Ascent

by Walker, Luke

  Gasping for every hot breath, Kelly ran into the rear offices and shot towards the open door leading to the main reception. A thought flared like a dying star, too quick to register fully.

  If this doesn’t work, you are dead.

  She skidded to a stop, saturated with sweat, t-shirt stuck to her back and breasts. The burning in her side wanted to come back, wanted to make her stare at it and wonder about infection and germs.

  He was still coming—all the world’s horrors turned into the shape of a naked man.

  The lift doors eased open and it wasn’t like a mouth. It was a mouth.

  Kelly ran with light steps to the pillar nearest the reception desk.

  Kelly. Where are you.

  The words were not a question, because there was nothing human here. It was like hearing the middle of the night come to life. All the cold and disquiet of walking home at three in the morning was striding across the floor of the rear offices.

  I’m coming for you. I’ll find you. Carl, or whatever was pretending to be him, laughed in a shrill, mad giggle, utterly unlike her brother-in-law’s usual big laugh. Kelly had to bite her tongue to keep in the frightened squeak threatening to emerge.

  Doing all she could to banish her fear, Kelly directed her thoughts at the sealed lift.

  You want me, don’t you? You know what you have to do. You have to open up, you fucker.

  The blank surface of the lift doors gazed back. The last she looked, they’d been wide open. Closing without a sound was a trick, a shitty, ugly trick to make her believe her little plan was a failure.

  You fucking want me. I know you do.

  Kelly breathed too loudly against her palm, unable to stop her panting.

  I tell you. That thing isn’t getting me so you can have me instead. Deal?

  Nothing from the lift. Its silence mocked her and tears of terror and frustration blurred the edges of her vision.

  Are you ready for me, Kelly. I hope so. I hope you want me to fuck you and burn you and fuck you and burn you and—

  “Shut the fuck up.” The screech was out before she had any chance of stopping it. The yell bounced from floor to wall, then up towards the high ceiling, crashing back to her, as mocking as the still face of the lift.

  Carl gave another giggle. It sounded like a child amused by a dying animal. A moment later, his footsteps reached the reception area. Without pausing, he drew closer.

  Where are you hiding, Kelly. Come out and see me. Come and see what I’ve got for you.

  Desperately, Kelly tried to picture him in relation to her position against the pillar. If she was lucky, he’d moved in a straight line from the opening into the back offices. That should put him level with the pillar opposite hers, a good twenty feet away.

  Praying she made no sound, Kelly eased away from the pillar and twisted so she faced the lift full on. She crouched. Her knee cracked. She froze as her exhausted thigh and calf muscles protested. Nothing from Carl. She splayed her hands on the warm floor as if about to launch into a sprint, then moved her head forward a fraction so the side of the pillar drew level with her peripheral vision.

  Nothing.

  He was behind her. She knew it.

  Kelly whipped her head around, hair hissing as it flew.

  Nothing.

  About ready to puke all over herself, Kelly eased forward another half inch. She could just see the line of the far pillar and a section of the floor. No sign of the thing pretending to be her brother-in-law.

  Silence closed in, pressing a cold weight over her ears. He was listening for her, both of them not making a move. The only difference was, Carl was playing with her while she literally gambled on her life.

  Dao.

  She’d left him behind in the white corridor. What happened if he came after her, thinking he could help? She’d told him to stay there, and while that had only been a few moments ago, it would be an eternity to him. If he ran from the back offices, if he appeared now, the Carl-thing would kill him. Or maybe his boy would. Maybe they were all seeing their own private fears and guilt, so those fears could kill them as they’d killed Rod.

  These thoughts sped through Kelly’s mind in a matter of seconds, even though she no longer had a sense of time or place. Everything came down to listening for the monster pretending to be Carl, listening while her bowels became a hot weight and her stomach was a rising boulder, rolling up into her throat and ready to bring all the screams in the world to her mouth because… because… because…

  Because I see you, the Carl-thing whispered from right behind her.

  Kelly flew, feet leaving the floor for a second. She crashed as she had the day before, the hard ground welcoming her body and giving her pain in return. She cried out and spun over without giving the hurt more than a second’s thought. Carl stood close to the entrance, facing her. Smiling with no trace of humanity on his face. Even though his whisper had come from her back, he stood at the other side of the floor, not caring about the space between them. He had no reason to because she had nowhere to go.

  Want to go outside.

  Kelly groaned, unable to stop it. Those few words were an echo, a memory. They were a shitty taste in her mouth to go with the remnants of the cocktails she’d downed that night a year ago. One year exactly. And here was her anniversary as Rod’s had come, and Dao’s with his dead son. And Alex’s, even though Alex didn’t know it.

  She groaned again, teeth and tongue wet with too much spit that wasn’t hers alone.

  The Carl-thing giggled, seemingly pleased by a dirty joke.

  It began to move towards her, taking his time because she was trapped.

  You hear me, you fucker? You took Rod. You can take me the same way.

  Carl, coming.

  Her body hurting and her heart a small ball of regret and her thought—sorry, Alex—a brief flare before primitive survival stamped down on everything else.

  I know what you want. I know the score, you motherfucker so you do this, you do it right now, you son of a bitch, you do it right now—

  Carl’s mouth wider than the world as he smiled; Carl’s teeth gleaming fangs; Carl’s naked body flesh rippling because things lived below his skin, things that should only exist underneath the earth where no light ever reached and no warmth baked mud and ancient rock—things of dirt and cold and rot all under his skin and ready to burst out the second his hold clamped down on her neck and began to pull her head free.

  Carl, howling and barking like a mad dog.

  Carl, a running nightmare.

  “Fucking do it, you motherfucker, you want this, you want this, I fucking know you do, I fucking know you do, I—”

  Ding.

  Kelly dived to her right, landing awkwardly on a wrist and yelling out in pain as the shape that had worn her brother-in-law’s face streamed over the space she’d filled a second before.

  Still running, it hit the mouth of the lift.

  The doors slammed shut.

  Kelly’s screech of triumph answered the crash of the closing lift doors.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Kelly almost managed to make it to Dao before she collapsed.

  He took the little impact of her weight, let her rest her head on his neck, and backed up until he reached the windows that looked into the rear offices. The streaming sunlight failed to reach this far from the front windows and that was welcome. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever been as hot or exhausted. Not a centimetre of his body was free from sweat; not a muscle was free from strain.

  You’re still here. That has to be worth something.

  Dao swallowed a laugh and eased Kelly away.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She made a noise that might have been a reply; he wasn’t sure. Shaking, Kelly pushed the hair away from her forehead and slid down to the floor. He eased himself beside her. She took one of his hands, welcoming to simple touch of his skin. Their shared stink of sweat and fear didn’t matter. Maybe they’d gone beyond both. For the f
irst time since their sprint from the foyer, chased by Carl, the pain from the struggle with the things that had filled the area made her want to cry out. Blood caked her arms. At least it was drying. She had that much.

  “How did you beat him?” Dao whispered.

  Seconds ticked by, the moment long enough for Dao to wonder if she would reply at all. That was okay, though. The quiet was welcome.

  “I remembered. Yesterday. On the stairs. Alex’s dad and that guy. That guy who hurt Rod.”

  Kelly had to take a few breaths. It hurt to think of Rod. He’d been a decent man. While she couldn’t pretend he’d have been anything to her in normal life, he’d mattered here. For the first time, Kelly realised what she’d noticed within minutes of meeting him, but hadn’t been fully aware of thanks to all the shit going on.

  Rod had reminded her of her dad before his dementia took him away. A man who knew what was right and fair. But now the world didn’t give a shit about that, just as it didn’t give a shit about her dad or Alex’s, so hurt, so wounded.

  Not aware she was crying, Kelly said: “On the stairs, those two things, they weren’t together. Remember? They are mine. He is yours. That’s what Alex’s dad said to the guy who hurt Rod. Everything here… it’s part of the same thing, but what we’re scared of, what we’re guilty about, it’s all working by itself. I told the lift it could have me, but I lied and the lift knew that.” She wiped her nose with a trembling hand. “It knew it. This place knows everything. It doesn’t care how it hurts us in the end, but the things looking for us, they want to hurt us themselves. Carl for me; your son for you. I gave Carl to whatever the fuck’s in the lift. Rod’s thing. My thing. Whatever. The lift… ate him.”

  Dao let Kelly fall quiet again while he chewed on a potential question. Asking it seemed pointless, because he already knew the answer just as he knew why the naked man was haunting Kelly. Even so, asking it was the last thing left to say right now.

  “Who was he, Kelly? Who was that man?”

  She didn’t pause or hesitate, perhaps aware there’d be no naming her guilt if she did.

  “There was a guy.” The words should be prisoners in her head; they belonged there. But they were out and she couldn’t stop more from coming. “Year before last. Dean. He was twenty-two; I was seventeen. Nice guy. Kind of.” She gazed at the white floor. “You know what’s funny? I can’t remember where we met. I think it was at a party, but it might have been in a club. You’d think I’d remember after what happened, but it’s not there. It’s just… ” She waved a hand. “Background. Anyway, we started seeing each other and I liked him. A lot. I mean, he was everything I wanted. He had his shit together. He had a job and that’s more than a lot of my friends asked for in a guy. He worked in his uncle’s company. Something to do with plumbing for businesses. I don’t know. But anyway, he wasn’t some bullshitter. He was the sort of guy you could take home to meet your mum. Mine would have liked him, but… she died when I was fourteen. My dad, not Alex’s, he didn’t meet him, either. Didn’t seem much point. My dad doesn’t know who he is most days. Alex’s dad met him and said he was a snake. That’s what he called him.” The anger, dulled by exhaustion and time, flared for a moment. “Said I couldn’t trust him. Said he knew boys like that when he was young. Nice, polite, friendly, but always looking for the money, for a way out of things. And if that meant he’d drop someone or do some deals, he’d do it.”

  She spoke more to herself than Dao, and couldn’t stop. Dao was there; the feel of his skin on hers was welcome, but her words weren’t for him. He might have muttered something, a bit of encouragement to keep going; she didn’t hear anything precise.

  “Turned out my step-dad was right. It was about six months later I found out Dean was dealing. Coke, mostly. Basically, he sold to whoever was buying. The stupid thing was there was no big scene about it. Like in a film I’d have heard someone talking about it or the police would have got hold of me and asked me to drop Dean in it, but none of that happened. I just walked into a deal. He was at home one Saturday and got his times wrong. He thought I was going round at two, but I went to his at one. Walked into him with a knife on some kid’s throat; some boy who wanted to pay less for a few grams. There’s me outside his flat, looking through his kitchen window, and I see it all. He saw me, kicked the kid out and tried to explain it all. I just ran.”

  Kelly shifted position, the muscles in her legs falling asleep. The discomfort belonged to someone else; movement was instinctive.

  “He came to mine later. He was all nice, you know? We went out to a park near my flat. We’re sitting on the roundabout like we’re ten and he’s telling me the whole thing. What he deals, what money he makes, what he has to say to people who don’t want to pay. He tells me it’s like a business and he has to be professional.” Kelly snorted. “Professional. Like he’s a lawyer or some shit. He tells me he wants us to be together and he’ll keep that side of things under control and away from us. And you know what?”

  Dao’s reply belonged to some faraway place. Maybe wherever the office block and its horrors went. Kelly had nothing but the pleasant warmth of that August afternoon and the creak of the old roundabout under her bottom and legs. Her jeans scraped on the flaking wood and Dean’s shadow stained the paving and tired grass, both dry in the summer’s heat.

  “You know what?” She had to whisper it. Guilt, shame and anger at herself took away any strength. “I wanted to believe him, so I did believe him. I wanted him. I wanted to still be his girlfriend… and something in me wanted to be a dealer’s girlfriend. How fucking stupid is that? How stupid was I? I mean, shit, I wasn’t a little girl. I knew better than to act like that. Or think like that. It’s something I would’ve seen a mate from school doing. You know?”

  If Dao did know, it didn’t matter. The festering self-anger of the last two years was out in a fierce stream. It ran over sharp rocks, growing faster the further it went. Unless she got in its way, it would become a flood. And maybe she didn’t want to stop it. Maybe letting it drown her self-disgust for being such a stupid kid was the way to go. Couldn’t be worse than picking at what it had led her to on the night of her eighteenth birthday.

  In memory or reality—it didn’t seem to matter which was real—Kelly pressed her calves against the old roundabout. They’d come here a lot when they were kids, her and Alex. Usually on a Sunday afternoon after coming home from church with their mum. In the bite of a dead January or the dazzling sun of the summer holidays, they’d come here and go on the swings or spin the roundabout as fast as they could. Days like that had lessened as time went on. They’d probably not been here since Alex turned fifteen. The thought of that time before, abruptly feeling as if it had all been decades back and not just a few years, stabbed Kelly harder than she might have expected. Things made sense when she’d been ten, her sister in her teens. Life was known, secure. Now, everything was up in the air and all she had to hold on to were Dean’s assurances and the nice light of his smile. It reached his eyes and she’d always liked that. He smiled as she glanced at him, and the peace of the park was broken by a strange cramp in her leg. Burning spread from her hip, reached down to her groin, then lower. Kelly jutted her leg from the roundabout, trying to concentrate on Dean’s explanation for what he’d been doing, holding on to the comfort and sense of them even as imagination whispered of the future with him: money, stability and an interesting life, instead of the dull asininity of everyday that almost all of her friends had taken after school and college.

  She held her leg, rubbed it, and claws sank deep into the skin of hip. Kelly jerked forward. In the movement, air on all sides blew away, taking every mote and line of colour out of the day, bleaching the lovely yellow into a dull grey. Breeze and warmth died in a second; she pitched through a murky light, trying to call Dean’s name, swinging her hands forward to take the impact when she hit the hard ground.

  Memory snapped in half and reality crashed down.

  She was against the wall
with Dao’s hand in hers, the wall at her back while thin lines of sweat dribbled down her neck and forehead.

  “Jesus,” she whispered.

  “You okay?” Dao asked.

  “Yeah… I think so.” She swallowed the staleness in her mouth. “Felt like I wasn’t here for a second.”

  “A second? You haven’t said anything for a few minutes. You just sort of trailed off and sat there.”

  “A few minutes?” Kelly stared at Dao, searching his face for a lie or a joke. She saw neither. “Why didn’t you do something? Say something?”

  “I didn’t know if you didn’t want to tell me more of your story.”

  Disorientation made clear thought difficult. A good few months had passed since she’d last been drunk; whatever had happened to bury her in memory felt like the brief time between sober and inebriation. Kelly let go of Dao to stretch and take a moment to look around. Everything appeared the same, which meant everything was as fucked up as it’d been since the day before.

  She surprised herself with a laugh. The sound and feel were both welcome. Dao smiled, unsure what she found funny but ready to smile all the same. It beat his tears or his fears.

  Not sure if she could explain anything, Kelly shook her head and took his hand again. Another funny thing: Dao, like Rod, wasn’t someone she’d have had much to do with outside here, but right now, she couldn’t be more grateful to have him with her. Human contact. That’s what it all came down to in this place. Maybe the same applied to Simon, as well, wherever he and Alex had run to upstairs.

  “You want to hear the rest?” she asked.

  “If you want to tell me.”

  “It’s shit.”

  “So’s everything else around here.”

  “Yeah.” Kelly checked the foyer again. Still empty. While it was possible for the lift to spit Carl back out like unchewed food, she didn’t think that would happen. The things here, the horrors, they were all apart from each other. Each one wanted to hurt its target and it didn’t give a shit about the others. Greenham Place might have made the walking nightmares, but she didn’t think it controlled them.