Harvest

by Steve Merrifield

  Chapter Forty Seven

  Cat retreated to the doors of the first lift, the creature staring at her, its glare drawing her energy while it pressed its will against hers, pushing itself against the invisible barrier she held against the creature, moving it back and gradually closing the gap between them. She pressed herself against the metal of the lift doors, they were hot, but then so was the air around her. The fires they had started were burning fiercely, destroying the objects they had used as fuel, causing the pile nearest the lift to collapse towards her bringing the flames uncomfortably close. She attempted to kick at the pile and the creature gained half a metre on her. She stopped any thought of doing anything but holding the creature back. She wouldn’t get past the creature to the fire door that Craig and Kelly had left by; the lift was her only way out now. Besides, she needed the creature at the lifts or their plan might not work.

  She danced hurriedly on the spot trying to delay the ignition point of her clothes. The creature thrashed its broad head wildly from side to side, trying to shake her resistance and regain control. It roared a barking roar that was like a punch to the head from some strike at her psyche, the creature gained another half-metre on her and it filled her field of vision, it’s legs stamping the ground, it’s spear-like arms lunging, it’s mandibles gnashing, it’s black hole eyes expanding and contracting, suckling the energy from her, weakening the last of her barrier.

  The lift doors slid open and she leapt within. The coolness of the metal box was an instant relief. She stabbed frantically at the button for the ground floor where she hoped Craig and Kelly waited. Within the sanctuary of the lift her control waned and she lost her focus on the space between her and the creature. Suddenly unleashed, it lunged forward as the doors of the lift lazily closed. The creature slammed heavily against them and the lift trembled as the outer doors buckled and came loose from the wall.

  The creature thrashed against the closed doors of the lift, pulling at the metal in frenzy, yanking the door panels free. The heat built within the basement as the flames consumed and replaced the oxygen around it. Cat knew the fire door was too small for the thing to escape through, even the stairs beyond would be too cramped for its current frame. The second lift that was on its way, or the lift shaft itself would be its only option.

  Cat held her breath listening to the sounds of the outer door being mauled as the lift slowly left the basement. Now heading away from the danger she became aware of the blood dripping from her wounded ear, brow and bloody nose, the pain was remembered too, from the surface injuries and the deep pain that tore at the fabric of her brain. The sound of the second lifts descent rumbled through her and she found she was holding her breath as she waited and braced herself.

  The second lift arrived and the creature crouched down to enter, prepared to follow its quarry. The atmosphere within the lift ignited abruptly around the creature in a rushing ball of blue yellow flame. The wall of fire receded, devouring its way back along the gas flow revealing four gas cylinders swallowing the fire. The creature staggered backwards screaming; a burning wreck. They ruptured the instant the flow of gas expired and violently disgorged an expanding rushing sphere of explosive light. The lift disintegrated and shattered upward and outward. Superheated flame and white hot ribbons of metal sprayed out, boiling over the creature in a storm of fire and shredding shrapnel.

  Cat slammed against the metal wall of the lift as it shuddered violently and surged upward riding the explosive demise of its companion car. The lights flickered and Cat’s stomach lurched as the lift dropped suddenly as gravity overpowered the force of the fiery blast, the fall forcing her onto her hands and knees.

  The lift hung perceptibly swaying on its protesting cables. Cat swallowed the pounding cadence that threatened to choke her as she saw the lift display flicker between the basement and ground floor. The floor was hot. The lift creaked and groaned over the constant muffled roar of the flames burning below her and the lift cables squealed as they quivered and strained overhead holding the lifts weight. Cat held her pose, afraid her movements might send the lift plunging into the fire below.

  Chapter Forty Eight

  Craig stood back from the lift maintenance cupboard with the stink of smoke hanging heavily on him, watching over Kelly who checked Alec for a pulse. Jason was on his haunches in the corner at the back of the cupboard, his face blank and blanched. The boy would have just sent down the second lift to the basement as they had planned. He wanted Alec to be alive; even if Alec had been possessed by the entity, he didn’t want Jason to have his murder on his conscience for the rest of his life. Everything ached but Craig ignored it. He just wanted to get to Jason and comfort him.

  “I have a pulse.” Kelly called over her shoulder as she checked his ears and began to feel his cranium, looking for signs of a serious injury.

  “He was trying to stop me.” Jason said for what must be the tenth time since they had stumbled upon the scene.

  “It’s okay mate. You did the right thing.” Craig reassured him as he helped Kelly drag the body out of the cupboard. He left Kelly to finish putting him in the recovery position and stepped into the cupboard. He took the crowbar out of Jason’s firm grip and tucked it through a belt loop of his jeans and pulled Jason up on to his feet.

  Finished with the unconscious caretaker Kelly jogged in the direction of the lobby and Craig followed, herding Jason with him. As they arrived there was a deafening crack as the second lift arrived and exploded. The lift doors in the lobby rattled violently and dust and grit fell from the ceiling as the foundations of the building shook.

  Kelly pulled Jason to her side as they waited for the silent lift to arrive on their level and Craig put his arm round her. This was it. If their plan had worked then the creature had been firebombed and Cat would be making her way to their floor in the lift. His wish that it was all over desperately clawed from his mind at reality, but fear and doubt savagely fought the hope back, leaving him in a stupor.

  The lift gears screamed harshly as they bit into the cable and the motor recovered from the trauma of the explosion and began to pull the lift to the ground floor. The doors shuddered open and Cat flopped onto the floor, crawling from within an atmosphere of thick black smoke, violently hacking her lungs out.

  Kelly lunged to the floor and Craig followed her, ducking under the ceiling of thick smoke to drag Cat free of the heat and suffocating smoke that poured up from under the lift and around the top half of her body and into the lobby. To think of losing Rachel was like a jab in the gut, but to have Cat safe was euphoric. Cat wriggled fiercely along the ground into Craig and Kelly’s arms.

  Halfway out of the lift, the car lurched violently upwards, and Cat slid back towards the lift. Smoke poured out through the lift doors and an orange glow filled the car. The floor of the lift Car had fallen away and Cat’s bottom half had slipped back after it. Seemingly in sickening slow-motion he watched in impotent shock as she slid into the burning shaft. She slapped a hand on the ground and grabbed the lift door with her other hand, leaving only her chest and head on the ground floor. He and Kelly dashed forward and crouched before her and tried to get a grip on her arms without dislodging her tenuous grip or falling in after her.

  Cat craned to looked behind her. “It’s not dead. It’s here!”

  A flaming skeleton lurched up, the creatures flesh devoured by the fire. Seven gashes stared intensely from raw green energy that became flame burning at the heads borders. It screamed in pain and anger and drew its javelins back, ready to impale Cat.

  Cat screamed and then suddenly calmed and was taken over by an intense concentration. The creature was struck back by what must have been an invisible freight train judging by the force that took it off its feet and slammed it against the far wall of the lift. Craig grabbed Cat’s wrist and although Kelly hadn’t managed to get as secure a grip as he had he pulled with all his strength. The pain from his injured muscles and joints was hell, but seeing Cat drawn from the shaft helpe
d him bite down against the agony. With Cat free he allowed himself to collapse backwards with her draped on top of him and Kelly, and he hacked his lungs free of smoke. The lift doors shut on the creature in the furnace lift shaft.

  He screamed from a raw throat. “Burn you fuck!”

  The lift doors wrenched open and spidery legs braced them apart. Craig cursed and kicked his feet at the floor to get himself away from the lift and Kelly copied. Craig bit his lip and ignored each kick that Cat delivered to his shin as she tried to get the same leverage against the ground while on top of him and Kelly. The lift groaned as the creature gripped the walls of the lift car to pull itself off the burning floor of the basement. Flames flickered around its burning body like eager tongues of undulating orange light licking swathes of its flesh from its bones. A vertical gash appeared in the flesh under its rib cage and its abdomen parted in two, pulled apart like a mouth. Green light spilled out, carrying the snatcher with it; it’s long spindly arms reaching from its skeletal torso, it emerged from the spider with its hands slapping frantically at the floor, walking itself towards Cat. The snatchers bone-caged mouth yawned wide and unleashed it choral howl.

  Craig felt Cat’s weight suddenly shift as she was dragged off them as it attempted to do what it had failed to do on the landing the night before. She slid helplessly along the concrete floor back to the lift with Craig Kelly and Jason all scurrying after her, grabbing at her reaching arms while the creature snatched at Cat and swatted at them desperate to claim its victim.

  Craig caught a good grip of one wrist with both hands and Kelly grabbed the other and joined him in straining against the creatures tugs on Cat’s legs. Seeing that she was suspended between Mr Sparky and the others and wasn’t going anywhere, she thrashed her legs and managed to get several kicks into the things face. It reeled but continued to walk its hands up her legs, pulling her towards its burning host in the creaking remains of the lift. The creature was receding into the green light emanating from within its burning spider-body; into the corrosive sac where so many others had been taken to form its now dying body. Taking Cat with it.

  The lift car protested under the creature’s weight and with the final damage of the floor being ripped out. The lift collapsed abruptly around the spider-creature and it and the lift dropped back into the flames. The snatchers scream turned into a shriek of panic and cry of pain, it released Cat and desperately flailed its arms to stop its descent as it rushed back into the lift shaft after its host. A howling began to rush into the air from above as the lift cars counter weight, no longer having anything to suspend it, fell from the top of the high rise. Smoke and air billowed out of the open lift doors as the weight slammed the creature to the bottom of the fiery shaft below them with an abrupt explosion of sound as it smashed through the lift and the creature.

  Craig flopped onto his back. Cat dragged herself off of Kelly and stood before the pried open lift doors and stared into the tumultuous orange and black shaft. If there was a place like Hell then that lift shaft led to it.

  “I can’t feel it. I can’t sense it down there. It’s over,” she announced coldly. “It’s dead.”

  Epilogue: The Scattered Remains

  Craig watched three young lads in the black and red uniform of Hampstead School walk towards him along Haverstock Hill road. He didn’t recognise the beaming kid as Jason at first, as much as Craig had made Jason laugh during all the difficulties they had faced together the humour had been strained, the belly laugh Jason was having with his friends made him look like a different kid. Seeing Craig, Jason waved goodbye to his two companions and jogged the little distance to meet him.

  “How are you then, kid?” Craig handed him the small chocolate shake he had bought him from the McDonald’s while he had been waiting, and took a short drag on his own.

  “Thanks. I’m good.”

  They walked together. “How’s is school going? Is it as bad as you thought it would be?”

  “I wasn’t worried.”

  “That’s not what you were saying on MSN last month.”

  The boy looked embarrassed to admit he had been nervous. “It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Not many from my old school going there. It’s like starting over.”

  Craig nodded over his shoulder. “They your mates?”

  “Yeah, they’re ok. They are coming round mine next Friday for an X-box night.”

  “Cool.” The kid obviously didn’t have anything to worry about after all. “We are overdue a death-match ourselves. I will have to track you down online and kick your butt again.”

  “Are you having those dreams that you think are real again?”

  The kid had a good sense of humour, but it was too soon to joke about that time. “Haha.” He said flatly. It was strange, because although he was sensitive about those experiences they didn’t seem real anymore. He wished they hadn’t been. “You over what happened?” He shook his head at his question. “Stupid question. Me neither. Nor Kelly. She’s still a bit jittery at times.”

  “Yeah, but she has you to comfort her.” Jason cooed.

  They loved each other and they had both shared their weaker sides together, but he didn’t like to think who wore the trousers in their relationship. The woman with the truncheon was likely to win hands down any day. Luckily he didn’t care about things like that. “You’re getting cheekier, you know that.”

  “Yeah, I know it. How’s work going?”

  “Pretty good actually.” It felt good to say it. “I am still doing the usual unreliable studio work and freelance stuff, but when I was back home my brother got some companies to use my pictures, so now there are a couple of calendars and some websites using my stuff and I am in talks with a gallery back in Bath.” When Kelly had returned to Bath with him after everything that had happened he had shown her pictures he had taken since he was a kid. Kelly had pointed out how good his pictures of Bath were and Darren reminded him of all the posh gallery shops there were in the town centre. It was ironic that he had stayed in London to have the best chance of getting his talents recognised, but it was only returning home that he found a market.

  “And don’t forget about being a published writer.”

  “It was only a short story in a collection.” Craig had spent so long struggling it was hard to take praise.

  “You were chuffed enough when you got the acceptance letter. Didn’t you get about a thousand pounds for it?

  “Yeah, I am proud of it.” Craig felt himself flush. His career seemed to be going well, but it was Kelly that made him most happy. He wasn’t going to admit that to Jason though. “I get the thousand when it has gone to print, the whole thing could fall through in between now and then, but it does look pretty promising. Have you heard from Cat?”

  Jason took a drag on his shake. “Only on MSN. She still seems tweaked too.”

  “She has taken it all pretty hard, but if she’s as tough as she acts she will be okay.” Craig thought about asking how Jason was after Rachel’s funeral, but he had already asked him online a little while ago and he said he was doing okay, plus Craig couldn’t take today being too heavy.

  “I guess were all gonna be scared of the dark for sometime now.”

  “Not to mention having a serious phobia of spiders.” He wasn’t sure why the thing had chosen a spider body, but he had read since then that the form of a spider was a Jungian archetype; something that was commonly thought of as evil and to be feared across different cultures. Maybe the entity played on that fear. He could feel the direction of their conversation and his thoughts slipping back to what had happened. He didn’t want that. “Your mum okay?” he blurted.

  “She’s not happy at granddad’s place. She says it’s got too many memories. She wants to move to a different part of London. She was even going on about getting out of the city, maybe even the countryside!”

  “Really? That’s a big change.” After what had happened Kelly managed to extend her break from work and she had stayed with him
back home, she had loved Bath and she had said she wanted them to seriously consider moving out of London when she had sold her flat. Craig had experienced his old reluctance at giving up on his London life, but it had been pretty miserable, and being home hadn’t been as bad as he had thought. It was actually nice to have mum fuss over him and it had been great to have a few drinks with Darren. It felt good to be part of a family. “You okay with that?”

  Jason’s shoulders dropped and he cast his eyes down on his shake and toyed with the straw. “Not really. I don’t want to move into the country. So I played the ‘But I have just started a new school’ card and she agreed to think about it more. She hasn’t been very well. Got some sickness thing, she keeps being sick all the time, says she hasn’t been like it since she was pregnant with me. She thinks its stress from losing granddad and all the trouble she’s having selling the flat.”

  Not to mention his mum having to watch her best friend lose her kids one after the other, then lose her mind and consequently her husband too. He hoped for Jason’s sake that his mum didn’t make a clean break of things, he remembered how disruptive such moves had been to him at school and with making friends. “Sorry to hear that buddy. Say ‘hello’ to her.”

  Jason looked up at Craig with arched eyebrows. “Er, texts and X-box death matches are one thing but telling her you met me from school and bought me a shake? I think not.”