The Eleventh Floor

by Shani Struthers

  Your soul, Caroline, he wants your soul!

  Finally, she tried to push him away but it was no use, he held her fast. And that smell. It was as fierce as he was, coating skin, blood, and sinew, drenching her.

  She couldn’t do this. She didn’t want to. It was a violation, a betrayal. Tallula might be rejoicing in what was happening, but David would not forgive her again.

  His memory gave her the strength she needed. She pushed harder, managed to dislodge him. “NO!” she shouted. “Get off me!”

  “Sweet Caroline,” he murmured, his eyes still half closed. “Diseased Caroline.”

  She inhaled. She didn’t want this again either. “Just… fuck off will you. Fuck off.”

  Her protestations caused both of them to laugh louder, to howl with laughter.

  “Oh, Caroline, first your father, then your mother, and now you…” His eyes widening with fake sympathy, he added, “Oh, I’m sorry. You didn’t know, did you? You had no idea.”

  “How…? How can you say such things? You didn’t know my parents, or what happened to them!”

  “Caroline, I know everything. I know about you and David too. Are you really going to inflict yourself upon him now that I’ve made you aware of what a burden you’d be?”

  Not laughing anymore, Tallula was sneering instead. “Selfish bitch.”

  Caroline took a step back towards the door. “You’re evil, the pair of you.”

  “Hey, where ya going, baby girl?” Tallula’s voice had changed, no longer the polished accent of a college girl, it had a Southern tinge to it, similar to John’s. “Out into the void? Dontcha think you’re safer with us? Edward’s the one to keep us safe. Althea can’t, she’s too old. She’s good for nothing. She should admit defeat. We’re in control now. Edward will take you under his wing – even you, Caroline – poor, diseased you. Especially you.”

  Against the door, Caroline opened her mouth to scream, but there was no sound, just that song playing on a loop in her head, the distorted version – a song she used to love but which she hated with a passion now, that used to be so special to her, but had since been corrupted, with their laughter, their crowing, accompanying it. If anyone was diseased, it was these two. Their minds beyond help.

  She closed her eyes, trying to hide in that way at least. She simply couldn’t stare at them any longer – endure such cruelty.

  “Caroline, Caroline…”

  Which one of them was calling her now?

  “Caroline, Caroline.”

  She wouldn’t answer. She wouldn’t!

  “Caroline, wake up.”

  Why? To listen to more of their lies?

  “Caroline, please, you have to wake up.”

  But if she did, if this was another nightmare, would it make them disappear?

  She took a chance and opened her eyes.

  “David?”

  “Caroline.”

  “Oh, thank God!” Leaning forward, she grabbed him, checking that he was solid, that he was made of flesh and bone. “You’re here, you’re really here!”

  “You fell asleep.”

  “Asleep?” Relief surged through her. “Edward and Tallula aren’t with you, are they?”

  “Edward and…? No, no, of course not.”

  “Why’s it so dark? I can barely make you out.”

  “The electricity has gone out, nothing’s working.” He swallowed, clearly unnerved by it. “I came here as soon as I could. I took the stairs, raced up them.”

  “Where were you while I was with Althea?” At the mention of her name, a memory stirred: the point of her visit to 1110 earlier. “Helen did come to The Egress, David, your hunch was right! Her name is in a ledger that Althea keeps; our names are too. Some have ticks beside them, and some don’t. What does it mean? What does it all mean?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know, Caroline, I’m sorry… not yet. But there’s something else… a more immediate problem.”

  “More immediate?” Christ, didn’t they have enough to deal with?

  “I went to check on Elspeth, that’s where I was.”

  “Why?”

  “I was… worried about her. I had another hunch…”

  Still she was confused. “About what?”

  His grip as hard as hers, he moved his face even closer. “She’s gone, Caroline.”

  “What?”

  “Her body’s gone. Somebody went in there and moved her.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  It took a few moments for David’s words to sink in. Elspeth’s body had been moved? Why? For what purpose?

  David’s unease increased. “I don’t understand,” he kept muttering. “I just don’t understand.”

  “Tell me again, exactly what happened. Don’t miss anything out.”

  “I have told you, Caroline. I went to the room we laid Elspeth in, as I approached I could see that the door was open – not just a little bit, it was wide open. I’ve still got the key Raquel gave me, she never asked for it back, and obviously there’s a master, although who has that I don’t know. Anyway, I went in, straight to the bed, and there was no body. There wasn’t even an indentation where her body had been. The sheets and the bedspread were perfectly smooth. Almost as if… as if she’d never been there.”

  “Could the emergency services have got through? Did they remove her?”

  “If that was the case, I would have seen something. We were in the lobby before, both of us. You went upstairs to go and see Althea; I went to check on Elspeth. As soon as I found out she was missing, I went back to the lobby to ask Raquel about it. I searched everywhere, but no one was around, and I mean no one, not a living soul. There are no tire tracks in the snow either. I then went to several other floors, and knocked on doors, trying to find someone I could speak to. Still nothing. That’s when the electricity failed.”

  Caroline could feel the colour draining from her cheeks. “Elspeth was in room 409, wasn’t she?”

  “Yeah…so?” And then her meaning dawned. “Caroline, we have to stay rational.”

  “Rational? Something’s going on here, something macabre. I don’t pretend to understand what, not yet, but we need to make sense of this. The first thing we do is go to Althea’s and demand that she tells us the truth. We refuse to take no for an answer. I’m sick of this game, if that’s what it is. It feels like everyone’s toying with us.”

  David’s voice was uncharacteristically low. “What if we’re better off not knowing?”

  “There’s no bliss in ignorance, David. Not anymore.”

  Standing up, she took her phone from her pocket and scrutinised it. Surprise, surprise, there was no return message from Violet, no Wi-Fi, nothing. If she made a call, she’d bet it would prove fruitless too. “David, have you got your phone with you?” He nodded that he had. “Can you get Wi-Fi?”

  “Wi-Fi?”

  “Please, just humour me.”

  Withdrawing his phone too, he did as she asked. “Yeah… there you go. Damn! There’s no juice left in it, sorry. What did you want me to look up?”

  “No… I… It doesn’t matter. There’s battery left in mine, we can use it as a torch at least. You know, a flashlight.”

  “Good thinking.”

  Shining it in front of them, they made their way to the door. As imperative as it might be to find out what was going on, it was a struggle to leave 1106, and the memories – the good memories – that it had spawned. Several times she was tempted to rush back, to close the door, to stay put, but she forced herself onwards.

  The corridor wasn’t completely dark, emergency lights were operating at least, their red glow making her think of devils. Glancing fearfully around, she was relieved to see no shadows of substance, that the way ahead was clear. Hand in hand, they walked to the corner suite and knocked on the door. Like the first time she’d tried, there was no reply.

  “Try the handle,” she urged, but it was no use. “She’s gone again,” Caroline muttered, even though in her head she
could hear Althea, I’m always here.

  “Let’s try the other rooms,” David suggested.

  Standing outside 1109, David knocked first. When there was no response, he tried that handle too. The door swung open and he glanced briefly at Caroline before entering.

  “Hello, hello,” he called out. “Is there anyone here? Are you okay?”

  The light from Caroline’s mobile revealed there was no one lurking, but the room was an unholy mess. Furniture had been upturned, as if in upset or temper, and so much paper littered the floor, covering whatever carpeting there was. Empty bottles too – there were dozens of them, whiskey, bourbon, and vodka, all cheap brands with garish labels. She trod on one and nearly lost her footing. David reached out a hand to steady her.

  “What’s happened here?” Caroline’s eyes were wide as she stared.

  David bent down, retrieved a piece of paper, read it, and then discarded it, repeating the process several times.

  “What is it?” Caroline asked. “What do they say?”

  “They’re just… ramblings. I can’t make out much of it, not without proper lighting, but the word ‘sorry’, that’s easy enough to read, it’s been written over and over again.”

  Caroline bent too. He was right, it was written in big letters, small letters, capitals, plus heavy-handed scrawls that had ripped the paper beneath.

  David took the phone from Caroline and shone it at the sideboard. “Look,” he said.

  She did as directed and gasped. Into the wood of the sideboard ‘sorry’ had also been written, each letter that was gouged the product of a tortured mind.

  “Whose room is this?” she asked.

  “No idea. Have you never seen anyone using it?”

  She shook her head.

  David stood up. “Let’s check the others.”

  All further doors yielded and all rooms were empty of inhabitants. In Tallula’s room, there was barely any furniture; it was stark, just like the woman herself, nothing personal, no warmth to it at all. In the bedroom, heavily starched sheets covered the mattress, crisp to the touch, and on the dressing table not a single cosmetic or perfume bottle resided, only the welcome letter, ripped to shreds and scattered like confetti.

  Marilyn’s room was next; a room with floral wallpaper and a patterned carpet. A special room, unique, reflective of the homely type of woman Marilyn was. However, it was none of that now. It was in as much chaos as 1109. Letters, photos, and clothes, not just female but male too, had been seemingly tossed in the air and left to lie wherever they fell. At the window, one curtain was hanging off its track, at another the curtains had been torn down completely. A teapot – it had to be the same one that Marilyn had poured from – was lying in pieces on the floor, broken cups and saucers beside it. The most ghoulish find of all was in the bedroom – a sheet ripped from the bed, knotted in several places, and then slung over the light fitting, the end looped to resemble a hangman’s noose.

  All too keenly Caroline could feel the pain, the anguish that still lingered, in here and in 1109. Still in Marilyn’s bedroom, she felt compelled to lay one hand against a pillow. It was wet, as if a thousand tears had rained down upon it. They probably had.

  “It’s Elspeth’s room next,” David said, from his position elsewhere in the room. With no emergency lighting in the rooms, only in the corridors, she couldn’t make out the expression on his face, but his voice was bleak enough.

  She walked over to join him. “We know what it’s like in there. It’s chaos too.”

  “Even so, we should check, just in case.”

  “She’s not in there, David.”

  “Caroline…”

  She nodded, finally agreeing.

  If only it had been in chaos, that would have been more fitting. Instead, there was nothing in it, no carpet on the floor, no curtains at the window, and not one stick of furniture. It had all been spirited away as Elspeth herself had been. Erased.

  David was as aghast as she was, but he was something more… distraught.

  “What was it about Elspeth? Tell me,” she whispered, her hands going around his waist.

  He was clearly finding it difficult to speak. “It was… She reminded me of someone – a kid I used to know at school, one that… well, one that was as vulnerable as she was, who might have ended up the same way, as damaged, as drug-dependent, if she’d lived.”

  “Elspeth wasn’t a kid though.”

  “But she was, deep down. You remember all those photos that she tore up, the one that she was holding in her hand the first night she went wild? Those were all of Elspeth as a kid, a happy kid, with the sassiest grin. But then something happened; I don’t know what it was, I could never get her to say. It could be she had a tough time during adolescence. Whatever it was, it caused her to shut down, in mind at least, if not in body.”

  “Oh, David.” His words, his understanding, reinforced what she already knew. “I love you.”

  He hugged her, as tightly – as desperately – as she was hugging him. “I love you too, Caroline.”

  In amidst the carnage it wasn’t a perfect moment, but it should have been.

  “Caroline—”

  “David, you’re shivering.” He was, violently.

  “I was going to say, I don’t feel so good.”

  He was damp too, as though a fever was burning right through him.

  “Hey,” he said, noticing the worry in her eyes as she reared back to look at him. “It’s okay, I’ll be okay if you just hold me.”

  She’d said something similar to him once – was it really just a day or two ago?

  Returning to the circle of his arm, she breathed, “I never want to let you go.”

  “Fine with me.”

  Tears formed, threatening to blind her.

  “Let’s just… keep in mind what we’ve found,” she continued. “The good stuff I mean, none of the bad. It was at The Egress that we met each other.”

  And whatever happened next, she’d always be grateful for that.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  They had to return to the lobby.

  “That’s where everyone will be,” Caroline said, remembering Althea’s words earlier, her insistence that she come to dinner. “They’ll be waiting for us in the ballroom.”

  As she extricated herself from him, he staggered slightly, his breathing laboured too.

  “Can you manage the stairs?” she asked.

  “Yeah, it’ll be fine.”

  “It’s just the elevator…”

  “I don’t think it’s working anyway. There seems to be no back-up generator.”

  Negotiating the corridor yet again, Caroline kept her head low rather than look ahead, focussing on their progress step by step. Soon enough they reached the stairwell. A few times she was sure she heard the sound of shuffling, or a chair being dragged along the floor. She furrowed her eyebrows. Was that laughter again, tinkling laughter? Whatever the sounds were – and David seemed oblivious to them – she refused to let them distract her. Being on the eleventh floor was sapping David’s energy, and, with only the light from her mobile to guide them, progress was slow on the stairs. Nonetheless, the more distance they put between them and the uppermost level, the more David rallied. He wasn’t leaning on her as much, his breathing was better, and he didn’t feel so hot to the touch.

  “That’s it, you’re doing well, really well. Not far to go now.”

  Methodically she counted down the floors. The only thing that waited for them as they rounded each corner was silence.

  “We’ll be there soon,” she murmured.

  At the bottom, they pushed through the doors and into the lobby. It was dark and it certainly felt empty. But they must be here, the others. Where else was there to go?

  Feeling David hesitate, she urged him onwards. “We have to, don’t you see?”

  “Caroline.” He was a strong man but there was a tremor in his voice. “Just wait.”

  “But—”

  “P
lease.”

  Once again he drew her into his arms, his lips in the darkness seeking hers. She was surprised at first, but then relaxed into it. It was so different to Edward’s kiss, infinitely sweeter, provoking not a rush of fear but tenderness in her, once an alien emotion, but now so wonderfully familiar. But there was something that wasn’t so sweet about it – an air of finality. As much as she wanted the kiss to last forever, she had to reassure him.

  “David—”

  “SURPRISE!”

  Before Caroline could say another word, both of them turned their heads in the direction of the person who had yelled out – a female, with such delight in her voice, cruel delight. It was Tallula, of course. Having pulled the ballroom doors open, she was standing in between them, still clutching at the handles, staring at them as they were staring at her.

  “We’ve been waiting,” she declared. “What took you so long?”

  Behind Tallula, other figures began to congregate, not shadows or shapes, although there were plenty of those too, hovering in the background. The people were figures she recognised: Edward, Althea, Jenna, Marilyn, John, Raquel, and Tom – they were all there. Not shrouded in darkness, there was a soft glow that made each of them perfectly distinguishable, the result of dozens of candles that had been lit and placed around the ballroom, romanticising the scene when truly there was nothing romantic about it.

  “Come in,” Tallula urged. “It’s rude to keep us waiting.” She bellowed with laughter, a sound that made Caroline wince. “You two can’t smooch out there all night, you know.”

  “Edward.” Althea’s voice was tight. “This infernal teasing achieves nothing.”

  Edward sauntered forward, wearing that smile of his, the one that Caroline had come to detest, that she’d like to wipe from his face; to erase it as Elspeth had been erased. He cupped a hand to his ear. “Sorry, Caroline, did I hear right? You’re thinking of Elspeth?”