ughters. Alex wanted to be a mother Charlotte and Louisa looked up to and maybe, if they’d been there (that thought turned her cold with a nameless dread), she’d have gone after Dao, told him they had to stick together.
But they weren’t and she hadn’t because getting out of this strange, frightening building, with its disappeared workers and weighty silence, was her sole purpose.
Alex was the first to speak after Dao’s departure.
“We go straight down and we get out through any door we can,” she said.
Simon trotted past her, turning back as if to ask what she was waiting for. Alex eyed him until he glanced at his feet. Kelly behind her, Alex passed Simon and started down. Bringing up the rear, Rod offered Simon a smile that did not feel genuine, and the men followed the women.
The hush of the landings took them, as did the non-stop light and warmth raining through the windows. Whoever designed the place had known what they were doing by using sunlight, Alex often thought. The open-plan offices and wall of windows on the east and west sides caught the morning and afternoon sun, turning the stairwell into a brightly exposed space. Usually, she found it welcoming, but now, with the stress of not knowing what was going on and the potential of a nuclear bomb less than fifty miles away, fine beads of sweat oozed down Alex’s neck and collected under the collar of her blouse, dampening her breasts.
A hot shower and a drink later. Maybe a few drinks. Once she had chance to focus on everything else that was happening here. The old guy apparently killing someone with his thrown chair, the stress of not one bloody phone working which meant no way of contacting Carl, and not forgetting what might be some Korean nutcase with a bomb out near RAF Lakenheath. Alex didn’t believe the mad events of LA the previous June were coming to her city; not in Willington, no way, but even so, there’d been a terrifying few minutes when she had believed it. Now, all she could think of was home, with the girls and Carl cooking something in the kitchen. Once the mystery had been explained. Once she’d had time to call the hospital.
They reached the top of the second floor stairs before she voiced the niggling fear of the last twenty minutes to check on her dad.
“Have you spoken to Anthony today?” she asked Kelly, glancing behind and not missing how her sister’s eyes darted from side to side. Also catching the shifty glance, Rod found it easy to dismiss. The terrible moments before he’d found Kelly were a loop in the background of his thoughts. Same with knowing what he’d done to the man outside.
Kelly replied to her sister. “No. Called him last night. He said there was no change.”
Alex knew her dad’s condition. She’d called her cousin at lunchtime to be told Dad slept his forced sleep and the nurses said he was comfortable, exactly as they said he had been for the last six weeks. And really, why was she asking Kelly? The girl wasn’t anywhere near as fussed as Alex might have expected. Not like she would have been with her own father.
“Everything okay, love?” Rod asked, bringing Alex back to herself.
She nodded and faced ahead again. Concentrating on each step, she spoke over her shoulder. “Our dad’s in hospital. He had a car accident recently so we take it in turns being with him. Our cousin Anthony was there last night and this morning.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Rod said. “I hope he’s all right.”
“Yeah.” That was the other guy, skinny white boy Simon and his weak offering.
Alex stumbled and slapped her hand down hard on the railing, then righted her pace without comment.
Skinny white boy? What was that? She didn’t think of people in terms like that. Never had. Her parents—especially her mother—believed there was good in all people, despite their own experiences of racism when they arrived in England back in the mid-seventies.
Treat people well, her mother said, and it didn’t matter that she’d been dead for four years. The woman could have spoken right beside Alex, the soft smell of her perfume as welcome as her lovely smile. Treat them nice and let them go if they don’t do the same.
Alex shook off the strange, slightly alien thought about Simon, as well as letting go of her mother’s voice and the phantom aroma of perfume.
“Thanks,” she said. “He’s in a coma, our dad, but they’re hoping he’ll come out of it soon.”
“Your dad.”
“What?”
Alex stopped without registering it and faced Kelly without feeling her body turn. Inside, the need to keep going down and get out was as strong as ever; she saw herself doing exactly that and stepping into the slight chill of five o’clock, but her body and head had other plans, it seemed.
“What was that, Kel?”
Kelly frowned. “I didn’t say anything.”
“Yes, you did.”
“No. I didn’t,” Kelly replied in a tone Alex hadn’t heard from her in a few years; not since Kelly was about fifteen and had become, frankly, a bit of bitch since their mother passed away. The tone a mocking, superior reply that implied Alex was closer to seventy than thirty and should stay out of matters involving young people.
Quickly, Alex studied the men’s faces, searching for a giveaway. She saw only a slight confusion.
So, what? I’m hearing things? I’m making them up?
That was bullshit. Kelly had muttered her negation, her rejection of them as full blood sisters the way she’d always felt. It didn’t matter that they’d grown up together or that they shared a mother. Different dads meant, to Kelly, they weren’t blood in the way most sisters were. She’d made that pretty clear quickly back when all that business with Dean went on the year before last.
“Let’s just get out of here.” Inwardly, Alex berated herself. It wasn’t as if anyone but her had stopped their descent. None of the others were hearing stuff that slowed them down.
I didn’t hear that.
Mouth set firmly, Alex turned back to the stairs and started down again, Kelly and the men following. At the end of the line, Simon peered back the way they’d come, wondering if he had heard a whisper or just imagined it. Nothing moved behind them. Trotting to keep up, he stayed close to Rod. They reached the last step, crossed into a wide beam of sunlight, and Alex’s body temperature dropped. Their surroundings of building, stairs, glass and heat vanished in a breath. A savage chill of mid-winter had come, exposing her to the wind and air as they sank deep claws into her naked flesh. On all sides, unbroken, open land spread in dead fields. The lonely cry of a solitary bird echoed across the acres; the high-pitched whistle of the wind answered it and carried it at the same time, and Alex turned on the spot, horror keeping her in place.
A churchyard was close by, grown from the lifeless ground in a second even though there’d been nothing but stunted grass and the freeze of the day in its place a moment before. Twisted trees poked their branches towards the grass. Old trunks and rotting foliage spread over the yard, meeting thick bundles of bramble bushes. The green of the shrubberies should have gleamed in the cold sunlight. Instead, they were faded, sickly. This was a dead place, somewhere to do nothing but live in the awful weight of fresh grief and be stuck there forever.
And the church oh my god the church the church no it can’t be here no please.
Jutting from the earth where there’d been only more brown grass and ancient trees all twisted together, the church loomed as large as a cathedral, impossibly bigger than it was fifteen years after Alex last visited it. The grey stone was bleached white in places, bricks and mortar cracked and crumbling; the windows all jagged holes and flaking glass. The building didn’t simply exist on the grass, it ate the space it filled, chewing it, mashing it into a gooey paste, then swallowing what was left where it would be dissolved in the icy world of its stomach—broken down into nothing as if it had never been.
Alex’s darting eyes took in more and more of the old building, even as she screamed inside that it couldn’t be here because it was a good place, a happy place of light and worship and decent people. It didn’t belong on a dead day in a dead place
with dead wind caressing its exterior, then blowing in through the holes and pitted scars of its frame.
Or through the doors creaking open, the old wood buckling and crumbling as the hinges gave way, snapping before the rusting metal clattered to the ice-cold stone of the steps.
One half of the doors broke free from the frame. It split into several pieces on impact with the ground; the other hung loose, and the pitch-black night living inside the church swirled, danced, beckoned her.
A skinny arm, unclothed so she could see what the disease had done to the flesh and muscle, jutted out of the doorway, more and more of it exposed as the figure slightly beyond the opening came closer. A finger uncurled, the bone no thicker than a twig and the skin as thin as tissue. It curled, uncurled, curled again, and the woman’s voice barely a croak didn’t live in the air and earth as hard as rock. Nothing lived here. The voice was the air and earth; it was every part of this dead place and dead day.
Alex. Come inside. It’s time for church.
A lone bell rang once from somewhere inside the building, the sound not for welcoming the worshippers or to praise God on a Sunday morning but to bring them in for a funeral, to mourn and ache with their loss. They would file inside, weeping, broken with their hurts, and there’d be no comfort from God or faith here. There’d be nothing but the lonely wind blowing over the open land and through the gnarled branches while the sunlight faded and the sky burned with the bloody red of a winter twilight.
And the heat.
The heat was back, closing in on all sides, come to burn her to ash and turn the universe into a blank canvas.
“Alex?”
She muttered a reply that was lost to her, reached blindly and found a hand. Kelly’s hand.
Alex landed back in herself. She remained in the large square of sunlight painting the floor of the landing into a smooth white. Behind Kelly, the men stared at her, neither looking as if they dared speak.
High above, a church bell gave a muted ring, the sound echoing as if falling down a deep tunnel. It faded into nothing and Alex thought: