by Walker, Luke
Unsure if she should be more scared or relieved by that thought, Kelly went on.
“We stayed as a couple. Me and Dean. And it wasn’t like you might think it would be. Like in a film, we’d be surrounded by gangsters and bad boys with guns. None of that. I mean, I knew that he dealt with some guys I didn’t want to know, but he kept it away from me. And with me, he was fine. Nice. He was the sort of guy you see yourself with for a long time. You see it going somewhere. Lasting. You know what I mean? Anyway, we were good together. Everything was good for us. Until Alex.”
Out of nowhere, a bizarre sensation hit Kelly. She knew what she wanted to say next, to tell Dao about Alex making her feel like a kid and all that had gone down. Sitting beside him, telling the story, she felt something close to ridiculous. She was focusing on dead issues, on a life miles away from the death and hurt in the building. Whatever was going on here, it was a killing business. The dead life outside it was no more important now than the exams she’d taken a few years ago, or the days at the park with Alex. It was all over.
She sighed. The story needed finishing either way.
“She found out what Dean was up to. Even now, I don’t know how, but she did. And she went for him. She wasn’t scared of him like you might think, even though he could have hurt her. She came to his flat one night when I was there and went nuts. She lost it totally. Told him if he ever came anywhere near me again, she’d kill him. She wouldn’t get the police involved. She would actually kill him. And if he hurt me or her, he’d better kill us because she wouldn’t stop until he was dead. She was like someone else. She was someone else for a few minutes. I’ve seen her pissed off before, but nothing like that. Anyway, she grabbed me. Grabbed me like I was a little kid and dragged me out of there. She got me back to hers and told me to grow up.”
The heat of embarrassment baked Kelly’s face and head. Stopping now wasn’t possible, though.
“She said that a lot. Grow up. She said being a dealer’s girlfriend was for silly bitches, not for me. She said I was better than that and I needed to start acting like it or my life would be over. I’d be a waste and I’d deserve to be a waste unless I did something about it. I was acting like a kid according to Alex and that… that was the worst thing. She couldn’t let me work it out for myself or walk away from Dean in my own time. She had to bully me into doing it and wouldn’t let me be an adult when I wanted to. She treated me like she always treats me. Like she became my mum after ours died. Like I’m a five-year-old going to school on my first day.”
Anger lived somewhere else. So did effort. Kelly finished speaking, her tone growing flatter by the word. All that time furious with her sister and she had nothing to show for it.
“There’s more, isn’t there?” Dao said.
“Yeah.”
She told him. It was like peeling a huge scab away from her skin. Millimetre by millimetre, it came free, exposing an unhealed wound and letting the stale air trace its fingers inside. There was nothing she could do about that because the words were in the speeding stream from a moment before, boiling and frothing from her mouth. There was no stopping her or the ugly story, no stopping the flood. It was here to drown her because she deserved that; she’d get what was coming to her. Carl had said so.
Trembling and crying a little (and lacking the energy to fight off either), Kelly stared at the wall; she spoke to the featureless surface; she confessed what she’d done and what was now haunting her, and when it was finished, she fell into the silence of aching regret.
A few moments passed without a sound. Kelly waited for Dao’s judgement or comment. Nothing came from him. A haze struck the edges of her vision; a speeding blur dropping from the ceiling and coming down even as she turned to it.
In the foyer, the body fell through the stairwell, struck the floor, and exploded.
Chapter Forty-Three
Simon listened. As much as he wanted to take hold of Alex and run for any door that would lead to a private room where they could shut away the sound of Kelly’s voice, he had to listen. He’d become a statue, joined by a rock-like arm to the railing around the stairwell, and he’d stay there until enough centuries passed by for his body to collapse from stone to dust.
“I was beyond angry at her,” Kelly said. “It wasn’t like anything I’d known before. It was like something I could touch. I wanted her dead. Jesus. I hated myself for thinking it, but it was still true. I wanted my sister dead. I was just sick of her. She’d treated me like a kid for my entire life. Alex wanted to be my mum, I think, and I hated her for it. After all that business with Dean, I just… I don’t know. It exploded out of me. I wanted her hurt. So I hurt her.”
Kelly fell silent. Alex’s head hung limp and useless. Simon saw with perfect clarity: Alex had given up. Any fight left in the woman after the hours of confusion and torment had quietly died.
“Alex,” he whispered.
She gave no response at all. He could have been addressing a corpse.
“My birthday. My eighteenth,” Kelly said from below. “We had a party in a pub my uncle goes to. It was a good time. A lot of people. I danced and drank and enjoyed myself but all night, I knew what I was doing and what I wanted.” The girl sounded near tears. Any dead note to her voice as there’d been from the ghostly vision that walked into the wall was long gone. Now, she was totally human, and that meant a complete lack of pretence.
No, stop it, Kelly. Stop talking.
“I got drunk and I fucked my brother-in-law out the back of the pub,” Kelly said, and that was all. It was as if her voice had been switched off. Alex sagged on the railing; her shoulders shook as sobs broke loose. Simon reached for her and she whipped her head up, eyes mad and staring.
“Don’t touch me,” she spat, bringing her fingers up to his face, long nails aiming for his eyes. Simon jerked back, dodging Alex’s fingers by inches. He eased away, not taking his gaze off her.
“Okay, Alex. It’s okay.”
Her mouth twitched at one corner. It took Simon a moment to realise Alex was trying to smile. She looked as if she’d forgotten how.
“Okay?” she echoed.
“I know this is bad. It is, but you can deal with it, right? You’ve got your kids to get back to, right—”
Alex grasped the railing. “They’re dead.” She stated it as a cold fact. “We’re all dead and I won’t be with my girls, again.”
“Alex—”
“Listen.”
Unwillingly, Simon did so. And there it was—the peal of a church bell calling the faithful and the bereaved to a funeral on a bitter afternoon. Alex’s doom had come to them and there was no melodrama. Just cold.
He closed his eyes against the heat of his tears. When the voice, Kelly’s voice, rose from far below, he tried to open them and could not. He was blinded by his fears and loneliness, damned to listen to the terrible story Kelly was telling while her voice cracked and echoed as it spun up the stairwell to land in front of them like a huge weight powerful enough to shake the building, to seal his eyes and cut away the last sliver of Alex’s hope that none of this was true.
She was no longer by his side. He sensed her movement while Kelly’s story came to its ugly end and all Simon could do was open his eyes, open them, fucking open your eyes, open them right now, open and see, Simon.
Simon’s eyes jerked open, spilling the last of his tears to mix with the blood smeared on his cheeks.
Alex stood at the stairwell, looking over the edge.
“Alex,” Simon managed to whisper.
What might have been miles above, a church bell gave a single ring. The last one.
“Alex, wait.” He managed to get to his feet and, even as he was rising, Simon knew he’d be too slow. He was a gust of wind, air blown from the sofa, and that gust could shove him in a hurricane or a summer breeze. It didn’t matter. Still too slow. Always too slow.
Behind him, a tiny breeze wafted by, created by movement from the slightest shape. He registered both but d
idn’t turn.
Alex swung her legs over the railing.
All he had was the trickle of seconds, his body not moving anywhere near fast enough. Alex pulled herself through the warm air, rising with it and casting no shadow on the white floor as her legs came up to the railing and she turned to see him one last time.
“It’s over,” Alex said.
She flew forward, then down, a streaming line of light passing each floor without a sound, the mouth of the stairwell swallowing her all the way to the hard ground of the foyer, where she changed in an instant, going from a distinct shape to a detonation of red that flew upwards before raining down in huge drops over a blossoming sea of blood.
Behind Simon, the gentle movement came closer. And as it moved, it said one word over and over.
Up.
Chapter Forty-Four
Kelly’s wail raced around the ground floor, taken by the floor and walls and the lift, and sent back in mockery. The noise echoed between the pillars, powered by a dozen voices, all shrieking Kelly’s agony and layering their reply with a terrible sneering. Kelly registered the derisive sound and banished it from her thoughts in the same instant. The body mattered. The mess.
She skidded over the floor, boots tracking through the widening pool of blood, Dao yelling her name as the echo of screams faded. Seven floors above, Simon’s face was a tiny white circle, his empty hands still visible over the railing.
“No,” Kelly whispered. “No. No.”
It seemed to be all she could say. The useless negation spilled out, not doing a thing to change the scene and refusing to go away.
“No. No. No.” The last was a roar that turned Kelly’s throat into fire for a moment, and it was no good.
Alex’s body was almost unrecognisable as formerly human. Kelly dropped to her knees, ignoring the sharp impact on her legs, and reached for what might have once been Alex’s face.
“No.”
Dao yanked Kelly away from her sister. Kelly shrieked and tried to free herself. Dao held her with arms seemingly made of steel.
The rich stink of all the gore assaulted her nose. She gagged and the vomit fell back down. Kelly’s vision spun, turned into a faint grey, and there was nothing wrong with that because it meant she didn’t have to see.
Her mind repeated the heavy thud Alex’s body had made upon impact with the ground, and then the wet explosion of all the blood in the world splattering the floor and pillars. It was the sound of rotten fruit bursting; a dead animal run over on a busy road, and its innards coming out; a binbag full of kitchen waste falling apart and its stinking contents slapping all over the floor. It was the worst sound in the world and it lived forever in Kelly’s head.
“Kelly.”
Dao’s shout broke through the grey and she wished it had not. She tried to say Alex’s name and could only manage a hoarse croak that brought back the fire in her throat. The ghastly, meaty smell of Alex’s shattered body clamped hold of her nostrils and coated her tongue and teeth like a stain. The blood, the shit, the liquids and organs never meant to be anywhere but inside filled the air; they filled the building and she was breathing in bits of her dead sister.
Kelly tipped, overbalancing Dao. He fell back, losing his hold on her. Kelly’s head struck the pillar. Pain bloomed like a flower inside her skull, joining the chorus of hurts singing in her scratched and torn skin and her bitten hip. She reached blindly, found the pillar and held on to it as hard as she could.
Alex, oh my God, Alex. I’m so sorry. So sorry. Sorry, Alex. So sorry.
She’d keep thinking the words for as long as it took. She’d block out everything else in her head and give space only to the apology if it meant Alex wasn’t dead and none of this hell was happening.
Someone held her elbows, pulled hard, and spun her around. Dao’s face was an inch from hers.
“Kelly? Can you hear me?”
She managed to open her mouth. That was all.
“Kelly?”
Dao’s hold was like a weight on her arms, pulling her down to the mess of her dead sister, and she had no strength to fight him.
“Kelly.”
She slumped against his narrow chest and let out a hacking cry. Her torso felt as if it had split open and all the hurt she’d ever known sprayed out. That was okay. Breathing out meant breathing in and if she breathed it back in, she’d drown and be dead and all this would be over.
Kelly tried to inhale and failed. She gave another huge sob and her world became hot, dark agony. Thought ceased and her cries belonged in another place far outside the nothing on all sides.
Barely able to think, Dao kept his hold on Kelly and his eyes off Alex’s broken shape. He’d seen enough already. The grey of Alex’s ribcage jutting through shredded skin met the grey of coiled meat. The back of her skull had become her face for an instant before the exploding bone sent what remained of her features sliding over her neck towards her breasts. Only one arm remained fully attached to her torso. The other had snapped almost free at the elbow and now lay like a curled up worm,
Dao saw all this as he ran after Kelly, not fully aware of what he was taking in as his gawking eyes rolled from one detail of horror to the next. In the sudden quiet, punctuated by the hiss of Kelly’s rapid breath, he saw it all again without looking at Alex. It was there in his head, forever.
Lin spoke, and it was a horror upon horrors because his wife had never sounded as coldly furious.
You heard the little bitch. You heard what she did and now here’s her sister, just pieces of meat. Look at her. Look at what Kelly’s done to her sister and all because she didn’t like being treated like a kid. You know what you should do? You know it, Dao? You should shove her face into Alex’s body like a puppy that’s pissed on the floor. You should rub her nose in all that blood. You should keep her face inside Alex’s stomach. See it? See it all opened up? Shove Kelly’s face right in there so she chokes on it, so she fucking chokes on what she did.
Dao closed his eyes and thought of Yang. He thought of his boy as he’d seen him the night before: a small shape beneath his bedcovers, curled slightly with one hand on the pillow, a toy bear sitting at the foot of the bed. Yang had placed it there to keep him safe, Dao knew, and that was the best thing in the world. Not the fear of a monster, but the belief in what could fight that monster. Fight it and beat it.
The image worked its magic. The horror masquerading as his wife faded away.
Chapter Forty-Five
It might have been moments or hours later. A little light exploded and broke through the black. Kelly blinked over and over until enough of the tears cleared for her to see. The light was sunshine, she realised, and the tang of blood remained horribly strong. Stronger, maybe, because it had time to ooze over the floor and drip down the pillars. Alex’s blood, everywhere but inside Alex’s veins and arteries where it belonged.
“You there?” Dao asked.
Kelly managed a single nod. Speaking was still out of the question.
“We need to move, okay? Just one foot in front of the other and we’ll get away from here.”
Okay. That sounds like a plan. Words, trapped inside. Words, refusing to come to her mouth.
She moved on auto-pilot, turning a little from Dao. Her boot squeaked. Blood. She stood in the blood and her boots squeaked on the floor.
The grey threatened to return. As fiercely as she could, Kelly wished it away and turned again so she faced the door that led to the stairs. Ten steps. Twelve at the most. And then she’d be at the door Rod had crept through the morning before, a nervous Rod calling out, asking if anyone was there, and hadn’t she known instinctively that he was decent? She’d known that, yes. It came from him like a scent and she’d welcomed it like she used to welcome a hug from her dad. But now her dad was gone and Rod was gone and Alex was gone and all she could do was walk away from Alex’s remains. And maybe she could imagine a distant time when this would be a memory instead of the worst reality possible.
On
e step. And then the rest would follow.
Kelly lifted a foot, placed it down a few inches in front and froze. The doors had opened. Simon stood between them. His eyes were two dark pits in his too pale face. He swayed and had to rest on the wall to keep himself steady.
“Alex.” The word sounded as if he’d forgotten how to speak properly. It was mush in his mouth.
“Dead,” Kelly whispered. She barely heard herself; even so, Simon caught the reply. He sucked in air. During his mad dash down the stairs, he’d frantically told himself Alex’s suicide was just one more shitty vision in this place. The building was playing another game. He’d crashed down each flight of stairs, the lie in his heart harder to believe the closer he came to the ground floor.
“I… ” He let the rest of the sentence go because he had no idea what came next.
Kelly pushed away from Dao, held a blood-smeared hand to her forehead and wondered if she was about to pass out. Dao slid off his jacket and dropped it over what he thought was Alex’s upper half. While the gesture felt a little pointless, given the severity of her injuries, it was better than nothing.
Resting against a pillar and fighting away waves of faintness, Kelly spoke to the floor.
“It’s my fault.”
“Yes.” The reply emerged before Simon had any chance of stopping it. Face flaming, he felt Dao’s angry gaze and tried to ignore it. Kelly gave no visible reaction.
“I mean… we heard you. Up there. We heard what you said about… Carl.”
“How?” Dao yelled. “All the way up there… ” He quietened, realising his question was pointless. Acoustics were their own issue in Greenham Place. If sound wanted to travel and take a painful story with it, then it would. At the same time, if it didn’t want to be heard, then it would not. Kelly’s confrontation with Carl hadn’t made it to the floors above, but clearly, something had wanted Alex to hear her sister’s confession.