“Craig, I don’t know what to say. I don’t understand any of what’s happening, my brain just isn’t wired that way, but I have relied on you to help me believe, so I believe you. What I can believe though is that you can’t look to yourself for any blame for what’s happening here.”
“I know. But I can’t get away from the fact that if I sleep something might happen to someone.” He could feel the tiredness draw on his words, as if talking about his dreams was an incantation that summoned him into that world. “Do you dream?” He asked quickly, desperate to avoid falling asleep again.
Kelly swept a swathe of hair from her face and looked away for a moment. “Yeah, I used to. After I left Ian I had bad dreams all the times. I would dream that I went back to him, or I hadn’t left and things were better. Or I would dream that I end up alone. Not quite like your nightmares but as you can imagine it created a lot of doubt, fear and anxiety when I didn’t need it.”
“There are lots of things to be frightened of. You don’t need monsters for a nightmare.”
“Yeah. So I don’t dream anymore. Not since I started taking sleeping tablets anyhow.” She shrugged.
“Ungh! Uninterrupted sleep! I could do with that. I just don’t want to dream anymore.” he murmured, losing his battle against the darkness behind his eyes.
“I don’t know that you should take any of my sleeping tablets.”
“No, best not to.”
He was woken up by the rolled up quilt slamming into him. “Hey! I could keep hitting you with this to keep you awake.”
“You could.” She swatted him with it again. “Yes. That could do the trick.”
“Craig.” Her tone was serious. “You are going to fall asleep, you already have. You aren’t going to be able to avoid it. I’m going to get myself ready for bed and read in my room, if Rachel calls me with any news I will come and wake you. Even if she doesn’t I will come and check on you in a bit and see if you are okay.”
“It’s not me that I’m worried about.” Craig cuddled the quilt sausage. “Yeah, you’re right I know. Okay then.” He thanked her for letting him stay and began arranging a bed on the sofa. “Twenty four and I’m going to bed at ten. Sad,” he harrumphed.
Kelly looked caught by something but he didn’t know what. His age? Or was she just as disappointed by the end of their evening together as he was?
“No stamina obviously.” She had recovered from whatever it was.
If Vicki had made a comment like that he would have made a crude comeback, but he held back with Kelly as he wasn’t sure how she would take it, yet somehow that buzz of anxiety that came with daring himself to say something was just as exciting as flirting itself. They said goodnight to each other. He slipped out of his top and jeans and pulled on a pair of jersey pyjama bottoms and climbed in under the duvet. He checked his phone in the hope that he had missed a text from Vicki. He hadn’t. He knew he wouldn’t be able to stay awake long and it was the end of the evening but he didn’t want to be on his own. The electricity was back in his stomach. He tossed the cover aside, got up and went to Kelly’s door. He hesitated for what felt like forever in the darkness, willing himself to knock.
He was startled when the door opened and he could see his shock mirrored in Kelly’s face.
“What are you doing!” Kelly gasped.
“Not what it looked like!”
“Listening at my door you mean?”
“I was going to knock, but you beat me to it.”
“I guess I can be grateful you didn’t grab one of my breasts like you nearly did when we first met.”
All Craig could do was laugh and burn up. “Seriously, you said something back there and it got me thinking. You said you could check on me, well this is going to sound very much like a line from Nightmare on Elm Street but I was thinking if you were going to read for a bit you could sit in the lounge and watch over me too. If you see me looking a bit restless you could wake me up.”
Kelly looked everywhere but at him and took her time to answer, probably recovering her wits from his scaring her, and seemingly doing everything not to look at his bare chest. Would she even like what she saw? “You are going to have to sleep properly sometime, but yeah, sure I can do that.” She turned back into her room and the door drifted open fully. It was lit by two small table lamps, each on a bedside table. Craig didn’t get much of a look at the room before Kelly returned to the door with her quilt bundled into her arms, but he noticed the surfaces were neat and uncluttered while the furnishings, the velvet headboard, the scatter cushions, the fur rug, were plush and cosy looking.
“Where were you heading when you caught me lurking anyway.”
If she picked up on his flirtatious insinuation she ignored it. “I had left my book in the lounge and was coming to get it.” Her face flushed. She wasn’t going to bite, but at least he had got her heart racing a bit. They didn’t talk much more after this except for another goodnight, but snuggled under his quilt he took comfort in having Kelly in the same room watching over him as he waited for the nightmares to begin.
Chapter Thirty
Rachel entered the staircase and glanced upwards at the remaining four flights of stairs that zigzagged from landing to landing to the fourteenth floor. Cat’s floor. She glanced over the glossy black banister looking for encouragement from the floors she had already conquered, but the sheer drop that yawned below her seemed to stretch and the landing retract, pitching her forward, as if the great throat of the building had swallowed.
A dull ting of metal on concrete grounded her vertigo.
She held her position and listened intently, her senses chasing the memory of the sound while she looked about her for a visual clue to its cause. Nothing. Rachel swallowed the discomfort that had gripped her chest from peering over the banister. “Don’t look down.” She instructed herself. She glanced around her warily then continued her ascent.
Scraaaatch. The sound of metal dragging lightly across stone rang out again, and was then silenced. Rachel’s head snapped upwards, and instantly homed in on the direction of the sound. The shadowy angles of the stairs offered no sign of movement, but whatever had made the sound was above her and out of sight, and her journey to the top would take her to it.
On the fourteenth floor at the end of the corridor seven doors down from Cat’s flat, a fluorescent tube fluttered winked then blinked out, casting Neil Harris’ door into darkness. Within the flat Neil stood in his kitchen and sloshed hot water onto the coffee granules in the two mugs on the worktop. The rich smell of the coffee gave no comfort. All he could think of was Jane in the other room and what he could say to her. He stirred a sugar into each mug, and then cursed – Karen liked sugar, Jane didn’t. He quickly tipped it away and poured another cup. As he tucked a flank of his shoulder length hair behind his ear he found his hands were shaking with apprehension. He heard her voice call to him.
“Are you growing that coffee?”
He quickly explained his mistake, but didn’t mention Karen.
“Typical, two years and you can’t remember what I take in my drink!”
Neil winced at her statement and poured another mug. Jane was cool, he reasoned. She was good looking, curvy, funny, pretty-smart and gave great head. He lingered on that last thought and his jeans tightened on his hardening groin. Karen was all that too, but there was more. There was a spark. Fuck that, there was an inferno when they got together. If Jane was like a comforting open fire, then Karen was napalm. Anytime he thought of her (which was a lot) his groin burned. Neil smirked to himself; his firmness became an uncomfortable brick in his jeans. He tried to think of something else to make it subside, but it was the kind of aching excitement that needed relief to quench it. He took the two mugs through to the lounge where Jane lounged on the sofa, lit gently by a single standard lamp and the flicker of the TV. She unfurled and took the proffered mug from him. “Thanks, love” She took a brief sip and laughed. “God, you got a bit horny out there didn’t you!”<
br />
Neil felt her rub at his crotch before he could sit down. It felt good. She stealthily slid his fly open and her hand started working him. He stood there, paralysed with the sensation as she rubbed within his jeans. He closed his eyes and thought of Karen.
Neil pulled away gently and put his mug down. He looked into her round confused face and tried to give a convincing smile but it was strained and weak. It sapped the life from his erection and his groin crawled with cold receding blood. He zipped his fly back up. “There’s something I want to say to you.” He tried harder to smile but thought he might look insane. The door knocker rattled and he sighed with relief at the interruption.
“Who would call at this time of night?” Jane asked.
Her face didn’t show frustration but concern. He knew why. He told her not to worry, but he had lost his erection the moment he had heard the door go. He straightened himself out in his jeans and headed out of the room. “It will be nothing.” He didn’t know if he was reassuring her or himself.
By the time Neil had reached the hall he had reasoned that it wouldn’t be anything to do with the craziness of the building. That kind of thing happened to other people. His heart pounded in his chest like the heavy bass of a nightclub. What if it was Karen? She had been pushing for him to end things with Jane so that they could be together. No. No, Karen didn’t want Jane to know about her, she wouldn’t come and force the issue. Whoever would be at the door Neil was glad of the break, it gave him more time to find the words that would end their relationship. Whatever he said he would probably end up wearing the coffee he had just made – just as well he made it extra milky; didn’t want a burn. He laughed inside but then felt kind of sad that he was going to lose Jane; he had become comfortable with her.
He stared through the spy hole, but couldn’t see anything. Strangely it seemed to be dark in the corridor. He opened the door and a part of the dark broke away and lunged into the hall, too quick for his eyes to register any detail. Something hard swiped across his throat and he stumbled back with an explosion of white-hot pain in his throat. He fought to draw a breath and a fluid red line lashed out from below his line of sight. He pulled his open hands up to it and watched the pulsing line break upon his fingers in a splashing spray of vivid red. He lost his balance and fell backward onto the carpet, scrabbling along the floor panicking and dying.
Jane blew on her coffee and took a sip. It was already drinkable. Bit milky but it was nice. A thought danced in the back of her mind at why Neil had been so strange this evening. He was nervous, no doubt about it. It couldn’t be anything bad. They hadn’t even had a row the whole time they had been dating. Perhaps he was going to do what she hoped he would do, after all they had practically been living together at each others flats the last year or so. She reached for her mobile and quickly thumbed a text into the screen: “I FINK HES GONNA POP DA Q!” Would he? She had talked about it with her best friend the day before, her friend had been doubtful of his intentions of commitment towards her. She would show her! She laughed quietly and girlishly to herself as she called up Karen’s name and sent the text to her.
Jane watched the shifting images on the TV. She was anxious for Neil to return and ask the question that she wanted and hoped to hear. A fat black fly bumped into her face, she swatted it away and watched it land on the coffee table where another one crawled lazily. She swatted at them with her magazine. “You coming back, Neil?” There was no answer, it might have been one of his mates calling round and Neil was trying to get rid of him. The television held her attention until his absence began to eat at her. “Neil? Neil?” She waved away another fly. There was one crawling across the TV too. She saw the handle of the door turn slowly downward, as if the door was being opened with the intention of her not noticing it. “Stop mucking around and get yourself back in here.” She laughed, but it came uneasily. Neil should know not to creep around like that what with everything that had been happening. She didn’t know why he had been so insistent at being at his flat tonight; they had spent most of the week at hers because of everything that had been happening at The Heights. She wouldn’t let him bring her here again until everything had settled down. She turned back to the television and let Neil do his thing, whatever that was going to be. The door swung slowly open and death, in a cloud of bloated flies, took three lightning swift strides to her side.
The sound of a tip of metal being scored across concrete dragged itself into the perimeter of Rachel’s senses. Her nerve faltered and she stopped her ascent a few flights short of Cat’s floor. Sharp but fleeting, the noise caught her attention before slithering quickly and illusively away. She stood there, alone in the isolated enclosed stairwell, her thoughts dashed to her mobile phone in her bag. She could call Kelly. She dismissed her anxiety with a stiff-upper-lip gusto. What would she say? That she could here a sound?
She scoffed dismissively at herself, but the humour trembled on a foundation of weak resolve as she hauled herself up the banister. An unsettling awareness of not being alone crowded in on her and slowed her steps. The sense was quickly followed by a new sound in the shadows. A soft shuffling on the stairs above her.
Rachel held her ground as step by step a slow stubbed footfall sounded, each step bringing the source of the sound closer to her. On the landing ahead of her a shadow moved. The pace of the staggered noise changed as the drawn out scuffing steps moved from the stairs and onto the landing ahead of her.
A meek woman around Rachel’s age stepped into view, shambling onto the staircase with Rachel in pink fluffy slippers. Rachel caught her breath and tried her best to restrain the pull of an inane grin of relief. The woman’s face was ashen and drawn, her hair tired and fragile looking. Her body huddled over with her arms folded under her chest in a cowering walk. Her eyes were evasive but aware as she walked around Rachel. Rachel managed to turn her self-amused grin into a pleasantry toward the grey woman as she shuffled past her in the direction Rachel had just come from.
Rachel’s wrist jerked, snatched into a strong grip by the woman who was now impossibly in front of her again, as if time had leapt backward like a needle on a scratched record. The woman held Rachel in place and shook her head slowly from side to side, her face and eyes hard and expressionless. Rachel swallowed the shock and allowed her eyes to stray from her face toward Cat’s landing, as if she instinctively knew that was the direction the woman warned her against. She glanced back to the woman and found that she was gone.
Rachel looked down and caught sight of the woman, impossibly further down the stairs withdrawing backwards, sliding along the wall with a sickening slithering noise as her cardigan dragged along the smooth white concrete. She was still shaking her head in warning. Her eyes, grey and haunted, stared up into Rachel’s face. She slinked across the landing below until she was out of sight. From experience and intuition Rachel knew that if she went after her she would find the landing empty.
The sound of concrete being scraped snatched her attention back to her original heading. Her heart was quivering from the apparitions unnerving warning, and her mind teetered on fearful imagination of what could be waiting for her. She bolstered herself to discover the source of the haunting noise. One measured foot after another she climbed the final approach to Cat’s landing.
The light on the wall above the door was dead, and the square of light from the window set into the fire escape door only served to deepen the shadows around it. For seconds that seemed like uncomfortable minutes she waited for her eyes to find whatever made the noise while the gloom pressed forebodingly against her.
The landing was empty.
With a sigh of relief Rachel clutched the handle and pulled the heavy door open, light from the sanctuary of the bright corridor spilled over her.
Scraaaaatch.
Sharp metal scratched across gritty concrete at a volume that raked at her ears and her nerves with its proximity. Rachel froze. The sound was on the landing with her, it had come from floor level from behind the
door she held open. Her palm became slick and her grip on the handle faltered. Her hand was very near whatever was making that noise.
She stilled her quavering breaths. All she had to do was walk forward. Three quick measured steps and she would be in the apparent safety of the bright corridor, near people’s homes and the help the safety they represented.
There had been nothing behind the door only a moment before. If there was something there now then it had to be spiritual. The woman on the stairs had unnerved her and her trust in the safety of the spiritual world had been shaken by events in the building. Despite her fears she had to see what was tormenting her. She let go of the handle.
The door drifted closed on her escape route and the gloom crept back out of the shadows. What was she doing? The spirit world wasn’t the benign plane that she understood. Not in this building anyway. She had already received a warning. She didn’t have any defence against whatever was at work here. Whatever lurked in this building was beyond anything she had ever experienced. Every supernatural horror film that had ever frightened her strobed through her mind. She was doing what the stupid heroine would do! Rachel’s heart leapt into her throat and she fumbled for the door.
Scraaaaatch, came the noise. She froze within the quiet that followed. It had been just to her right. She only had to turn her head to the right and whatever made that noise would be at her feet. Dread paralyzed her. The noise punctured the quiet then left her dangling in silence again, seemingly daring her to look. She could feel a presence by her side; a ‘something’ at the perimeter of that other sense beyond sight and sound. Whatever it was hadn’t done anything to her. Yet. Maybe it liked to taunt it’s victims before… She waited for the noise as someone might wait for the next heart stopping drop on a rollercoaster. It didn’t come. She hesitantly lowered her gaze towards the ground.
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