THIRTY-NINE
Leaving the catch on, Seth pulled the door shut behind him.
The lights were on in the hallway. Stretching away like a red funnel the passage looked fleshy, with clots of shadow pooling on the floor in the spaces between the lamps. And the place was silent. Every painting was covered in muslin as it had been the last time he visited here, accompanied. Pushing the recollection away he walked down the blood-lit hall to the mirrored room, with his skin acutely aware of how the air swelled about him, as if some restless energy rolled and thickened about these rooms, even when he was not here.
And things seemed to be quiet tonight in the mirrored room. From the other side of the door he heard no one cry out from the ceiling in a far-off rushing of air. There was no bumping or crawling or dragging of something out of sight. Nothing. Just the still, cold air in which the greatest art man had ever known hung behind its coverings.
He paused a moment. Slowed down the spinning in his head. Steeled himself against what he might see, against what might be shared with him tonight, and against thoughts of what would become of Apryl, sweet Apryl. In there, in that room. She was the last one. The boy had said so. He’d learn to live with himself later. If that Miles guy raised the alarm, then so what? What could he or anyone prove? He’d say she forced him to show her that apartment because she was obsessed with some conspiracy about a dead painter. He just had to hold his nerve and keep that door shut until they took what they wanted. But would she still be breathing afterwards, like old Mrs Shafer? She’d have to be. What the f*ck could he do with a dead girl? Where was the boy? He had to speak to the boy before he put Apryl inside.
He swallowed and opened the door, looked into the cold, unlit room. Nothing but the bare wooden floor, the covered picture frames and the empty mirrors. His body shuddered with relief. Maybe, just maybe nothing was going to happen tonight. You never knew, he told himself, when you had dealings with such things.
Reaching inside the door, he felt the bump of the light switch and flicked it down to flood the space with faint reddish light. Some unseen curator had concealed the paintings again, but left the four large mirrors that faced each other uncovered, their silvery corridors reflecting each other and tunnelling away to the furthest reaches of light and sight. Carefully, he walked into the middle of the room, watching the mirrors for movement. For the one who wanted to meet Apryl.
But saw only himself.
Seth then steeled himself against the very idea of what would shriek and twist and unravel between the borders of the gilt frames before his eyes tonight. It had been prepared. Was he to unveil them? Would that kick things off then, and get it all going round and round?
Time to collect his guest.
But as he turned to face the door, a sudden dart of movement pulled his eyes to the mirror on his right, above the empty fireplace. When he turned to look all he saw in the glass was a reflection of his own shabby visage again – shoulders hunched, face tense and pale.
It was nothing. Just his imagination.
But then again, at the periphery of his vision, to his left, he detected a quick but distant movement inside another mirror. He turned quickly to look into the glass. And saw nothing again save his own dark eyes reflected back at him.
It struck him that the mirrors were connected at the side of each reflection. As if all four faced each other to offer some means of passage for whatever flitted within them. Before serving as an exit for whatever was taken back inside.
Anticipating a circular movement, he looked quickly to the next mirror, at the head of the rectangular room. And saw a pale shape flap across the bottom of the silvery square, halfway down the tunnel of reflection, but closer to the surface of the glass than before. With a smear of red this time, a momentary blossom of scarlet near the floor of the mirror, as if a coloured face atop a stooped body was turned inward, towards the room where he now stood alone.
He was too afraid to turn and see how close it came to the skin of glass in the next mirror, the one behind him. The skin on his neck goosed from an unwelcome static.
He moved his eyes down and to the right, but couldn’t bear to turn his head completely. Instead, he stared at the wooden floor at his feet. And listened.
The lights hummed. There was no other sound. Or maybe there was. In the distance. Maybe it was the far-off traffic from the world beyond the curtains, windows and walls. Or the swish of an approaching storm, draping its hem across the roofs and through the stony ravines of street and lane as it came towards Barrington House.
No. It wasn’t moving forward, it was moving down and from a great distance that lessened by the second.
A moment of dizzying panic filled every molecule within his body, before he suddenly broke from a stunned paralysis and made for the door. But the hooded boy stood before him, in the open doorway of the room. Hands in pockets, face drawn back into the volume of dark hood, he said, They’s coming for the tart, Seth. They want to show her the next bit. He didn’t get the aunty-bitch, but he’ll have the tart, mate. You can be sure of that, like.’
The enormity of what the delinquent was suggesting stopped his breath. Seth shook his head. His nervous smile made him feel idiotic. ‘No. I don’t want to.’ He took another step towards the boy.
The hood shook. ‘Nah-ah. You’s gonna get her in here fast like. It don’t stay open for long. I told you before. You’s got to be quick, like. Get the tart in here and shut that f*ckin’ door behind you. You know how it’s done, mate. You’s gettin’ good at it. So don’t go gettin’ all soft in the ’ead, like. She’s just using you, mate. Finks you is a cunt, like. She’s tryin’ to f*ck it up for us. So she’s gonna disappear. Summat special tonight, Seth. She’s goin’ right off the edge. Down there wiv him, our mate.’
‘But what do I do with the body? I can’t just put her in a bed and walk away. There’s a guy. He knows she’s here.’
The boy closed the door of the mirrored room with them both inside it. Looked up. ‘Won’t be no body, mate. I told ya, like. Gonna be nuffin left of that tart once he’s had his way. She’s going off the edge, like he did. All them years ago. Won’t be f*ck all left, innit.’
‘But—’
‘He’s comin’! It’s all going off, mate.’ The voice was tight with childish glee. The little arms left the pockets and a row of fingertips all melted together were displayed.
Above them, the light flickered. Then suddenly dimmed. It was like a cloud moving over the sun. Shadow tinted the room, then darkened the very air before his eyes. And there was a voice from beyond the room, but too far away to be a part of this place. A voice that called his name: ‘Seth? Seth? You’re freaking me out now. Where are you?’
It was Apryl. ‘Apryl, no!’ he cried out. ‘Don’t come in. Stop!’
‘You’s shut your gob!’ The boy shouted at him, then raised stubby arms as if to start a fight with him.
Then the temperature suddenly collapsed to a cold he could feel like frosted pins inside his bones. What was left of the room – the walls and floor and skirting board, the hooded boy, the very substance of the solid and visible – melted into darkness so quickly he could no longer see the wood beneath his feet.
Instinct begged him to flee. To rush quickly for the direction of the door and to leave the building, with Apryl in tow. But he knew he had no choice. He had been so limited in this city ever since he’d arrived, and choice was no longer an asset he could command. Had it ever been?
And this meeting was inevitable anyway. Whatever presence had been inhabiting his dreams and watching him from afar, and opening his eyes to the world, would eventually present itself. He’d always suspected as much.
He took two faltering steps towards where his memory told him the door was, every muscle in his body shaking from the icy temperature and from the sudden sweep of cries that came down from above, circling, helpless, and torn about by the cold turbulence.
From behind him something issued a sigh. It filled the cold room with a rasp that seemed to have escaped from lungs greater than anything that could possibly be housed inside a man’s chest. The sound continued in one long exhalation, dispersing like a frosted gas to the four corners of the room, rolling across the floor to swallow the last traces of definition before him.
There was no sign of his hooded companion. No trace of him now. Or of warmth, or of any evidence that the world existed or had ever done.
And down came the rest of them. From above, in a multitude of distant cries and screams. Moving so fast towards him, he wanted to be sick with terror on the floor he couldn’t see.
He took several stumbling steps on legs he could barely feel, and was sure his heart would stop and his blood would freeze, then shatter, if anything touched him in here, in the darkness.
Behind him, so close now, and competing with the maelstrom from above that he dared not look into for fear of seeing its descent, he heard the sound of footsteps upon a hard floor.
The tone of the continuous sigh that gushed and filled this blind place rose in a note of expectation. Or excitement. Within the shroud of his fear, he didn’t know. Couldn’t possibly think clearly. Didn’t know much at all any more – which way he was facing, if his feet were still on the floor, whether his body was tilting back, down and down and down to the place where a floor should have been. Or why in a place of no north or south, no ground or sky, he could still see so far ahead of himself. Or maybe it was an inch from the end of his nose. But he could just make out something red that moved as he blinked and tried to focus. And it only became clear for splinters of seconds in which he glimpsed what appeared to be a red cloth bound about a small head. With sharp features pressing hard against the taut scarlet fabric. And out of what could have been an open mouth came the sigh.
Seth covered his eyes when the cold burnt the flesh of his face.