Harvest

by Steve Merrifield

  The cadaver of carcasses lurched violently into a sitting position. Its jaw wrenched open crudely as an inhuman scream howled out from its maggot ridden lips. Its screech cut the air like ragged glass, the echoing shrill scream chasing up the stairwells and along corridors, hauntingly teasing those that heard it. A cry of new life from the darkness in the depths of the concrete tower.

  Part Two: The Threat Grows

  Chapter Thirteen

  Craig drifted from the depths of sleep and became lucid mid-dream, aware that he only needed to flick open his eyes to wake, but the slumber was comforting and he recognised the situation playing out around him. The images on the monitors were shaky and unidentifiable, and Rachel and Kelly’s panic was a contagion. Before he knew what he was responding to he was acting on the rush in his blood and his jack hammering heart, all he knew was that Amy was in trouble.

  Craig took comfort that this replay was only his subconscious trying to make sense of the night. He drifted from sleep, dimly aware of the uncomfortable hospital bed and his surroundings. Although the dream would have inevitably become a nightmare as the evening had, the sleep that drained out of him was strangely more wholesome and satisfying than the one he had back at his flat before the disturbance of the monitors had roused him. That sleep had been deep – so deep that he had thought he wouldn’t find his way out. Something hadn’t wanted him to leave. Something had needed him to stay.

  He lay there in his curtained cubicle with nothing to look at, resting his eyes but guarded against sleep, listening to the sounds of the hospital, the sobbing cries and angry shouts at pain, bed wheels squeaking past his cubicle, footsteps and voices. He filtered through the voices trying to tune into a conversation. He could hear a heavy Jamaican accent mumbling and another very polite voice explaining something in response. Probably a nurse. Then there were two female voices, clear but distant from him.

  “It’s Chloe isn’t it?”

  “Close; it’s Zoe. Zoe Sampson – like it says on my badge.”

  “Sorry. Guess that’s why I won’t make detective.” It was Kelly.

  “That’s okay, it’s Kylie isn’t?”

  “Kylie?” Kelly laughed and Craig found himself smiling with her. “It’s K…”

  “Kelly – I know. Only pulling your leg.”

  “Listen, I’m not on duty but a friend of mine is here somewhere. I was hoping I could see him.”

  ‘Friend’? It was what she needed to describe him as, but the idea that she might class him as a friend warmed him.

  “The guy from The Heights? He mentioned a Kelly.”

  “Craig – I don’t remember his surname.”

  That jarred Craig. They barely knew each but here they were.

  “The ones from The Heights tend to stick in my memory at the moment. We have had a few through our doors. I do agency work at one of the flats in that block; I take an old guy out and about for a bit of respite for his wife, she tells me there’s been some weird stuff going on. I wouldn’t want to be living there at the moment…”

  “I know – I live in the same building.”

  “Oh, right. Sorry. Don’t know what he was involved in but your people have been all over him.” She stopped abruptly before speaking again in a quicker pace. “You were with him weren’t you – right O-KAY not sure there’s any other way I can put my foot in it! He’s in here.”

  The curtain parted, he saw Kelly and he recognised the nurse as one of the ones who had treated him. “It always works in the movies…” He greeted Kelly feebly, trying to hide his embarrassment at his injuries.

  “You nob. A heroic nob I guess though.”

  “They shouldn’t make battering a door down look so easy.” Craig eased himself up in the bed on his left arm, careful not to move his other arm in its padded sling.

  “They fixed your shoulder then?”

  Craig winced at the thought. “Yup. They relocated it – and just where I like it.” The nurse checked over his sling, her lips curled at the edges. The little red head had a wicked smile. He imagined that nurse Zoe Sampson was a bit of a handful outside of her job.

  Kelly stepped into the nurse’s place as she moved away to jot some notes on some paperwork on the bedside unit. Kelly fingered his blonde hair away from his forehead and found the thin ragged gash that was knitted together by three adhesive stitches. “I didn’t realise you cut your head.” Craig pretended not to notice her sudden discomfort with the familiarity of the gesture as she tentatively withdrew her touch.

  Craig grimaced sheepishly. “I didn’t… I er, passed out when they popped my shoulder back in and I hit my head on a trolley.”

  “Yeah he’s a regular hero alright.” Zoe added, tipping him a wink.

  Kelly laughed then covered her mouth and apologised to Craig. She jumped as if she remembered something. “Oh… It’s as near to grapes as I could get you at this time of night…” She pulled a bundle of greasy paper out from under her arm.

  He savoured the sharp mouth-watering smell of salt and vinegar. “You are magic.” He beamed and sat the bag of chips on his lap, fingering it open with his good hand and with some help from Kelly.

  “Great. Now I fancy a Kebab and I don’t get off for hours.” The nurse smirked. “I will leave you two to it.” She said goodbye to Kelly.

  “I take it you had the interview from the Police too?” Craig blew on a chip before popping it in his mouth.

  “I wasn’t spared, they interviewed me and Rachel at your flat just after you was taken by the paramedics. God, what must they be thinking down the station? They took all of Rachel’s equipment.”

  “Has there been any news?”

  Kelly sat on the bed. “No.” She confessed shamefully. “No Amy.”

  Craig put a poised chip back into the pile, suddenly losing his appetite despite how good the food smelt. “What happened? I just don’t understand. She was snatched off her feet. She was just…gone!”

  Kelly nodded blankly, hugging herself against the gutting guilt. “I don’t understand it. Rachel’s at a loss.”

  “How about the parents?”

  “I spoke with a colleague – they are scraping Claire off the ceiling. She’s hysterical. Brian has just shut himself down. Don’t think he can cope or understand.”

  “I feel the same.”

  “It took them ten minutes to get them out of the bedroom.”

  Craig paused in mid-expression of a frown as he deliberated over this statement. “How come?”

  “My friend said the door had wedged. Well; more than wedged. It was as if the door and the jamb had become one lump of wood: Fused together! The team had to hack it open with an axe. They were at a loss to explain how it had happened.” Kelly frowned and then rubbed her eyes and groaned aloud. “I’m so tired.”

  “What time is it?

  “Almost five I think,” Kelly guessed without checking her watch.

  “What you still doing here then? Get home…” Not actually wanting her to go anywhere.

  “Thought I would wait for you, give you a lift home.” Kelly’s face flushed.

  Craig thanked her. Touched by the fact she had waited around for him considering they barely knew each other.

  They both picked through the chips and ran through each others experience of what had happened at the flat, looking for inconsistencies between the two that might offer a chance of rational reasoning for Amy’s disappearance. They quickly lost their appetites.

  Although Craig was reluctant to head back to his flat, he admitted he was at least fit enough to leave A&E. Kelly helped him off the bed and found Zoe to let her know they were leaving.

  The early morning air was chilled and smelled fresh. It was raining and the tarmac was glossed black except for the puddles of orange light below the car park lighting. Craig squinted against the drizzle that speckled his face. The glare of passing headlights and ambulance blues glittered in the rain.

  “Oh, I hope you don’t mind, but Rachel was worried about you
and a bit upset about the whole thing and didn’t want to go back to her empty flat. So after her turn to be interviewed by the police she crashed at yours.”

  “That’s okay.” Craig pointed at the gold Yugo that Kelly hurried to. “This is – your car?” He eyed the piece-of-junk-car warily.

  “Yeah, she makes the speed limit,” she justified. “She may not look like much, but she gets me about.”

  He looked over the small car. “I can see that they are right about the Police needing pay rises.”

  “Ha, bloody, ha! Don’t insult ‘Goldie’.” She stood poised half-in the car. “You could always walk.”

  Craig dived awkwardly into the cramp interior and settled himself into the passenger seat. “No, no. I’m always up for new experiences. Of course walking could be quicker”

  Kelly cocked her head and rolled her eyes disdainfully with a wide warning smile as she plugged her seat belt in. “I could have bought a better car, but I save a lot. I don’t want to be stuck at the Heights for the rest of my life.”

  Her goal was like a punch in the gut. Was he going to be stuck there for the rest of his life? It was unlikely he could afford to be there for the rest of the year. “Don’t you need me to get out and crank this thing up?”

  She turned the engine over and the car came to life. “That won’t be necessary, thank you. Back home then?”

  The shadows within the car seemed to thicken and smother him with the prospect of having to return to the tower block. The tower block that was home to something they did not understand.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jason slipped out of his bed and padded from his room, barely awake, his eyes half-open as he stood using the toilet. He headed back to his room on autopilot until something unfamiliar snapped him from his trance and his pace slowed.

  He stopped dead.

  For a moment he challenged what caught his eye through the lounge doorway. A smudge of light picked out the shapes of the furniture in the lounge before it faded into blackness. A chill wrapped around him as he stood and stared into the black doorway.

  The light had been green.

  The same colour he had seen in Amy’s scribbled drawings. The crayon that had been thickly scrawled on the dog-eared pages in spirals and swirls, with a creature sat in the centre like a spider with a crocodile maw grinning and long skinny arms ready to grab.

  He had glimpsed the same colour light glowing from within Amy’s room when she had been briefly trapped behind the door. The fear on her face stayed with him. Emily was gone. He knew to fear the coloured light.

  His mum’s room was off of the lounge. She was all he had now and the thought of losing his mum terrified him more than the light. He needed to see her. If he woke in the night he often needed to check she was still there. Now, seeing the light near her room the urge was even stronger. More selfishly he wanted the safety of his mum.

  Jason hesitated on one foot, poised on the brink of stepping into the darkness. He launched himself forward, charging into the blackness. His legs pounded the floor. The air hushed in his ears, joining the sound of his own racing blood as he ran. His heart and fear powered him the short distance through the lounge. He burst through the bedroom door, slammed it behind him and dived into the bed, his arms snaking across the sheets until he found the reassuring warmth of his mother’s body. Safe.

  Police Officer Stewart Balin shone the thick beam of his torch around the large room that faced him at the bottom of the tower-block stairs. The air was thick with dust and heavy with the smell of age and damp. He flashed the beam at his feet to secure his path into the basement as he conducted his part of the coordinated sweep through the building.

  Stewart started his journey into the large basement room with a casual confidence, not bothering to hunt down the light switch. His search took him deeper into the room and the darkness swept around him. The lance of light from his torch cut and sliced at the black tendrils of shadow that clung to the borders of any relief. The black smothering monster that surrounded him ate at his resolve to move forward, devouring his choice of direction except for the steps that would lead him back out of the basement and up and away into the safety of light and his colleagues.

  The spot of light from his torch slid across the cabinets and shelving before him, jumping the cracks and seams of the doors. He rested it on a black gap behind a cabinet that had been pulled aside. The inky black strip swallowed the light from his torch as if nothing existed beyond.

  Leave… There’s nothing down here… Go back up… No one will know…

  Stewart’s fear marshalled as he heard the strong spontaneous and desperate thoughts in his head. Were those his thoughts? It had sounded like his mental-voice… Yet there was something in the irrational thoughts that was too loud, too clear, too commanding. Not quite him. He tried to shrug the thoughts off, but the doubt teased his fears. He spun on his heels, and clasped his radio at his lapel and squeezed the buttons, launching a rake of static at the silence.

  “Basement clear. Nothing down here…” Stewart jogged the last distance to the stairs feeling the blackness at his back like a rearing beast. His jog broke into a run as he hit the first step. With each footfall away from the basement the fear receded and reason regained its reign, a growing confidence slowing his pace. The voice in his head now his own again.

  Frank Harbuck lay back in the steamy warmth of the bath. The water washed over him, rising up his sagging pigeon chest and into the crevices of his collarbones as his bony hands held the rails on the bath. He lowered himself into the comforting heat. Cupping the water in his clawed hands he bathed his face and ran his fingers through his thinning hair, plastering it to his prominent shiny scalp of liver spots and broken purple capillaries. He heard his wife padding toward the room, and with bleary eyes he saw her silhouette fill the doorway.

  “Don’t turn the light on…” he grumbled blandly. Not wanting the drone of the extractor fan to shred the peace.

  “I know, I know. After forty six years of being married to you, you would think I don’t need telling.” Phyllis chastised absently as she started to brush her remaining teeth in the gloom.

  These days she did need reminding. In the last two years she had started forgetting the little understandings and rituals they had developed over the decades together. Frank lay back and sighed as the heat relaxed his stiffened limbs that felt hollow and brittle. He closed his eyes and thought of the days when his body had been toned, strong and light, not scrawny, sinewy and the dragging weight it had now become.

  He eyed his wife covertly and wondered if the confusion that occasionally flitted across her face was actually her wonder at who this old man was that claimed to be her husband. Although they had both watched each other age through the years, the shrivelled old woman that he lived with now was totally irreconcilable to the young woman he had courted and married. How jarring it must be for her to have her mental slips into the past, only to be confronted by him how he is now, or by her own aged reflection. He scoured through photograph albums with her from time to time, reminding her of the time line of their relationship and their physical appearance. Hoping it would keep her grounded for longer.

  His insistence upon routine despite being retired probably made it easier for her to keep her anchor in the present: up early, breakfast – full English at the weekends, reading the daily paper together, shopping. Then he went for an afternoon drink down the Labour club with the lads, except there were no lads anymore, only Robbie Peters and James Mckerny were left from the crowd that he regularly drank with. Robbie lived with his son and his family now that his pins didn’t work so well and he needed wheeling around. It meant that whenever Robbie was brought down the club he was surrounded by his family. He couldn’t chew the cud over a pint with Robbie’s grandchildren hanging off him or racing him unceremoniously around the bar. James Mckerny didn’t recognise Frank anymore. James didn’t recognise anyone anymore. The others had disappeared, or were in rest homes or dead he g
uessed. The afternoon consisted of a nap with a book then dinner, and television in the evening while rubbing Phyllis’s feet or bony back.

  In the last year he regretted choosing not to have a family. The financial struggle would have been worth it to have people around him, people that knew and loved him. Old Father-Time and the Reaper were whittling his world, his life, away. Eventually the two old boys down the club would be gone, and his wife would slip further into the past. Then it would be just him. There would be no one around that had shared in his past, only those that knew him as the old boy to say a polite hello to. They wouldn’t give any thought to the life he had had. He opened his eyes. Phyllis smiled at him before replacing her toothbrush and left the bathroom.

  Frank closed his eyes again and took a deep breath which strained at his dry lungs as he sunk his face under the water. The heat flooded his ears, deafening him to his wife working at breakfast in the kitchen. The water flowed over his cheeks, floating the hair from around his head like a halo. Filling the recesses of his closed eyes and threatening his nostrils. He slowly released the air in slaloming bubbles and surfaced. Keeping his eyes closed he sucked in a fresh supply of air and sunk back into the quiet womb-like world. After exhausting his lungs he rose again. The surface didn’t break but stretched across his face in a warm and flexible film.

  Frank panicked with the urgency of needing to breathe. His eye’s flicked open and the heat of the water washed over his naked eyes. He could make out the gloomy details of the bathroom from his underwater world but no obstacle other than the surface itself. Frank’s hands leapt for the rails of the bath to draw himself up but they struck the same restraint that kept him under. His fingers scrambled at the smooth malleable skin unable to gain a grip or to break it. The surface of the water had become like polythene. His lungs desperately clung to the last of his air, begging his body for more.