by Adam Nevill
I stare at the bird-face with the plume of grey hair. Never have I hated anything so much. A little gargle comes out of my throat and I am at her bedside before she can say another word.
She looks at me with surprise in her eyes. Neither of us can believe that we are facing each other like this in her bedroom. This is not how I imagined it would be: the light on, me in my nightgown, and Mrs Van den Broeck’s dry-stick body sitting upright and supported by pillows.
She opens her mouth to speak, but no spiky words come out to hurt my ears. It is my time to speak. ‘You,’ I say. ‘The boys. The boys in the truck. You brought them here.’
‘What are you talking about? Have you lost your mind?’
I take one of the pillows from behind her back. Mrs Van den Broeck never liked to see my china-doll hands poking from the sleeves of my uniform, so it is only right that they are the last things that she sees before I put the pillow over her face.
‘Oh,’ she says in a little-girl voice. Her frown is still asking me a question when I put her into the dark and take away the thin streams of air that must whistle through her beak holes. I grin the wild grin that I cannot control when I am killing, that makes my whole face shake. This bully-bird can’t peck me now!
Her pigeon skull fidgets under the pressing pillow. Twiggish legs, with brown spots on the skin, kick out inside the sheets, but only make whispers like mice behind the skirting boards. Claws open, claws close, claws open, claws stop moving.
I put my big onion skull against the pillow to add weight to my late-night pressings. Now our faces are closer together than they have ever been before, but we can’t see each other. A few feathers and some silk are all that is between us. The pillow smells of perfume and old lady. Squalls and squirts of excitement start in my belly. Triumph makes me want to take a shit.
I whisper words through the veil between us. I send her on her way with mutterings. ‘The little boys from the truck were crying when they were taken into the tiled room’ – flicker of talon on the mattress – ‘They were scared, but didn’t know why they were going to be hurt. They didn’t understand’ – stretching of a single bony leg under the sheets – ‘What did the big boy look like on your plate?’ – final kick of twisted foot, and a yellow nail snags on silk – ‘There was laughter in the boardroom during dinner. I heard you. I was outside and I heard you all’ – all the thin bones relax and go soft underneath me – ‘Then you made me bring the leftovers up here in white bags. They banged against my legs on the stairs. They felt heavy. The bags were wet inside.’
Now she’s still. Nothing under me but bird bones, fossils wrapped in silk and some hair, but not much else.
I stay on top of her for a while.
When it’s done I feel warm inside. Milky sweat cools on the skin under my nightgown. I take the pillow off Mrs Van den Broeck’s face and step back from the bed. I pad out the part that was over her beak. Leaning across her, I put the pillow back behind her warm body.
Underneath my body, one of her chicken-bone arms moves, quicker than I thought something so old and skinny could move. Yellow claws curl around my elbow.
I look down. An eggshell brow wrinkles. Pink eyes open and make me gasp. I try to pull away.
Bird snarl. A pinched mouth opens wide. Two rows of tiny yellow teeth sink into my wrist.
Now I’m drowning. Pain and panic fills my balloon skull like hot water. I pull, and tug, and then yanky-shake at her biting beak that wants to saw off my dolly hand. Grunting, she holds on. How can an old thing like Mrs Van den Broeck, made from such tiny bones and paper skin, make so deep a noise?
Digging my heels into the rug, I push backwards with all my strength, but her body comes forward in a tangle of sheets, pulled across the mattress by her mouth. Snarly and spitting, she shakes her head from side to side and I think that my wrist must be broken. I should have guessed that 170 years of her evil life could not be stoppered by a soft pillow in the night.
Mad from the pain, I swat my free hand around in the air and it hits something solid. Now there are stabbing pains in the knuckles of that hand too, from where it struck the heavy lamp. Strength leaks out of my feet and into the rug. Black dots float in front of my eyes. I might faint. It feels like her serrated beak has gone through a nerve.
I fall backwards and pull her whole body off the bed. Her stick-body hits the floor but makes no sound. I stand up and try to shake her off like I’m trying to pull off a tight shirt that has gone inside-out over my face. Tears blur my eyes.
I reach for the lamp on the bedside table. My little hand circles the hot smooth neck below the bulb. I pull it off the table and watch the thick marble base drop to the biting head on the rug. There is a thock sound as the sharp corner strikes the side of her head by the small ear. She stops biting.
I twist my wrist free of the loose beak and step away. I look down and can’t believe that so much liquid could spill from the broken head of a very old bird. The liquid is black. It’s been going through her thin pipes and tubes for 170 years, and now it is soaking into a rug.
Working fast, I wrap the white cord of the lamp around her claw and make it go tight. Maybe they will think that she fell from her pillows and pulled the lamp down on top of her bird head. With the tail of my nightshirt I then wipe all the things that my dollish fingers have touched around the bed.
I flit from her room like a ghost. Go down the long hall and close the front door behind me. In the light of the landing, I inspect the circle of bruises and cuts that her beak has made on my stiff wrist. Not as bad as it felt.
I find it hard to believe that Gemima is not screaming and that doors are not opening and that phones are not ringing and that residents are not shuffling down the stairs, wrapped in their dressing gowns. But there is only silence in the west wing.
Then the shaking starts.
Down the stairs I go on my hands and knees like a spider with four legs torn off. Back to my bunk.
Curled up in the warm place that I have made in the middle of my bed, with the thin sheet and itchy grey blanket pulled over my head, I try to stop the shakes and wipe away all of the pictures that swirl around my pumpkin skull. There is so much room inside my big head-space, so I guess it can hold more memories than a smaller head. Over and over I see the chewing bird that was Mrs Van den Broeck, with her beak fastened onto my wrist. And then I see the heavy lamp land with a thock . . . thock . . . thock . . . It’s all I can hear: the sharp marble corner breaking the wafer of her veiny temple.
What have I done in this giant house? What will become of me? They will know that my dolly hands got busy with a pillow and bedside-lamp to crush that flightless vulture in its own nest. I wonder if turning back the hands on my little brass clock will take me back to the time before I went sneaking and creeping into her room.
An impulse makes my face scrunch up to cry and my body shivers under the blankets. Then I stand up beside the bunk and peer into the top bed where Vinegar Irish snores. I wish I was him. With no killing pictures inside his head, only thoughts of clear liquid to sup from plastic containers, flowing through his twitchy sleep.
The cold in the porters’ dormitory makes my shaking worse. My wrist throbs. I want to get back into my bed and curl into a ball. Like the baby in a tummy before I was cut out and made my momma die.
I leave the dormitory and look down to the washroom door.
No one is shouting, there are no alarms or lights being turned on. All is quiet in the building. No one knows that Mrs Van den Broeck is dead. No one knows that it was me who did it, not yet.
Inside I feel better. No one saw me. No one heard me. Gemima was asleep the whole time, dreaming of the hot green place across the oceans where she was born. I just have to stay calm. Maybe no one will suspect me, the big-headed boy with the doll hands. What can he do with those puppet legs and pencil arms? That big bulb-head, with the baby face stuck on the front, is not capable of thinking of such things: maybe that is what they will think. That’s what they
thought at the orphanage too. That’s how I got away with it before. They never even thought of me at the same time as they thought about the nasty, smacking carers who were all found dead in their beds. I did three of them carers with these small china hands.
I grin with joy. My little grey heart slows down its pumping. Pebbles of sweat dry across my skin. Warmth spreads through every teeny toe and twig finger, and goes up my see-through body to my roundish head, until I am glowing with the happiness of escaping and of tricking them. All of them who don’t know about the power in my tiny hands.
And in my head now I see the boy who came in the white truck. The one they ate yesterday. He is dancing in heaven. Up there, the sky is totally blue. He likes the long grass that is soft between his toes, and he enjoys how the yellow sun warms his jumping, running body. It was for him and his brother that I dropped the heavy lamp. Thock. What happened to him must always be remembered. I see it again now. I see it all behind my squeezed-shut, black-button eyes.
But what of the other one?
And then I go down to the washroom and I unlock the door. Behind the wood of the door, before it is even open, I hear the skitter of dry feet retreating into a corner. And a whimper.
No, they shall not have you too.
I open the door and walk past the dark, wet bench beside the white wall. And I go to the huddled yellowish boy in the corner. I smile. He takes my small outstretched hand and blinks wet eyes.
I think of the Church of Our Lady and of the mist. We’ll need a blanket.
‘Your brother’s waiting for us,’ I say, and he stands up.
To Forget and Be Forgotten
E ven in the most populous cities on earth a multitude of people exist in solitude. And yet, after a sufficient period of time has been endured while feeling awkward, or being neglected socially and professionally, it is my experience that individuals can yet make themselves moderately comfortable in the role of the excluded, or the barely tolerated.
I was never really cast out, but manoeuvred toward the edges of human affairs by the herd. And it was only after considerable experience within this role of the outcast that I finally accepted my own fate. It was liberating.
I considered myself a true outsider, because my loneliness itself became a purpose. My new vocation was to avoid all of those things that drew people together and could be termed a shared experience, for I developed a desire to create a silence and stillness around myself, and a space within my head, in which to think and to read. For the rarest aspiration for any individual to pursue, in this solipsistic age of me, is to be ordinary. Just ordinary. Unexceptional and invisible. And this was a goal that I would take to the mountain.
I would take the last seat at the back of a tram and remain so still as not to attract scrutiny; I would stand in shadow at the edge of a crowd if a crowd could not be avoided; I would not court fad or fashion; I suppressed any feature or attribute that could be termed distinguishing; I lived in unremarkable lodgings without cohabitants in unfashionable districts; I took no part in any community or subculture; I never stuck my hand up, or spoke out loud. I shuffled away from the party and breathed a sigh of relief. I would be courteous and civil if contact was unavoidable, but if it could be avoided then it would be. Every time.
And I began to come to life in a way that few could imagine, because much can be seen and understood when the mind is not clamouring for attention and approval or acceptance from those around it.
Fade to grey. It became my motto, my release, my peace. And my mission led me to Dulle Griet Huis in Zurenborg, Antwerp.
The very idea of work is an incongruous proposition for the self-excluded who want no truck with team-players or professional advancement. But funds for the basic needs of lodging and food were still required. A modicum of security was necessary because I did not want my new mental space troubled by gnawing financial anxiety. And what was required, I realised quickly, was an occupation as opposed to a career, and an occupation that could be performed alone. Such positions without colleagues and supervision do exist. In fact, there are plenty of openings available because few want to fill them.
Where I was going to commit myself, even the poorest imagination could envisage a profound isolation, a lack of opportunity for progress, inhuman working hours and a slide down a slippery slope that could remove me so far from society that I might never find my way back. ‘When do I start?’ I said to the agency manager who had interviewed me for the job of nightwatchman. ‘Sounds perfect.’ My new job title was the fastest track in Antwerp to nowhere, and I stepped onto it with glee.
The only qualifications required were a clean criminal record, the ability to be punctual and the willingness to stay awake for twelve hours. My duties were described as ‘light’ by the agency that employed such odd individuals as myself, by placing us in the old but well-maintained apartment buildings in Antwerp’s chi-chi zones.
I would relieve a concierge at 6 p.m., and he would then relieve me at 6 a.m. the following day. I would work four nights in a row, and then take four nights off. While on duty, I was required to monitor the monitors that monitored the nine-storey exterior of Dulle Griet Huis, patrol the internal communal areas every four hours, and assist the residents when required. The rest of the twelve-hour shift was my own.
The last duty on my job description did set off bells and buzzers, as I imagined perpetual interaction with the affluent residents and their guests, going on through the night as they entertained and swaggered and brayed as the privileged seem keen to do. But not so, according to Pieter, who ran the employment agency. There were only forty flats in Dulle Griet Huis and most of them were empty; all owned by overseas companies, or belonging to private residents who lived abroad and hardly ever used their properties. The building had a strictly enforced rule that forbade children under the age of fourteen, so there were no families, and the only permanent residents were very elderly and rarely left their apartments. At night, in Pieter’s own words, ‘It’s dead. You’ll never see them. So I’m afraid you’ll have to amuse yourself.’
‘Not a problem,’ I assured him, and could barely contain my elation at what sounded like a bespoke position for a gentleman of absence like myself. ‘Is it OK to read?’ I asked. ‘I like to read.’
Pieter nodded quickly, as if he was as pleased at filling the post as I was at taking it. ‘Of course. I have a lot of students working nights, so they can get some work done without distractions.’
‘And who can blame them? This sounds ideal, Pieter.’
‘It might well be. Terry, your predecessor, worked that building for thirty-five years.’
‘Thirty-five years?’
Pieter nodded.
I will confess, that detail alarmed me, as if by taking the job I was signing a guarantee that I would stay for an indefinite period of service, and it felt akin to making a final decision about something that would change my life, and there would be no going back.
Pieter closed our interview quickly by handing me a background-check form and reminded me, ‘Take a look at the monitors now and again.’
I quelled my last vague doubts and left the agency whistling. And I could not remember being more excited about starting a job. In fact, I could not remember being excited about beginning any job before, because I never had been. I dreaded them all. But now, at last, I would finally be free of the manipulative, and so far beyond the hunting grounds of the pathological who delight in a colleague’s downfall in conventional employment, that they would never pick up my scent again. I would have no colleagues at Dulle Griet Huis who could deride, contradict, undermine or discredit me. And no one would ever take ownership of another one of my ideas, because this was no place for ideas, or competition, or ambition. It was no place for anyone but me. I didn’t even have a supervisor. My employers were the residents, who left the business of paying me to an offsite management company. Finally, I could forget and be forgotten.
Dulle Griet Huis cast a long shadow through the ba
ck streets of Zurenborg and instilled a strange hush on the square below. Looking up at the ten floors of imperious red brick and white stone balcony from the street, the first time I saw the building I was tempted to lower my eyes, and even to bow my head in deference to the aura of exclusivity that the building projected. Run along, my good man. Nothing for you here.
The interior had been renovated in the 1920s and not since. It had the eerie grandeur of a luxury passenger liner. There were antique elevators panelled in brass and mahogany, stairwells and corridors papered with silk, and ornamental light fittings of patterned glass that created a brownish haze in the communal areas. I even imagined myself wearing a top hat and tails and roaming between decks on some giant floating ballroom. And the entire interior had that peculiar smell of traditional importance. Not quite ecclesiastic, but not far from it: a scent of old things preserved and of poor ventilation, of wood and metal polish.
On each floor a square landing contained the elevator entrance and two veneered front doors, with brass knockers, which led into penthouse apartments. Ornate marble radiator covers, reminiscent of late-nineteenth-century tombs for children, stood beneath the gigantic gilt-framed mirrors, fitted at eye-level opposite the elevator doors. Between each floor, a staircase turned once.
Manuel, the day porter, was so tired each morning when he arrived to relieve me, and so eager to get out of the building at the end of each day shift, that contact between us was minimal. And we both liked it that way. No gossip, no intrigue, no Machiavellian tactics, just a nod and we were out of each other’s space. We changed our little guard without fuss or spectacle.
The front desk was quaint and efficiently positioned opposite the elevator doors in the ground-floor reception. Below the top of the desk were six tiny monitors showing greenish exterior views of Dulle Griet Huis, as if the square outside the building were at the bottom of some silty ocean.