Bleeker Hill

by Russell Mardell

  ‘Just how big a fool do you take me for? Need I remind you that you’re talking about a friend of mine? You calling my friend a crackpot, is that it? Is that what you’re doing?’

  ‘I’m telling you what I know.’

  ‘I think you’re trying to feed me a pack of lies to cover up whatever you’ve done here. That’s what I think. You know what else? If I find out that you had a hand in what happened to my friend then I will see that the same thing happens to you. Because you know what, Mia, we haven’t yet lost our way, not completely. We can still make people pay for the bad that they do.’

  ‘Stop it…let her talk.’ Davenport’s voice was faltering, frightened and weak. He was looking at Mia yet somehow looking through her. ‘Mia, please, please continue. You took Wallace’s clothes, right?’

  ‘I was trapped in that damn forest and I wasn’t going to freeze to death. Yeah, I took his clothes. Of course I did.’

  ‘And you got away on the snowplough?’

  ‘I took it as far as I could. It bucked from under me and hit a tree. I tried to get off the hill. Get out of the forest. I went a little further each day, I got to the edge of the valley eventually, but I knew people were on their way. If I could just wait, stay hidden…’

  ‘You thought they would come and rescue you?’ Kendrick returned with a sneer. ‘Is that what you thought, Mia?’

  ‘I thought they would take me out of here. Yes. I hoped…’

  ‘That they would believe in ghosts?’

  She looked away from him, gazing absently into the room, shaking her head. ‘You really have no idea, Mr Kendrick. None of you do.’

  ‘Well I’m all ears, dear. Tell me. Tell us all. I’m sure we will all be riveted.’ Kendrick waved his hand around again in front of her face, the vulgar watch waggling on his wrist and turning itself around. ‘Go on then, get on with it.’

  ‘The first thing I remember I was lying across the front seats of the truck and someone had come in. I felt them leaning over me, pressing into me. I thought it was…’ she had meant to mention her father but instead just flicked a hand out, hoping that would do. ‘I could feel them breathing in my ear. We lay there for a while. I don’t know how long. Time didn’t seem to stick. Didn’t seem to work. I was in and out of sleep, I couldn’t move, I felt like I was made of lead. You know…then, well…’ She reached for her sleeve again and tugged at it once before shrugging. ‘You don’t want to hear any of this…’

  Kendrick leant forward again, delivering curt words on stinking breath. ‘I’m fascinated, Mia. Truly.’

  Davenport, his professional façade tentatively regained, puffed his chest out and then gently ran a hand through Mia’s hair. ‘Carry on, Mia. Tell us what happened.’ He smiled his well-rehearsed smile and then wiped his hand slowly down one trouser leg.

  ‘I was jolted awake. The front cab of the truck was bouncing, rocking, getting colder. I felt like I was in the middle of a block of ice. I could feel that breath in my ear, at my mouth, all over me. Then my arm…it pulled my sleeve up and then…’ she looked to Kendrick, waited for him to jump in, to pounce on her words but Davenport was moving in front of her, blocking Kendrick off, encouraging her on.

  ‘It’s okay, Mia,’ Davenport said gently.

  She took a breath and held it, and then as she released it there came a small laugh, like an old memory, trapped inside her. ‘There was no one else in the cab. I was alone. The doors were locked from the inside. The tailgate was up. There was nothing. There was no one there.’

  ‘A dream,’ Kendrick said blandly, shrugging his shoulders.

  ‘No!’ Mia snapped. ‘No, it wasn’t.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I couldn’t open the doors in the cab. They seemed to be…the locks seemed to be frozen. Maybe the cold had…I don’t know…I climbed into the back and got out over the tailgate. It was so cold. It was horrible. The front door to the house was open but I couldn’t find anyone there. I called. I shouted. No one came. I called for my father but…’ Mia’s words tailed off to a whisper and she seemed to be lost in a thought, turning something over in her mind. ‘You know, it was the weirdest thing…there were these two paraffin lamps either side of the front door and I swear they lit themselves as I walked in.’ She paused, waiting for more sneers or laughter, but nothing came. She went on: ‘Then…it was strange…time seemed to…it seemed to stop. That is the only way I can explain it. I wandered that whole house, went in every room from the kitchen to the attic and yet somehow I didn’t leave the entrance hall. It was like…’

  ‘A dream.’

  ‘Like my mind was in someone else. My body stayed still but my mind took off, carried away in a separate person, walking the halls and wandering from room to room. I could smell everything, the damp in the hallway to the musty staleness in the attic, yet I didn’t move. Not an inch. Finally, I went into the kitchen. I remember doing that. I know I did. A meal was prepared and set out on the table. I was so hungry, famished, I hadn’t eaten in days.’

  She kept her head bowed, staring down at her battered trainers dangling above the floor, turning them inwards and delicately bouncing the ends together. She waited. She was convinced that someone, perhaps Kendrick, or more likely Maddox, would suddenly erupt into peels of uncontrollable hysterics, but for a minute or two no one said anything. Were it not for the delicate whispered breath of the air conditioner, she would have sworn that she had actually slipped into a dream.

  ‘What of the food? Were any supplies ever brought in? Food, ammo, anything?’

  ‘I don’t see how they could have been. I didn’t see any. I don’t know. When I escaped I took what I could. Just one pack, just what Finn gave me. There wasn’t much. Ammo I don’t know about. I had the pistol. I didn’t even want that.’

  ‘We have no food?’ Turtle suddenly shouted from the other side of the room, but no one was listening to him, he was merely articulating the question they were all asking in their minds, the one question no one else felt the need to vocalise. ‘No food or ammo? Are you kidding me?’

  She looked up and took in each man’s identical expression. Far from laughing, they looked horrified. Davenport was playing nervously with his fingers again, looking away, staring at the wall. Maddox’s eyes were flaring, the piercing blue diluting. Kendrick’s face seemed to have drained of colour, yet he hadn’t lost the anger, it was just there under the surface. His waving hand came again, this time a little slower, a little unsure.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I kept calling for someone, I kept shouting but no one came. I went out of the back of the house and shouted across the grounds. Nothing. Then I saw…the door here was open.’ She shrugged. ‘I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything. I saw blood in the snow. Then I saw Connor. I don’t know what happened to him, I swear I don’t.’

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘There were bodies in the pen too. Lots of them all in a heap…’ A hand went to her mouth, the index finger rubbing along the lips, the teeth chewing on the skin next to the nail. ‘I had never seen a dead body before coming here. I honestly hadn’t. They looked so peaceful. I remember thinking they looked happy. Is that weird?’

  No response. Vacant looks. Scared eyes.

  ‘They were from the Wash, right? Experiments. Your guinea pigs?’

  Davenport gave Kendrick and Sullivan a sideways glance before confirming it with a slow nod.

  ‘Well, it was a massacre, Mr Davenport. One body was missing a leg, another one an arm. There was a woman that had got caught on the barbed wire, trying to escape. She was riddled with bullet holes. Torn through with them. Yet she looked so pretty, so peaceful. What’s going to happen to them, Mr Davenport? What will you do about them?’

  ‘The Party will see to it. I promise they will. They will receive a proper burial.’ Davenport seemed to retch and held a steadying hand out to the wall. ‘When the Party arrive it will all be okay.’

  ‘The Party loves everyone,’ she said mockingly, biting off a
bit of skin from her finger and spitting it to the floor.

  ‘That’s right, Mia.’

  ‘And they loved those poor people too?’

  ‘You are tasked with saving this country, what would you do, Mia?’ Kendrick asked. ‘You have no idea the challenges we have faced trying to create a new world. No idea.’

  ‘Cure violence with violence? Doesn’t sound much like a new world to me.’

  ‘Sometimes it takes a lunatic to change the world, Mia,’ Kendrick said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

  ‘Or to break it,’ Mia returned.

  ‘Semantics.’

  ‘What about your father, Mia?’ Davenport asked. ‘What about Lucas?’

  Mia fell silent and dropped her head, hiding behind her greasy hair. Her trainers banged together once and then were still. A sound escaped her throat, a squeak, and then she was quiet again, her body hunching over as her arms hugged against her chest. Sullivan walked behind her and then jumped up on the gurney, shuffling over to her side. She didn’t jump, didn’t move, and didn’t even seem to notice him.

  ‘So you came in here, what then?’ Sullivan’s words were gentle and calm. Fatherly. In front of her Kendrick was snapping his fingers, jigging about on the spot like a petulant teen having a tantrum. Sullivan reached down and moved Mia’s face up to him, leaving the hand long enough for the coldness at her skin to cool his fingers. ‘What then, Mia?’

  ‘You have such a sad face, Sullivan.’

  ‘Mia, tell me what happened.’

  ‘Don’t be sad, Sullivan. Please don’t be sad.’

  ‘You came in here, what then?’

  ‘No. I don’t believe I did come in here. It was like before, it was like it was in the house. I never left the door. Yet somehow I went everywhere. Every room and every corridor, like I was searching the building for something, but yet I also never left where I started.’

  ‘Sleepwalking. It was a dream, dear,’ Kendrick said, cutting in.

  ‘No, Mr Kendrick, no it wasn’t. There was music. I remember the music, such beautiful music. I seemed to carry with the music, float with it…’

  Kendrick mumbled a steady stream of expletives and turned away.

  ‘I know the complete layout of this place yet I swear I’ve never set foot in here before. But I’ve felt it. All of it.’ She lost herself in Sullivan’s face and the words started to come easier, quicker, with confidence. ‘I was calling for my father. Shouting. I could hear noises further down. Like people talking. So I carried on. I ran to the noise, shouting his name at every landing and every turn in every corridor. I could feel that breath again, it was at my neck like someone was behind me panting. I couldn’t get away from it. It was like…like when you run through a spider’s web, and no matter how much you scrub yourself you can’t shake the feeling that it is still on you. Yeah, that’s what it felt like. You know that feeling?’

  Sullivan nodded.

  ‘I was looking for something but I didn’t know what. Then there were those noises again. People talking, I swear it was people talking. I came down here,’ she pointed outside, motioning to the corridor. ‘The light…this room…’ A shiver passed through her and into Sullivan. ‘It smelt funny.’

  ‘Did you see Schaeffer?’

  She looked across to the covered mound just behind Turtle. ‘I saw them both. He…’ she stopped. Froze. Her face emptied, emotion and expression lost again, scared away. Her arms began to stretch out to her sides momentarily and then they stopped too, flopping back to the gurney. ‘He was on the wall.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Hanging there. Just hanging there. But there was nothing holding him. He was just…just there. Off the ground. Looking at me, not looking at me, looking through me. He didn’t see me. He didn’t know. He was dead. Blood. There was blood at his chest. A wound.’ She began rubbing at her right arm, fingers reaching under the sleeve, scratching, nails digging at the skin, pinching and breaking small blood streaks. Sullivan reached across and held the arm away and she let him. She seemed oblivious to it and to him. ‘He always said he would look after me and keep me safe. He promised me.’

  ‘You’re talking about your father?’

  ‘I swear he was there.’ Mia gazed absently up at the wall above where Davenport now stood and Davenport quickly backed away into the centre of the room, gawping up at it with horrified eyes. Kendrick looked at him with a barely concealed contempt. ‘It was what I was supposed to be searching for. It was what I had to see. It was another warning.’

  ‘The levitating corpse?’ Kendrick said, laughing. ‘That’s a good one, now let me guess, at this point you turned into a chicken, is that right, Mia?’

  She didn’t hear him, the words drifted past her, she was deep in a memory, lost to them. ‘I ran. I screamed. No, I tried to scream, but I couldn’t scream. I ran. Yet I wasn’t there. Not really. Somehow I knew that, yet I was still frightened.’ Her eyes moved up to the ceiling and began tracing a path from one end to the other. ‘I didn’t see him. No wonder I suppose. I heard him but I didn’t see him. I got to the turret. I think it’s a turret. Is that what you call it? I don’t know. The hatch was down. Open. I saw the ladder. A long ladder going on for miles it seemed. The hatch at the other end…a small white circle, miles away, like the moon. Years ago people thought they could build a ladder to the moon. People tried. Did you know that? But we know now that you can’t.’

  ‘Mia?’ Sullivan could feel the light hairs on her arm, erect like she was receiving a static shock. Still she looked to the ceiling, seeing something no one else could.

  ‘What’s the matter with her?’ Kendrick demanded.

  ‘Mia?’

  ‘I think…’ she said quietly and then stopped, nodding to herself, to a question she hadn’t asked. ‘Yes, I think he was on the ceiling. He was following me on the ceiling. Yes. I couldn’t see him but I could feel him. I could feel his breath on me. He was number thirteen and he was chasing me out of here. He said I didn’t belong here.’

  ‘For fucks sake,’ Kendrick seethed and turned away, throwing his hands in the air in a dramatic show of exasperation.

  ‘Who, Mia? Who are you talking about?’

  ‘Him.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Them. Everyone. They walk through him. Number thirteen.’

  ‘Mia…’

  ‘There is so much anger,’ Mia said flatly. ‘There is so much anger here.’

  Sullivan moved down her arm and lifted up her hand. It felt lifeless and cold; a delicate squeeze would surely shatter her bones. He looked to the others, waited for someone else to take the initiative but no one did. He pulled her to him and she came easily, flopping into his hold like a much loved rag doll.

  ‘What about Finn?’ Sullivan asked, gently stroking her hair.

  ‘He got me away from here and took me back to the house. He was alive. I think he was alive. But his face was bleeding. Something had attacked him. He was frantic. He was terrified. Finn never got scared. Finn never knew how to feel fear. He just didn’t. He got a pack from the truck and told me to take it. He threw the pistol at me. He was screaming. Shouting. Finn knew. I could see it in his eyes. He could feel it too. He looked so scared. He looked so old.’

  No one heard the first crackle from the walkie-talkie. Maddox heard the second a few moments later.

  ‘What happened to Finn? What was it?’

  ‘He started reloading his machine gun and was running back to the house, firing at something, chasing something I couldn’t see. He fell at the door. Though he didn’t really fall. He was pushed. It was as if his legs were taken out from under him. His legs were bleeding when he got back up, I could see the blood through his trousers. They were slashed and ripped and…’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He took up the paraffin lamps from either side of the door and threw them into the house. Then he fired his gun through the door. Just kept on firing. Firing through the flames. Then he was down again and I never
saw him get up. I ran then. Ran to the snowplough. I ran. But I didn’t scream. Honestly, I didn’t.’

  ‘Hello?’ The voice from the walkie-talkie was low and quiet, hiding under the crackle, looking for a way through, but it was unmistakably the voice of Frankie Bergan. Beyond the voice was the faint echo of footsteps and then, one by one they all froze as if playing a game of musical statues.

  8

  ‘Frank?’

  ‘Frank, it’s Theo, where are you?’

  ‘Hello?’ The voice at the walkie-talkie was hollow and distorted, but there nonetheless, infesting the room.

  ‘Come in, Frank. Where are you?’

  Maddox stepped out into the corridor and Turtle followed. Davenport took their place in the doorway, his neat and tidy hands playing nervously with the collar of his shirt.

  ‘Hello…Hello?’

  Kendrick remained rooted to the same position, his body twitching and jittering in his suit as his narrowed and angry eyes roamed the crumpled body tucked under Sullivan’s supportive hold. Sullivan could see he wanted to shout, to rant and to rave and drag an answer from her that he could understand, but even Kendrick could see that Mia was lost to them at that moment, and that any logic had shut down with her.

  ‘I just want you to know, Mia, that whatever you think you’ve seen, whatever you think you know, you are not leaving this place. Can you hear me?’

  She turned her face into Sullivan’s side and said nothing.

  ‘Until the Party gets here it is for me to decide what happens to you. I just wanted you to know that. I need you to understand that.’ Kendrick turned on his heels and swept from the room.

  Sullivan could feel her shaking again, one cold and clammy hand holding his own. He wanted to comfort her, to tell her it would all be okay in the end, but he couldn’t. Somehow it would be a betrayal, not just to the man he thought he was, but also to the man she needed him to be. At that moment he was neither, he was a spirit floating somewhere between them both, disorientated and trying to escape. It felt that if she were to release her hold on him at that moment, he would float away. At that point, in that room, he wouldn’t have fought it if he had. She wasn’t close to letting go though; instead she tightened her grip even more.