“That noise.” Jason broke his silence, his face ashen and his eyes glazed and lost. “The singing-screaming sound. It was the same noise I heard when that thing in the lift tried to snatch me.”
Rachel was right; there was a connection with what was happening at The Heights, but what that was remained a mystery.
Craig frowned. “If Malik was somehow involved with what’s happening back at The Heights, then I would have thought any paranormal or supernatural events, or whatever you want to call them, would have worked for him against us, not the other way around.”
Kelly had been quick to dismiss Rachel’s recounting of the strange things that had occurred around Cat, but now Kelly experienced an unease that wormed under her skin.
The journey back to the flats had been an awkward one. Before Rachel and Jason had been dropped off at her flat, they had shared the cramped back seat with a spiky Cat. Cat had looked considerably more relaxed after Rachel’s departure but was quiet and clearly happier to not be spoken to. Despite Cat being weak from the inactivity of her coma, back at the hospital she had been determined to make her own arrangements to get home. She had soon found she had no money with her for a taxi, and had adamantly declined Rachel’s charity. Much to Kelly’s chagrin Rachel had leapt on the offer of her car with only a cursory check to ask if that was okay. Faced with hours of waiting for hospital transport Cat had accepted without realising that Rachel would be travelling with them. When she did she looked too tired to rant and just quietly resigned herself to the idea. Despite everything that had happened at the hospital Craig’s mood had been strangely jubilant, and he had been enjoying the journey as if it were a daytrip, when the physical tension between Cat and Rachel had been just inches behind them his buoyancy seemed as inappropriate as making jokes at a funeral.
The car had barely been parked when Cat had said her thanks and goodbyes in one curt sentence as she climbed out of the passenger seat. As Craig and Kelly made their long climb of the stairs to their respective flats they could hear Cat treading away the stairs ahead of them to the top floor, an act that must have been a real trial after her coma. Cat had listened to Rachel’s recital of what had been happening, aided by the occasional contribution of the others at Rachel’s prompting, but had been non-committal or dismissive, yet she had clearly listened to Jason’s warning not to use the lifts.
Craig’s mood had seemed to sour as soon as The Heights came into view, and she could guess at what he was feeling through her own reluctance to return there. Halfway to his floor, it was not only his spirit that had waned, but apparently his energy too. His pace had slowed and he looked pale and tired.
She had attempted to engage him in conversation since they left Cat but Craig’s answers were short and limiting. “If you have changed your mind about inviting me in for a cuppa I understand.”
“Hmm? Oh, I’m tired, that’s all. Sorry.” He flashed her a smile and he seemed to force some energy into his eyes. “I will try and be more entertaining for you. I guess I’m not quite sure what happens now. Despite everything that just happened, Cat is a dead end.”
“I know. Even if she does have some kind of understanding her hatred for Rachel is so strong I doubt she would tell her anything any way. Rachel said she would call her later, but I doubt Cat will even take her call.”
“Do you think she might talk to one of us.”
If he thought Kelly was going to volunteer he could think again. “After you.”
“Yeah, maybe not.”
“I think she is likely to treat us the way she treated Rachel. I imagine we are guilty by association.”
They arrived at the landing for Craig’s floor and they both nodded a greeting to Alec the caretaker who was busy painting out an area of the wall that was mottled grey. He gave a distracted nod in return as he fingered a small hole in the masonry before attempting to paint it over.
Craig hesitated in the doorway to his corridor and glanced back at Alec working at the wall.
“What?”
He shook his head. “Déjà vu that’s all.” He rubbed his face vigorously and carried on down the corridor.
“You’re not okay are you? What is it?”
“It’s just I kind of know how Jason feels, I don’t wanna be here anymore either. Is that stupid?”
“You know it isn’t.” She took a deep breath. “How about we have a cuppa at yours as planned, then you get some things together and come to mine, you can mooch around for the afternoon and do your own thing, then we could have some dinner, watch a bit of TV and you can crash on the sofa. No point us being alone with all this.” Being alone far-outweighed the discomfort of making such a suggestion.
Craig nodded enthusiastically. “That would be great. Yeah, I’m up for that.” Kelly and Craig were approaching the lift when the doors opened and Harry stepped out. Panic chased across his face at seeing Kelly and Craig and a black refuse sack slipped from his grip, slid down his body, fell heavily to the floor and slumped to one side. Kelly’s hands instinctively reached down to help and beat Harry’s fumbled scramble to retake possession of his load. She lifted it to him but her gesture faltered with the bag’s unexpected weight and bulk. “What you got here.” She rolled her eyes at him. “Not been bringing stuff up from the garbage bins have you?”
“It’s my business if I have,” Harry’s voice snapped uneasily from his thick greasy mask of a beard.
Something flopped heavily to one side within the bag and she pulled the untied refuse sack open to peek in. The wide cold black eyes of a Labrador stared at her from its bloodied face, its thick dry tongue hung from its mouth, bent unnaturally backwards, almost into its ear. Kelly dropped the bag and wiped her hands down her jeans in disgust.
Suddenly the full weight of Harry pushed into her, sending her staggering back into Craig, who once again cried out through catching her with his bad arm.
Craig rubbed at his shoulder. “I do it every time…”
Kelly didn’t waste any time on sympathy, and from her position of being propped up against Craig she made a snatch at Harry’s raincoat. The grime in the material slicked her fingers and caused her grip to flinch which Harry took advantage of and shrugged her off and ran. She gave chase, but in the few seconds it took her to regain her balance and realise she hadn’t caught Harry he had gained enough lead to key open his door.
She called after him as she bounded to his closing door and leapt at it, thrusting her foot between the door and the jamb, but in her haste she overstepped and the door bit and chewed at her ankle instead of the protection of her trainers. She cried out with the pain that shot up her leg and tugged her leg out, tumbling back onto her rear with a jarring shock. Harry yanked the door open, snarled angrily at her and slammed it closed. The sound rolled over her, pained her ears and fanned a blast of pungent air at her. In the brief moment his door had been opened, she had glimpsed walls, ceiling and light-shade flecked and streaked with dark browns and reds. She gagged and coughed on the smothering smell of decay that helped her understand, with dread and revulsion, what she had seen of the inside of Harry’s flat.
Chapter Twenty Eight
Yshor Malik dragged himself from the boggy depths of a dark swamping sleep. Every fibre of his muscle ached. His mouth was dry and his tongue was glass paper against his lips as he tried to moisten them. He lifted his head and the hospital room blurred and faded while nausea rose in him and lingered. He propped himself up on the firm mattress with his elbows, and would have yelped at the sight of his legs could he find a sound in his throat. His legs were a swollen mass of yellow and purple bruising, with deep dark glistening splits in the flesh that ran great lengths down his limbs. Each leg was contained within silver cages that had pins puncturing the fronts of his legs holding his bones together. His legs looked pulped.
He lowered himself back to the bed, trying to block out thoughts of his legs in case it brought on the wild pain he was sure his legs would be filled with. His voice lulled in the back of
his throat for anyone that might hear but it was nonsensical even to him as it crossed between his native Polish and his adopted English. He couldn’t understand how he had got where he was. Perhaps he had been hit by a car, it explained his injuries. Would he walk again? Hot tears gathered in his eyes. Where was Ruth? He could see her in his mind, his beloved wife with her long grey hair with its natural kink framing her delicate face and the blue eyes that had faded over the years. Eyes he had loved to lose himself in when he had met her in his youth. It seemed like weeks since he had seen her, which was an alien feeling to him as they had been brought up in the same neighbourhood together, were schooled together, worked together and retired together, they had barely been apart since they had wed all those years ago. It must have been whatever drugs the hospital had given him. He tried to think of the last time he had seen her, but all he could see was darkness.
That’s when Yshor remembered.
The darkness had been the last time he had seen Ruth. He had told her he had something to show her in the basement. He couldn’t think what it was at the time as he had never been down there before, but he had woken up that morning knowing that there was something she needed to see down there. He had asked her in a state of detachment and delirium, as if somehow he still dreamt. She had called him a daft old fool in their native tongue as she jauntily headed down the stairs ahead of him to the basement and into the blackness.
There had been a hole in a wall, and beyond that a hole in the floor, both appearing to be freshly excavated. She walked ahead of him, her voice uneasy as the visibility grew weaker until the only light was the soft green throbbing of a gelatinous sack of skin resting in the hole.
Then she had been scared.
Yshor’s lungs inflated in a deep inhalation dragging air that scraped like a flurry of dried leaves through his dehydrated larynx as the moment played through his mind and he screamed. The air around Ruth erupted in a blaze of light and hands that plucked her out of the gloom, after which the sack was suddenly swollen and distended by a writhing mass within. Yet somehow Ruth’s voice had stayed with him, she had laughed at his folly of dragging her to the basement for nothing, and carried on in her usual chatter about their neighbours and her friends at the over sixties club. She talked him into voluntary work at the hospital, standing vigil for a lost soul.
On one of his visits Ruth had asked him to do something bad, and when he had refused, it was as if she hadn’t asked at all, but it was another voice. Because of what it asked he had ignored that voice too, until he came to realise that it spoke in scripture, and it was the voice of God. He was a child of God and he could only obey, even if the abomination it demanded dead was just a girl in a coma.
Harry knuckled his forehead and paced back and forth in frantic confusion. Why had he run? He could have explained the dog as something he had found. He stumbled over his own feet and struck his shin against the toppled coffee table. He yelped but it was lost in his manic sobs of fear and madness. Tears tracked through the grime of his face as if his very skin was running away.
He could hear his Deirdra talking to him; her soft voice was sweet to his ears but like a memory of something lost that could never be had again. Harry punched the air as he saw her coffin in his mind. It had been so small. All that had been Deirdra, all that had been that loving woman, that wife, that companion of forty-four years ended in a wooden box. Yet she had been talking to him? Now; just then. Hadn’t she?
She had been talking to him for weeks, and despite the strangeness of the things she had asked him to do, or the ideas he had in her presence, he did them. He had made the hole in the wall in the basement, and dug up the ground beyond even though the exertion had nearly killed him, he had unearthed the dried up leathery sack beneath. That thing scared him, because when he touched it with his bare hands it had felt like a layer of his skin had been burned away, but strangely his fear and anger had been smothered. Deirdra took all the pain, fear and confusion away. The strange rigid cocoon of unrecognisable bones and calcified organs had engendered nurturing feelings within him, and with the encouragement of Deirdra’s voice he had brought it food. He would shower the thing with decaying animal waste scavenged from the rubbish, and when he returned with more the previous supply would be gone and the sack would be more supple and bloated.
Deirdra had made him feel like a king again and that overrode every contradictory feeling. Oh, she had worshipped him, and he had loved her so much. So much. She had been everything to him, and she did everything for him. When she had gone he couldn’t function without her. When she had gone? She had gone.
She was dead, it couldn’t have been her. Could it? Was this madness? Everyone he met thought he was already mad; perhaps his mind had given in to popular opinion? He could see something rushing round him, just out of his vision it flickered and darted, like a movement in the air. He flailed his arms as if repelling a swarm and cursed the air about him. He cursed Deirdra’s voice and then silenced himself. He had never said such words in front of her – to her! Never! Anger swelled within him and he clawed at his face as his reason crashed against his mind. “She’s DEAD!”
Suddenly he experienced an overwhelming sense of freedom, but he had the unnerving feeling of something standing behind him, always just out of view no matter how much he turned and span. It made his skin bristle. As if something had released him and was now watching the results. He became still, and without the blinkering soft voice of his Deirdra and the vivid memories of a life he no longer had, reality descended upon him. The fantasy-memory of the old house with its gay floral wallpaper and well-kept furnishings was suddenly gone. The marriage house was gone and he was back in his flat. He froze. He hardly recognised the charnel house room as his own. The walls were stained and lost in streaks of red and brown, the carpet was mushy and seeped a black red sticky sludge underfoot. Blood. So much blood!
Harry remembered. His eyes widened. The sights and sounds of the last few weeks came rushing in like water on a sinking vessel: the nauseating soft popping of a cats spine being twisted and broken, the feel of the sweaty warm knife handle in his hand that had worn blisters into his palm from so much work, the heat from blood up to his wrists, the smell of evacuated bowels and the gasses from a ruptured stomach, the tension in his arms as his blade dragged between resistant muscle. The look in his social workers eyes as he gagged on his own blood and slid to the ground dying.
He remembered the silent man in the top hat with the ragged face. Harry lured those foolish enough to trust him to this undead undertaker. Harry had accepted that thing so easily within his illusion, his fear masked it, his fear of the monster and his stronger fear that if he didn’t accept the creature then reality would return and deprive him of Deirdra.
The guilt writhed in his guts like the maggots that lived in the undertakers face and he vomited suddenly and violently in reaction to his own sins. It was so sudden he barely shielded himself and he caught a handful of acrid smelling oil and digested sludge. It was red, blood red, with scraps of raw flesh sliding through the liquid. He realised that by vomiting he hadn’t separated himself from his actions but produced a product of his work to haunt him. “What have I been doing?” he cried. He didn’t understand. Didn’t understand why and how this was all happening; as if it was all some nightmare that he couldn’t wake from.
Harry wailed loudly and knuckled his head again, his pounding fists seemed to boom like explosions until he realised the sounds were from the front door. The door with the bloody handprints that his social worker had left shook with each crashing sound. They were coming for him. That policewoman. They knew. They would arrest him. A voice filled his ears and his fear allowed him to believe it was Deirdra; “They are going to take you away. You can’t explain your way out of this. The monster told me to do it? The voices in my head told me to do it? They think that this is all your fault. They won’t just think you are a criminal they will think you are mad too. They will lock you up and throw away the key.”
The door creaked, and with a loud snap the wood of the doorjamb split from top to bottom, but the door held. “What shall I do, love?”
“Run, Harry. They will take you away from me and I will be all alone. You know how painful it is to be alone, don’t you? You don’t want that for me do you? Don’t let them take you away from me. Run. Run away with me.”
A split-second after she had answered him his attention was snatched by the large carving knife at rest on the grimy worktop as if it had been thrust in his face as a suggestion. She didn’t ask, she never would, but these ideas always came when she was with him. Before he could decline, the doorjamb broke free of the wall and clattered to the floor and in fright he snatched the knife up. “Run,” Deirdra cried. “RUN!”
Between the first and second plea he had broken into a stride with the knife held before him. The plain-clothes policewoman, her companion and a uniformed colleague, tumbled through the door then stumbled back over each other as Harry charged at them with an anguished cry. With every step he took he expected to be tackled and pulled to the ground, and it was with disbelief that he reached the fire exit. The only sensible direction was down, to get out and away to escape his captors, and it was this clear understanding in the chaos of his situation that made his choice to go up so disturbing to him. In the same way that the knife hadn’t been a conscious thought, going up had not been a consideration, he seemed to be under the influence of some other will. Although it had Deirdra’s voice, her feel, it was not her force of persuasion. It was not his Deirdra, it never had been. “I’m so sorry, Deirdra.” He sobbed to the memory of his Deirdra, the real Deirdra that would never have asked for any of the things he had done. “I’m so sorry. What have I done. What have I done!”
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