by Walker, Luke
Turn the machines off and let me die. I’m never going to wake up. The man’s voice abruptly shifted from a whining, pained mutter to a shrill shriek that made Alex cry out and fall backwards. Simon caught her, his face betraying his confusion.
A sound muted but still recognisable reached Alex’s ears and she understood at once that none of the others heard the ringing bell. For whom the bell tolls. Oh yes. For her and her alone. That was it. That was her freezing death in a fresh grave. Hers and hers alone.
And then her father’s shrill voice broke the noise of the ringing bell in half.
Let me fucking die, Alex. For once in your life, do something for someone else and let me die. I’m dead already so just switch the fucking machine off before I get out of my bed and come and find you and fuck you and fuck you and fuck you and—
Alex’s howl raced from the landing to the soundless floors above, crashing over stairs and closed doors and racing higher and higher to the tenth floor, where a listening shape welcomed it.
Five steps from Alex’s dad, Rod’s overflowing terror met an outraged disgust. Stomach churning, bowels hot, he lunged up the rest of the stairs, meaty fists already swinging. As the injured man continued to shriek his vile threats, Rod punched him in the back of the head.
It was like punching hot mud.
Rod’s fist slid wrist-deep into the heat. Disgust at what the man was saying became revulsion at the sensation against his skin. Rod yanked his fist free and stepped back as the man tried to turn. His head and neck fell into his narrow chest; muck oozed downwards, forming a spilling goo, and Rod could only think:
He’s melting, Jesus Christ, he’s melting.
Alex cried out in horror, unable to do a thing as her father decayed into a mess of ruined flesh. What might have been his face slipping into his stomach twisted around, and the two pits were unmistakably his eyes, staring, marking her.
Alex fell to the side. Simon and Kelly caught her but couldn’t take her impetus or weight. They lowered her to the ground as she wept.
“It’s not real, Alex,” Kelly said. “That isn’t him.”
“What the fuck is happening?” None of the others heard Simon’s mutter.
The last remnants of Alex’s father sank into an oily patch, staining the stair. Panting hard, Rod stared at the man further down and spoke as deliberately as he could.
“I killed him and I will kill you.” The next two words took everything Rod had. “Martin Williams.”
Naming the monster was a form of magic. It had to be that rather than the threat. Williams winked out of existence, leaving the stairs clear save for the dripping mess that had been a man moments before.
With no warning, Rod’s stomach rebelled. He vomited thin strands of his lunch, keeping his eyes shut as the mess splattered at his feet. Retching the last away, he straightened and wiped his mouth with the cuff of his shirt.
Whatever the man had been made of, it was already flowing to the next step. On legs that felt like they would spill him at any second, Rod skirted the mess and walked to Alex. She gazed at him with a child’s frightened eyes.
“Alex—” Rod began.
His legs shook and all he could do was hold the woman as she sobbed against his shoulder.
Lost outside horrors he didn’t share, Simon stared at the empty stairs and again heard the soft whisper of a distant wind. When Alex jerked back from Rod, mouth open in shock, Simon stepped away.
I don’t want to know what’s going on here. No, thanks. Not for me.
“What was that?” Kelly whispered. “What the fuck was that?”
On the floor, Alex heard it again.
The cold clang of a tolling church bell.
Chapter Twelve
For a tiny moment, it seemed to Dao that the hand gripping his head would let go. Instead, it lifted him from the carpet while he cried his agony. Then it flung him across the room.
Although no more than a second passed between being yanked up and thrown, Dao still had time to see the dazzling blue of the sky spread across the windows on the other side of the room, the clean white of the carpet, obviously kept pristine and shampooed by cleaners, and the nothing in the air that could possibly have touched him.
He hit the wall beside the office door five feet above the floor. Fire replaced the breath in his lungs. Crashing to the floor, Dao tried to gasp and inhale at the same time. Fire turned his back and chest into a conflagration, and rational thought belonged in another universe.
The sky had changed from a sheer blue to the burning red of fire. The flames licked over the tops of buildings and streamed through the air, all converging on the windows of the office for Mr Alan Letts, all coming soundlessly as they turned the space over Willington’s streets into an oven.
Dao crawled for the door now open, unaware of the blood dribbling down his forehead from several gashes and cuts. If anything watched him, it watched with curiosity and amusement. Dao reached the door, dug his fingertips into the plush carpet and pulled. Convinced the door would slam shut on his arm at any second, he pushed himself on and finally registered how much he bled when the salty tang of his own blood reached his mouth. Spitting red flecks, he swung his feet around. The pain living and breathing through his body didn’t matter.
He was out of the office.
Dao rolled over in time to see the noiseless fire in the sky blow against the windows. The door crashed shut hard enough to shake in its frame. There was no pause between the mighty thud and the wailing from its other side.
Daddy, he’s here. Make him stop hurting me.
“Yang.” Dao made it to his knees, pitched forward and tried to rise again. “Yang, let me in.”
Dao reached for the handle and, by some white magic, his damp fingers found the metal. It refused to move. Pulling, Dao managed to stand. Right by his ear, Lin said:
Get away from the door, Dao. Our boy isn’t here and he never was. Get away.
With a savage increase in pain and volume, Yang answered her. He is here, Mummy. You said he was dead but he’s here.
With numb lips and a numb tongue, Dao said a name he hadn’t spoken in two years, only thinking of it in memories that stung with loss and grief. And at the same instant, Yang howled it on the other side of the sealed door, and all Dao had was his pain dancing with his son’s agony.
Huan. Leave me alone. You’re my brother. You have to leave me alone.
Chapter Thirteen
The ground floor.
The lift.
The sunlight beginning to ease a little as half past five approached and dusk closed in.
The trapped warmth leeching out of the air as the shadows spread from the corners and the edges of the pillars.
All still. All without a single breath to disturb the silence.
Ding.
Nothing again except for a slight disturbance outside the open lift doors, a movement close to imperceptible making its way across the floor towards the automatic doors motionless for almost two hours.
The faint outline of a human hand waved in front of the sensor over the doors. They slid open. The same movement brushed the sensor over the outer doors.
Whatever walked from the lift returned to the dark space of its innards. A moment later, the lift doors eased shut.
Silence, again.
The outer doors parted. Then the inner.
Fingers, the flesh, sinew and muscle burned down to the bone, pressed on the override button unnoticed by Kelly and Simon during their pounding and kicks on the glass doors. The entrance to Greenham Place sealed itself.
A voice, low and musing, addressed the dozens of charred figures grouped across the floor.
Wait.
Chapter Fourteen
Out of breath, hurting and unable to think clearly, the group halted on the landing of the sixth floor, although Alex had to ask herself if she was sure about this being the sixth. Every floor looked the same; every landing with the same features, and every set of double doors opening
to the same fucking open-plan offices and why the fuck was she thinking about this shit when her dad, her dad, her fucking dad.
Alex closed her eyes, counted to five and opened them again. Taking a mental breath helped a tiny degree, if only because she no longer wanted to scream until her lungs exploded.
“Can someone tell me what the hell is going on?” Simon asked nobody in particular. He collapsed on a chunky sofa between two of the fake plants and gazed at each of the others in turn. “Anyone?”
“It was my dad.” Alex focused on the fading sunlight, registering it for the first time. “My dad.”
“Where?”
She stared at Simon. “What do you mean where?”
“I mean, what are you talking about? Your dad? Where?”
Confused silence filled the space of the landing and the stairs. Rod broke it.
“You’re saying you didn’t see anyone?”
“I’m saying I don’t know what the fuck is going on and nobody’s making any sense,” Simon yelled.
Alex opened her mouth to say something—she had no idea what—and Rod raised a hand to calm the situation.
“Hold on a second. Let’s get this straight.” He addressed Simon. “You didn’t see anyone on the stairs? No men?”
“No.” Because something else seemed required, Simon added: “Sorry, but I didn’t.”
Kelly stood at the railing beside the window, back to the others. “He can’t have been there, Alex. No way.” She faced her sister. “Those things he said… no way.”
Alex laughed, although it was without humour. “He was and he did, Kel. We all heard him.” She jabbed a finger at Simon. “Apart from you.” It came like an accusation and he flinched. Wanting to take back the snide tone, Alex dismissed the man by turning away.
“Who was the other man?” Kelly asked Rod.
“Nobody.”
“Bullshit.”
“I’m telling you, he was nobody. Just… a family friend from when I was younger.”
“He was more than that.”
“He was nobody.”
Kelly cringed at Rod’s yell and he stepped forward to take her hand. “I’m sorry, love. It’s just been… it’s been a bad day.”
While Simon took a seat apart from them, the others barked shrill, mad laughter, their pressure escaping a little. Rod wiped his eyes, still giggling, while Alex turned away, crying again but still laughing. Eventually, the strained humour faded, leaving only growing shadows and a new chill in the air. As insane as it seemed, evening was coming in quickly. At the windows, Kelly studied the roofs of buildings, not daring to move closer and see if the streets were normal or devoid of life.
Did it go off? The bomb? Did it go off and we’re all… what? Dead? Is that it? I’m dead?
Nothing approaching an answer came back.
“I think it’s safe to say something unnatural is happening here.” Rod’s face had regained a little of its healthy colour and he’d stopped breathing so heavily. “We can call it whatever we like. Supernatural or whatever. I’m not fussed. It probably doesn’t matter too much what we call it or what’s happening. Why might be more important.”
Simon stood. “I’m not part of this, whatever the hell is going on, so if you’ll excuse me.” He moved to pass Rod and descend. Surprising herself, Alex stopped him.
“You can’t go back down there.”
He met her eyes. “Why?”
Alex’s mouth worked for a few seconds before she managed to speak. “Because you might bring them back.”
The fine hairs on Alex’s arms danced as a wave of cold swooped down from the floors above. In her mind, she saw her bleeding father, heard the terrible things he yelled, listened to the squelch of his body dribbling into so much mess after Rod’s punch.
“Who?” Simon whispered.
Alex’s mouth opened, closed and opened again. All she could offer him was a soft exhalation.
“Dead people,” Kelly muttered and Alex whirled around.
“Don’t say that. Don’t you say that.”
“Why not? They were dead. They were fucking dead, Alex—”
Alex ran for her sister, her fingers like claws. Dumbstruck, Simon could only watch as Rod shoved himself between the women, his body taking Alex’s and saving Kelly’s face from her sister’s nails. Raging, Alex pushed and pummelled at Rod; he grabbed her wrists, shoved them away, all the while telling her to calm down. Kelly ran to the next flight of stairs, stopping on the third floor. She sat, holding her knees while Alex dropped into a sobbing mess and Rod held her, still talking, murmuring comfort.
Moments passed while Simon could do nothing but stand and feel useless. More of the day’s light faded. The pooling shadows on the stairs that fell away to the next floor were terrible; all the worst things in the world lived down there and Simon could only wonder why he didn’t share those things with the others.
When the group heard the hesitant steps from above, gradually descending, Alex eased away from Rod and stood, waiting for her father to reappear and voice his terrible threats.
The footsteps came closer.
Chapter Fifteen
“Dao?”
Alex managed a few trembling steps towards the stairs, then had to stop before she collapsed again. The surety that her father was coming back, the knowledge of it had been as real as knowing her own name. He was coming back with those awful threats, bleeding through his bandages and begging for her to kill him, and she wouldn’t be able to do a thing to stop any of it. But that hadn’t happened, and wasn’t there something just out of sight, something in the gathering gloom that capered and laughed at her? And if she turned fully, she’d see it and then it would be her turn to scream and scream.
Pretending no such thoughts whispered to her, Alex said Dao’s name again as Kelly backed away from the stairs and Rod joined the sisters. Even Simon rose, staring up to the shuffling shape of a man, bloody and bruised.
Gripping the railing, Dao descended. Trickles of blood ran down his forehead and his cheeks from nasty gashes in his forehead. Sweat stains discoloured his shirt. A sleeve had ridden up to reveal a bruise filling his forearm. He moved like an old man or as if he was drunk. His gaze couldn’t or wouldn’t land on any one of them for longer than a second.
“Fuck.” Simon reached for the other man and Dao stumbled the last few steps. Simon caught him. “What the hell happened to you?”
Dao spoke, the words too soft for anyone to hear. Even so, Alex thought she understood and she heard Rod’s words from a few minutes ago.
Something unnatural is happening here.
“My son,” Dao muttered.
Unnatural? This is a nightmare.
They took Dao to the sofa and eased him down. He spoke without looking at anyone. It seemed easier that way.
“Up there. I was in an office. The door closed by itself and something put me through the window. It put me through it like it was water. I saw the streets and roads. There’s nothing outside. Nobody. It’s like a drawing out there. And the sky was on fire. The sky burned. It pulled me back in and threw me against the wall. I got out. The door closed and—” He lifted his head and saw none of them. He was back up on the tenth floor and the terrible shrieks echoed between his ears. “My son was in the office. He screamed for me. He screamed for Huan to leave him alone.”
Simon met Rod’s eyes. The older man gave a tiny shrug. Sitting beside Dao, Kelly took his hand and couldn’t ask the obvious question. Alex crouched, banished her fear for a moment and said:
“Who’s Huan, Dao?”
He let out a shaking breath. “My other son. Yang’s brother. He died two years ago.”
In a shocked whisper, Rod said: “Jesus Christ.”
He placed the solid weight of his palm on Dao’s shoulder, offering silent comfort and wishing he had any helpful words. Alex lowered her head to stare at the smooth floor and try to make any sense of what was going on. She couldn’t even come close.
“We need
to get into one of the offices,” Rod said. “This one will do.”
The meaning behind what the man said broke through. Alex stared up at him. “You mean stay here? With all this? Stay here?”
“We can’t get out, Alex,” Kelly said. “Not now, anyway.”
“No fucking way I’m staying here.” Alex stood, a distant voice asking if she’d ever sworn as much before today.
“We can’t get out,” Kelly said again.
Desperately, Alex tried to come up with a third option, another exit from the ground floor. While there might have been one at the back of the building, she had no idea how to find it. Her four years working in Greenham Place had only ever involved the fourth floor, with occasional meetings on the sixth. The ground floor was simply the entrance. She hadn’t given the reception or the lift any thought since her first week.
“I’ll get out through a window if I have to. I’ll jump from the first floor. I’m getting out and I’m getting back to Charlotte and Louisa.”
She strode to the top of the stairs, staring down, and hesitated. While she knew the shadows were simply due to the fading light, the faint shape of something human growing from a corner on the next landing made her stop.
It’s a trick of the light, like seeing a shape in a cloud or in a tree. It’s nothing.
Nothing or not, she wasn’t going down there.
Kill me, Alex. Kill me or I’ll fuck you.
Baring her teeth at the shadows, Alex backed away.
“In there.” She pointed to the doors that opened to the offices of the sixth floor.
Simon helped Dao to his feet. Rod took the lead, and Alex and Kelly came behind him. At the entrance, Rod drew a breath and pulled his foot back to boot the doors open. Faint but definitely there, a bell rang once from somewhere above. If any of the others heard it, they gave no reaction. It seemed it was for Alex alone, and her head was filled with visions of the abandoned church, standing cold and lonely in the winter sunset.
Rod kicked the doors open. They flew apart and the group entered without speaking.