by Walker, Luke
Shadows slid further in from the windows.
Chapter Sixteen
Expecting no result, Simon flicked the switch for the main set of lights in the staffroom. As with the other three he’d tried, they did nothing. A quick look to the windows told him they probably had half an hour before full dark, and what the hell they were supposed to do then, he had no idea. Sitting on one of the three sofas, he shook and tried to ignore the growing cold. His coat remained up on the ninth floor and no way was he going for it by himself or in the dark. Simon didn’t believe anything was happening in Greenham Place that couldn’t be explained, but that didn’t mean he relished the idea of wandering around the empty building when he couldn’t see more than a foot in front.
Dao sat beside him, the guy as close to catatonic as someone could be while still able to move. Alex took a bundle of coats from a rack in the corner and handed them around. Marginally warmer wearing someone else’s coat, Simon dug his hands into the pockets and didn’t want to think about what had happened to the people who owned the clothing.
In the small kitchen, Rod searched cupboards for food. Eating seemed like a mad idea, but as they had no way of knowing how long they’d be stuck in the building, they had to fill their bellies. There was little in the cupboards. He found a packet of bourbons, jars of coffee and packets of tea. Holding the biscuits, he let the cupboard close and wished for enough power to boil the kettle. Going through this was bad enough. Without a brew, it was hellish.
Trying to smile, he opened the tall fridge and spied a few unopened sandwiches and pots of pasta. Unclaimed lunches, presumably. He took them to the others sitting on the sofas and chairs.
“Not a lot, but it’s the best we’ve got. And the taps are still working if anyone’s thirsty.”
Wordlessly, Kelly crossed to the sink and filled a mug with water. She drank it with her back to the rest, then filled the mug again.
“Come and eat, Kel.”
Kelly turned when her sister spoke. Her face gave nothing away and Simon wondered what festered between the two women. Something, obviously, and that something was ugly. Still not speaking, Kelly filled another three mugs and carried them awkwardly to the round table at the middle of the seating area. Water slopped over the rims as she placed them down. Staring up at the darkening sky, Simon ate without tasting the chicken sandwich. For a moment, everything but the sound of chewing and swallowing faded. It was only after a minute passed that Dao’s lack of movement became obvious.
“You going to eat, Dao?” Simon asked.
Dao remained silent, face flecked with drying blood.
“Dao?”
Simon might as well have addressed a statue.
“Dao, mate, you need to—”
“Fuck off and leave me alone.”
Simon recoiled from the yell; Alex shook, spilling water onto her leg. Rod remained still. He’d seen the anger coming and knew the fear that powered it; he knew it was directed at all of them rather than only Simon. The boy was cracking under the unimaginable stress of his boy, somewhere here and being tortured by what could only be described as a ghost.
“It’s okay, Dao,” he said as quietly as he could. “It’s okay, son.”
Dao let out a breath that sounded as if it hurt. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Simon knew he didn’t sound at all genuine.
Dao put his uneaten pot of pasta back on the table and walked to the windows, where the last of the sunset was fading. He peered downwards.
“There are people out there. Cars and people.” Dao smacked on the glass as Kelly ran to him. “Hey. Hey, we’re up here.”
Dao turned as Kelly reached him, his thoughts racing: they needed to break a window. It no longer mattered what had happened when Rod did just that, because that body was gone, was gone, was—
“Where?” Kelly asked.
Outside, the dark streets were as empty as they’d been when the invisible hand shoved Dao’s head through the window to show him the painting of Willington’s centre. One by one, the streetlights began to go out, letting the night fill the spaces they’d illuminated.
“No,” Dao whispered.
The others crowded round, watching each light wink into nothing. The same was happening with the glow from the interior of the Tesco and the three pubs. And the same in the takeaways. The same in the little shops, the travel agents.
Willington was becoming a void.
Kelly fumbled in her back pocket for her mobile and thumbed the screen. The little illumination shone white on the window and turned their faces into slightly more distinct shapes than they had been a second before. Like a tiny miracle, the cloud passed over the moon. That shine and the gleam from Kelly’s mobile were all they had.
“Everyone, keep calm,” Rod said. “No screaming, no shouting, no shitting ourselves, okay?”
Simon let out a laugh he didn’t know he had in him. “How are you keeping it together?” he asked Rod.
“I barely am.” Rod sat again. Simon took the space next to the bigger man and placed his iPhone on the table. He turned the light on the screen. Kelly and Alex placed their phones beside his. Without comment, Dao did the same. The collective glow of their displays became a welcome beacon in the new dark.
“We need to talk,” Rod said. “We need to get everything we know out in the open.”
“What do we know? We’re either all mad or someone’s playing a joke on us.”
“You really believe that?” Kelly asked her sister, and Simon winced at the harsh note of disbelief in the girl’s question. Without saying as much, Kelly made it pretty clear she thought Alex was being an idiot.
“What the hell else is it?”
Kelly sank deeper into her chair, legs pulled up from the dark carpet. In the poor light, Simon tried to study Dao’s face, but the other man was almost invisible. Was he thinking about his son? Was he hearing the boy’s agony? Was he even listening to anything being said right now?
Would I be? Simon asked himself as he pictured the living room of his flat. The soft sofa, the little coffee table he only ever used to place the remotes and his cans of beer on; the big telly and no kids or anyone else there and not one fucking thing in it that he shared with the world. He was Dao’s opposite, and maybe having no kids to worry about was about as good as this shitty place could get.
“Alex, please,” Rod said. “We need to talk, right?”
She clasped her knees and said nothing.
Rod took a few breaths. “So, the world’s going to hell. We’ve got a load of idiots forty miles away with a bomb and they’re going to do here what they did in America last June. They’re going to bomb London, only one of them gets away with that bomb and wants to stop it, and everyone out there—” He waved at the windows. “They leg it. And they includes us. And we have no clue if the bomb has gone off or not.”
Dao spoke in a flat voice. “If it went off, then how come the buildings are still standing? How come we’re still standing?”
“I don’t know. Personally, I don’t think it did go off. I think something happened out there. Otherwise, everyone else who was in here would still be with us. All I can guess at… ” He paused as if considering. The others waited in silence, simply because none of them could offer any realistic scenarios. “All I can guess at is the bomb didn’t go off but we’re injured. Maybe in the panic. Maybe we hit our heads and this isn’t real.”
Rod’s last few words came quietly. He studied the floor, unwilling or unable to offer more.
“You think we’re just seeing this? Like it’s not real?” Kelly said. “Bullshit.”
“I’m not hallucinating. I heard my son and something threw me across the room,” Dao said.
Rod curled his hands into fists. “All I’m saying is we have to be open to possibilities.”
“There is one possibility.” Simon heard himself speaking even as an interior voice told him to shut the fuck up.
“What?” Alex said.<
br />
What the hell difference does it make? Someone’s going to say it sooner or later. Probably Dao. And Rod’s already thinking it. I can tell by his voice.
“What?” Alex said again.
“We’re dead. The bomb went off and we’re dead.”
Alex barked high-pitched laughter. She crossed to the window. “Does it look like the bomb went off out there?”
Anger pulsed inside Simon’s chest. He could deal with fear as much as the others here, but he wouldn’t take their sneering judgement. He wouldn’t be reduced to nothing
(you are nothing simon a big fat fuck all nothing waste of fucking space)
or made to feel he had nothing to say.
“No, it doesn’t, but you lot sharing a load of fucking hallucinations while the building’s emptied and the doors are locked doesn’t make any fucking sense, so excuse me for trying to come up with something.”
Spit flew from his lips; the thud of his heart was a dull ache, and something at the periphery of his vision slid over the carpet—a secret thing that managed to somehow elude him.
Silence, uncomfortable and heavy, filled a moment between the group. Alex ran her fingertips over the smooth glass, perhaps thinking of Dao’s story about an invisible hand shoving his face through the window of a tenth-floor office. Kelly caught the white circles of Rod’s eyes gazing at her. Curiosity shone in that gaze. It wanted to know the score between the sisters, because Rod was beginning to look at the bigger picture, not just what was happening but why, and Kelly could handle none of that. Not any implications or Rod’s slow, careful thoughts or the shit between her and Alex—shit that hadn’t been cleaned up since that business with Dean, and then the mess Kelly made of everything at the party for her eighteenth last year.
Lost in his thoughts, Dao felt the throb of the small wounds in his forehead beat in time with the ache running down his right-hand side where he’d struck the wall. Dead? No way. Being dead wouldn’t hurt either his body or his heart. Being dead would mean no torture of his son would reach him. As long as that had the power to turn him into a howling, raging animal, he was alive.
Without warning, words came to his mouth and letting them free was as much a relief as it was a horror.
“Two years ago today, my son died. Huan.”
It seemed, for a moment, that the others stopped breathing. Dao let his own breath out and it tasted old.
“He was four. My boy. Huan and Yang. My boys. He was… he fell off a climbing frame in the park. Hit his head.”
Again, silence. Dao wept no tears or cried out. The brief story about his son came and went in seconds and left the staffroom even colder. Simon held himself much as Alex and Kelly were doing. The chill sank below his new coat (and whose coat was this and where the hell are they now); he squeezed himself, resisting the need to rub his sides.
“Dao, I couldn’t be more sorry, mate,” Rod said.
“Thank you.”
“Dao… ” Alex began. A single word, but it was clear her anger, powered by fear, had faded.
“It’s okay. Lin and I, we’re not over it. Not close to that, but we keep busy. We have a lot to do and we focus on that and Yang. He’s… a lot of work, but he’s a good boy and… ”
And he’s screaming upstairs, apparently.
Dao dug his nails into the thin material of his shirt, scratching himself in an attempt to silence any further thoughts.
“Anyway, that’s who I heard upstairs. No hallucination. No pretend. I heard my dead son attacking my living son.”
If there was any possible comfort to be given to Dao’s cold statement, Simon had no idea what it was. Neither, it seemed, did the others. They kept quiet while the small pile of phones offered their white glow against the night.
Around Simon’s ears, the air shifted a little, the movement barely registering at first. It was only when it dropped to the collar of his shirt and whispered on his neck that he realised he felt as if he were standing outside on a late September day, the breeze not quite fresh but still far from summer warmth.
No. Leave me alone.
Gleefully, the breeze exploded into a savage gust of wind, skittering over the carpet and table and chairs, hissing as it passed across the arms of the sofas and ruffled the pages of the magazines dotted around.
“What the fuck is that?” Kelly cried.
One of the coat stands crashed as it fell to the lino bordering the main seating area; a chunk of the plastic snapped free and the last of the phantom wind blew it against the cupboards beside the sink in the little kitchen.
As quickly as it came, the wind died, leaving only a faint stink of rotting meat and old decay.
“Jesus.” Rod shielded his nose and mouth. “What is that smell?”
Lie, Simon thought. Right now, you lie.
“I can’t smell anything,” he said. “What happened to the coat stand?”
He left the sofa and walked in the poor light to the other end of the seating area. Well aware he was not a good liar, and there was no way the others would believe him, Simon kept his back to them and righted the stand.
They heard it that time. They smelled that stink of old breath and they won’t believe you didn’t because it was meant for you. Whatever they’re seeing, whatever was on the stairs earlier, is for them. That was for you, but you shared it with them.
The thought came and went in the time it took Simon to let go of the stand and turn back to the shapes of the others, their outlines illumined by the phones.
“Must be a window open,” Rod said.
“There’s no wind out there. No air. Nothing.” That was Dao.
“Well, maybe someone’s got bad guts and let one go. How the hell would I know what it was?” Rod shouted. He quietened immediately. “Sorry, Dao.”
Alex gazed at Rod and he seemed to be aware of her appraisal but said nothing. Eventually, Alex’s question came and none of them missed Rod’s brief flinch as if she’d yelled at him.
“Who was that man, Rod? On the stairs?”
“Nobody.” He shifted a little. “Someone my family knew years ago. I don’t know what he’d be doing here. I don’t know… ” Rod shifted again. “We’re seeing and hearing things, aren’t we—”
“Most of us are,” Alex said, looking towards Simon’s outline. He felt a mad sense of embarrassment. Rod went on as if she hadn’t spoken.
“We’re seeing and hearing things, but I don’t know why I’d see that man.”
“Or hear that voice when the lift opened,” Kelly muttered.
“I don’t know anything about that,” Rod replied, and they all heard the lie.
Dao’s face asked the obvious question to Kelly; she shook her head. He’d have to wait to find out what had been screamed by nobody they saw down below.
Wanting to stand apart from the rest, Simon had no choice but to return to his place on the sofa. Either that or remain standing like an idiot. “We need to find out what’s happening outside,” he said. “The bomb. Korea. All that.”
“Who cares about that? Inside here is what matters,” Kelly replied.
“Kelly’s right.” Rod sounded calmer now. Maybe he’d needed a little relief of pressure. “We’re in here; the world’s out there so what we have to deal with is in here with us. On that note, I say we say we sit tight in here until morning and go from there.”
“A night in here?” Alex’s aggression borne of fear wanted to come back, but she didn’t have the strength. “You serious?”
“What else can we do?”
“Shit,” she whispered. Then: “Come on, Kel.”
She rose, reaching for her sister as she did so.
“Where are you going?” Simon asked.
“If we’re staying here, then we’re blocking the doors. We’ll find something heavy. Tables. Desks. Whatever.”
“What about these?” Kelly kicked at the chair she’d sat on.
“We need something more solid. Some big desks should do it. Come on.”
“Be careful,” Rod said to the women’s backs as they made their careful way across the moonlit carpet. He waited another few seconds before pitching his voice low. “Dao. I hate to ask… ”
“What?”
Rod sighed. “Your son.”
“You mean Huan, don’t you?”
Rod answered as simply as possible, aware hesitating or picking at the edges would be worse. “Yes.”
“What about him?”
Rod shifted in his seat. “When you lost him… when was that?”
“I told you. Two years ago.”
All at once, Simon wanted Rod to shut the fuck up because he knew what Rod was getting at. Inside, he saw his Aunt Rachel, squatting so she was at his level, opening her arms and smiling and how he’d loved her; how he’d lost his fear in that moment.
Thirty-three years ago.
Simon, six years old.
Thirty-three years ago today.
His birthday.
“You mean when exactly?” Dao asked.
“Yes.
Dao answered without pause. “Today. Two years ago today.”
A moment of quiet passed between the three men, broken by Dao inhaling and stilling the threat of fresh tears.
“I am sorry, Dao. I truly am,” Rod said.
And all Simon could do was wonder why Rod was so curious on the date of a child’s death, just as he didn’t want to ever know. Because knowing might also mean knowing something awful.
Chapter Seventeen
On the ground floor, the doors to the lift stood wide open. Night peered in through the dozens of windows; moonlight came with it but did nothing to dispel the darkness coating the cold of the floor or inside the lift. The reception area of Greenham Place, only ever silent when the last of the building’s staff had locked up and gone home to hope they wouldn’t be called out for an alarm, had the same lonely atmosphere it held during the Christmas break or over a bank holiday weekend.
Except on those occasions, no aroma of burned flesh coated the pillars or the desk and computer monitors, both resembling unblinking eyes in the quiet. The stink remained constant and motionless in the air. Nothing of Simon’s breeze disturbed it down on the ground floor; no bodies walked to waft it in the currents. The stench of cooked skin and raw muscle bubbling in fire simply existed in the same way as the night, while the eyes of the open lift gazed out blandly.