Paper Children (Phoebe Harkness Book 3)

by James Fahy

  Above us, distantly through the ruins of the castle, I could hear the crackle-rumble of more fireworks. I switched off my torch and slipped in into my pocket, as Chase produced something from the pocket of his coat and set about fixing it to the skull-covered shelves we had just cut a hole into. It was small and electronic, with an orb-like lens.

  “What is that?”

  “Spycam,” he explained, fiddling with it until he felt it was sufficiently secure. He stepped back, drawing a small DataPad out of a pocket and flicking it on. After a moment’s twiddling, I saw the crypt, through a slight fish-eye lens, appear on his display.

  “If I’m going in there, darling, I’d like to keep one electronic eye on what may well be our only exit, wouldn’t you?”

  He followed me into the elevator, which looked old, but which was pristine and unmarked. There were only two buttons, neither of them numbered.

  “That simplifies our choices,” I said, jabbing the lower, which I assumed was the ‘down’ option.

  The doors slid smoothly shut, cutting us off firmly from the crypt, the castle and the night, and a lunge in my stomach told me we had begun to descend. The lift was almost completely silent.

  “They could at least have sprung for some elevator muzak,” Chase muttered, seemingly unconcerned as he checked his gun.

  I on the other hand, was feeling increasingly tense as the lift carried us down, away from the surface world.

  I tapped my foot a little.

  “That’s been sixty seconds,” I told him. “We’ve been falling for a minute now. I’m not sure what our drop-rate is here, but it feels like this lift is moving fast. That means wherever it’s going is pretty deep, maybe even deeper than the labyrinth tunnels you and I explored together.”

  “I do always seem to end up somewhere underground and menacing with you, Dr Harkness,” Chase teased. “You’re a terrible influence.”

  I looked sidelong at Chase. I didn’t believe that he had killed Griff and Denison. I just didn’t. I had decided to trust him out in the woods. He might be a little ‘off’ in the head, but he was resourceful and capable, alarmingly so. I was fairly certain he was on my side, or if not on it, at least not directly opposing it. But I’m a suspicious person by nature. There was still a small, cautious part of my mind that reminded me quietly that I could be wrong. I could be burrowing into the bowels of the earth with a dead man who was a killer, luring me down here for god-alone-knows why.

  But I had very few allies left. If he could help me find the missing children, or my vampire, that was enough of an alliance for me right now.

  Chapter 31

  There was eventually a lurch, and the elevator doors slid open silently before us. I was tensed, unsure what to be prepared for, but we stepped out into what looked for all the world like hospital corridors.

  Low-level lights in glass cages overhead brightened slightly as we stepped-forward, washing the unmarked corridor ahead with a wan and bleached haze. There were no doors breaking the unadorned walls, the floor was a plain, pale tile. The corridor ahead was crossed by another, headed off to both the left and right, and swinging double medical doors ahead past the junction. As subterranean secret facilities go, it was remarkably quiet.

  It felt old. Abandoned.

  “CCTV,” Chase pointed out as we stepped cautiously away from the elevator. Our footsteps echoed away from us in the silence, rolling down the empty, bare corridors.

  There were indeed corner cameras, little black glass domes fitted to the ceiling like bulging insect eyes. They looked like old tech.

  “I think maintaining the element of surprise is a little beyond us at the moment,” I said, my shoes squeaking on the tile floor as we walked the empty hall.

  It was definitely a medical facility of some kind – or had been once. It could have been a hospital at one point, except that hospitals, cheerless and functional as they are, at least are always decorated in attempts to diminish the clinical coldness inherent in their architecture. Countless posters, noticeboards and flyers tacked to the walls, decorative children’s paintings, framed photographs of calming scenes from nature. At the very least, huge information boards giving confusing information as to which wards and departments were where. But there was nothing of the sort here. No basic sign of humanity, just blank and joyless walls, not even an emergency exit sign. That was just lax health and safety in my opinion.

  We approached the four-way junction. The march of the bulbs stretched away both left and right, splitting the hallways into segments of light and dark.

  “What’s this?” Chase was looking up at the ceiling. I followed his gaze. At the intersection, there was a wide strip along the width of the roof. It looked like a slot, closed for god-knows how long.

  “Security measures,” I told him. I didn’t recognise the design, but we had similar failsafes at Blue Lab. When you work in a dangerous environment, there is usually some kind of last-ditch system. “It looks like a containment screen,” I told him. “I guess that answers my hunch. This place must have been medical use, and something potentially hazardous at one point.” I glanced back at the elevator, still open like a mechanical mouth. “Say you’re developing a new bioweapon for instance, and clumsy butterfingers drops a test-tube. Nobody wants a cloud of poison super-death getting out to the outside world, right? My guess is steel doors, or something similar, hidden up there and designed to drop, cutting off the exit.”

  “What about the people working down here?” he asked. “Seems a bit harsh, to say the least.”

  I shrugged. “My lab seals the same way. All of Blue Lab does. It’s a risk you take in this profession. They make us all sign a waiver before we can even work there.”

  We pressed on across the junction towards the corridor ahead. It looked the same all three ways, so keeping straight, for now, seemed as good an idea as any.

  “That,” Chase contemplated, “would not make for a relaxing and laid-back work environment.”

  I nodded in agreement. “True, but it does make you all kinds of careful with your test-tubes.”

  At the far end of the featureless corridor we pushed through the swinging doors, finding ourselves now at a T-junction. Further corridors stretched away in either direction. From here I could see that there were yet more corridors branching from them, intermittently further down, and doors at last, sturdy, iron-rimmed doors, punctuating the walls, each with meshed glass in circular portholes for internal windows. The corridors either side flickered into light at our motion. I heard a whisper behind us and turned, a little spooked. But the sound had only been the elevator doors, closing at the entrance. I assumed they were on a timer of some kind.

  There was lettering printed on the wall ahead. It was faded and parts of it missing altogether, but I could still make out what the word had once said, in military block lettering.

  “Seraph,” I pointed out. “We’re in the right place then. This facility must have been where the original project was run, before it all shut down when results went bad.” I glanced at Chase. “And the Cunningham Bowls dastardly duo went their separate ways. She to fake her death and go spend time in her own company in the woods, he to shiny wife number two and little Melodie.”

  “Someone’s using it again,” Chase nodded.

  “Left or right?” I wondered. “It’s not very helpful. They could at least have coloured arrows on the floor or something. We have no idea how big this place is, and we certainly don’t have time to wander around aimlessly all night down here. This place could be a maze.”

  “I found myself within a forest dark, for the straight path had been lost,” Chase murmured in the silence of the oppressive blank corridors, looking up and down thoughtfully.

  “Did you just quote Dante at me?” I raised my eyebrows. He smiled.

  “Suitable though? For a guy back from the dead descending into deep dark secret places. I think Dante suits me.”

  I shook my head. “I never would have taken you for a man of cultu
re, Chase Pargate.”

  “For she doth make my veins and pulses tremble,” he purred suggestively. Then sniggered and elbowed me in the ribs.

  “I think we should split up,” I said. “I’ll go left.” I checked my phone. “I have signal here. They must be using the same sub-boosters we use underground at Blue Lab. Call me if you find… anything.” I had no idea what we were hoping to find.

  I noticed his expression. “Yes… yes, I know,” I sighed. “I’ve seen plenty of movies too. ‘Let’s split up’ is as bad as ‘I’ll be right back’, but I’m a big girl and you’re a big boy. We can look after ourselves, right? We’re on something of a time issue here.”

  “Darling, you were cramping my style anyway,” he winked. “Text me if you come across people Giger-ed into the walls birthing xenomorphs or any such larks, I’d hate to miss out.”

  He set off to the right, gun down at his side, at a brisk and carefree trot, his coat flapping around behind him. I watched him go, the power-walking dead.

  Once he had disappeared around a corner and was out of sight, I set off to the left. It was much creepier than I had anticipated being suddenly alone down here. There was a soft background hum, which I assumed was the sound of the generators powering the lights, but otherwise, only the hushed shuffle of my own shoes. Hospitals are never silent. Blue Lab is never silent. There’s always machinery, equipment bleeping and beeping, the music of medical science threading its thin and unobtrusive symphony through the air. But down here I felt muffled, as though I could hear my own heartbeat. I tried a couple of the doors as I passed them, but they were all locked, rattling slightly in their frames and unyielding to my shoulder-barges. Even cupping my hands around my face and peering through the small glass portholes, there was little I could see beyond. The rooms within must have been working on motion-sensitive lights too, and in their stillness they were dark and silent as tombs.

  I pressed on. Another corridor and identical double-doors later I finally came to a stairwell, mesh-metal steps leading downwards into darkness. Down another level of hell then.

  My feet clanked loudly on the steps, echoing horribly as I descended. The lights in this stairwell were clearly not motion-sensored like the floor above and I was unable to find a switch, so I pulled out my torch and flicked it on, making the shadows leap and dance around the walls as they shone through the skeletal framework of the metal.

  The next floor spilled me out into another, deeper corridor. Similar to the floor above, though the spaces were narrower down here, and looked more industrial than medical. Long pipes clustered on the ceiling ran off in either direction into darkness. The corridor was lit, but very dimly, with low-watt bulbs spaced along the walls at intervals which personally I considered simply inconvenient. Choosing left at random, I picked my way along quietly, keeping my torch on. It wasn’t really dark enough to need it, but I found its scouring of shadows here and there reassuring in a childish way. I dialled Chase as I walked.

  “I’ve gone down a floor,” I told him. “Nothing yet. Gloomy industrial nightmare down here. Anything your end?”

  His voice was worryingly crackly and distant in my ear. “Not much. It’s like a rat-run here. But I’ve just found what looks to be administration offices. Just busying myself jimmying the lock as we speak. Kind of need two hands for that, sweetie.”

  “I haven’t seen anyone down here at all,” I frowned, aware that I was whispering without meaning to. I forced myself to talk at normal volume, the way one whistles walking through graveyards to prove to yourself you’re not afraid. Every few steps I took though I couldn’t help looking back over my shoulder into darkness, just to check. “Maybe this place is really abandoned, and we’re barking up the wrong tree? There must be hundreds of facilities decommissioned all over the place after all.”

  “Keep your eyes peeled.” Chase’s voice sounded tinny in the air around me. “My zombie-senses are tingling, Doctor. There’s mischief afoot down here, I know it.”

  “There are no such things as zombie-senses,” I said. “You are a hopeless mental-case, Pargate.”

  I heard a loud click and a soft whoop of celebration through the phone.

  “Well I’m in, and no alarms have gone off, and I haven’t set off any blowdart traps,” he replied. “I’m going to snoop around up here, call me back if you find anything down in the haunted basement of this… haunted basement.”

  He hung up without further ado.

  I continued along the corridor. The facility did seem utterly disused. My flashlight roved over occasional institutional detritus as I picked my way along. Other dark tunnels branching off here and there from this one. A medical gurney on its side, wheeled legs sticking out making it look like some spiky, oversized, dead insect. A wheelchair, left abandoned and askew. I skirted my way around it, glaring at it suspiciously in case it decided to move at the last second of its own accord. I’d seen far too many ‘haunted asylum’ movies. It didn’t move of course. It just sat there, being all kinds of sinister all on its own without any need from special effects.

  Motion at the corner of my vision made me snap my head back up. I shone my light down the corridor. There was an intersection ahead, the portal to the adjoining corridors masked at the junction by slatted plastic hangings, and something or someone had just run across it, swift and silent. A small, fleet shadow in the dark.

  I stared for several seconds, frozen in place and feeling the hairs all along the back of my neck and arms standing on end.

  “Absolutely and utterly fuck this completely,” I whispered to myself. I pushed on, passing through the slatted plastic with a rustle. There was no-one to be seen in either direction of the intersection. The thing I had thought I’d seen, it had looked small enough to be a child.

  I knew I was here potentially looking for children, but it’s one thing to say that in broad daylight and quite another to be deep underground in a silent and dimly lit maze of industrial corridors, seeing them running around silently. I had zero tolerance for any of this Silent Hill bullshit.

  “Hey!” I yelled. My voice echoed back from both directions. “I saw you, so come out! I’m not here to hurt you, I’m here to get you home.”

  And hopefully you’re not here to hurt me either, I added mentally. There was no response from either direction for several seconds, and then, almost inaudible but whispered as though directly into my ear, I heard my own name.

  I didn’t quite jump out of my skin, of which I am very proud, but I did do the same kind of just-walked-through-a spiderweb dance, spinning in all directions, my jittering flashlight making the shadows leap and dance wildly. I was convinced there was someone standing right next to me. There wasn’t. I was completely alone.

  I strained to listen again, feeling only my heart pounding loudly, and some soft rattling from the overhead pipes.

  “Phoebe.”

  I swung my torch down the corridor. I had definitely heard it this time, no imagining. But it had sounded very far off. I let out a shuddering breath.

  I set off in the direction I’d thought it had come from. Someone was down here, somewhere. I was convinced of it.

  *

  I finally found someone down here in the dark. A lot of someones. But they were not children, and they were not my vampire.

  Having descended yet another twisting stairwell, emerging into a further floor of dark and chilly hallways, I passed one wide corridor, the left hand side of which was studded with five large, reinforced doors. Each had a bulb above it, encased in a steel cage. They glowed a steady red, dull bloodlight. All the doors contained a small oblong window, across which was pulled a metal cover. They looked like cells.

  “Chase,” I managed to get him on the phone, but the line was cracklier still. “There’s something down here…”

  “There’s something up here too,” I heard him say faintly drifting in and out of static. “Coldwater is definitely the one playing mad scientist down here. Like we suspected. I found an office she
’s been using. There are notes everywhere on Seraph. On experiments. Involving the Pale, GOs… I know it’s her. There are coffee cups everywhere. What have you got?”

  I tentatively grasped the cover of the slot in the first door and pulled it aside with a squeak of metal. It was an observation slot, no larger than a letterbox.

  Pressing my eyes to the thick glass filling the slot, I peered within.

  “Holding cells,” I said, aware that my voice sounded shaky. “Like big pens.” Shadows moved inside the large room behind the reinforced door.

  “Lost girls?”

  “No,” I whispered, as quietly as I could. “Really really no.”

  The black, lightless cell I was peering into was large. There were at least ten moving figures inside. I couldn’t hear them at all. The room must be soundproofed, but even with the darkness, I could see them moving… a lot. They were packed in like sardines, and they were thrashing against one another, ricocheting off the walls. Constant, jittering fittish movement. Even in the dark I knew what they were. I could tell just by how they moved, how they threw themselves around with blind and angry force. Mindless. Restless. And very very angry.

  I closed the slot quickly, before one of they could spot me spying in on them and rush the door. Before the small observation window was filled with wild eyes and gnashing, snapping teeth. I took a stumbling step backwards.

  “Pale,” I hissed into the phone. “There are Pale down here. Fuck, Chase. There are…” I glanced at the other doors. Four more cells. “…there are lots of them. Coldwater is keeping a fuckton of Pale down here. They’re contained… but they’re pissed.”

  “Be careful,” he said. “Don’t open any doors you shouldn’t. I’ll make my way down there soon.”

  I hung up. Carefully I checked the other four holding pens in the same manner. Sliding back the observation slots as quietly and slowly as I dared. I didn’t want to draw the attention of the monsters howling silently and crashing against the walls of their cramped prisons if I could avoid it. But I had to check. One of these rooms could have held stolen girls instead of naked, emaciated rage-zombies.