The Sleeping Dead (6 page)

Just one floor. He’d only traveled one floor.

He wanted to cry. He wanted to lie down on the floor and scream.
I can’t do any more.
This is too hard.

He paused with his fingers wrapped around the door handle, not even sure why he was thinking of leaving the stairwell—the world was no safer outside. In fact, compared to the disjointed madness of Creative Partners and the empty offices of MedWay Associates, the stairwell was safe.

Jackson carried on walking down, throwing himself at each flight of steps, focusing only on reaching the next landing and not being lured away from the side of the wall by that aching gap in the heart of the stairwell. The gap that burrowed down through the center of the building. The gap…

He tore his fingers off the red railing once more and ran back to the wall, hitting the breeze blocks so hard he felt the impact judder through his shoulder. Again he had woken from the trance just in time. The idea that he could continue to be so lucky was absurd. Would it be the next time? The time after that? When would he only come to his senses after he had climbed over the railing and felt the wind rushing against his face.

He took his phone from his pocket and tried Donna’s number again. “Please,” he begged. The phone shivered in his hands. He put the handset to his ear and heard
currently experiencing difficulties
.

He sat in the corner of the stairwell, the phone clutched in his hands, and tried to allow the thick lump of emotion that had settled in his chest to pass.

He took the next flight of stairs sitting down, shuffling down one step to the next like a toddler.

He sat on the cement staircase and sobbed in perfect silence.

A few minutes later the silence was broken by the slam of a door. Jackson jerked his head up—someone had come to rescue him. There was an end to this hell.

And then the voices started shouting, drifting up through the center of the stairwell from somewhere below him.

7

Three voices. All female. They twisted together and at first Jackson couldn’t hear any of the words, but as he sat there and listened he began to pick apart the individuals.

Two of them sounded rational. They spoke in calm, measured sentences explaining to the third why it was important that they do this together. That it would be easier for her, for all three of them, if they just did it now.

The third woman was beyond hysterical. Her voice was ragged. Most of the time she didn’t scream or shout, but made a sound that bore no resemblance to language. When she was articulate, her words were simple and definite:
No. Never. I won’t.

Jackson listened. Not just to the words, but to the shuffle of their feet on the concrete steps. He imagined the three of them wrapped in a cocoon of violence and he knew, even without setting eyes upon any of the trio, that the two rational women were trying to persuade the third woman to join them as they climbed over the railings. He wondered when the reasonable, measured discussions would cease and the two would simply grab their friend and drag her over with them.

He locked his arms around his knees and sat in the corner. If the women knew he was there, they would try and persuade him to join their pack, and maybe he wouldn’t be as difficult to convince as their friend was proving to be.

Just do it and have done
, he thought. It was inevitable. The crazy woman couldn’t resist forever. They would wear her down.
Just jump
, Jackson urged.
Jump and leave me alone.

The madwoman was screaming. And crying.
Not much longer now
, he thought. It would be over soon and then he could continue his own private battle.

He put his hands over his ears to block out the worst of the screaming and crying. It was like swimming underwater. He heard the distorted voices of the three women. He heard the dull rhythm of his own heartbeat. He shut his eyes. Clamped them tightly shut.

See no evil. Hear no evil.

When he took his hands away from his ears, the women were still arguing.

He felt pain in his chest. It was not something physical. It was guilt. The guilt of leaving the woman down there while he hid above her and urged her to kill herself.

There was a smooth rustling in the stairwell around him, soft and rhythmic, and Jackson realized that he was rocking back and forth.

He shot to his feet, moving before his sensible mind had the opportunity to convince him that he was mad. If he wanted to survive, he had to look after himself and not get involved in anyone else’s problems.

He started to run down the stairs. Somewhere around the second flight of stairs he began to scream. Maybe they would think he was a madman. Maybe that wasn’t so far from the truth.

His shoes slapped on the concrete steps. The noise spiraled up through the stairwell like pigeons exploding from a town square. He raced down one flight of steps and then a second. By the time he reached the landing of the fifth floor, he felt each jarring impact from the steps rising up through his knees.

The three women stood in the doorway to the fifth floor of Pinnacle Tower. Jackson didn’t think any of them had noticed his arrival.

8

It was immediately obvious to Jackson. The woman in the blue suit was the screamer; the reluctant suicide. Her two friends surrounded her, their hands on her shoulders as they tried to drag her across the stairwell.

The screamer was clinging onto the door with both hands. Veins stood out along her arms. Her hair was bleached blonde—the sort of bottle-fed color Donna would hate.

“Come on, Susan,” the woman on the right said. She was in her early sixties with a gaunt face and a wiry frame that suggested permanent hunger.

Susan shook her head. Jackson could see scratches along her bare arms and he wasn’t sure if they were self-inflicted or the result of the scrabble at the door.

None of them had seen him yet. That was good. He pushed back up the stairwell. With the stark lighting there were no shadows to hide in, but he thought that if he was above them, they might never look up, and he could wait until this particular drama had played out before continuing down to the ground floor.

“I don’t want to,” Susan whimpered.

“Why not?” the gaunt woman said.

“Don’t be a mardy-ass, Susan. You’re slowing us down.”

“I didn’t ask you to wait for me.”

“We can’t go without you.” Jackson heard the shocked tone filter up the stairs to where he hid. “It wouldn’t be right.”

“Please, Helen.”

The gaunt woman shook her head. She reached out and took Susan’s smallest finger and bent it back.

“Helen, don’t. That hurts.”

Jackson heard the snap of the broken finger; it came a split second before Susan’s wail slashed across the stairwell. As he watched, she pulled her injured hand away from the door to nurse it. Her voice echoed in spirals around the confined space.

She was still holding on to her hand and crying when the gaunt woman stood behind her and pushed. The second woman joined in, the pair of them pushing and pulling at Susan’s clothes until her back was pressed against the railing.

“You broke it!” Susan shouted. “You broke my finger.”

The women ignored her. They were occupied with the mechanics of how to lift a woman who was taller than them over the four-foot-high safety railing. Helen bent down and started to lift Susan from her legs. There was something farcical about the action except the wizened old woman was deadly serious about what she was trying to do. Jackson noticed that even in the midst of her work, she muttered to herself.

Susan began to batter down upon Helen’s back with her good hand; the ineffectual blows glanced off Helen’s spine.

“Let me go! Let me go!”

“You have to come,” the other woman said to her. “We all have to go. It’s better this way.”

“You’re mad! You know that?” Susan screamed into her face. Jackson watched as she wrapped the elbow of her injured arm around the railing like a peace protester. With her free hand, she lashed out at the two women.

Helen straightened up and freed Susan’s arm from the railing.

“We don’t want to hurt you.”

“No?” Susan shouted. “Then what are you trying to do?”

“We can’t go without you. It wouldn’t be fair to leave you behind.”

Helen stopped fighting. For a moment the three stood in an uneasy peace; Susan with her arm still hooked around the railing, Helen and the other woman panting with the effort of trying to pull her free.

“This can’t go on,” Helen said. “We’re late.” She spoke in a casual, almost conversational tone. As if she was discussing the problem of a faulty photocopier. And then she hooked a leg over the railing and climbed over.

Susan reacted. “Don’t, Helen.” She started to pull at the older woman’s arm. “Come back. You might fall.”

Helen laughed. “But that’s the whole point.”

She leaned back, her feet anchored on the small ledge on the outside of the railing. Her body bowed outward.

“Helen, please…”

“It’s for your own good.”

The second woman started to climb over the railing. Susan was panicking; Jackson could hear it in her voice: the stop-start pleadings she made with both of them to let her go. They clamped tightly to her, one on each arm.

Jackson pressed his hands over his ears once more but that wasn’t enough to block out the sound of Susan’s desperate pleas. He pushed himself close to the wall and squeezed his eyes shut.
Please let it be over soon. Please let it be over.
He wasn’t sure how much longer he could sit there. He felt the urge to rush forward and push Susan over the edge himself. And then throw himself after her.

Helen leaned out over the empty center of the stairwell.

The other woman joined her on the ledge. She approached the matter in a more severe, organized manner. She didn’t speak—Jackson didn’t think he’d heard her utter a word in all the time he had been watching them—but she carefully took up her position on the outside of the railing. Her lips were moving silently, as if she were praying. She leaned back, parallel with Helen so that the two of them were hanging off Susan.

Susan tried to crouch down, but her arms stretched under the pressure. Jackson wondered if the weight of the two women would be enough to pull her over the railing or if that would only happen when the joints in Susan’s shoulders started to twist and snap.

It was impossible for Helen or the other woman to lean back any farther. Their arms were both at full stretch and Susan was pulled tight, as if she were on a rack. It occurred to Jackson that if she could find a way to break their grip on her wrists, then they would fall away and she would be free.

Helen stepped off the ledge and dropped two feet. Her feet hung in the air and Susan lurched forward, bent double over the railing.

Any second now
, Jackson thought. She couldn’t possibly hold out any longer.

Helen’s shoes swayed in midair, as if she were trying to walk across the blank space. Susan’s screams rose another notch.

The second woman shuffled backward on the ledge, standing only by the very tips of her shoes. Jackson saw it in slow motion: the second woman stepping back off the ledge, the combined weight of the two of them pulling Susan over the railing so that they would all fall. There would be a moment’s silence and then the heavy
whump
of impact and then it would be over. The horror would be finished.

“Jesus,” Jackson whispered. He understood he was
willing
the two women to succeed.
What does that make me?

Susan was bent over the railing. She seemed to be standing on her tiptoes. Every muscle was strained, every tendon elongated to the point of snapping.

Jackson moved, but already knew he’d left it too late. He could see the second woman taking her first foot off the ledge. The strain upon Susan increased. Now Jackson was sure her feet were no longer on the floor.

He clattered down the staircase. It was too far. Too late. He turned the first corner and Susan turned her head and looked at him.

He jumped the next set of steps and felt the impact in his knees. The shock ran the length of his long bones and finished somewhere in his jaw.

The second woman stepped from the ledge. Her body hung in the air.

Jackson was still two flights of stairs away from the women. He made three crippled steps across the landing and then jumped the next flight of stairs. From the corner of his eye, he saw Susan’s body slip over the railing.

He staggered across the landing. His legs felt numb. He didn’t have the strength to lift them. The maneuver was closer to a tumble.