by Greg James
Now all he needed to do was find the house.
*
It was the only house with a light on. Though light was doing the illumination a favour - it was a dim burning that flickered through heavy curtains drawn across the ground floor windows. The glow it cast was such a subdued amber that Adam might have passed the property by if not for his meticulous counting of the houses as he made his way along Ashton Road. It was No. 53.
Adam walked down the short path to the front door. Something cracked and crunched under his shoe. Swearing, he lifted his foot and examined what was there. Something like a cockroach - a large, lean, dirt-brown specimen. Its shell split neatly in two making it appear as if it had been cut in half. He swept it off the path with his shoe and went on to the front door. Raising his hand to knock, he found the door retreating from him. It opened inwards and he was staring at a girl not much older than he was; scrawny and underfed with her collarbones showing through tightly-stretched, sallow skin. Her clothes were shapeless, beige and drab though he was not sure if they might have been white at one time, months or years ago. Her pupils were dilated holes and her thin jaw worked uneasily as she ground a nervous tension out with her brown teeth. He could not see track-marks along her bare arms though and there was something else - her abdomen was swollen. He thought he saw a bulge or a twitch there as the long seconds passed between them. Baby will be here soon, he thought, very soon.
“Can I help you?” Her tone was as dead and listless as her eyes.
“Yes, my name's Adam. I'm a student. Here to see the room.”
“The room. Yes. The room. Come with me. Follow.” She turned down the dismal hall and Adam followed, taking care to close the door behind him. As he shut out the night, he felt his shoulders ease and a feeling left him. One that had been with him since he disembarked from the bus. A feeling of being observed. The girl was waiting for him at the bottom of the uncarpeted stairs. She led the way up, Adam finding himself hopelessly hypnotised by the heavy motion of her engorged abdomen. Despite the encroaching shadows and gloom, he was sure he saw yet more bulges and twitching, even an uncanny rippling of the flesh there. Something in the nature of the motion made him taste bile in the back of his throat.
She stood waiting by the door of the room as he looked around. It was an attic, or it had been. The owner had simply cleared it out and dumped an array of mismatched furniture in there; a threadbare armchair, a bedstead with a rather limp mattress, a leaning cupboard and a chipboard bookcase with cracked rear-panels and a few old books lying on it. The attic had not been cleaned so the windows set into the gable were curtained by cobwebs alone. He went up to the windows, smearing the glass as clean as he could with his fingers. Looking outside, he took in the view it afforded. Adam blew out a breath and scratched at the back of his neck. “Make the best of things ... “
He turned to the girl, she had not spoken a word whilst he made his way around the room, and said, “I'll take it.”
*
Adam moved his possessions in a week later and spent the weekend scrubbing and cleaning the attic until it was habitable enough. From the slanted windows, shaped in that way by the angle of the gables, he could see out across the district and the sight of it produced an aching in his chest. Sheets hung fluttering in dark, empty windows. Collapsed slate roofs gaped like toothless mouths. There was an atmosphere of such desolation about the place and yet it did not feel abandoned at all. Despite the darkness and shadows that appeared to flow and teem in each and every house, Adam Melton felt with a strange certainty he could not put a name to that there was something to the district. Something about which he was determined to find out more.
Whilst he was taking a stroll through the streets the following Friday, watching the evening sun set over the jagging line of horizon created by the many mildewed slopes of the terraced rooftops, Adam came to a house that stood open. That is its front wall, windows and doors had been torn down, leaving a gaping cavity within. There was a light in there, weak and plaintive, tempting him to investigate. Adam scratched at his neck and shoulders, feeling that strange prickling of his skin which often came over him when he was out walking in the district. There was an odour that he could not identify exuding from the cavity and, as he stepped closer, he saw there were growths of fungi and lichen spreading over the broken bricks and stone. This had been in such a state for a long, long time. And the odour was growing stronger as he came closer. A part of him screamed to go back, to get out and return to his attic flat before darkness came down; that suffocating, all-consuming darkness that seemed to not only extinguish every trace of light in the area but to negate it utterly until morning came.
Yes, I should go, he thought, but I don't want to.
The odour, he found himself drawing deep draughts of it into his lungs. It was as rich as it was rotten – a papyrus spice, a charnel balm – and he followed it to the source of the dim light that he had previously perceived in the gutted hollows of the property.
Picking his way through the debris, he found his breathing quickening and shadows seeming to start ebbing and flowing as if making way for him. The walls and ceilings seemed to fluctuate in their proximity; making the blood pound in his ears as a profound shiver of claustrophobia went right through him. He came to the light, it came from behind a door that was barely hanging from its frame. He nudged it open, just enough for him to be able to peer inside at what was taking place in this barren realm.
On the other side of the door was an empty room; decorated only by the pale patches on the peeling walls and oatmeal carpet where family pictures had hung and furniture once rested. In the centre of the room was a glass arcade booth framed with strips of battered metal patched over with rust. The ornate legend on its side had faded to swirling streaks of yellow and off-white. A papier-mâché head resided inside; plastic skull showed through where its painted flesh had given way. One white marble eyeball remained in one of the sockets. The other was vacant – a dirty hole. A straw Kiss Me Quick was set atop the head at a jaunty angle. Once the head had worn a jolly smile, now the smile had worn away to become something brutish, colder and emptier. There was a big red button of chipped wood mounted on the front of the booth. There was a slot below where the fortune would be dispensed into.
Adam didn’t want to press the button. Perhaps, he could just leave this scene and go through – ignore temptation. He stepped away. The room rustled. Movement surged underneath his feet; the carpet undulating like disturbed water. It unbalanced him. He lost his footing and had to grab at the cabinet to steady himself; the heel of his hand fell and depressed the red button.
A slow, ponderous recording began; a choking followed by a staccato phlegm-flecked cackle, the asthmatic whistling of an old man’s breath, then it stopped – silence. The lone plastic eye lit up, flickered went dark again. The insides of the cabinet whirred, wittered and clicked; something popped out in the slot below. The empty, ridged shell of a large cockroach-like insect split neatly in two. Adam picked it up, looked at it, how it glistened, let it fall to the floor and trod on it hard. The sound of the shell shattering under his foot was answered by the room rustling once more – and an intense wordless chattering that came from all around surged over him, turning everything black.
*
Adam awoke in his attic room, struggling, stripping the sheets away from his body then tearing off his pyjamas to scratch at his skin. Moonlight bathed him and showed that his flesh was bare and that there was nothing to fear. His mouth tasted bad as if he had swallowed something harsh and bitter. He was alone in the dingy, dark room. Still shaking, he got to his feet and padded across to the windows that looked out across the district. Out there, he saw some lights burning in the upper stories of a handful of houses. One of these was in Ashton Road and at a right angle across the road from him.
A soiled sheet hung as a substitute curtain across the open space of the window so he could only see the distorted shapes of silhouettes through it. Sinuous and stretch
ing, the forms appeared to be human enough, they reached out long, quivering fingers to a central figure who was broader and oblate. Whether this central figure was swaying naturally or because of the motion of the sheet, Adam could not tell. The swaying appeared to increase in tempo and the gestures of the long fingers matched it. Again, he thought, repeated ritualistic rhythms.
Then, the bloated figure was seized by spasms, jerking and dancing fitfully about, though the sheet over the window was now blustering in the night wind; how much of the movement was down to this Adam could not be sure. But he could see the arms and legs moving at violent angles and contorted degrees that suggested utter agony and a sure suffering. Then it fell out of sight, wires cut, shadow puppet down, the marionette extinct. It was then the wind caught at the sheet and, like a revealing hand, tore back the limp barrier and Adam saw the dismal figures standing in that room illuminated by columns of fluttering candlelight. And they were all turned about, staring out, and their eyes, shining like the shells of dead insects, were staring at him.
Adam did not remember crawling back to bed after the spectacle he saw but, in his dreams, he was sure that the clicking-chattering sounds of the district echoed through a darkness that was not the comforting darkness of sleep.
In the days that followed, no matter what he ate or drank, no matter how often he scrubbed at his teeth to the point where his gums bled, he could not shift that harsh and bitter taste that clung to the inside of his mouth. It was like times when he had been hungover from a heavy night out but that was usually dealt with by a hearty breakfast down the local greasy spoon and a pint of orange juice. This horrible and persistent flavour cut through everything no matter what he did. He suspected he was not alone in being aware of it as friends at university seemed to have a permanent grimace fixed upon their faces like a shared mask whenever they talked to him. And when the conversations ground to a halt, their speed in getting away from him was noticeable. The few young women that he had his eye on and had hoped to get to know better spurned him. Something was wrong, something he could not exactly put his finger on, and it was down to the district – and down was where he had to go late one night.
The light in his attic room went out as twilight was settling and he could see from the window that the lights were out in the other houses. It was a blackout and there was no way he was enduring a night here without any electric illumination at all. He went down the stairs to the basement; hoping to find the fusebox, wielding his torch as if its beam of light were a weapon. There was no sign of the girl who lived downstairs. He had no urge to knock on her door. The odour that marked the district was particularly ripe around the threshold to her room.
He descended to the basement and it to be occupied by the densest darkness he had yet encountered. It fought against the penetrating light of the torch, withering it down to a stub of watery brilliance. Crumbling brown debris of indeterminate nature shifted as if half-alive under Adam’s feet. A tremor passed through the ground. The disturbance was followed by far-off creaks and sighs. He paused, licking his lips. Another tremor chattered through his bones. Must be the tube underground that’s all – train going by. Nothing to worry about. He went on, one slow step at a time, until he found the fusebox, such as it was; a worm’s nest of broken switches and shredded wires, all hanging there useless. He couldn’t fix this. Adam would have to endure the night with his torch and candlelight after all. He turned around in the subterranean hole and tried to make his way back to the stairs. He couldn’t find them but he found something else: holes in the ground. Long, neat rectangles cut into the rough earth. Holes made to be occupied.
Here was the odour he knew so well. The holes exuded it and, as he looked closer, brandishing the light of his torch as a priest might a cross, he saw the bodies.
Scarified corpses, two or three in each grave; for that’s what the holes were. The torch’s light touched them – and they moved. They emitted damp, trembling sounds from lipless orifices embedded in their soft, wet, writhing flesh. Their arms were legs and legs were arms; jointed wrong with broken toes and fingers that grasped at the loamy earth of their resting places. Blind eyes nestling in their shoulders and crotches wept mildewed tears. Adam saw creeping rashes, infected burn-flesh and the heaving weight of elderly tumours. Forlorn, piebald faces lactated strings of pus and elderly rheum as they opened toothless mouths to beg and plead – only for chattering pieces of darkness to come scuttling out and make them gag on silence. In their flesh, beneath the layers of ruined burial-skin, he saw numerous black fragments surging to the surface, rising up – they were coming for him.
“Time to move out,” he breathed.
Adam dropped the torch and fled.
*
There was nowhere else to go in the city. Prices had risen as the economy sank deeper into recession and the few places he went to interview at turned him away. The same rigid mask of unease and revulsion clinging to the skin of their faces as they closed the door on him. He would wait a moment on the doorstep, listening to the muffled sound of their shocked and disgusted words. Nowhere to go but home to the district. Home to the chattering darkness and the empty houses it inhabited. No family. No friends he could call on. The streets beckoned. The university wouldn’t help. He’d told his story to them and they merely looked at him until he went away and left them in peace.
He had to go, just take his stuff and leave; find something, someone, anything, anywhere that was not there.
When he came to the door of No. 53, it was opened for him as it had been on his first visit by the girl he took to be a pregnant junkie. He had heard her shuffling and moving about downstairs in her digs on a number of occasions but he had not seen her since then. And she was different. The swell of her belly was gone entirely.
Despite everything, he smiled and asked, “How's the baby doing?”
Her dilated eyes turned towards him. Her lips parted and the teeth ground together as if preparing for speech, but nothing came out except for a low, lingering hiss and an odd, wet scraping sound. Adam smiled, uncertain, and walked around her so as to make it to the stairs. In his periphery, he noticed how her eyes followed him and how she turned, seeming to drag her feet and stumble. A child who had forgotten how their body works. A stream of drool ran out from her lips. Adam increased his pace, taking the steps of the stairs two at a time, closing his eyes at the sound he heard emanating from below, coming from her. The sound of a darkness that was not darkness, the ceaseless chatter of its penumbral ebb and flow; the voice of the district.
He grabbed what he could of his belongings and stuffed them into his rucksack. Straps over his shoulder, he made to leave when the pain first scythed through him. It travelled from his abdomen, up through his stomach and oesophagus to erupt inside his mouth. He fell to his knees, dry-heaving, gagging, feeling something come up from deep inside; tearing soft muscle, pushing out of his throat and into his mouth. He dry-heaved again and spat it out; segmented, white and writhing with a burnished pale brown knuckle for its nascent head. Pain shot through him once more but he was on his feet this time; stamping and dragging his foot through the bulbous pupa until it was a dead smear. More cramps, more aches reaching through to his bones, but he was moving now with a drunk's alacrity. The room twisting and veering on its axis around him as he battered open the door and crashed down the stairs. The pain drove through him again and again; making him stumble, stop and buckle. More bulging pupal bulbs fell down the stairs before him, robed in his phlegm, bile and blood. He came to a stop at the feet of the once-pregnant girl. She was looking up at him with those eyes of hers as she opened her mouth to show him what was inside. What might, on first sight, have appeared to be pregnancy as the pupae hatched and multiplied. What might look to be a tide of overflowing darkness and a welter of waning shadow to the uninitiated.
He saw mandibles stirring in her mouth; heard them click, chatter and call as his insides tightened and burned with the unseemly birth-pangs of their young. He understood
something of what was being said. He understood the gnawing aches would only last as long as his bones did and that his stomach would only hurt as long as they needed him to be a walking womb – a hive. After it was all over, all done; he would find his place with the other meat in one of the basement graves. There, to be digested and reborn in a darkness that was not darkness; where he would become one with the district – one with its voice.
It Follows You Home
Warm shadows of evening were gathering in the cemetery. Cheryl drew her coat tighter around her shoulders as the world began to grow dim. It wasn’t cold but it felt colder as light was gradually overtaken by darkness. The shutter of the camera clicked shut for the final time and Damon nodded at her. The shoot had come to an end. The cemetery had been a good choice and she knew Damon’s pictures would be superb, but there was still the thought she had been not been able to shake of all the dead people sleeping under her feet.
“It’s a spooky little place even in daylight, eh?” Damon said as he packed his camera and tripod away.
“You’re not kidding,” said Cheryl, “I think I had a dream about it last night.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, that the people buried here were watching us, I could hear their fingernails scratching away against the lids of their coffins and they were saying something. Something strange, I can’t remember what it was though.”
“Brrrr – that’s some imagination you’ve got on you there.”
“Well, I am a writer, Damo.”
“This is true. Maybe you want to hop in the SUV so we can get on our way. You don’t want it to follow you home.”
“What did you just say?”
“What?”
“That last bit.”
