Apartment 16 (6 page)

Apryl looked into the dregs of her tea. After a long, uncomfortable silence she spoke. ‘Wouldn’t a care home have been a better place for her?’

‘Yes, probably. But she did have a carer, and when she was here Lillian was fine. Eccentric, but capable and lucid and able to look after herself. She was quite a strong woman for her age. It was only when she went out – only when she left the building – that she . . . well, had a funny turn.’

Lillian could have been suffering from anything: Alzheimer’s, dementia. If only she and her mother had known. ‘Poor Aunty Lillian,’ she said.

But Stephen didn’t seem to be paying attention. He was preoccupied with his own thoughts. ‘But the strangest thing that day,’ he suddenly said, ‘was her bag.’ The head porter frowned at his shoes in puzzlement. ‘She had a plane ticket in there. To New York. Along with a passport that had been out of date for fifty years. It seemed she really was planning on leaving us for good that last time.’

After Stephen left, Apryl ate some pasta parcels with pesto she’d bought from the little store on Motcomb Street and then ran a bath. There was no shower, or even a shower attachment to fix to the cloudy steel faucet. So she sat on the little cushioned stool beside the tub and watched the thick cascade of water splash with a hollow sound against the worn enamel. It set off a whole series of clanging and gassy whooshing sounds behind the discoloured and patchy walls of the bathroom. Waiting for the tub to fill, she went and unpacked the few clothes she’d brought with her and put her vanity case on the dresser in Lillian’s bedroom.

She found herself looking for things to do. Trying to distract her mind from dwelling both on the prospect of sleeping alone in the apartment, and on what her great-aunt spent her time doing at night. The two end bedrooms had long been out of action and were just used as storage, so it was doubtful Lillian ever went in there other than to make deposits. The living room was never used for anything beside the delivery of fresh flowers to cover the dead flowers of the window shrine. That room was sacred to her aunt. And the furniture in the dining room was covered in dust sheets. There was no television or even a working radio in the apartment either. Earlier, she’d found an old broken radio set with a Bakelite casing, wrapped in newspaper and plunged deep inside a box of pewter tankards. But apart from that and a few books in the bedroom, none of them recent titles or publications, she couldn’t even begin to guess how her great-aunt occupied herself during so many nights indoors and alone. No wonder she talked to herself; Apryl had been there for a day and she was ready to do the same thing.

After her bath, in which her eyelids closed themselves three times and abandoned her to a doze – lasting until the water cooled – she made her way to the bedroom and shut the door. The bed linen under the ancient quilted eiderdown looked clean, but she couldn’t bring herself to climb beneath the sheets. On top of a wardrobe she found some blankets and made a temporary nest with them on top of the covers.

When she turned off the side light, the profound darkness of the room shocked her a little; made her pause before lying down. But she forced herself to quell her silliness; she was just too tired for it. In fresh underwear and a Social Distortion T-shirt, she curled into a fetal position facing the door, like she always did when sleeping in a strange place.

As she settled down, she listened to the purr of the occasional car passing below the window of the room, down in Lowndes Square. She cast her slowing thoughts out there, into London, rather than let them turn and begin exploring the apartment, reaching to the strange and cluttered rooms upon which a darkness and heavy silence had fallen.

Pulling her knees further up and into her stomach, she clasped her hands together and sandwiched them between her warm thighs, like she’d always done since childhood. And was immediately aware of herself slipping into a thick slumber, one that would last for hours, all night. Down she went, and away. At last her mind was still. Though the room beyond her closed eyelids was not.

She dismissed the rustle and the subtle padding of feet on the floor, moving swiftly from the door to the foot of the bed. It was only her roommate, Tony. Tiptoeing the way he did, in a kind of hasty walk to fetch something he had left in her room earlier. Too tired to open her eyes, in a very distant and shrinking part of her consciousness she knew he would be gone soon. Gone.

What did he want now, then, standing at the foot of the bed and leaning over her? She felt the long presence extending across her feet, the indentation of a knee at the foot of the mattress.

She snapped awake in a panic, sweat cooling on her forehead. Utterly disoriented, she stared into total darkness. Sat up. Said, ‘What do you want?’ Which went unanswered and left her unable for a few seconds to understand where she was or how she came to be there.

Until her memory supplied a few vital details. There was no Tony here, no roommate. She was in London. In the new apartment. Lillian’s. Then who . . .

With one hand she smashed about the bedside table looking for the lamp. Found it. Groped around for the switch. Whimpered. Clambered onto her knees, her body feeling painfully vulnerable while exposed to the standing figure so close by in the darkness. Her fingers found the old ceramic fixture with the clunky switch and clicked it. The heavy base of the lamp rocked on the table. Then suddenly the brownish room flooded with pale light.

No one there. She was alone in the room.

Her every fibre and sinew relaxed with relief. She gulped at the air like she had just sprinted up a flight of stairs. It was the drapes wafting in a draught, or the old floorboards correcting themselves. Like they do in old buildings you are unaccustomed to.

She put her face in her hands. Shock drained from her, to be replaced with a blush of foolishness.

But the experience of such acute alienation, and the terror of intrusion, shook her sufficiently to make her try and sleep more lightly, by sitting up, with the bedside lamp on. And she left it shining all night. Something she hadn’t done since the first and only time she had watched
The Exorcist.

SIX

Some time after midnight, the residents stopped bothering Seth, and the smell of sulphur and old smoke on the upper floors of the west block dispersed during his third investigation, as he hunted for its source in the rubbish stores. But the inertia that prevented him from concentrating on the
Evening Standard
increased once he was back behind his desk. His head was soon dropping across his chest every few minutes. Which was odd; he never usually dozed until around 2 a.m. at the earliest. Must have been the virus his body was busily cultivating into something more than just a temperature and scratch at the back of his throat.

He decided to nap for a few minutes. Then he’d wake up refreshed and able to keep his eyes open, at least for another few hours.

He fell into a deep sleep.

It lasted for what felt like a few seconds, before a swish of movement nearby and the darkening of a shadow across his closed eyelids woke him.

Seth sat up, alert.

The reception area was empty.

He shivered, and then relaxed back into his chair.

And dozed off again.

But awoke a moment later. Because this time he was certain a face was pressed against the glass of the front doors opposite his desk. But when his eyes snapped open and he lurched forward in his chair, noisily clearing his throat, all he could see in the dark glass was his own reflection peering back: a solemn, thin face with dark eyes.

Unsettled, he went downstairs and smoked two cigarettes and drank a cup of coffee. But despite his best attempts to stay awake, within moments of returning to his chair behind the reception desk his chin began to drop. And he slipped off a ledge and eased into a welcoming depth of sleep.

Until once again he heard the brush of clothing right next to his ear. And a voice. Someone said, ‘Seth.’ And then again, ‘Seth.’

Sitting bolt upright in the chair, his heart thumping, he peered about. Stood up, already mumbling an apology as if expecting to find a resident in a dressing gown leaning over the desk. But there was no one around. He’d imagined it. But how? The mouth had been right against his ear; he was sure he’d even felt the speaker’s cool breath.

The glare of the white electric lights in reception bruised the back of his eyes.

Still uneasy, he returned to his chair and turned the television on. Clawed at his face with two hands and shook himself. But it was as if he had no choice and there was no controlling his mind’s insistence on slumber. Or on the dream that came with it.

From the corner of the wood, a small figure emerged. Wearing a grey coat with the hood pulled over its face, it just watched Seth as he stood in the stone chamber with his hands clutching the cold bars of the gate that kept him locked inside. Stepping from one foot to the other, Seth swallowed and secretly wished the figure would not disappear or pass by.

Trying to smile, he found he had no control over his facial muscles; it must have looked as if he were about to cry. He stopped trying to smile, and waved. Embarrassed when the hooded figure never so much as moved, he let his hand drop to his side and wondered whether he should crouch in a corner and never bother anyone again. That’s why he was here.

The figure moved forward away from the trees. Slowly, it wandered through the long grass, avoiding big clumps of dark wet nettles, until it reached the edge of the stone steps. The urns upon them held dry brown stalks. The figure looked up at him. Inside the hood, Seth could see no face.

‘What’s ya name?’ the boy asked.

‘Seth.’

‘Why you in there?’

Seth looked at his feet. He paused to swallow, then looked up and shrugged. ‘Dunno.’

‘I know why. You got scared and crazy. Same as me. You’ll be in there for ages. And then some place much worse.’

Inside the stone prison, Seth began to feel something cold skitter about his stomach. His skin goosed and his vision flicked about. It was hard to breathe.

‘Makes you shit-scared, don’t it?’ the boy asked.

Tears burned Seth’s face and he gripped the bars of the gate so tightly that all the feeling disappeared from his hands. He kept squeezing even though he knew it would leave bruises. ‘It’s too late,’ he said, in a thin voice that broke around the edges.

‘It ain’t,’ the hooded boy said with defiance. ‘I can get you out.’

‘But we’ll get in trouble,’ Seth replied, and hated himself for saying that.

‘Who gives a shit? And anyway, no one thinks of you. Not no more. You’re forgotten.’

Seth tried to say
no
but knew the hooded boy was telling the truth.

‘Do yous want to come out?’ the boy asked, rummaging in a deep pocket.

Snuffling back his tears, Seth nodded.

From his coat pocket the boy withdrew a large iron key. But Seth never really looked at the key; he couldn’t take his eyes from the boy’s hand. It was purple and yellow and just the sight of it made him feel sick. The skin had melted and then gone hard again. Some of the fingers were stuck together.

Crooked fingers folded around the key’s large butterfly-shaped handle and turned it in the lock of the gate. The mechanism made a groaning sound before the barred portal swung open.

Too frightened to move his bare feet from the marble floor of the chamber, Seth remained inside for a while, shivering. The boy retreated to the bottom of the stairs and looked up at Seth. He put his hands back inside the pockets of his snorkel coat and assumed his usual posture: relaxed but expectant.

The sky over the wood turned dark. Either night was coming or the clouds brooded closer to the treetops.

The hooded boy began to look over his shoulder and watch the woods. Seth instinctively knew he had to hurry and make up his mind. Did he stay or leave? It was as if another much bigger gate had been opened in the world outside the chamber and if he wasn’t quick enough it might close again and leave him stranded. And together for too long in the same place, they could attract attention. He had a sense they might be spotted at any minute by someone in the trees.

Seth ventured out through the gate and into the grass on weak legs unused to exercise. He thought of his limbs as spindly sticks of vegetable left to go soft in the bottom of a fridge.

He stood in the grass and marvelled at how the stalks felt on the soles of feet so used to stone, at the pluck of the breeze against his naked skin, and at his excitement at the sight of a path that led into the thick, deciduous foliage of the wood.

The hooded boy moved toward the trees. Anxiously, Seth followed.

From the edge of the wood, he took a last look over his shoulder at the chamber and its little yellow light. Further up the path, the boy encouraged Seth to follow by doing nothing more than waiting and staring at him until they stood by each other on the path inside the damp wood.

‘Where are we going?’ he asked the hooded boy.

‘Away from this place.’

Seth swallowed and tasted panic.

‘If yous go back we won’t be able to get you out again. Yous’ll stay in there. It always happens. There are lots of people trapped. I see ’em all the time. They don’t know how to escape.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Only a bit of yous is still alive, Seth. The rest of yous is here, always. And when you die you’ll come back to this place again. For a long time.’ The hooded head nodded in the direction of the marble cage. ‘That’s what happens. Then yous get the darkness, when you can’t see nuffin’. Or remember much. Then it’s like you’re in the sea at night. Cold and drowning and no one comes to help yous.’

Nervously, Seth began to take short steps back and forth.

‘I’m your mate, Seth,’ the boy said, in a more decisive, grown-up way. ‘You’re lucky we came. Yous can trust us.’

‘I know. I know. Thanks. Really, thanks.’ Seth felt better and grateful, but awkward too. He wanted to ask so many questions but didn’t want to annoy his new friend who’d let him out of the chamber. ‘Who . . . what I mean is, you said
we
and
they?’

As if he had not heard, the hooded boy continued to move along the path away from the chamber. Overhanging branches and wet bushes whipped against the nylon of his coat. Seth continued to follow until they were moving faster and had gone so far from the chamber he wondered if he’d ever find it again. Dew soaked him and nettles stung his shins.

‘Don’t be scared, Seth. It’s just strange at first. Everything will look strange to start with. But after a while it’s OK. I was only ten when I got stuck. I was stuck in a concrete pipe near a playground.’

‘Really, a pipe?’

‘Then I was done in with fireworks, by me mates.’ The hooded boy slowed down. He took his hands out of his pockets and Seth saw a flash of deformed joint and purple flesh before the long sleeves fell down to cover his fingertips. ‘Now you’re out of that place you’re gonna see things as they really are, Seth. When people like you and me are on the outside of the places we get put, we see it all. Then we do what we were supposed to do.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. And you’re going to paint what you see. They’s gonna show you how. You’s gonna be brilliant, mate. The best. They told me. And then you’ll do stuff for us too, like.’

‘Yes!’ Seth said, suddenly excited, although it was not clear to him what he was going to do.

‘It’ll be really scary at the start. But you’ll never want to go back. I never did once I was let out of that pipe.’

Seth nodded, enjoying the new sense of liberation he felt outside the chamber. Yes, there was a real difference now; a real freedom he could not properly define. It was unformed but its new presence made him shiver with pleasure. It was something he’d waited most of his life for and then forgotten about. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt enthusiastic about anything.

Soon, the wood started to thin around them. The air became colder and the sky lightened to a watery grey. ‘This is my bit,’ the hooded boy said. ‘I wanted to show yous where I got stuck. Most people go back to a place when they die, like I’s told you. And can’t get out. Till those places go all dark. And you don’t want to be in the darkness, mate. Nah-ah. I seen it. That’s the end of everyfing. But we’s going to show you how to move around all the others down there, mate. They’s fucked. Don’t mean you have to be, like.’

They emerged from the wood and onto a wide plain of waste ground. Sparse, struggling grass grew from mud that pulled at his bare feet and made him slip about. In the distance, to their left, Seth could see a cluster of sheds with plastic sheets on the roofs and polythene windows that were ripped. Between the sheds were allotments grown over with weeds. Straight ahead of them, he could see a playground.

They walked towards it. Every few feet they would pass a coil of dried dog shit and shards of glass from smashed bottles. The hooded boy started to skip and hum to himself. He seemed pleased with the way things were going.

In the playground there was a slide and four chain-link swings with plastic seats hanging from an iron frame, and a roundabout made from rusty sheet metal with wooden bars across the top. It had been solidly anchored into a concrete square. The bright paint on all of the apparatus had chipped down to brownish metal and then been varnished with the grease from many little hands. There was a giant sandpit full of broken glass and slugs. Part of a smashed plastic doll languished in a rain puddle. Its head was cracked. Seth could see a dark hole through its curly blonde hair. The wound looked real. An eye was missing too. The violence of the thing made him shudder. Beside the doll were a few pages from a porn magazine. Glancing at it, Seth saw a woman with her legs open and one finger between her big purple lips.

‘Shit hole, ain’t it,’ the boy said.

Seth nodded and followed the boy out of the playground until they came to two enormous tower blocks rising so far into the clouds the height of them made him squint. There were no lights on and they looked derelict. Graffiti covered the walls up to the height of a child and there was rubbish blowing about the pathways between the buildings.

Seth looked at the things around his feet – crisp packets, cans and tins with faded labels, a tyre, something from a car engine, a smashed television and a pair of tights that had been soaked by the rain and dried out so many times it took him a while to work out what the crispy thing with long tentacles was. The remnants of a child’s scribblings, drawn with coloured chalk – pink, yellow and blue – had stained some of the paving slabs. The rain hadn’t managed to wash it away. And it must have just rained. All the concrete was wet and there were still some puddles on the pavement. Seth assumed the place was always damp. He shivered. Wrapped his arms around his ribs. Even in summer it would be horrible. The closer they got to the buildings the stronger the smell of urine and bleach became.

As they walked between the giant tower blocks, a gust of wind whipped between the walls and made Seth cringe from the cold. When he looked up, the buildings seemed to be tilting and ready to fall down on him. He put a hand against a pebbled wall for support.

Next they came to a small, brackish stream that dissected the endless, flat, dull landscape and its struggling grass full of excrement and glass.

The mud of the banks and bed of the stream were bright orange and smelled of the spaces beneath kitchen sinks where plastic bottles are kept. Under Seth’s feet, a lethargic trickle of water moved between a rusty paint tin and a broken pram that had been made for a child to wheel its dolls around with. Purple canvas hung in rags from the white plastic frame. Further down the stream, Seth could see a large grey sewer pipe. Inside the mouth the concrete was stained orange. He looked down at the hooded boy, who nodded without speaking. What a place to die.

They crossed the stream. As far as he could see the view never changed: disused allotments, empty playgrounds, litter, and tower blocks dotted about the stagnant plain. It went on for ever.

‘There’s toilets too,’ the hooded boy said, without turning his head to look at Seth. ‘I never showed you them. And in some of the flats I found people.’