Harvest (38 page)

Alec stepped slowly forward
across broken masonry towards the black hole that absorbed the
spotlight from his weak torch. He flicked the light from side to
side, and lit up the jagged teeth of the large gaping hole. He
approached the maw and fingered the chalky dusty teeth of the
broken concrete wall. It swallowed him as he stepped within.

For a brief second his eyes
offered no respite from the darkness. Then he saw it, a faint
glowing shape barely distinguished from the dark, Alec marvelled at
how he had seen this weak light from the main part of the basement:
a ghostly green shape among the black ocean that he now swam in.
There was an uncomfortable softness under foot, a thick cloying
surface that pulled on his shoes as he took his steps. He didn’t
want to think about what was underfoot, all his attention was drawn
to the shape, he levelled the shaft of his light and the green
ghost was given form.

A green misshapen clumsy
obelisk stood before him, an opaque fleshy membrane of translucent
veins and capillaries stretched over a skeletal structure of thick
crude bone which reached up from the floor to the ceiling like
gnarled branches. The shock of the alien sight struck him as if it
was a physical blow, Alec dropped his torch; the detail that it
patted to the ground as if it had landed in something soft and
thick was lost to him. The nightmare in his vision overpowered his
other senses.

The obelisk seemed to keep some
memory of the light his torch had cast upon it, as if it was
somehow absorbed within. Something moved in that glow; great
cramped limbs, human-like, but too many of them to belong to just
one single person. The limbs twitched and slid slowly, one over the
other, surrounded by a thick viscous fluid. Suspended in the
gelatinous slime were shapes he couldn’t recognise, and shapes that
were clearly vital organs that were no longer internal to anyone.
Suddenly in a moment of sickening clarity of vision some of the
shapes had faces; one by one they appeared like stars in the night
sky. Some were clear while others appeared half-dissolved, either
by shadow or eaten away by something else, making them ragged and
hideous to look upon, or soft and borderless as the flesh became
one with the liquid within the obelisk. Then there were the faces
he recognised. Their eyes, or empty sockets, were upon him.

The ghostly light at the heart
of the shape intensified then dulled, and suddenly an arc of green
light flashed through the air and deposited itself into the
darkness between him and his exit. Alec heard the buzz of flies
disturbed by the strange lightning, and they pelted his clothes and
face in their erratic flight. A man stepped into the half-light
from Alec’s floored torch. A man dressed as Albert Taylor the
undertaker used to dress, except his face was not Albert’s, it was
dead and rotten and the green light throbbed within it’s skull,
bleeding out through its eyes, mouth and nose. It spoke with Alec’s
mother’s voice, except she had emigrated to Canada eight years ago
to marry, and neither she or Alec could afford to visit the other.
Despite the monster he knew was before him and the living obelisk
he knew was behind him, he didn’t feel fear, he only had the
emptiness he experienced whenever he needed his mother and the
longing it created. He could see only his mother, and Alec didn’t
run.

Chapter
Twenty Nine

Craig stared up at the tower
block through the windscreen of Kelly’s small car as she pulled the
vehicle into its space in the car park. The fact that the building
was home had always softened his perception of the place, but now
that it felt far from homely all he could see was its grey, stark
ugliness. What was he doing here? Separated from his family, living
in a grotty building, struggling to make ends meet. Lonely.

He was distracted from his
despair by the sharp creak of the handbrake as Kelly finished
parking and rattled the key out of the ignition. He took his seat
belt off but didn’t make any effort to leave the car. He didn’t
feel any urge to go inside and Kelly seemed to share his lack of
motivation as she joined him in listening to the tick of the engine
cooling down. He glanced over at her and she looked at him, he
broke eye contact and she did the same. He looked in her direction
out of the corner of his eye and found she was doing the same and
was attempting to stifle a grin. Ever since they had left A&E
he had caught sight of that little smile of hers. Despite his
unhappiness he found his own cheeks aching with a broad grin too.
“Go on then. Say it.”

“
You are going to have to
stop picking on doors.”

“
Aha! I have been waiting
for this. In my defence…”

“
Oh this should be good.”
Kelly cut in.

“
When you me and Balin
lined up to kick Harry’s door in I thought you said to Balin that
we would all kick the door on a count of three.”

“
I meant after
three.”

“
I realise that
now.”

Kelly bit her lip and nodded.
Still smirking.

“
Strained tendon! I never
realised how fragile I was.” Craig shook his head. “Thanks for
taking me. If it wasn’t for you being with me in A&E I would
have been waiting hours.”

“
At least with me at your
side my being in the service gets you seen quicker.”

“
I can’t believe I got
seen by the same nurse who strapped up my dislocated shoulder. That
was embarrassing. You know her don’t you? Chloe wasn’t
it?”

“
Zoe. At weekends we get
called to A&E quite often, you get to know some of the nurses
and porters a bit.”

“
Yeah.” He cut in. “She
seem different to you though?”

“
Colder?
Distrusting?”

So Kelly had noticed it too.
“It’s because of all the stuff that’s happened here isn’t it?”

“
She has seen us involved
with it twice now.”

“
I have seen it in the
faces of other residents in the building. Weeks ago, my neighbour
Vi wanted me to pop in for a cuppa from time to time, but I saw her
in the lobby when we brought Cat back from hospital and she had
that same look in her eyes. I doubt I would be so welcome
now.”

Kelly leaned forward in her
seat, folded her arms on the steering wheel and rested her chin on
them and joined Craig in staring up at the tower. “I guess it’s
hard for people to trust anyone with all that is happening on their
doorsteps. It can’t just be us that are experiencing the suspicious
looks – or the strange experiences. I know we seem to be
experiencing a lot of bad things, but it’s not like we are looking
very hard to find them.” Kelly slumped back in her seat, shrugged
and gestured in the air with open hands. “We are just trying to
understand what’s happening. To figure out how to stop it. We
aren’t causing any of it.”

When he considered how his
nightmares seemed to predict each terrible happening at the
building her defence sounded hollow. He had got past his fear that
his dreams were repressed memories of things he had actually done
or intentions he didn’t want to admit to, those explanations didn’t
make any sense, but his dreams somehow did connect him to what was
happening. With every nightmare he had someone would suffer a
horrific fate. He couldn’t help but feel responsible for whatever
might happen when he slept.

Kelly let out a deep sigh. “I
guess we have to go in.”

Craig leaned against the cool
glass of the passenger window as he contemplated returning. “I’m
glad you invited me over tonight. Forensics will be all over
Harry’s place next door.” Kelly turned sharply to her side window,
hiding her face from him. They had shared their disbelief at what
had happened, but they hadn’t spoken about the events on the roof.
Craig wanted to sweep his arm around her and pull her close and
tell her it was okay and that it wasn’t her fault. In the confines
of Kelly’s little car the gesture could easily be blundered. She
might think it was a cheap pass.

“
Are you sure you don’t
want to go to your parents?” Whatever trouble the mention of Harry
had caused her it was gone from her face, yet he doubted it had
left her mind. “I don’t mind driving you.”

“
No.” Craig realised his
knee-jerk reaction to her offer and softened his voice. “No, it
feels like running away.”

“
I don’t think anyone
would blame you.”

“
I know, but this place
was my home and I don’t want to be driven out of it by whatever is
going on. Besides taking me to Bath would involve a four-hour round
trip for you and that’s not fair.”

“
I was thinking. Let’s
see what tomorrow’s like but I imagine the forensic boys will be in
Harry’s flat for days, so you could always stay over at mine until
things have blown over. You can come and go as you please, just use
the place as a base so you don’t have to get confronted with
whatever they will be doing on your doorstep.”

“
Yeah? Okay yeah.” She
was clear that this was one friend doing another friend a favour
but he was still surprised, this was not the woman who had treated
his offer of a coffee as an indecent proposal a few days ago.
Things had changed since then. They had been through so much
together in such a short period of time and it connected them so
much more than the coffee on the canal could have done. “We will
see how it goes then, and yeah that would be really great, thanks.”
Craig suspected that she wasn’t just being kind, but wanted some
company herself with everything that was happening, he didn’t care
though because she wanted him and that felt good.

After collecting some things
from his flat he had walked up with Kelly to her place, practicing
his strides with the crutch he had been given at the hospital so he
could get around without hobbling. Craig had accepted Kelly’s offer
of a shower, he towelled down, thought against aftershave but
decided to spray enough deodorant to give him an attractive scent
instead. He didn’t want to scare Kelly by making too much effort.
In the bathroom he changed into fresh clothes, dark blue Ben
Sherman denims that hugged his rear and his front nicely, and a
pale blue fashion tee-shirt that was intentionally faded and
distressed on the shoulders.

Kelly showered straight after
him and she emerged from the steamy bathroom while he was sorting
through his bag in the hall, she gave him a sheepish smile and held
her towel tight around her, clearly regretting not changing into
her clothes in the bathroom as he had. Craig had spared her a
lingering look but he had caught sight of her fantastic slender
legs, his glance had only been brief but in his mind the journey
his eyes had taken along the contours of her smooth glistening
legs, to the hem of that towel at mini-skirt length, had been
leisurely.

He had made himself comfortable
tucked into one corner of the larger sofa with his legs crossed
beneath him, drinking the white wine Kelly had opened for them
while he waited for her company. Some time later Kelly had gotten
herself ready and joined him, he had been mistaken in thinking that
the highlight of the night had been glimpsing her bare legs because
they looked just as shapely in the snug dark denims she wore. He
was glad she hadn’t worn a dress because the memory of her bare
legs was a tease in itself.

She wore a brown tee-shirt, the
bottom-half detailed in amber bronze and gold beads and stitched
through with some kind of elastic that pulled the material close to
her abdomen, it drew attention to her slim figure and the
plain-half of the top clung to the fullness of her breasts. Her
hair had volume from being blow dried and hung in kinked plump
swathes against her chest and shoulders. She wasn’t wearing
make-up, he was glad because that would have meant she was trying
to look attractive for him and his nerves at being around a woman
he didn’t know that well would have gotten to him. Besides she
didn’t need make-up.

They had laughed their
way through a couple of episodes of
The
Simpsons
and
Friends
that they had stumbled across on TV while they devoured a
tube of Pringles together. Part way through the evening the wine
had mingled with his painkillers to create a warm numbness through
his whole body. They had rung a few local Chinese restaurants
before they had found one willing to brave their building and its
new-found notoriety and they had tipped the edgy looking delivery
boy a fiver for his trouble. It was in this moment Craig had
realised that they could have opened the guy to real risk and five
pounds didn’t cover that. It had been the first point of the
evening Craig had thought about the dangers beyond the front door,
and despite his enjoyment of chilling out with Kelly he hadn’t been
able to shake the thought of it from his mind.

With their meal finished they
flicked the TV through its many channels trying to find something
to watch. “I wish I could get satellite. I only have
terrestrial.”

“
Yet despite the hundreds
of channels I have we still can’t find something to watch.” Kelly
flicked the channel to a programme with four women sitting around a
restaurant table bitching about men. “What about this?”

“
Sex and the City
? Vetoed.” Craig shook his head
and Kelly flicked the channel over to three men standing around a
car and bickering. “
Topgear!
”

“
Almost worth it for
Richard Hammond, but no. Vetoed.”

Craig groaned. “We might have
to do a trade-off soon or we won’t settle on anything.”