FORTY
Seth had been gone for over five minutes. And she had stood, nervously, outside the front door of apartment sixteen, fingering a cigarette lighter inside the womb of a deep coat pocket, while listening for any sign of him inside the apartment.
Once she thought she heard him approach the door on swift feet, almost as if he was running back to the front door. But the door hadn’t opened. And the feet had sounded tiny, like a child’s.
When she called out, ‘Seth? Seth?’ the footsteps stopped and her memory of them became vague, making her believe they had occurred somewhere else in the building, in another apartment, on another hard floor. Maybe they had.
And then she thought she heard a door close deep inside the flat. Far off, far behind masonry and wood. But again, the sound might have been generated from another place somewhere inside the building. It was hard to tell.
But she couldn’t stand outside for much longer. And what was he doing in there anyway? She wondered if Miles was right. That it was a setup, an ambush. This couldn’t go on any longer. She took her hands out of her pockets.
‘Hello. It’s me.’
‘Apryl. You all right?’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘Beats me.’
‘Are you inside?’
‘No, I’m still waiting outside. He’s been in there ages. I don’t know what he’s doing. He told me to wait here. Do I wait all night?’
‘I don’t like this. I’m coming in.’
‘No. Don’t. You’ll ruin everything. I promised him.’
‘It could be a trap.’
‘No. I told you . . . I think he’s harmless,’ she said to calm Miles, but wasn’t sure she believed it any more.
‘You think he’s harmless! Jesus, Apryl.’
‘I just don’t know what’s taking him so long. So I’m going in. The door’s on the latch. I just wanted to tell you I’m leaving the line open. You know, just in case.’
‘Apryl, don’t go inside. I don’t want you to. This is all wrong. You’re trespassing. I don’t like the sound of this at all.’
‘It’ll be fine. Trust me. Just listen out. To be on the safe side. I won’t stay long. I just want to see what’s in there. I’ll see you in a few minutes.’
‘I’m getting fed up with this. It’s so damn foolish. Don’t you feel absurd?’
Apryl pushed the front door open.
The hinge squeaked and then whined as the heavy door swung inwards. To reveal an unlit hallway. From the light of the landing she could just make out its shadowy far end in a derelict penthouse apartment. ‘Seth,’ she whispered into the gloom. ‘Seth. Seth.’
Taking a step inside, she looked for a light switch. And found an ancient ceramic device that looked like her grandmother’s butter dish turned upside down. She flicked the switch down but it clunked, emptily, and there was no response from the elaborate glass lights attached to the walls.
Guided only by the light from the landing, she moved further down the deserted hallway, her feet creaking the floorboards. The place smelled of dust and stale air.
‘Seth’, she said again, louder this time. ‘Seth. Where are you?’
Passing another two light switches, she flicked them up and down. They were useless. Dead.
She was running out of light from the landing. The darkness in the apartment swallowed the yellowish glow before it could spread fully from the mouth of the front door. Then it suddenly went even darker, right around her.
Looking over her shoulder, she saw that the front door had silently swung half shut, its weight pulling it back to the frame. She retreated, anxious with every step that her heels didn’t make too loud a sound on the floorboards, and propped the door open by wedging her compact underneath. Then returned to the middle of the hallway.
This time she took more notice of the doors she was passing. The smaller ones painted white she assumed had cupboards behind them; the others must open to rooms like they did in Lillian’s apartment. ‘Seth,’ she said. A note of command mixed with irritation sharpened the word to cut the silence.
Taking out her lighter, she sparked it into life and raised it to see better.
The walls were skinned with an ugly paper. It was browned with age and had a rough texture against her fingertips. Every other thing had been taken down from the walls as in the other apartments she had seen. Like they were not to be trusted. There was no sign of the paintings Seth promised to show her, or any sign of him either.
‘Seth? Seth? You’re freaking me out now. Where are you?’
A few steps further and she ran out of all but the thinnest electric light and the pale flicker from her disposable lighter. Its bright but short flare scattered into the cold, heavy atmosphere, showing little beyond a small radius. But it managed to reveal a closed door on the left-hand side of the passageway. In her great-aunt’s flat this would have been the living room. And inside it, she heard a distant voice. ‘Seth? Is that you?’
As if from a great distance he cried out, ‘Apryl, no! Don’t come in. Stop!’
A draught seeped out of the gap between the door and the floor and cooled across her hands. The flame of her lighter flickered blue, then flattened itself against the metal cuff before going out. Impossibly, it was as if he had been calling from a great distance. She stayed still, her body tense, the nerves down her spine prickling. She listened.
Someone else was speaking again inside the room. Yes, she could hear a voice. No, voices. Was that a television? A radio? Moving closer to the door, she pressed her ear to the wood. The sound seemed distant, like she was passing Yankee Stadium during a home game. It must have been coming from beyond the building.
Her mind suddenly filled with what Mrs Roth and Mr Shafer had told her about the noises they heard inside this apartment. She pressed the phone to her ear and stood away from the door. ‘Miles?’
‘Yes, I’m here. What is it?’
‘I don’t know. There are no lights in here. I can’t see much. But I can hear something. Or is it outside? Can you hear anything down there?’
‘Like what?’
‘Like a crowd.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Is it windy out there?’
‘What?’
‘Windy? Is there wind outside?’
‘No. It’s bloody cold and wet, but there’s no wind for once. What are you talking about?’
‘I can hear something.’ And she could. Either it was getting louder by the second or her hearing was improving. It was like a storm. Or like something really loud and far away but not tuned in properly. From beneath the door the cold air increased its force and made her take another step away.
‘Apryl? Apryl?’ She heard Miles’s little voice chirping from the phone.
‘Seth? What are you doing?’ she said at the door and repositioned the lighter before her face. It sparked but wouldn’t ignite in the draught.
‘Down here,’ a voice called from inside that room, from right behind the door. At least that’s what it sounded like. Was that Seth?
‘What?’ Quickly, desperately, her fingers scraped at the metal wheel of the lighter. She raised her phone. ‘I think I can hear someone. In this room.’
‘Apryl, you’re worrying me. What the hell is going on?’
Apryl held the lighter up. It sparked, then died. Then lit up again on the next attempt. She took a hesitant step right to the threshold of the room, the flame held up near her face. Choked by the thump of her own heart, she squinted over the lighter and decided to take a peek into the room to see what Seth was doing. It must be him in there. With someone else. Or he was talking to himself? She touched the door handle.
And the door swung open.
It had been pulled open from the other side. She sucked her breath back inside her mouth. The little flame of the lighter was extinguished, instantly, by the sudden darkness and cold that rushed out of that room. That came roaring out like a tremendous pressure forcing itself from a confined but volatile space. Yes, it was all alive in there. The air was alive and full of so many screams she lost her balance before the force of it all.
The thin light from the landing was doused and all definition from everything in her line of vision – the dirty wallpaper, the vague suggestion of a ceiling, the cornice – vanished. All gone. Eclipsed by something so dense and black only her sense of temperature remained.
As Seth came out of there, fleeing right out of forever, her hair plastered itself against her skull and her eyelids trembled in the sudden punch of an arctic wind. And with him came a slipstream of howls so wretched and frantic she was forced to add her own long scream. But at the very least, hers came from a living mouth.