‘I really am here because of guilt then?’
‘His guilt complex was always going to take him down in the end.’ The pistol was raised into Sullivan’s face, the hammer slowly pulled back. ‘Morals are great, in an ideal world, and we’re working on that. Really we are. But we’ve got a long way to go yet. You and him, you’re just men in the wrong time. That’s all.’
‘Who’s judging?’
‘Oh, you might be interested, since you did ask; I should have said…the madman you seemed so concerned about? You wanted to know what happened to him?’ Kendrick nodded down to Sullivan’s boots and the heavy concrete floor beneath them. ‘You’re standing on him.’
Sullivan didn’t look down to the floor, his eyes were fixed ahead just over the pistol barrel and were firm and unblinking, looking deep into the flared corruption of the man before him.
‘Sorry, Sullivan. Really. You won’t come back and haunt me will you?’
Kendrick laughed loudly and wildly and then squeezed the trigger.
5
Turtle stepped out of the shower and stood naked in the centre of the floor, the water trickling off him, cresting his body’s ridges and curves. He closed his eyes and savoured the moment, the feeling of being clean, the dirt and grime scrubbed off, the cuts and bruises standing out sharply, proudly on his body. He felt his beard and then ran the hand through his hair, pushing the fringe back, smoothing his fingers through it. He opened his eyes and looked at himself in the mirror on the opposite wall, the same mirror he had convinced himself he had seen someone else in, standing behind him, just a short time ago. He managed a wry smile at the memory. “Trick of the mind,” his mind told him, reassured him. “I conned you, baby, that’s all.” It was the place, the place messed you up. That’s what the stories said, and heck, he’d heard so many stories about Bleeker Hill that law of averages must suggest that some of them might be true. He could see how the place played you – the lack of light, the thick walls – it was a tomb, yeah, a glorified tomb, why wouldn’t such a place freak you out and make you see things? Somehow, in his current state all answers seemed obvious.
A gentle push of cold air licked at his legs and moved up his body. He shivered, one quick all-over body shiver, and then reached over for the bed sheet, the makeshift towel he had hung over the curtain rail of the next shower, and quickly whipped it around his waist before padding back into the sleeping quarters. Maddox was dressed and lying in the bed next to Bergan, one hand under the back of his neck, gently rubbing at it, the rifle at his side, a maniac’s teddy bear.
‘You feel that?’ Turtle asked, crossing to the opposite bed.
‘Feel what? Your dick?’
‘Never mind. How’s he doing?’ He nodded to the great giant in the next bed, still in the same position as they had placed him.
Maddox casually looked over to Bergan and shrugged.
‘Man, I need some sleep.’ Turtle slipped his T-shirt back on and perched on the bed, staring at Bergan solemnly. ‘He looks dead.’
‘Always did, how’d you tell the difference?’
‘His face, Maddox. Look at his face.’
‘Face like a dead man’s scrotum. There you go, he was never winning any beauty awards anyway. Take the weight off, Turtle and get some sleep. Don’t feel like you need to talk to me.’
For a while neither spoke. Maddox stared off dreamily at the ceiling, cuddling into the rifle, shifting his head on the pillow, looking for a cool spot. Turtle dried himself down and pulled on his trousers, raising one knee to his nose and sniffing at them in disgust. He pushed himself back on the bed, sitting up and staring off at Bergan again, once more watching his chest rise and fall against long stuttering breaths. He could feel coldness tickling his arms, gently blowing under his shirt, and then it was all over him, his body breaking out in goose bumps seemingly from forehead to foot.
‘You feel that?’
Maddox ignored him.
‘Did it just get cold in here?’
‘Huh?’
‘It just got really cold, you felt that, right?’
The tinny tones of Joe Kendrick suddenly sounded from Maddox’s walkie-talkie, resting on his great, bulky chest. ‘Maddox? She’s gone walkabout again. Go find her, will you?’ Maddox made no attempt to hide the glee in his face as he swung off the bed and barked his compliance, a small light of craziness cracking through his blue eyes.
‘Got me a date, Turtle. You okay to stay and look after dad?’
Turtle could see Maddox’s breath in the air, blooming out of his mouth as he spoke. He looked across to Bergan and saw the same; little puffs of breath coming from his nose and breaking over his face. The sight chilled him even further.
‘Hey, Turtle! I’m talking to you!’
‘Why don’t I go?’ Turtle suddenly said, the light tone suggesting he were doing a great favour for a good friend. ‘I’ll go, you stay here.’ Turtle leaned over and reached for his boots.
‘You trying to cut in on my girl there, short arse?’
‘I just think that…’
‘What sort of man would I be if I didn’t go help find a young girl who’s gone lost her way out there?’ He swung the rifle up over his shoulder and rearranged the front of his trousers. ‘I’d be a bastard wouldn’t I?’
‘Why don’t we both go? Yeah, I’ll come help you.’
Maddox was moving out to the door, a huge cloud of breath blasting forward as he offered Turtle a maniacal laugh as a response. ‘The fuck you will.’ He was gone even before Turtle had time to slip into his boots.
Instantly the temperature in the room seemed to plummet even further, the cold becoming sharp and unforgiving. Turtle looked up at the ceiling and then back across to the open door to the showers. The walls seemed to have lost all colour and definition. He held his hands before him and the skin looked blue, impossibly smooth, unreal and inhuman. Suddenly it felt like he was sitting in a deep freeze and the coldness started to hurt. His breath was an angry cloud of smoke, moving, finding shapes as it danced mockingly before him, and he followed its form as it drifted across the room, bending and curling over itself in the air, slowly finding its way towards Frankie Bergan’s bed.
Turtle’s heart suddenly froze in his chest.
The great giant was sitting up in bed and staring back across at him, his dead eyes rolled high in their sockets, two pale moons where the darkness used to be. His huge hands were reaching out before him, his legs moving from under the covers, as slowly he started to get out of bed.
Attack
1
There was a pressure at his arms, a strong grip holding him to the bed. He could feel the force climb on, could feel the heavy weight grow at his chest as it slowly started squeezing the air from him. He lay on his back trying to crane up to the sounds coming from his boss’ bed but he could lift his head no more than a few inches, the grip tightening at every move he attempted, like a snake coiling around its prey. He looked to the ceiling and tried to piece together the moving shadows with the sounds he could hear but it was a chaotic jumble that made no sense. His mind was telling him it was all a dream, that it was playing him again and he found comfort in the absurdity of it. For one brief moment he found himself laughing through the terror welling up inside his body, and then, as if what held him had also seeped into his mind, demanding his attention, a long, deep gash opened down one arm as something slashed across him, and with it Turtle was back in the room, drowning in fear.
‘Frankie! Please! Get this thing off me!’ He sounded like a child, his usual sharp rattle, the voice that would bark and swear and challenge all day long in his kitchen back home, diluted to a weedy whine.
He could hear Bergan’s soft footsteps padding back and forth across the floor, and then a bed being shoved roughly to one side, the metal legs scraping across the smoothness like fingers down a blackboard. He tried once more to look up, to turn his head, to find Bergan, but each jerk and movement only served to tighten the force that covered
him. There were ripping sounds from across the room; loud, long tears of the bed sheets and then the bed was tumbled over on to its side and next to it, near it, somewhere, a locker was shoved to the floor with a loud thud.
‘Frankie? Frankie please…’ Turtle whimpered. ‘Frankie, please help me…’
To his right he could hear noises coming from the showers; the ugly gurgle of water, the straining of pipes as if someone were trying to bend them out of shape. The steady plop-plop of the dripping tap was louder than it had ever been. Each drop of water was a stone in a puddle, heavy and angry.
Across from him he could feel Bergan pass his bed, a black shape with human form, yet surely not the man he once knew so well, this was his shadow given life. He heard Bergan’s bed moving again and then a loud clanking sound as the metal headboard hit the floor.
‘Frank…’ his name came quietly now, no more than a whisper, an echo of a previous thought. ‘Frank…please.’
He heard the upturned bed strain, the metal scratching the floor and the wall, and then he could hear what sounded like light footsteps on another locker. At the ceiling a shadow grew like spilt ink on old parchment; it found form, slowly, and the shape became human, tall and imposing, great long arms and mighty hands reaching up above its head, working away at the ceiling.
The pressure at his arms suddenly abated, and Turtle yanked them up above his body and struck out at whatever held him firm, sweeping through the impossible coldness and the ash clouds of breath, yet striking nothing. The wound at his arm flared and he saw the blood streams running down to the crook of his elbow like hideous talons, the red brilliant and deep, the only rich colour in a room drained of definition. Still he fought against what was at his chest but he couldn’t shift it, his legs now waggling at the base of the bed, trying to buck the heaviness off him. He pulled at his shirt, rubbed his hands against the pressure but there was no soothing it. He dug fingers in, one breaking through the material to the skin, and clawed at himself, trying to scour himself free.
Suddenly, and with a heavy, impossibly loud thud, a locker hit the floor just at the base of his bed and its cold, unwelcoming echo reverberated across the room, through Turtle’s body, and seemed to shatter the force at his chest. He pulled himself up immediately, coughing and hacking, doubling up as he cleared his chest and throat through a shower of mucus and spit on to his bed sheets. It hurt, he felt raw and brittle, his heart like flint and his bones the most fragile of glass.
As he looked up, his watering eyes blinked wildly at the sight before him, slowly taking in the image, seeming confused, squinting and then widening, moving up and down it, swallowing up the impossible information. His mind couldn’t, wouldn’t, process it: “You’re on your own, baby,” it told him and jumped ship. Before him the body of Frankie Bergan seemed to hover in mid air, those eye whites shining dully in the corpse face, matching the off-white noose of bedsheets that was roughly and tightly wrapped around his neck. Above him the bedsheets ran to the metal chain that held the first light in place, where they were tied in one small bunched knot. Turtle had just enough time to question if the smile on Bergan’s face was real and then he was knocked roughly off the bed and on to the floor, landing with a thud on his back.
The bed he had just left jumped off the ground, flipped over in the air and then came down on top of him. One by one the other beds down his side of the room did the same, rising up in sequence, spinning over, and then crashing to the floor. He was screaming in his own head, his hands at his face, his body scrunching up into a protective ball. As the last bed crashed down he was dragged forward from under his own and shoved crudely into the fallen locker. He moved again, this time on his front, pushed across the ground like an icy hockey puck. In front of him a series of loud bangs sounded as each showerhead exploded in turn and jets of water shot up and across the room, raining down on him. Turtle staggered up and again was knocked aside, lifted off the ground and then hurled across the room into the wall. The lights above him shattered one after the other in tiny little explosions of glass and sparks. He batted his arms around him, screaming an angry garble of words, and then he was on his feet, swaying back and forth, feeling the walls come out to him and then push away, the ceiling fall and then disappear completely.
He was turning to the door, moving his little legs like he were trying to run through treacle, pushing past Bergan dangling in front of him. His fingers were losing all sensation, the unforgiving cold shooting up through his hands, into his arms and gathering at his head. His bare feet slipped and skidded on the cold ground and he was unable to get a hold; for every foot forward he went he seemed to fall back even more. Something blew against his face. Something touched his arm, then yanked at his shoulder, and then just as he reached the door it slammed shut on him. A pressure started against his eyes, the force was on him again, long fingers probing at his cheeks and mouth and then as he was shoved back into the wall he could feel blood seeping from his nose, down to his mouth.
‘Please, please stop!’ He could taste the blood, could feel it flying from his mouth with congealed saliva, and mucus as he spoke. ‘Please…’
His feet went from under him and then he was on his back once more looking up at the ceiling, and the low hanging clouds of breath that held their form like suspended cobwebs. He could feel vibrations under his back as something far below thrummed and shook, dancing its ugly dance. As if in reply to what played out beneath him, the ceiling suddenly gave its own stuttering wail as the air conditioner in the room argued its last, gave to a weary sigh and then fell to silence. He fought what held him, frenetically writhing and thrashing, imbued with an adrenaline soaked fear. He moved to his knees, shuffled forward and then turned back to the door. He saw it instantly; bright and red and inked from his own blood, a crudely drawn arrow was in the middle of the door pointing upwards, directing him out.
‘Yes!’ he suddenly screamed, unsure why. ‘I’m leaving. I want to leave! I don’t want to be here. Let me leave!’
He got to his feet, stumbling forward.
‘I want to leave! I want to leave this place. Let me leave!’ He roared the words up to the ceiling, through the clouds of breath, the shattered lights and into the broken air conditioner. ‘I don’t want to be here! Let me out!’
There was a gentle click and a weary moan. In front of him the door was slowly opening. He pushed through into the outside corridor and began to hobble, jog and then run. Somewhere ahead of him, further on through the building, there was a gunshot, but Turtle paid it no attention.
2
Mia heard it all from where she was hiding; the screaming, the crashing of beds and lockers, and then above her the loud clunk as the air conditioning stopped working. She had felt it as soon as it happened and the images she saw as she closed her eyes were monstrous. Yet for all that was playing out around her and despite the encroaching threat she could feel creeping through the empty corridors, she found herself relieved and just for the merest of moments, smiling. For now she wasn’t a crackpot or a liar any more. Even if the screams belonged to just one person, she knew she was no longer alone.
She turned on her side and looked out from under the bed. The higgledy-piggeldy stand she had made from a small chair and a low standing bedside table looked back at her from the corridor, just underneath the hatch to the shaft. The holding strap that she had prised off the bed and fastened to the small circular hatch handle dangled down like a fat light flex. She had been sure it would be all the extra help she needed to turn the handle, that several hard tugs on that strap would loosen it just enough for her to swing it around until the lock released, but it had ripped in two and she had fallen off the makeshift stand, shouting reproaches to her own wishful thinking. She had come back into the bedroom to tear off the second holding strap when she heard the footsteps. They were heavy and confident and she had heard them before. She knew who it was.
Giving no time to remove the stand she had tucked herself under the bed, pushing back ag
ainst the wall, as far into the shadows as she could get. Waiting. Hoping he would turn away or pass the room by. The footsteps came and went. He was walking from room to room, looking in and walking back out. But the cigar smoke was constant and getting thicker. She tried to remember how many of those small, cramped bedrooms she had passed on this level, working over in her mind how long she might have before he pulled up in her doorway. Bedrooms! She suddenly shouted in her mind. Did I really think they were bedrooms? She could smell the hopelessness in the room. The decay. She wondered who had been held there, had it been one of those she had seen up above in the pen? Maybe it had been that beautiful woman, slain trying to escape over the barbed wire? How many had been here? How many lost souls?
The footsteps came again, much closer, and she could see his shadow along the wall, that great, bulky rock on legs, and up before the shadow of his body was the shadow of the rifle, long and thin like an antenna. A small cloud of cigar smoke wafted past the open door, heralding his arrival, and then the shadow stopped moving, hanging on the wall before sinking down to the floor as he drew up in the doorway and stood looking at the stand like it were a piece modern art he just couldn’t grasp. He tilted his head at it, walked around it as if expecting to see something different on the other side of the corridor and then in one quick action, kicked it over and turned into the room.
She was flat against the wall now; yet still she tried to squeeze herself back further. Her arms were up above her, stretched out with her body and she felt her hands breaching a thick spider’s web, the fingers tearing through the carefully crafted home, as they pushed against the wall. She could feel a spider walk on to her wrist, the legs tickling against the light hairs of her arm as it began to wander under the loose cuff of her outsized fatigues and pass under the sleeve.
Bleeker Hill Page 21
