by Walker, Luke
Chapter Forty-Nine
Simon smashed into Kelly, knocking all the air from her lungs.
The back of his skull connected with her nose, breaking it instantly. The crunch of bone was lost to Kelly’s wheezing as she tried to inhale oxygen, suck it down into the fire of her chest. Hot blood exploded over Simon’s head, soaking into his hair. At the same time, Kelly choked on more blood. She was utterly unable to breathe, swallowing the hurt from the bite in her hip. The flood of boiling liquid struck the back of her throat, splattered out of her mouth to cover her lips, cheeks and chin.
Simon pitched forward, reaching on pure instinct. His flat palms took the jarring impact of landing on the floor; he cried out, unable to think coherently. Still operating on instinct, he rolled backwards, throbbing head meeting the arm of the sofa Kelly had sat upon seconds before. Something approaching, something turned into an indistinct shape by his tears and blurred vision; something with arms reaching, reaching, reaching to tear him into pieces.
Collapsed on the sofa, thrashing and still choking, Kelly’s body jacknifed like a dying fish. She tipped over and hit the floor, face down. For an unknowable time, she existed in a white supernova of agony, then crashed back to awareness.
I can’t fucking breathe oh Christ I can’t fucking breathe help me Alex can’t breathe I don’t want to die Alex I’m so sorry but I can’t fucking breathe—
She spun on the floor, pushed by an invisible force, spatters of blood turning the white walls red, and the red trickling like tears. Kelly crashed into a pot plant, managed to lift her upper half and coughed up a huge volley of blood.
Airwaves cleared, she sucked in a lungful of oxygen, and that was when she saw the thing on the stairs, lumbering towards Simon.
It was Dao and it was not Dao.
She was looking at a thing formed from a man’s body and a shape devoid of any light, as if a shadow had become three-dimensional and swallowed a man’s form. Its arms, much longer than Dao’s, swung like clubs, and talons grew from their ends.
The talons swooped down towards Simon’s face.
Without thinking, Kelly flicked out a foot, and it collided solidly with the centre of the Dao-thing. The impact did something to him, turned him back into the man she’d known for barely twenty-four hours. No shadow-shape or walking darkness, only a skinny guy, head thrown back in agony from the foot striking him in the crotch.
Howling, Dao staggered backwards. His feet hit the top step and he fell. Bone snapped; he shrieked and another bone broke. He hit the level floor of the landing below, blood streaming from his head. His eyes danced, spun over, closed.
Wanting nothing more than to sleep, Kelly shuffled closer to Simon, let the streams of blood fall from her ruined nose and reached for him.
“Kelly?” he whispered.
She couldn’t speak or nod. Both actions were unthinkable. Pain. All the pain in the world and all hers.
“Jesus, your nose.” Simon lifted a hand as if to touch her. She pulled back a fraction, and even that little movement was enough to make her want to scream.
Scream all you want later. For now, you need to get out.
She found his hand and then her voice. While it wasn’t much more than a husky whisper, it was still hers.
“You okay to move?”
“Dao.”
Talking was like dropping into a bath of fire.
Stop moaning. You’re still alive, aren’t you?
The mad thought brought a tired laugh. The sound was so unexpected, she did it again. Simon stared at her, and Kelly wondered if she was still sane.
Probably not, a mournful voice answered her.
“Dao,” Simon murmured. Even if the man had been right beside them, Simon’s quiet voice wouldn’t have reached him. Staggering, Simon edged close to where landing met stairs and peered down. Dao hadn’t changed position since crashing down there. He lay flat, a wrist obviously broken, his head almost touching the bottom stair. If he opened his eyes, Simon and Kelly would appear upside-down to him. But he wasn’t going to open his eyes. Not again. There was no movement in the man’s chest. Maybe the snap had been his neck. And maybe that was as kind as this shithole could be for Dao. No more terror over what was happening to his boy. No more agony over the death of another son.
Simon moaned. Losing Rod, Alex, and Dao was just too much. Better to sit on the sofa, close his eyes and let this place do whatever the hell it wanted to him and Kelly.
Come on, someone whispered close by. A woman’s voice full of desperation and urgency while something in the air hunted for her. Something furious.
Simon backed away to a swaying Kelly and tried not to focus too much on the blood coating her shattered nose, painting her face a dark red.
“We need to go,” he said.
“Dao,” she croaked.
“Gone. Come on.”
They lurched to the next flight of stairs and stared ahead. To both, the landing of the eighth floor seemed at least a hundred feet away. Air, stairs and wall rippled, all sliding away on an upward slope that took the next floor to some distant spot in the perfect blue sky. The clear sheen high over their heads mocked them. Safety up here, it said. Peace and comfort the higher they climbed. Only their stupid legs and aching bodies wouldn’t carry them another step, let alone a thousand miles into the blue where the thing haunting Greenham Place—eating Greenham Place and wearing the face of all their fears and old guilt—had no chance of getting to them. Oh, no. None of that up above, thank you very much. Above was for being happy; above was for looking down on the secret ugliness that owned Greenham Place and the dark miles below its feet. Above was a sweet blue. Above was out of the way of the streaming river of fire barrelling down the slope of stairs at a thousand miles an hour and sinking its rage into their faces, turning flesh into ash and bone into scorched stone.
“Jesus,” Simon cried, and came close to falling to his knees. Head bowed, he panted and tasted the harsh tang of his sweat. It was all he could do to pretend he hadn’t pissed himself a little.
Kelly made a noise. Simon didn’t catch it fully, and Kelly herself wasn’t sure what she was trying to say. Sight made as much sense as her wavering thoughts. She blinked over and over until some sense returned.
Nothing unusual about the stairs. No sea of blue at the other end of the world and no flying red and orange coming to cook her face. She spat blood and wordlessly pulled on Simon’s hand. They ascended slowly, neither with the energy to talk. On the last step, Kelly looked back, convinced Dao would be right behind them, ready to tip her over the stairwell. No sign of him, and that hurt in an odd way. While she’d picked up on his anger and frustration, that her childish behaviour had cost Alex her life, and known he’d disliked her for it, he’d still been okay in his own way.
She spat again and then looked over the railing.
The open space gave her a view all the way down to the ground floor. At least, it should have done.
Instead of the railings of the floors below and the foyer at the bottom, a shape blocked it all out.
It was a lizard, but one larger than any she had seen before. It stood on its rear legs, hunched and squashed in the relatively tight space of the stairwell, the top of its spine level with the railings of the fourth floor. Its skin, a dirty brown, was spotted with massive patches of diseased flakes, and where the sunlight fell on it, the yellow turned the surface into a sickly white that trembled and squirmed. Not the skin, Kelly realised, the horror finally beginning to close in. The tendrils like giant worms waving in no breeze; the sightless, squirming things with their tips opening to reveal a thousand mouths, and two spreading pieces of flesh jutting from the lizard-thing, their skin thin enough to let beams of sun spear them and rain from their other sides. The appendages like gossamer; the growths flapping once and sending up a great stink of dead wind.
She was looking at a thing that did not belong in any human world. It lived outside all worlds, sleeping and dreaming of somewhere other tha
n its cold nothing. It was an old god buried in the earth; it dozed for aeons and knew nothing of all that time passing because the long centuries and years were simple days to it. Days of sleep and dreams of food in the world of human things.
Whatever grew from its sides flapped again.
It’s got wings. Oh Jesus Christ, it can fly.
It heard her.
Its head tipped back to reveal what might have been a face. Paper-thin skin, brown like old muck, stretched from head to neck, broken by no eyes or nose, then splitting in half as a mouth opened.
No teeth. No tongue. Only a hole in its face that contained all the darkness in the world.
With no idea how she managed it, Kelly jerked away and spun to see Simon reaching for her. The understanding was a flash of white light—she’d been staring over the stairwell for no more than two seconds and still long enough to take in all the chaos under their feet—and her flying hand met his.
“Don’t look down,” she told him. “Run.”
A wail answered her.
It was Dao.
He stood at the bottom of the stairs, blood coating every inch of his head, broken wrist cradled to his stomach.
“Help me,” he moaned.
Not looking back, Simon and Kelly ran, skidding on their own blood and both trying to see clearly through the streams of sweat and dripping red blurring their vision. Kelly crashed into the thick arm of a sofa, barely registered the impact, and lost her hold on Simon’s hand. She raced for the stairs, took two at a time and thought: Getting out, Alex. I’ll make it up to you when I get out.
Movement spun in her peripheral vision. Even as she ran, Kelly turned her head to see. On the wall, a shadow jutted off the surface, reaching for her, splitting open to form a human face and mouth. In the mouth, an agonised voice called her name.
Kelly. Kelly. Help me, please. Oh, God. Make the pain stop. Make it stop. Dear Jesus, kill me. Kill me now. It’s eating me alive. It’s inside me. I can feel it eating me. Make it stop. Jesus fucking Christ, kill me.
Above, below and on all sides, her mother’s mad shrieks blew everything into pieces. Kelly’s shame and guilt and grief became dust, leaving her with nothing but horror, horror at what had been done to her mother.
She faced the older woman, Carla Brown’s form twisted and eaten. Before her death four years previously, she’d stood at barely five foot tall. Now, she’d lost at least eight inches and her already small waist was a line, a pencil slash on paper. She tried to stand straight and something inside ripped. Carla yowled and blood splattered down her chin, dropped onto her hospital gown. Hissing rose from the floor. With dim horror, Kelly realised her mother was urinating, wetting herself in her agony.
Kelly. Kill me. Please kill your mother like you killed your sister.
Kelly howled.
From somewhere far away, Simon was a running animal, crying Kelly’s name while the walls laughed at him and the floor shook like a wild sea and all he could do was watch.
A flailing, spinning darkness struck Kelly. The world went around and around. Sunlight shook with her screams and the windows were blinding squares stretching from miles below the earth to the roof of space. All of the sun’s light was a never-ending explosion in the sky, come to cook her into ash.
Shrieking, she went over the railing into the hungry mouth of the stairwell.
Chapter Fifty
Non-stop wailing battered Dao’s ears as the agony in his crotch, broken wrist, and elbow howled at him. The fire of his ruined arm and bruised testicles and the yells were nothing compared to the horrendous ripped sensation of being invaded by something so alien and so fucking cold. It had torn him in half; it had split him wide open and held on to both pieces, its ugly bulk keeping his mind from simply drifting in two different directions. Now it was gone and all he had was the knowledge it could come back whenever it wanted, because it had somehow found a doorway into him.
Huan let it in, Lin told him sadly, and the only thing worse than the idea of his dead son wishing him such hurt was hearing only truth in his wife’s voice.
Crying, he tried to move over the floor to get away from Lin and the racket of Simon and Kelly’s yells at the other side of the landing. Despite carrying him from the floor smeared with his blood to the stairs and up, his legs and feet wouldn’t work properly. He slid as if moving over oil. A horrible wail crashed down on all sides. He’d seen the hunched figure of an old woman; he’d seen her piss herself and the stink of the urine made him want to choke. Escaping it all was the only option.
Dao made it to the wall opposite the stairwell, scrabbled at the smooth surface and made it to an almost crouch. He looked back. Simon bellowed Kelly’s name, and Dao realised he was shouting nothing that made any sense. He managed to move a few inches by kicking at the floor, then rolled over to lie flat. Cold floor against his face, cold despite the sunlight, cold despite the burning fire in his throat and mouth from all the awful noise.
Dao staggered to his feet. The terrible racket behind faded to a low drone, all of it pulled down that same dark corridor that took Rod. Moisture ran down walls while stagnant puddles coated the floor and things capered in the gloom: things with teeth and claws, their sole purpose to please the ancient ruler who’d made Greenham Place its home.
While the shouting remained as background noise, he could focus and think. He could take hold of the rail separating floor from the massive windows, and stare out to the blue sky, unmarked by a single cloud. Even though the dazzling daylight made him want to squint or cover his eyes, he did neither. Much nicer to see and take in as much of the city as he could. Standing here with the blue spread in front and the entire landing lit and shining, he could let go of the noise behind, the growling barks that weren’t quite human. Let that all go. Let it stay at his back while his eyes took in every inch of the thick blue, relished it in a way he hadn’t since he was a child and summer days were long, long, long. Since he had little to do in this strange, new country full of pale people and kids who thought he was the odd one because of his language, because everything he knew was thousands of miles away and trapped in a country closed to him. His life was sealed now, and all he had was days by himself, days of sunlight and nights of staring at the window, wondering which way China and home was from the streets and noise of England.
Blue sky. Blue stretching from one end of the world to the other, all of it laid out for him and Yang.
His son stood on the other side of the glass, no more than a few feet ahead, his little shoes supported by air and that same air making his fine hair dance. No sign of injury or hurt; only his boy as beautiful as always.
Daddy.
The word had no sound and it didn’t need to. Dao saw it on Yang’s lips, and his heart cried out for it.
A voice spoke inside and it was all him, not Lin.
NO. THIS IS NOT REAL. YANG IS NOT HERE. HE CAN’T BE HERE AND YOU KNOW THAT.
He did know that. Knew it as he knew his own name, as he knew he loved the boy and he loved his wife. Whatever the building was and whatever was happening outside to prevent anyone from hearing their shouts, Yang was not here.
Dao reached for the boy.
Daddy.
Hot liquid burned Dao’s cheeks. He was crying. Maybe he made a sound while he did. It didn’t matter. Sound had left him. Touch and sight remained; the touch of the morning sun on his skin, and the sight of his boy only inches from his fingertips.
NOT HERE. HE’S NOT HERE SO CLOSE YOUR EYES. DON’T LOOK. CLOSE YOUR EYES.
In reply, another voice spoke to him, this one kind and soft, and Dao knew there was no pretence of his mind trying to be Lin and no outside, alien force probing its way into his thoughts. This was something good; the opposite of the sly, ugly force living in the brickwork, glass and foundations of Greenham Place.
Yes, he’s not here, but this is as close as you’re going to get to him. All you’ve got is right here. It’s as close as you’ll get to Yang again. You know it. Li
n would do the same, and you know that, too.
He did. Oh, God, he did.
Swinging a leg over the railing took no effort at all, even though he hadn’t done anything like that in many years. The section of landing on the other side was barely large enough for his feet. The gap of a few inches between it and the window was a tiny mouth opening all the way down to the ground floor.
Daddy.
Yang. Oh, God, Yang. Wait for me.
Blurred movement swam close to Yang: a reflection. Something behind Dao. Something running for him, someone reaching, and beyond the someone, a voice doing all it could to break through to him. His name. Was that it? His name shouted from the other end of the world? If he turned back, it might be able to break through the bubble keeping him safe; it might pierce that bubble and bring all the terror and confusion with it. He did not want that.
Alex had the right idea. Better to go your own way than to wait for this place to decide it for you. She knew it. She accepted it and you can, too.
Yes. He could.
Yang’s not there. You know that. He never was, but this is as close as you’ll get to him now.
He knew that, too.
So, go your own way, Dao.
Inside Dao’s head, some breaking chunk of thought, hammered and beaten for hours, snapped free. There was no pain. He welcomed the break. He welcomed the freedom it brought.
Go, Dao. Go outside.
Was that Lin? Someone else? Himself?
—DAO STOP DAO STOP DON’T DO IT DAO WAIT—
The last thread of Dao’s sanity whispered the name Simon, then died. He didn’t mind. There was no need to look back when all he needed was right in front of him.
Dao took a single step forward. On all sides, his vision rippled, as it had when a claw-like hand forced his face through the window in the office of a Mr Alan Letts the day before. Again, passing through the glass was like moving through a peculiar mix of water and oil. It slithered off his body in a pulling sensation. He wondered if walking through a huge mound of jelly would feel the same. Wind blew hard on all sides; the sunlight streamed down from the blue, forcing Dao to squint. With his decreased sight, he still saw what was in front of him.