Falling Over (8 page)

It took an effort of will to draw the blind and turn away. He heard the temps and the rest of the staff leave, but he stayed hours after that, managing not to work. He left the building to go straight to the team night out, still wearing his creased and inappropriate day clothes, the company swipe-card the manager needed for access still clipped to his belt.

A team night out? His mind felt incredulous at the suggestion.  It couldn’t be that he was going to spend
voluntary time
with his staff. He barely knew them after all; and more than that, the new boy might be there, that skin-crawling doppelganger...; he should just go home, but his mind felt incredulous at that suggestion too:
your attendance is of course required etc. ...
He went out into the evening light still not knowing exactly what was awaiting him, which punishment he would choose. The streets seemed crazed, the traffic murderous. People dashed to cross the road at the scantest opportunity, while he scuttled back and forth across the curb not daring to cross. It was a new fear for him, of stepping out into the road; the green man took an age coming and people walked passed him and dodged traffic, except for the old who muttered beside him. When he crossed he felt as slow as them, and felt too like he only just made it across before the lights changed and the engines revved. It didn’t help that while he had been waiting to cross it had felt like  something was urging him, almost pushing him, forward. Just a few steps. The streets felt crazed; but he realised they had always been like this, too.

He noted his destination with blank surprise – so he had been heading here, after all. In front of him, across another treacherous road, was an ugly modern building, all fragile glass it seemed, containing gyms, multiplexes, bars. Even from this distance he could see the innards, the people inside. When he finally entered, he found that the bar that he wanted was on the third floor, and he had to get an escalator which was glass sided and at a steep incline. It felt like it was tipping backwards and he felt sick; his vision bobbed and doubled as if he were already drunk. When he reached the third floor and headed towards the bar the manager felt like the escalator was still carrying him forwards.

Sunlight – the bar had, of course, huge glass windows to share the view of cambered rooftops and climbing spires. He closed his eyes instantly, but red and green shapes like another reality danced behind his eyelids when he did. His ears detected a phantom rattling; he felt he could feel the wind blowing through the windows. Was it really only three stories up? Had he really come to this bar at all? In another universe, he thought, I went home and never came here.

In amid the doubling shapes of evening light that baffled his vision, people were beckoning him – he didn’t know their names. Out of work the temps looked different, dressed funny and with uninhibited faces. His sub-managers were sitting in among them, with the same naked smiles, no doubt encouraging insurrection. But the manager didn’t care for he saw that
the new boy wasn’t there
and it didn’t matter that his senses were telling him that there was someone behind him reaching out because there
wasn’t
and...

There was a tap on his shoulder. He gave a little cry, turned around. He was so used to seeing Jay everywhere that when he saw him his mind waited for the face to dissolve into someone else, before realising that that wasn’t going to happen.

“Drink?” said the new boy. “My shout?” His voice was exactly the same as Jay Neuworth’s slurred voice, and full of threat. The manager took a step backwards, away, into the sunlight that was pouring through the windows. People were looking at him. Behind the new boy he saw
his
manager come into the bar, dressed as straight-laced as ever; she paused, searching for a second, then headed towards him.

“Drink?” the boy repeated stubbornly.

He wondered why, since he had spent the last few weeks looking for Jay Neuworth everywhere, he had never given a thought to the circumstances of his life, only the manner of his death.

“Bitter?” he managed, his voice a strangulated gasp. “Bitter?” The new boy gave a smile – “Yes,” he said, “bitter” – and headed away towards the bar.

The manager felt trapped – he didn’t want to sit down , for he felt if he did then the temps on the sofa would pen him in, keep him pressed down if he needed to rise urgently. Instead he remained standing, pretending to look around the bar; a nerve jumped in his eye. The bar was modishly characterless, glass-top tables lit up like mirages in the sun from the large windows; the bar itself set back in the murk. He could hear the new boy talking to the barmen there but couldn’t make out the words. To the right of the bar, also in the dark light, were three doors:
Ladies, Gents
and...

“Nice to see you here,”
his
manager said; she had somehow moved right behind him without him noticing. He felt like reality kept twitching and changing with no prior warning. As he traded polite clichés with his manager, he felt like he was in fact saying something else, to a different person.

“You’ve obviously had a few before you came here,” his manager said, with a professional expression of humour and tolerance. But she sniffed as if she could smell the alcohol on him – when he hadn’t even had a single drink yet! The thought reminded him that the boy – that
Jay
– would be returning from the bar soon.

“Excuse me,” he interrupted. “I’m sorry.” I have to get out of here, he thought. The new boy was handing money over at the bar... The manager turned and hurried towards the door marked
Gents
.

The window was open in the toilets (which were about three times the size of his office) and he could feel the cool air creeping in; hear the sounds of the city below him. He didn’t know why he had come in here, it was nothing more than a temporary reprieve. A hot terror was rising in him; he stuck his head under the tap but the water was warm and didn’t wash away the feeling. The mirror in front of him was cracked and doubled his reflection; made him think someone else had entered the gents behind him. He turned around, his eyes blind and full of water, and walked directly through the space where he’d thought he’d seen someone. In another universe, he thought, I never came here, and this isn’t happening.

He exited the toilets cautiously. Looking around he couldn’t see the boy anywhere: not at the bar, not sitting in among his colleagues. The temps were silhouetted against the window;
his
manager was standing to one side and looking at him. The feeling that he had to leave before he did something terrible increased. Where
was
the new boy? He looked to his left, at the signs on the other two doors:
Ladies
and
Fire Exit.
Only to be Opened in Emergencies.

Until he pushed the bar to open the door, he hadn’t realised his exit would set off the building’s alarms. The familiar sound caused him to pause – he was still on the verge of being able to claim it was an accident, to go back and sit down. But the pause was mental only, like the gap between jumping and landing, because he was already rushing down a rickety metal fire-escape. The ground looked a thing impossible to reach; the view was like he was falling. The alarm rang above his head, and he heard noises of protest, the beginnings of pursuit. As he fled down the fire-escape his steps were panicked, but cautious, like an old man’s, shaking as the metal shook beneath him. Even when he set foot on solid ground it seemed to be shaking.

There was an angry shout above him – he looked up and saw a black figure looking down at him. He could see nothing more because of the white light above him. The manager lowered his gaze and quickly looked around his surroundings.

The alleyway was a dark, hot corridor, between what seemed to be two walls of light at either end. The way back to his house was to the right; so was the sun and the still blue sky. Turning left was darker. Above him he heard the fire-escape start to rattle again, whether with the wind or because someone was coming down after him he didn’t know. He turned left, and ran.

There was a road at the end of the alley and he found his fear of traffic returning. There was nowhere to cross, and the traffic seemed a constant flow, a tidal movement of speeding metal (it didn’t occur to him
why
he wanted to cross, why he didn’t just turn left or right and flee along the pavement). But concurrent with his fear was the feeling of someone pushing him, urging him forwards into the road...

There was a screeching sound and he looked up and saw that a bus had stopped to let him cross. The driver’s face seemed to alternate between generosity and hate as he made a get-on-with-it gesture. The manager stepped off the lip of the curb gingerly, like he was tight-rope walking across a drop. He was aware of the growling bus to his right, aware that if it was a trick and the bus suddenly moved forward he wouldn’t have time to react. He knew the idea was ridiculous but he started to run anyway – into the other lane, which he had temporarily forgotten was there – cars screeched and honked and  seemed to miss him by inches as he suddenly appeared from behind the bus. He was shaking when he got to the other side of the road – he felt like he was going to be sick.

He turned around; on the other side of the traffic he saw the boy, who was trying to cross, but kept having to pull back because the flow of cars refused to pause. When the boy saw the manager looking at him his expression turned urgent, almost eager. The manager watched the boy try to cross again, saw Jay Neuworth’s face shout something at him, but the words were lost in the sound of the traffic. “I’ll
fire
you!” the manager shouted, his voice shrill. “I’ll call the agency and...”

The manger jerked away from the roadside awkwardly, feeling a stitch on one side dig into him. He ran up one side of the street. There was an opening into another alleyway, and he ducked into it, feeling slightly comforted by its cramped, dark confines. But he had to keep running, because he felt that because he was no longer in the office, because of the strange parallel-world decisions he had made that evening, then no rules applied anymore, and the thing coming after him would have no restraints. There was a contrary urge in him to stop and
explain
; but he had no idea what he should say to Jay, and two weeks compulsive brooding had not given him an answer. He fled deeper into the alleyways.

~

He thought he would be safe after sunset, but it was dark when it got him.

He was walking up a quiet street in an unsavoury area, which ran parallel to the main road and was lined with adult bookstores, chippies, and pubs that most never dared drink in. He couldn’t run anymore, he was too tired, instead he moved in a quick and painful shuffle. He wasn’t sure if anything was still behind him – when he turned to see his eyes could only penetrate so far into the night. Everything was blurred and wouldn’t come together. His hands had unconsciously unclipped his work ID card from his belt and were turning it over and over.

When he next looked up, someone was in front of him.

His first thought was one of relief, despite the edge of light on the knife that the figure held in its hand. This was just a person, not Jay Neuworth or anything like him. He studied the man’s face – pale, with short cropped hair, a piddling little mustache. The man appeared to be shaking slightly in agitation – his knife blade wavered in and out of the light. The man was staring at him with eyes that looked doped, duped...

The familiar sensation hit him when he looked at the man’s eyes – another world seemed to step out from behind the one he was seeing. The slack, bored look of malevolence was familiar, and so were the lazy steps that the figure took towards him.

“C’mon, are you
deaf?
Give your wallet!” The voice
was
Jay Neuworth’s, despite the differences in pitch and timbre. “Now!” There was a gesture with the knife; light flashed.

The manager opened his mouth to protest – this didn’t seem quite right. Why had there been an insinuating presence
behind
him these last few weeks, if Jay had just been planning to step out in front of him, crudely waving a knife? “No,” he said, “no.” Something wasn’t correct.

That slack face tightened for a second, the gaze grew alert as if suspecting a trick. “What you on about man?” But then there was a relapse, the return of stoned malevolence. “Just gimme your wallet!”

“No,” the manager repeated. “You
fell
. You can’t just stab me...” The manager’s voice was stronger, because he was convinced that this didn’t fit with what
should
happen.

He heard a noise of impatience. “The fuck I can’t.”  The world tilted, like he was back in a tall building moving with the high wind. Maybe he was. The world was at right-angles to where it should be in his vision – he was aware of distant pain. He kicked his legs trying to get away, as he saw Jay Neuworth bend over him, hands eager.

~

It wasn’t like waking up and realising it was a dream. There was no simple transition from one state to another, instead there was a movement back and forth, a swaying from one view of the night to another as he staggered home, the path rising and falling like a fairground ride; neon lights and pub names doubled meanings in front of him, far away people crashed into him or propositioned him. His fingers were pressed tightly against the knife wound – which
might
just have been a pain in his side from drinking too much. Had his drink been spiked? He remembered the new boy Jay handing him a pint and grinning with uncharacteristic alertness as he had sipped it, and he had vowed to sack him at the first opportunity... But he
also
remembered fleeing the bar sober, having not had a drink, and the invisible pursuit through the alleys, and the
cold
feeling of the knife just below his ribs... He steered a course between these two sets of memories, based on a amalgamation between them, which maybe wasn’t right. His head seemed to ache with effort.

No one was
following
him, there was no presence behind him anymore. No, he felt like the presence was somewhere in front of him now, and in his unfocussed, reeling way he plunged towards it. Looking up, there were a myriad of lights above him, rotating on an axis that he couldn’t see, and the sight made him dizzy and his steps faltered...