by Adam Nevill
‘Well I guess we better do what the young man says,’ Mrs Shafer said to her husband, leaning down and shouting into his face.
‘Well, yeah, but where’s the fire marshal?’ he asked her. ‘This man isn’t qualified. I’d like a word with the fire marshal. I mean, do you smell smoke? I thought I did back there,’ he said to his wife, but allowed himself to be led.
Only when he came to cross the threshold of the flat and enter the red hall did Mr Shafer stop. ‘Let go, dear. Let go. I said let go a me. This ain’t right. Where are we? This says sixteen, right there on the door. It’s that apartment, dear. He’s taking us into that apartment.’
No mistaking the emphasis. Seth’s neck stiffened.
Bewildered, Mrs Shafer stopped tugging on her husband’s thin but wilful arm and looked about herself until she also saw the number on the door. ‘What? I don’t understand? In here. We can’t go in here.’ Her voice was rising again.
‘What is the meaning of this?’ Mr Shafer demanded, his voice growing in strength and volume. A voice of business, one that must have come in useful when he was amassing all of those millions.
‘Look. There is . . . I’m trying to help,’ Seth said uselessly as they talked over him.
Mr Shafer was pushing his way back out now, around the bulk of his wife. His head was lowered with a determination to escape. ‘Call Stephen now. I want to speak to whoever is in charge. This is ridiculous.’
Seth tried to regain control of his voice. ‘You have to. You must. In there.’
‘I’m not going anywhere until I’ve seen the fire marshal. Stand aside.’ The old man prodded Seth in the stomach with his cane.
He shouldn’t have done that. Belittled him with the stick. Shouldn’t have touched him. Seth couldn’t breathe. Inside he felt himself go black. And too hot for reason to act as a coolant.
Mrs Shafer was still looking at the brass number on the door, then down inside the unlit hallway, then back towards her husband with her mouth open and her eyes all wild, when Seth kicked the stick out of her husband’s hand.
It hit the wall.
Mrs Schafer screamed.
Seizing the old banker by the collar of his nightgown, and then fisting another handful of thermal cloth near the small of his back, Seth lifted the figure from the ground and walked quickly through the front door. Mr Shafer’s feet never touched the ground.
‘Outta my way,’ Seth said to Mrs Shafer, his teeth clenched. And she stood aside, which surprised him. Just stood aside and let him pass, like he was carrying an unruly child to a family car on a trip the child had spoiled with a tantrum.
Mr Shafer never made a sound. Not a word. Nothing. Just hung from Seth’s hands and let himself be carried down the hallway. It was only when they stood outside the partially open door of the mirrored room, where the sound of the wind inside embraced them and the unnaturally cold air gusted out to burn their faces, that Mr Shafer spoke. He said, ‘Oh dear God. No. Not in there.’
Seth kicked the door open.
The lights might have been off, but it was clear the air of that room was occupied. Alive and electric with wind and animate with something else on the floor he couldn’t see, but could hear as a swish of eager movement around the edges. Just audible under the spinning.
As if he were simply throwing a log into a furnace, he hurled Mr Shafer into the room. Head first, into the darkness. And the old man didn’t make a sound as he hit the floor, as if something was there to catch him when he came down in the dark. But Seth didn’t have time to stop and think about what he was doing and what had become of his victim – best not to think of that – he just returned his attention to Mrs Shafer, who stood mute in the entrance to the hallway and stared at him.
He grabbed hold of her and marched her through the flat. ‘That’s it. That’s it. Come on. Here we go,’ he said to himself, to drown out the part of his mind that was screaming at him to stop.
She didn’t make a fuss either. Just whimpered. Dazed with shock, she even walked right into the room after her husband, requiring not so much as a shove. And it was noisy in there now. In the dark it sounded as if the ceiling had opened to let in a thousand voices all crying out at the same time, but not to each other. It was as if they couldn’t see each other, but were crowded together in some terrible dark confusion.
Seth closed the door on it all. Then fell to his knees and held the handle with hands white as bone, forcing it up so nothing could get out. And he tried to shut his ears to the new sounds defining themselves from out of the wind, and the cries so thick inside that room.
When he heard the bumping up against the door, as if someone had lost their balance and fallen heavily against the other side, he desperately wanted to take his hands from the brass door handle and block his ears, but knew he couldn’t afford to leave the door unsecured. This instinct for self-preservation was reinforced when out of the circling swept-away voices came a snarling in the foreground, like a dog worrying something between its teeth, up near the door where he had heard the bumping. And when someone tried to twist the handle down on the other side to get out, Seth was sure he heard the scrabbling of clawed feet on a wooden floor.
The wind and the voices were gone, the red lights were switched on, the paintings were all covered with dust sheets, and Mr Shafer was dead. Seth could see that straight away; the eyes turned around and gone all white, the mouth wide open, the hands frozen into claws and the legs wide apart. You didn’t strike a pose like that when you were still breathing.
But his wife was moving. She was hunched over before the mirror on the wall opposite the door. On her knees. Tottering ever so slightly, from side to side, and looking into the mirror for something she had lost in there. Her lips were moving too, but no sound was coming out of her mouth.
Seth locked her inside apartment sixteen in case they came back for her, and then carried the frozen bundle of sticks that was her husband’s body up the stairs to their flat. He then placed the thing that had once been Mr Shafer back inside the bed and covered it with the sheets, up to the chin, all the time taking care not to look at the face. And then went back down to collect Mrs Shafer, or whatever was left of her.
She was still kneeling, but now silently rocking back and forth. Her mind must have gone out like a blown fuse. And she offered no resistance as he coaxed her to her feet and slowly walked her out of the flat and into the lift.
‘She’s finished, Seth,’ the hooded boy said, reappearing when Seth guided Mrs Shafer out of the flat. ‘She won’t say nuffin’. Her head’s all bust inside. It was the ’usband he wanted most. Don’t forget his stick. Take it up wiv his missus. He won’t need it where he’s gone. You’s done well, mate. Our friend’s gonna be pleased.’
‘I don’t want to do any more. It’s finished. You tell him that.’
‘Nah ah. Yous don’t tell us nuffin’. We tells you what to do, like. And I fink you might be ready for a little treat for being so helpful and all. Summat nice might be comin’ along soon. ’Stead of all these old uns.’
Seth scowled at the reeking thing in the tatty hood, who trailed him as he led Mrs Shafer inside her apartment. He decided to put her back on her knees beside the bed. The Shafers only had an occasional visiting nurse, but they always came down in the early evening to walk to the local shop on Motcomb Street. Piotr would soon notice they’d not been around for a while. He’d check on them soon enough.
TWENTY-NINE
‘Apryl, please. Just take it easy. For your own sake. You’re starting to worry me. I mean, really worry me.’ Miles leant over his desk, his fingers wound tightly together, trying to look into Apryl’s wild and excitable eyes and to still them because they were flicking about and blinking as fast as the thoughts and ideas were streaming into her head.
‘I’m starting to worry myself. Jesus.’ She stood up again from the chair on the other side of Miles’s desk. Could not keep still, and walked across his office to the door. Then stopped, and clasped both hands on either
side of her cheeks. ‘I have to, Miles. I have to do something. I can’t walk away from this. People are dying. Lillian tried to help them, but they wouldn’t listen.’
‘Have you any idea, any idea at all how preposterous this all is? I mean, you are suggesting that Hessen is still in that building in some . . . some . . . I don’t know, altered state and murdering those who wronged him back in the forties, one by one. Listen to yourself, woman. It’s nuts.’
Apryl was deep in thought and did nothing but shrug Miles off. She removed her hands from her cheeks and slapped them against her tight-skirted hips. ‘I need to go in there at night. That’s when it all happens. When people are in danger. And someone is helping him. That’s what Mr Shafer said. Before he was killed. Murdered. I’m sure of it now. Mrs Roth, then him. And I’m responsible.’ She turned to Miles, her eyes moistening with tears. ‘Don’t you see? I made them talk to me and now they’re dead.’
Miles sunk his head into his hands and slowly drew his long fingers down his face. ‘I cannot believe I am hearing any of this come out of your lovely mouth. You know, a gay friend of mine claims that all women are latently mad, and by degrees the lunacy gradually surfaces. Right now, you are a testament to his insight.’
Apryl sat down and sniffed, then dabbed her eyes with a tissue. ‘I’m not going to cry . . .’ By the time she was attempting to pronounce the last word a big bubble popped in her throat and she was crying. ‘Fucking eyeliner’s going to go everywhere,’ she said, sniffing again.
Miles came around the desk to her. ‘Hey. Hey. Go easy on yourself. You are putting yourself under a lot of strain. Just sell that bloody flat and put all of this behind you. Come on.’
She moved away from his embrace and shook her head. ‘I can’t. I just keep thinking of Lillian. All those years, Miles. On her own. That terrible . . . thing, frightening her. Night after night. That poor old lady. Who lost the love of her life. And then suffered for so long without him. And . . . I know what it’s like. Hessen, I mean . . . I saw him too.’
‘What?’
‘You’re not someone I can tell things like that to.’
‘Hey. Now that’s not fair.’
‘You’re not. But I did. It . . . he was in the mirror I brought up from the basement. And in the painting of Lillian and Reggie. And in other places. Whenever I’m in that building, Hessen is watching me. Trying to scare me away, I think. Because I’m getting closer to him. He follows me about, like he did the others, who just hid and waited for the end. Lillian never did. That brave, brave woman tried to escape every day for fifty years. Every day, Miles. After he killed her husband. Drove him out that fucking window.’ Out of the corner of her eye, she caught the look of disbelief and pity on Miles’s face. ‘You’ve never seen him, Miles. And be glad you never have.’ She said this with such force she surprised herself, and Miles leant back, away from her.
‘Before I even met Betty Roth and Tom Shafer, I’d already seen the same thing. In mirrors, paintings. Hessen. The residents didn’t suggest it to me. I saw it independently. Because when I arrived he’d become more active again. Because someone is helping him. That’s what Tom Shafer said. Shafer was as sane as you and me. He said someone in that building is helping Hessen now. To kill, Miles. To kill those terrified old people. Hessen’s been able to keep Lillian and the others all stuck there, and has tormented them with his population of the Vortex, or whatever the fuck he brought into that building, but he hasn’t been able to kill them. Not until now. Because now someone in that building, maybe someone who works there, is doing his bidding. Maybe all of them. Piotr, Jorge, Stephen. This morning, when Stephen told me about the Shafers, I pressed him about the coincidence of three elderly residents dying like this. Three people who knew Hessen. Tried to talk to him about what Betty Roth and Tom Shafer had insinuated about Hessen still being in the building. And he looked really uncomfortable. Cagey, you know? He’s avoided me ever since. And there’s another guy too I haven’t met. Who only works the night shifts. Or who knows? Maybe it’s a resident behind all this. They could all be in on it.’
‘Then go to the police.’
‘Don’t be fucking ridiculous.’
‘Because that is how your story will sound. Because it is fucking ridiculous. It’s wild and unsubstantiated. You can’t just go around accusing people of murder.’
Apryl turned to him, her face tight and fierce. Miles raised one hand, palm outward, in an appeal for silence. ‘Now hang on. Let me finish. Mrs Roth and this Shafer chap were in their nineties. Their nineties, Apryl. That is a fact. People in their nineties can keel over at any moment. That is also a fact. Your great-aunt had been ill for a long time, and she was in her eighties. There was no evidence of foul play in any one of these deaths. That is a fact. Heart failure, strokes, all natural causes. I’ve no doubt at all that they knew Hessen. Or that his antisocial behaviour and his paintings, which they destroyed I might add, affected them profoundly. They never forgot him or his work. And I’m also beginning to believe they may have killed him and burned the evidence. But as they got older, their minds . . . well, their memories became less effective. And now the trauma of the original crime and its lingering influence have warped into this . . . this ghost story.’
Apryl sat quietly and stared at the floor. ‘But why didn’t they ever leave Barrington House? Explain that.’
Miles shrugged. ‘I really don’t know. The rich often huddle together in a castle-keep mentality. Look at all of these gated communities springing up. Safety in numbers.’
‘That’s bullshit. None of them have gone more than a block from the building in fifty years. Fifty years, Miles.’
For a moment Miles looked at his lap in silence, his eyes half shut, his lips pursed. Then he said, ‘OK, OK. Let’s look at this from another perspective then. From within your current point of view. And I am only speaking hypothetically here. By no way is this an endorsement of your theory—’
Apryl waved a hand in the air with frustration. ‘Yes. Yes. Just tell me.’
‘Well let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that Hessen did summon something into Barrington House. Something demoniac. From one of those rituals he learned from Crowley. And that the Vortex exists somewhere in that building. If this is truly the case, then what in hell are you going to be able to do about it?’
She had no idea. None at all. But she was going back to Barrington House. To stake it out. To harass Stephen, the rest of the staff, whoever she could suspect of an involvement. And she was going to get proof . . . somehow. She’d even break into apartment sixteen if she had to, to find out what the hell was still inside that place. There had to be something, inside there, allowing Hessen’s presence to remain. Something that her great-uncle and his friends overlooked so long ago. Betty had been hearing Hessen at night in there, right up until she died. She said it had become worse all over again. The noises, the voices. It was all coming out of there, that apartment. Where it began, so long ago.
Something was going down inside that place. Something very wrong that she had found impossible to accept, no matter how hard she thought about it. Until now. Until Betty and Tom died. That was no coincidence. So soon after Lillian. People were dying who had known things about Felix Hessen. Who had made him and his art disappear. And maybe there were others, still inside that dreadful building. Trapped. People in grave danger. Imprisoned and stalked and tormented like Lillian and her circle from way back, until the time was right to take revenge, if that’s what it was; something coming back from the dead to settle a score. And she couldn’t just leave them in such a situation. That crazy bastard had killed her great-aunt and uncle, her own flesh and blood. And maybe even now, after death, they were still trapped inside the building, like Hessen. Didn’t Lillian suggest as much? She couldn’t leave her there, in limbo, for ever. Inside those terrible places with those hideous things he painted.
But as she walked away from Miles’s office at the Tate, with the wind gusting and darkness coming do
wn over every building and turning the stone a darker grey, she felt herself suddenly seize up inside, in a paralysis of fear, at the very thought of setting foot inside Barrington House again, at night. Could I, she asked herself, as she steadied her body against a bus stop with one hand, could I get trapped inside there too?
THIRTY
And the next night Seth waited for the call, all the time unable to stop shivering in the warm reception area. Anticipating the moment the solemn hooded figure would appear before his desk, to instruct him on who was next. Who he was to escort not merely to their death, but to something infinitely worse that came after.
But would the boy come for him first? Or would it be the police, wishing to speak to the porter on duty when two of the most senior residents had died within a week of each other?
It had been just over two hours since Stephen left him alone. The head porter had been waiting for Seth to come in, and had told him there was ‘some more terrible, terrible news’. Mr Shafer had died in the night and his wife had suffered some kind of breakdown. ‘Looked like a stroke to me. Poor thing must have lost the plot when she realized her husband was dead. They were very close, you know. They had their moments. We all know that. But they were inseparable.’
And Stephen had nearly called him at the Green Man this time, to ask how he’d missed finding Mrs Shafer while he was on patrol in the night. Mrs Benedetti from flat five had discovered Mrs Shafer on the first-floor landing the following morning just before six, looking as if she had been slowly making her way down to the ground floor all through the night. She was found, still dressed in her nightgown, on her hands and knees, catatonic with shock and cowering in front of the mirror on that landing, as if she was looking at something above her. But then Stephen had assumed by the state of Mrs Shafer that her husband must have died after Seth’s last patrol at two and that she’d lost the presence of mind to raise the alarm.