by Walker, Luke
“I’ve got Huan.”
Rod nodded.
“Alex? Your father.”
“No,” she said. “I mean, yes, that’s a thing, but it’s not… ”
She broke off, utterly unsure of how she should phrase it. “It’s not what’s here for me. Not really. I think if there something wrong here, it’s using my dad to get at me. The—”
She had to break off again. A church bell clanged, the chime low and lonely, leaving a fading echo. Alex hugged herself. “You hear that?” she whispered, convinced in the second before they answered that they had no clue what she meant.
“Yes,” Rod replied.
“I did,” Dao said and Kelly gave a quick nod.
“That’s what’s scaring me. That church bell.” Alex met her sister’s eyes. “You remember St Margaret’s? When we were kids.”
“Yeah.” Kelly sounded near tears and a gentle alarm went off in Alex’s head. Her memory shouldn’t upset Kelly. Taking that thought any further was too much to focus upon; she had to verbalise what haunted her in this shitty office block.
“It was a church we went to with our mum when we were kids.” Alex spoke to the men without looking at them. “It was a nice place. Good people. Happy people, but in my head, now, it’s changed. It’s a dead place.” She had to lower her head and fight off the idea of something listening to her a few floors below. Something still and watchful. Something wearing her dad’s skin and face.
“I saw it. Yesterday. Like a vision or something. I don’t know. It was in the middle of nowhere. Cold. The building was falling apart.” She lifted her head and said the word that had drifted around the edges of her thoughts for a day and a night. “Doom. That’s what I hear when that bell rings. It’s over the top and melodramatic, but that’s what I hear. I hear doom for me and my family and my life.” Struggling, she gave life to the worst idea in the world. “I hear never seeing my girls again.”
Wordlessly, Dao reached for Alex’s arm. Although they didn’t touch, silent understanding passed between them, a shared fear of harm coming to their children.
“Now you know,” Alex said. “That’s what is here for me.”
“You’ve got nothing to worry about,” Kelly said. “You get out of here and you’ve got the girls.”
“And your husband.” Rod offered Alex a smile. She didn’t see it. Her attention remained on Kelly, who’d shifted on the spot. While her body remained facing Alex, she’d moved her head to the left which meant Alex could no longer see her sister’s eyes. And that was—
secret, Alex. It’s a secret.
Simon walked to the top of the stairs and faced the landing and corridor below. “Whatever’s happening here, I say bollocks to it. We get out and nothing stops us. Right?”
Again, Alex pictured her father, clad in his hospital gown and bloody bandages. He was down there, waiting for her, waiting for her to relieve his suffering.
In her head, the church bell rang out, welcoming the mourners from the freezing fields, ushering them inside to gather around the coffin.
Whose coffin, Alex? Who’s being buried? It’s you, isn’t it? Your death. Your doom.
“Can I say one more thing before we go down?” Rod asked.
“What is it?” Alex replied, voice thick and heavy like mud.
“Today. The twenty-fifth of October.” He pursed his lips as if considering. “Fifty years for me. Fifty years to the day.”
When Dao spoke, there was no surprise for Rod.
“Two years.” He had to clear his throat. “Huan. Two years today.”
Standing on the first step down, Simon sighed. “All I can tell you about today is it’s my birthday. Thirty-nine today. That’s it. No big deal.”
“Your birthday?” Kelly sounded startled, although Alex’s heightened awareness picked on a slightly overdone note to the question, and the first fully conscious thought Alex had about her sister in a long time stated without any fanfare:
She’s faking it.
“My birthday. It’s not a big thing. No horrible thing in my past. Just my birthday.” He gestured to the stairs. “Can we go?”
Without waiting for a reply, he set out. As Dao and Rod moved to follow him, and Alex refocused herself on getting down to the exit, Kelly peered down to the street below. Her shout of joy stilled all of them.
“The police. The police are coming.”
On Greenham Road, a convoy of police cars and vans streamed towards the office building, their sirens singing the most welcome song in the world.
Alex was the first to start running.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The tenth floor.
At the stairwell and looking straight down, four figures watched the sprinting, yelling people run for each set of stairs, dash across the landings and take the next flight. They watched Rod’s face turn redder; they watched Dao overtake Alex; they watched Simon bounce off a wall and come close to stumbling, and they watched Kelly glance back but not stop to help him. Huge beams of sunlight coated the steps as the group raced on, and if they registered the savage warmth in that sunlight, they did not stop and they did not look outside to the yellow air. The wail of the sirens was enough to make them keep going, and those watching from the tenth floor were deeply amused by this.
Blood flowed from the bandages and dressings covering one of the figures. It soaked the head and face, turning the dirty white into the rich red of a flame, before long lines of that red streamed down the body, met and formed blossoming pools. They ran over the floor towards the stairwell in a puddle and found the edge. A bead of gore hung for a second, motionless an inch beyond the railings, then fell in a red raindrop. The shape beside the bleeding figure—a naked man—opened its mouth and said Kelly’s name without making a sound. And, still running fast, Kelly looked straight up from seven floors below as if someone had bellowed to her. At the same instant, the four shapes—three men and a child—vanished from sight and left the empty space as so much freezing air.
Seconds later, the drop of blood hit the ground floor and sank, the ground seemingly turned into water. In the foundations of Greenham Place, movement spread from all corners.
A rising movement.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Dao jumped the last three stairs and crashed to the landing on the second floor. Through the nearest set of windows, sirens howled, the sound welcome and terrible. He’d seen a fraction of the street as they raced down. People out there; actual people walking and talking and normal and he ached to be beside them. Simon and Alex a step behind him, Dao sprinted into the growing pools of sunshine, then skidded to a stop. Simon crashed into his back. The men went down in a tangle of arms and legs, both crying out senseless noise. Dao shoved Simon away and scrambled over the floor.
“Dao,” Rod panted like a dog. “What’s wrong?”
Groaning, Simon tried to stand; his legs gave way and he reached blindly. Alex’s hand found his and pulled him upright. He tried to mutter his thanks but had no voice. He held his side, ribs aching, and looked upright for no good reason.
Nothing up there but empty floors. Nobody watching.
The noise of the police sirens and ambulances went on and on. They sounded as if they were coming from miles distant and coming fast. Sweating and shaking, Kelly fought off a wave of confusion that wanted to know why the sirens were still going when Greenham Road wasn’t that long.
“We need to move,” she said, and tried to pull Alex’s free hand.
“Yang,” Dao whispered. “I can’t leave him here. I can’t—”
“He’s not here.” Rod grabbed hold of Dao’s shoulders. While Rod was no taller than a level six feet, he seemed to stretch, his form blocking out the morning light. “Something is trying to hurt us, Dao, but your son is not here, so get bloody moving.”
Dao remained on the spot, swaying, and Kelly had to wonder if he was going to faint. A voice inside, made cold by distance, told her to run if he did. Let go of him and the others and run f
or safety. Kelly focused all of her energy on ignoring the voice, but it remained. Run, it said. Run away and let them die here. Oh, and by the way. Who said your name a second ago?
She knew who.
“What the fuck are you doing? We need to run.” For Kelly, tears of fright, anger and confusion were close. Getting a grip, even a weak one, on the situation was impossible.
“What is here, Rod?” Dao whispered, barely loud enough for Rod alone to hear. The sirens on the street had become a hysterical shriek.
“I don’t know.” Rod moved his mouth to within kissing distance of Dao’s ear. “It’s playing with us. It wants to hurt us. But we stick together and it can’t, okay?”
Shaking, Dao nodded. “We can make this right, Rod.”
“I know,” Rod replied, not sure of what exactly Dao meant and not caring. “Now, move, son.”
They ran, Dao in the lead and Rod falling behind the others. Their shadows raced ahead. The sunlight danced and capered on all sides, its heat growing into a scorching summer instead of late autumn, and a mix of loud voices came with the police sirens. While words were impossible to make out, every one of the group recognised the sound of order and control. The police had come. The world of logic and order had come.
Dao took the last of the stairs to the ground floor corridor, not stopping to study the mess of the black stain. If that had been down to Alex’s father collapsing into so much oil or mud, then so be it. He’d think about it once they were out; he’d have time to wonder if he was nuts. Now was all about getting the hell out and—
Ahead, the doors that led to the main foyer were gently closing. Nobody in sight; nobody going through them and yet, they were still closing.
Yang or Huan? Who was it, Dao? And who do you want it to be?
The terrible question brought a shriek of outrage and grief to Dao’s mouth. He loosed it and upped his sprint to a maximum, bringing both arms up to smash them into the doors and flood the corridor with pure sunlight.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
They’d stepped into a painting.
Simon aimlessly wandered around the reception area, his body temperature already rising in the unbroken sunlight and warmth while his mind paid it no attention. Focusing on a single thought was like trying to grip liquid. He could plunge his hands into their situation all he wanted to; it still squirted from his grip.
“I… ” he began, then let the rest of the sentence, whatever it might have been, die in his mouth. He had nothing to say, anyway.
While the sun shone on the pavements and road, it shone on no people or police cars. Building fronts, trees and the few benches opposite the front of Greenham Place cast no shadows, and all his eye could focus upon was the lack of… of…
Energy.
Yes. Energy. Outside had no energy. It was like reading a centuries-old book, the paper torn and brown, the stink of decades’ worth of dust and trapped air wafting from the cover. Everything from the paving slabs to the weeds growing from cracks—none moving because there was no breeze, let alone a wind—to the windows on the pub and takeaways over the road turned featureless had no life.
He stood at the exit, both sets of doors sealed. Above, the sensor was a blind eye. Simon booted the glass; it shook but held and the door remained sealed.
“Fuck,” he muttered.
Standing at the centre of the floor, Dao looked to all sides, no longer fully registering the others. Rod saw this and decided to let the boy be. He stood beside the sisters, trying to think and hoping nobody was going to lose it.
Playing with us, aren’t you? Well, I don’t think I’m in the mood for games.
Dao spoke, voice almost soft enough to be unheard. “I am going to find a chair and I am going to break every fucking window in here if I have to.”
He drew breath, waiting. Whatever had yelled its obscenities to Rod the day before gave no reply. Dao wondered if it was listening, before realising that was beyond stupid. Of course it listened. It’d been listening to them the whole time because it was everywhere.
“Are you here?” he asked. Rod moved a step closer to Dao, unsure if he should speak.
“Fuck you,” Dao said, exhausted. “Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.”
Nothing replied. The inside of Greenham Place was as silent as the rest of Willington.
Heading towards the cash office, Dao walked without looking back. He only stopped when Kelly shouted after him.
“This is your fault.”
“Kelly!” Alex yelled, reaching for her sister. Kelly pulled away and pointed to Dao.
“It is. If he hadn’t stopped, if he hadn’t waited, we’d be fine, we’d be out, we’d be—”
She broke off, choking on her anger and frustration. More, trying to swallow the knowledge that what she was saying made little sense and trying to cling to the idea it did.
Dao turned and everything else came out before Kelly could stop it, the words fast and hot as she sobbed.
“You want your son; you stopped; you’re keeping us here. You, Dao. You’re hearing your son and that’s what trapped us here. We’d be outside if you hadn’t stopped. It’s your—”
She bent double, sure she was about to vomit. The cramp in her stomach flexed claws deep inside and Kelly had a horrible mental image of her period starting, flowing down her legs and soaking into her trainers.
What the hell is this shit? she thought miserably.
Standing straight and holding her mid-section, she gazed at Dao with vision blurred from tears.
“Kelly, that isn’t fair,” Alex murmured. “I think you should—”
“Don’t you fucking say it.”
Alex recoiled from Kelly’s shriek. Almost unfelt and unseen, a shifting in the air floated from close by Alex’s side towards the lift doors.
“Don’t say it, Alex. Don’t fucking tell me to apologise.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
In her shock and panic, all Alex could do was lie because suggesting Kelly apologise was exactly what she’d been about to say.
“You are not Mum,” Kelly hissed. “Don’t fucking forget that.”
She staggered away, eyes and stomach hot, sweating freely.
Almost forgotten by the others, Simon rested against the warm glass of the doors. “I hate to get in the way of your family shit, but can we focus on getting the fuck out of here?”
Nobody replied for a moment. Dao turned away. “I’ll get a chair.”
Simon pushed himself off the doors. “Wait. I’ll go.”
He wasn’t sure why he wanted to get away. Maybe it was due to feeling disconnected from the others. Maybe he wasn’t as much a part of them as they were with one another. Or maybe he just needed to feel as if he was doing something instead of being a useless lump of shit with no plans and nothing to offer and—
Simon tore the thought in two and tried not to consider the level of vitriol inside it. He crossed the floor towards Dao. “I’ll go,” he said again. “Stay here.”
Without much idea of where he was going, Simon headed for the low wall of windows forming the front of the cash office. Beyond the tinted glass, a wide space sat empty apart from chairs, the odd filing cabinet and a few desks. While none of the chairs looked particularly heavy, they’d have to do. While another office was near the back of the lift, this one open-plan like the others on the floors above, he couldn’t bring himself to wander too far away. The others were still strangers to him. Even so, they were all he had for human comfort right now.
He pushed at a heavy door to the left of the darkened windows. As with all the other doors, it relied on an electrical fob access. And as with all the others, nothing powered it now. Whispering on the carpet, it slid open. Simon took a moment to study the area, telling himself it was to get an idea of anything they could use and not to check for movement. If the others were talking, they were doing so in low voices. He entered the office; the door began to close and he grabbed it with a shaking, nervous grip. While he couldn’t even
guess what Greenham Place and its phantom sights and sounds (for the others, not for him, unless he wanted to think about the people yesterday, all burned, and no, he did not want to think about that, thanks very much) was all about, the last thing he wanted was to be locked away from Rod and the rest.
He placed a small bin between the door and frame, keeping it wedged open, and crossed the floor. The blank monitors watched him walk, and the tinted glass overlooking the main foyer was easier to see through on this side. Kelly rested against the reception desk, holding her knife; Alex stood at the exit, palm on the glass as if she could push the doors open. Against one of the thick pillars, Dao and Rod stood together, Dao’s head bowed, his little knife looking forgotten in one limp hand. Simon turned from them, gaze falling on one of the heavy chairs. That would do. He could wheel it out, then throw the fucking thing through a window or the doors. Either way, they were getting out. Making sure he had a firm grip on his knife, he grasped the chair’s back and froze. Dao’s voice came. Impossibly, madly, it came as if the man was in the office with him, and Simon didn’t have to look through the cashier’s windows to know Dao was speaking to Rod in barely a whisper.
“It’s my fault. Huan. It’s my fault. I wasn’t paying attention. And not just for a few seconds, but for minutes. Minutes, Rod. He’s playing in the playground; Yang’s sitting on the grass by my feet and he’s talking; he’s telling me about the grass and the sunshine and I’m on my phone and Huan’s climbing on the frame while I’m not paying him any attention and he’s falling, Rod, he’s falling while I’m talking on my phone and it’s my fault and that’s why I had to stop upstairs. I had to… ”
Dao’s little tale collapsed into fresh tears. With his mind’s eye, Simon saw Rod placing a strong hold on Dao’s shoulder to offer an awkward comfort. He saw the women watching this display, Kelly embarrassed and sorry for her outburst a moment before, and Alex’s head and heart full of worry for her own children. Simon saw it all without making a move.