by Walker, Luke
“She didn’t deserve this,” Kelly said. “Alex was… she was a pain in the arse, sometimes, but she was all right. She meant the best for everyone. She wanted that.” Rage ignited inside and that was just fine. “She didn’t deserve this, you motherfucker.”
Kelly shouted her abuse and anger at the air, helpless tears making her vision dance and the desperate urge to hammer her fists against the pillar close to overwhelming. Unable to think of doing more to stop her, Simon called her name. Kelly’s mouth sprayed saliva; the thunder of her heart boomed in her ears. She raged at the invisible presence watching them all, fully aware of that appraisal and infuriated by the sense of its amusement. They were toys to it, and Alex was a broken toy. She’d been discarded because her fear had gone as far as it could. She’d lost all hope and the only one to blame for that was Kelly.
The fury dribbled away. She felt it go as if a tap had been turned off. Gasping for each breath, Kelly subsided and caught a tiny sound—something whispering or hissing. It didn’t come a second time.
“You okay?” Simon asked gently.
Kelly lifted her head, tilted it to peer upwards. “Fuck you,” she told the air.
A soft laugh answered her. Despite the anger, the laugh turned her cold. It was like an abusive parent amused by their child’s attempts to fight back.
“Fuck you,” she said again, although she couldn’t manage the same strength.
Dao moved a little closer to her, but not too close, she noticed. Maybe he didn’t want to associate with a sister-killer.
Alex, I am so fucking sorry. So sorry.
“What now?” Dao asked.
“Up,” Simon replied.
“What?”
“Up. We go up. ” He struggled with explaining or elaborating. “I saw something. I don’t know what.”
Oh yes you do, you liar. You didn’t want to. Never want to but that doesn’t change a single thing. You saw her. You heard her.
“Up there.” With a trembling finger, Simon pointed to the gap of the stairwell and pictured Alex’s rapid descent punctuated by the horrific noise of her body turning into mostly liquid. “Something wants us to go up. As far as we can. I think… I think that might be the way out.”
It made no sense. The way out was the street and the street was probably thirty steps away. So what if the street was an oven, ready to strip the skin from their bones the second they managed to make a hole in the windows? It was outside.
Dao gave an exhausted shrug. “Okay. I’m out of ideas. Let’s go. Up it is.”
He extended an arm towards Kelly’s back, thinking he could perhaps guide her forward or offer support he didn’t much want to give (her sister’s dead and it’s her fault, her fault, her fault) and froze as Kelly did the same. Abruptly frightened, Simon took a step back.
Another slight whisper. Another little hiss.
In his head, Simon said: We need to move now. In his mouth, he didn’t make a sound. Something was with them and it ate his speech as it ate any hope they might find a way out somewhere above—despite what he’d seen.
From the corner of her eye, Kelly watched for moving shadows on the wall or floor. Neither came. She listened for Carl’s threats or his approach. Again, neither.
You imagined it.
No. She had not.
A little sliding hiss. The sort of noise someone might make if they dragged their foot over a carpet. Or maybe a piece of clothing pulled gently over a floor.
Cold prickled the back of Kelly’s neck.
There was only one item of clothing on the floor nearby.
Dao’s jacket inched a fraction to its right again.
Alex’s voice slithered out from underneath the jacket.
Help me, Kelly. It hurts.
Chapter Forty-Six
Later, when only the two of them remained in the building, Simon would ask himself if he’d truly meant to move and shout for Dao and Kelly, or if something shoved him forward. Running back was the thing. Yep. Definitely the plan. Leg it for the door and stairs and just keep going until he found a way out or collapsed. Whichever came first was fine if it meant being away from the sight of Dao’s jacket sliding free from Alex’s remains, pulled or pushed by nothing at all.
He lunged forward. “Move. Fucking run.”
His answer came in the form of Alex’s quavering voice. Help me, Kel. Oh god, everything hurts. My body, Kel. It’s broken.
Alex’s jacket was whipped free and flung at the wall beside the lift. It struck, splattering blood and loose pieces of flesh on the surface, before dropping to the floor. What remained of Alex’s upper half had risen a few inches, supported by the circle of blood and innards surrounding her. The jutting growth of Alex’s spine was no longer connected properly to Alex’s skull, because the skull was little more than a shattered egg shell, and Alex’s eyes and mouth were now on a sliding sheet of her face.
It hurts, Alex moaned, and the word stretched, made of the same gooey fluid that should never see the light of day. Hurrrrrrrrrtttttsssss. Hurrrrrrrrrtttttsssss.
Dao’s hand slammed down on Kelly’s shoulder, spinning her around. “That’s not your sister.”
Daddy’s coming, Alex hissed. He’s hurt like me, Kelly. He’ll make you hurt, too.
Kelly’s mind banished every single emotion but the burning need to flee. She ran, Dao a second behind, Simon yelling at them to move, to leg it, and the floor dropped away as if it had become a waterfall.
Kelly hit the edge of a spreading opening, arms spinning, her upper half leaning forward affording her a horrendous view of a tunnel dropping from the floor to the other end of—
everything it’s the other end of everyfucking thing oh god oh jesus christ
and the growing hole reached the toes of her boots. She threw herself backwards, bringing Dao down. Screaming, they both rolled and struck a pillar. Upright in seconds, Kelly jumped further back from the rip in the floor and a gentle finger ran its way down her neck. She whirled around, fists raised. There was nobody in sight. On the floor where her body fell, half of Alex remained risen from the blood and shattered bones of her hips and legs. A flapping piece of meat—what had once been Alex’s arm—wavered madly. She was trying to point at Kelly. Miles away, a new sound crashed out of the air; something metallic, the grinding of gears, and Kelly named it straightaway.
The lift, descending.
“We have to jump,” Dao roared.
On the other side of the hole, Simon seemed much smaller. He stared at the waterfall below their feet. And Kelly’s senses, taken to new levels of awareness by her terror, registered the look on the man’s face. It was simple recognition.
Jagged growths shot from the edges of the hole, spreading inwards, twisting and curving together.
They were teeth and the hole was a mouth.
Kelly, take me with you, won’t you? You owe me that. You killed me so you owe me. Come and take my hand.
She looked. She didn’t want to but she was powerless to stop herself.
Alex’s fingers hung from a dangling hand. Several compound fractures shoved bone through skin and muscle, and fresh blood sprayed as Alex shook the ruined limb.
Give me a hand, Kel, Alex whispered, and screeched mad laughter.
The mouth reached the first pillar. The marble oozed into the black, both seemingly no more substantial than oil. More teeth, gnarled and broken, snapped free.
“Jump it. We have to jump it.”
Jump it? How the fuck could they? It would be like jumping a river. They’d fall and they’d fall into a mouth and when the teeth closed together above them, they’d be chewed into shredded meat, and maybe even then, Greenham Place wouldn’t leave them alone.
Kelly took Dao’s hand.
“We jump,” she whispered.
He didn’t hear the words and had no need to. What she said lived on her face and in her tears.
Ding.
The lift doors flew open and Carl sprinted from them, a naked Carl with skin tor
n by claws and bite marks. A massive rent tore one of his eyes in half and turned a cheek into a flapping piece of skin. Sprays of blood coated him from head to foot; half of his scrotum dangled almost to his knees, the testicle a smear of meat rubbed into his thigh. Through the rents in his chest and stomach, his ribs and organs peered out; a layer of flesh held in place over the centre of his chest by sticky blood came loose. Carl’s heart was an exposed fist of red, the chewed edges visible.
He saw them with his one whole eye as Kelly took in every inch of his ravaged body, each scene given to her by the mocking sunlight, a gift she didn’t want. And then she was pulling on Dao while what remained of Alex cackled its laughter to the walls and the teeth and Carl was a lumbering pile of meat and Simon could have been on the other side of the world.
Their feet left the ground; they flew hand in hand, hanging for an instant over the centre of the mouth.
Then, hand in hand, they dropped.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Solid ground.
All the miracles in the world, solid ground.
Dao tried to rise and overbalanced. His hold on Kelly had broken, and his empty hands spun desperately. Black raced in from the edges of his vision. He tipped backwards, trying to cry out, and felt his centre of gravity snap.
An instant before he fell to the teeth, fingers soaked with sweat grabbed his bicep and yanked. He fell against Kelly, almost knocking her to the floor, as Simon took hold of both of them, pulling them away from the hole.
Dao shrieked until he ran out of breath, then turned while his lungs ached and his head pounded.
Nothing. Not a fucking thing.
“What… ” he whispered.
There was no sight of Alex’s husband or the terrible damage done to his body; no Alex coming from the ruins of her remains, and no mouth in the floor. All that remained was his jacket covering the terrible hurt done to Alex.
“We need to go,” Simon whispered.
“Go?” Kelly coughed. “Fucking go?”
Maybe she wanted to yell it, to let her anger loose as Dao did, but she obviously didn’t have the energy for raising he voice. Understanding—come and gone in the time it took him to blink—told Dao that Kelly was almost used up. Greenham Place had found a weakness in her tough surface and it was kicking down that door with everything it had. She held her hip, covering the blood now drying. Streaks of it coated her cheeks. Splatters stained her fleece. Dao wondered if he looked as done in as she did.
“Yes.” Simon smiled. “Fucking go.”
A soft chuckle came from the direction of the lift. Despite his body plunging into winter cold, Dao refused to turn. Let the place laugh at them. Let it find their fears funny. He wouldn’t give it the satisfaction of facing it, just in time to see another phantom image—something to replace the hole in the floor or the resurrected mess of Alex.
Not real. Any of it. Not fucking real.
“Let’s go,” he whispered.
“Alex,” Kelly murmured.
She’s dead, Dao raged inside his head. She’s dead and that’s on you, Kelly, so don’t say a word.
He closed his eyes briefly. He wasn’t angry inside; it wasn’t his voice cursing the girl. Nor was it Lin.
You’re inside me, aren’t you? You’re laughing inside me.
It giggled. Dao didn’t need to open his eyes to know the others had not heard the little laugh. Nor had they picked up on the chuckle coming from the lift, because both noises were in the dark underside of his heart. Somehow, the horror of the building had slipped inside him. An undercurrent of anger, and what he had to admit was hate, now flowed a little stronger than a moment before. And maybe it didn’t matter exactly when Greenham Place had found a way into him. Maybe it had come without a sound in the seconds after everyone vanished, in that frozen millisecond when the bomb detonated, trapping them in one instant. Maybe it had been with him since, biding its time.
I know what to do about you, he told the stranger who’d set up home somewhere in his soul. If you don’t want me to hurt you, then leave right now.
He sensed it listening, almost curious. While Dao felt the thing looking into his mind, he knew it couldn’t probe as deeply as it wanted to. Perhaps it didn’t understand the human psyche as well as it thought. Perhaps the resolve to fight and stay alive was an alien concept to it. Perhaps—
“Dao?” Simon called. “Still with us?”
Dao jerked. Kelly and Simon were a few feet away, both heading for the door to the stairs. Kelly shuffled; Simon walked with a new purpose.
What did he see up there? What did that idiot see?
“Shut up,” Dao whispered, and then jogged after the others.
Chapter Forty-Eight
While she wanted to run ahead of the men, Kelly simply didn’t have the strength to push past them and lead the way. Instead, she staggered from step to step, head down, forcing her to stare at her aching feet. Managing to keep it upright and her eyes focused on Simon’s narrow back was hard work.
Alex.
Alex was gone. Her sister who, no matter what she said, had acted more like a mother than a sister, was dead and there was only one person to blame for that. Yeah. Just the one. She knew it. Simon knew it. Dao definitely knew it. Although she was aware of her grief, to the point of knowing it had fucked her up, Kelly had still picked up on his anger and disgust. It was like a low hum only she could hear. Being angry at him in turn was an attractive idea, but one she couldn’t get behind.
Because Alex was dead.
The thought spun in her mind as they ascended, reaching the third floor, then the fourth and then shuffling up to the fifth. She stumbled on the next flight of stairs and Simon managed to catch her flailing hands a moment before she almost went down. Dao watched her, unblinking, face set.
“You okay?” Simon asked.
She nodded, mouth and throat too dry to let her speak.
“We need to keep going.” Simon peered ahead. For the first time, he registered a niggling sensation, an odd feeling that had lived below his skin since he’d arrived for his meeting the day before.
Every floor, every landing and every set of offices were laid out in the same way, and it was fucking horrendous. While he knew they’d come up five floors, something in the décor, a slight change, to confirm it would have been nice. Different coloured walls, different pot plants; differing levels of sunlight through all the fucking windows. But, no. Whoever designed Greenham Place was, in Simon’s humble opinion, a total wanker.
He snorted tired laughter and felt Dao’s gaze.
“Nothing,” he said to the unasked question. “Come on.”
He set out again, stopping when Dao spoke. “Wait a second.”
Simon looked back. Dao stood between him and Kelly. She blinked hot sweat from her eyes and tried not to hear the whisper of Alex’s name echoing through her heart.
“Why are we going up?” Dao asked.
Simon studied his shoes, the toes scuffed. Kelly gathered her strength and slipped past Dao. Not wanting to put too much space between herself and the men, she rested on the arm of one of the leather sofas, too weak to move from the strong sunlight turning her already warm skin to hot.
“Why, Simon?” Dao said.
“I saw someone. I don’t know who,” Simon added quickly, as if Dao had demanded a name. “Up there when you were on the ground floor. They said to go up. As far as we could.”
“What?” Dao pulled himself up a few steps, gripping the rail. “I was up there yesterday.” The memory of the awful time trapped in the office while an invisible nightmare tormented him and his son made Dao shake.
And maybe that’s when it got inside you. Maybe then. Maybe earlier. Who cares, right?
“There’s nothing up there. And there’s definitely no way out. I mean, how can we get out seven, eight, nine floors up?”
“We need to go to the roof.”
At first, Kelly wasn’t sure she’d heard Simon. The roof, she repeated to herself
. That’s what he said. Jesus Christ.
Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, her mother’s voice shrieked, and Kelly let out a moan. Neither of the men heard it.
“The roof? Why?”
“Because… ” Simon began to cry. It reduced him from a man in his late-thirties to a child. Tears turned the dirt and sweat coating his face into clean tracks. He bent double, agony gripping his chest and stomach. Nothing physical hurt him and that was the worst thing in the world. An open wound would have been better; cuts and gouges healed. The fire burning its eager way through the meat of his belly and bones of his ribs was worse because it was old. It festered like a sore left untreated, and he understood too many long years had gone by when he should have done what he could to deal with it, instead of letting that hurt take over his life, become his life, and stop him from opening the door to anyone or anything.
Too many years. Too much of a lifetime turned into a pit because that was easier than filling the pit with love and light that might one day go away and go out.
And look what that’s got you, a woman’s voice muttered and it was not without kindness and sorrow.
“Simon.” Dao said.
“You saw your mum, again, didn’t you?” Kelly asked him. “Simon… ” She had nothing else to offer him. All the good things had gone, now.
Simon struggled to speak for a moment.
“I don’t know why she’s not here to hurt me like… what hurts you is here. It’s not her. Not totally. It’s like she’s… ” Again, he fought for the words. Mercifully, they came. “It’s like she’s who I want her to be, not who she really was.” He stared at them. “She’s our way out.”
Simon spun, moving to sprint as he turned and Dao grabbed his shoulders, spinning him back. Dao’s face was shielded to Kelly by Simon’s head and neck, but she still heard the man speak. She knew his lips weren’t moving, because none of the other demons of Greenham Place needed to use their mouths to voice their horrors.
Fuck your mother, Simon.
With a strength he could not possibly possess, Dao threw Simon straight at Kelly.