EMERGENCE

by R. H. Dixon

  A chill rushed down with the ladders, one that made the hairs on his arms stand up and his breath look like dry ice. He shivered and settled the rubber-stoppered feet on the carpet, then began to climb. The rungs were like sweaty ice against his left hand, the warmth from the house having created an instant layer of condensation, and he held the torch aloft in his right hand, aiming its beam upwards. Soon an unfamiliar wood-panelled sloping wall came into view and, as his upper body passed through the rectangular hatch into the intensified coldness of the loft, he saw that his mother and Norman had at some point renovated the upper space of the house. A light switch to his right suggested electrics had been installed. When he pressed it a low light from an energy-saving bulb glowed with all the ambience of a lantern. Now with handsfree illumination, John turned off the torch and pulled himself through the hatch fully.

  The loft was no longer a dingy chamber of bin-linered Christmas decorations, black soot and the exoskeletons of insects caught up in ancient spider webs. Now it was a carpeted practical space with things stored neatly on metal shelving units around its circumference. A header tank was supported on one of the shelves. John immediately checked it over for leaks or damaged casing but nothing seemed awry. There was a pile of boxes stacked next to the water tank, above Seren’s bedroom, but there was nothing that could be directly linked to the incriminating mess on the ceiling.

  Shit.

  This meant the problem wouldn’t be a quick fix, it was nothing as simple as a superficial spillage. Could the problem wait till the following day though? Yes, he thought so. He’d need to source some of Norman’s tools so that he could take up the carpet and floorboards to see what he was dealing with. And besides, the stuff on the ceiling wasn’t indicative of a serious leak, water wasn’t exactly gushing out all over the place. It could definitely wait till morning.

  He went back downstairs to warm up, the loft’s cold having seeped into his epidermis to become one with him. Emily poured him a generous measure of Southern Comfort, which warmed his insides, and they chatted for another couple of hours before both declaring it bedtime. By that point John felt relatively relaxed, now convinced that it was a pipe in the loft that was leaking fluids and not his brain.

  Upstairs he checked on Seren. She was lying in the same position he’d left her, Geller noticeably missing from her arms. He wondered where she might have hidden him and how long it would be till she got bored of the whole charade. The sound of the toilet flushing downstairs filled the house with ordinary familiarity, and a few moments later he bumped into Emily on the landing.

  ‘What time should I be up in the morning?’ she asked, barefooted in shorty pyjamas. Her dark hair was plaited long and thick down her back. She looked more girl than woman without any makeup on.

  ‘Seren will let you know when’s good for her, I’m sure,’ John said, smiling. ‘Otherwise, whenever you like.’

  Her cheeks dimpled when she smiled back, her full-lipped mouth very similar to John's. ‘Okay. Night night then.’

  ‘Night night. Oh and, hey, I know you have work and Cam and probably loads of other stuff going on, but feel free to stay with us as long as you like. It’s nice having you around. Seren thinks you’re the bee’s knees.’

  Emily considered this for a moment and nodded. ‘Thanks, I’d love to hang around with you guys for a while.’ She clicked open the door to the sewing room and, before disappearing inside, said, ‘Oh and I am the bee’s knees.’

  John stuck his tongue out then went to his old room. He’d considered sleeping on the couch but decided it was more of a proactive approach to sleep in the room below the suspected leak, in case the leak got considerably worse during the night and he could at least try to prevent a flood. He didn’t bother switching on the light, telling himself there was no need. He stripped his clothes off and left them in a heap on the floor, then climbed into bed.

  Lying on his back he looked around at the walls and ceiling, recalling certain details like the way the streetlights presented a rectangular strip above the curtain rail and how the crack in the coving above the door looked like the letter Y. The dark patch of mould above him wasn’t familiar though, and he hated the way the light shade was watching him. He turned over onto his stomach and buried his face between two pillows. Stretching out, he slid his arms beneath each one. His right hand touched something cold and flat. He gripped it between his fingers and held it up to the street-lit glow of the window.

  Queen of Spades.

  How the hell did that get there?

  Swiping the playing card to the floor he flopped back down onto the pillows, scrunching his eyes shut in frustration. With all that had been going on he’d managed to put Pamela Tanner to the back of his mind, yet now here she was right at the forefront again, as though she was still playing games with him. And suddenly he couldn’t rebuff the strong thought of her mouth on his. Red. Hot. Wanting. Her tongue touching his. Teeth teasing his lips. No empty promises. He felt vulnerable and feverish, his mind not his own.

  He saw black clouds seducing a wedding day sky.

  Smother me with everything you have.

  And Argus butterfly wings bound with titanium spider thread.

  Till there’s no way out.

  Then storm waves conquering a castaway’s beach.

  Because I’d like you to destroy me.

  Because you can.

  The window was open but the room was sealed within a stifling vacuum that he hoped could be broken, because this crazy, wanton urgency to do things that might or might not disgust him was confounding, yet the intrigue that motivated it unstoppable. His face flashed hot and the excess heat spread rapidly down his body. To his neck, arms, chest and belly. Pamela Tanner’s hands touching him all over. Wanting. Needing. Knowing. Right down to his groin. Where he was overcome by such a ferocious desire he felt aroused and horrified all at the same time.

  Turning onto his back he reacquainted himself with the stain on the ceiling, until staring at it for too long made it look like the spade symbol.

  No escape.

  Pamela Tanner was inside his head and under his skin and all over his body.

  He focussed on the ceiling light instead and thought about untacking carpets and lifting floorboards and repairing broken pipes. He thought about making sandwiches to take to the dene and cutting across the beach and picking out the right path and walking under trees’ canopies and passing beneath the grand arches of the viaduct and arriving at the cundy. Only, once he got there he was at one end of the tunnel, Seren the other and Pamela Tanner was somewhere in the middle, waiting for him in the thick, endless black.

  Sleep wasn’t easy for John that night, but it did eventually come.

  __

  17

  _

  John slid the hot baking tray onto the middle shelf, looked at his wristwatch and set the oven’s timer for forty-five minutes. He slung the checked tea towel over his shoulder and called, ‘Coming, ready or not.’

  Tiptoeing into the hallway, he listened. There were no creaking floorboards or door hinges. No creeping footsteps or muffled laughter. When a thorough search of each downstairs room and cupboard proved fruitless he went upstairs, checking first the sewing room. Emily’s large holdall was lying on the floor, items of her worn clothing and underwear scattered about the carpet next to it. The spare duvet he’d found in his mother’s airing cupboard was a messy heap on top of the futon. A perfect hiding place. He lifted it.

  Seren wasn’t there.

  Next he went to his mother’s room. ‘I’m closing in on you, kidda.’ His voice broke the brooding presence of the house which buzzed in his ears; a susurration of expectancy. He looked under the bed. She wasn’t there. Inside the mirror-fronted wardrobe. Not there either. Creeping back out onto the landing he went to the final room, the room with the mould, the room of his childhood, and put his hand on the doorknob.

  ‘I wonder where she can be.’ He grinned, expecting to hear a stifled giggle.

&
nbsp; None came.

  He opened the door and was confronted by a brashness of black, grey and red. Barcoded wallpaper wrapped the room on all sides, an attack on the senses, and bedding on two single beds, as black and degenerate as the Devil’s moustache, smelt of teenaged boys. His brother’s red Tamiya Hotshot was sitting in the middle of the room, facing him. He remembered it well because he’d got one of the biggest poundings of his life for having broken it, back in the nineties. He’d taken it without permission and accidentally smashed it head-on into Stuey Griggs’ Clod Buster. Stuey’s monster truck had survived the collision but the shiny plastic casing of Nick’s Hotshot had splintered and the front wheel alignment had been damaged beyond repair. Yet now here it was, good as new, purring beautifully as though talking to him on some animistic level.

  What the fuck is wrong with me?

  John gripped the door to steady himself and looked up. In place of the tasselled light shade there was a rectangular hole in the ceiling. A black opening into the nefarious oblivion of the loft, which had no business being in this room. The hole was wrong in its simplistic nature, it was too deliberate and square to be an accident. From this angle it was impossible for him to tell what horrors were living up there, or indeed what might come down to stay.

  But that’s okay because none of this is even happening.

  He rubbed his temple, not taking his eyes off the hole for a second in case it should change or disappear or swallow him whole.

  Just another episode. It’ll pass.

  The sound of scurrying overhead denoted small feet on wooden joists.

  ‘Seren?’

  A short burst of excited laughter announced she was still playing hide and seek.

  ‘What the hell are you doing up there?’ he demanded.

  She didn’t answer.

  Clambering onto the bed, concern overruling any hesitancy he might have felt, John put his hands through the hole in the ceiling and gripped wooden boards at either side for leverage, managing to resist an almost insurmountable urge to pull away when grit and cobwebs settled around his fingers. He took a deep breath, bent his knees and sprung off the mattress, hoisting himself upwards. Old dust caught at the back of his throat, a layer of dry staleness that made him cough. Darkness greeted him wholly as he settled onto his hands and knees on unseen joists. All around him was a blackness that seemed to have substance, like the insidious dark inside the cundy. A blackness he thought might consume him if he stayed still for too long.

  ‘Seren?’ His voice came out an urgent whisper. He hoped it wasn’t loud enough to make grim things in the dark stir. He held his breath and listened. Nothing stirred. His eyes tried to adjust, desperately wanting to see, and after a while he thought he could make out the blacker silhouettes of rafters above him. Then he decided he was probably wrong and that his brain was playing tricks as it was wont to do of late.

  Then a light flickered on.

  He blinked rapidly against its abruptness. A small orange flame that tinged everything round about with insipid colour and texture blinded and disorientated him all over again. Seren was crouched in the corner furthest away from him, her face a sullen mask of shadows above the large burning candle she held in her hands.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asked, afraid to move away from the hole in the ceiling in case he got lost in the dark, dusty chamber that shouldn’t even be there. The toe of his right shoe was hooked below the ledge, anchoring him to the ceiling of the black and grey striped bedroom below.

  Seren didn’t answer.

  ‘Come on, kidda, let’s go,’ he urged, rubbing his face where silvery spider trails, imagined or not, tickled.

  She made no attempt to move and held firm to the candle even though hot wax ran down the backs of her fingers.

  ‘Our fairy cakes are almost ready.’ He held out his hand to her. ‘Come on, let’s decorate them together.’

  Her face tilted downwards so the flame chased away some of its shadows, and John saw her handicap: she wasn’t wearing glasses. Groaning at the prospect of what he must do, he brought his right foot fully into the darkness and began to shuffle along the two parallel joists towards her. ‘Stay there, sweetheart. I’m coming for you.’

  ‘No. I have to stay here now.’ Her voice was eerily monotone, almost as expressionless as her face.

  ‘Stop playing games, it’s not funny.’

  ‘It’s not supposed to be. I belong to Her now.’

  John stopped crawling. It felt like an intrusion of insects was scattering beneath his skin, as though a stone in his mind had been disturbed, thus revealing their hiding place. He shivered. ‘Who?’

  ‘You know.’

  ‘I don’t.’ He started inching forward again, his arms leaden, knees hurting and the wood rough against his hands.

  ‘You should.’

  ‘Pack it in, Seren, this really isn’t…aaargh!’ As John put his hand down something spiky pierced his skin and drove straight through the meaty flesh of his palm. For a moment he couldn’t move. The sensation of metal scraping against his bone rendered him paralysed. Then adrenalin kicked in and he slowly, quickly, agonisingly prised his hand away from the protruding prong in the joist. Hotness welled in his eyes and white flashes of pain blotted out the dark. Losing his balance he fell sideways, clutching his wounded hand to his chest. Blood poured freely, coating him with sticky warmth and dripping into darkness, feeding unseen monsters. He thought he might crash through plasterboard and into the bedroom below, but thin wooden slats supported him as he landed on his side in the groove between the two joists. He sucked in air through clenched teeth and looked up.

  Seren was still hunkered in the corner. She made no attempt to go to him and he watched in terror as she brought the candle up to her face and puckered her lips.

  ‘No, Seren. Don’t.’

  She blew.

  The candle’s flame went out and John was surrendered again to a darkness that touched his soul with all the horror of loneliness. At almost the same time cold breath swiped his cheek in hoary swirls of rancid decay, and, as he retched at the smell, wet corpse lips brushed the outer rim of his ear. He thought he might die. Curling up tightly he willed the plasterboard beneath him to give out, wanting to see the noisy walls of the bedroom below because, even though they were wrong, he could deal with them better than he could deal with this. But the boards remained intact. He couldn’t imagine that he’d ever make it back to the hole, not without the halitosis of death breathing on him again. And he didn’t dare move in case witches’ fingers snagged his hair and clothes to pull him even further into their domain. This time, because of the noise he’d created and the excitement he’d caused, monsters had definitely stirred. He could feel the presence of evil just as surely as he could feel his own heart exerting itself, offering his blood up freely to the unknown. Clenching his eyes shut, preferring the darkness inside his own head to the darkness surrounding him, he waited and listened. Not daring to move. Not even to swallow.

  When nothing had breathed on him or touched him for a long while, finally he unfurled and opened his eyes. ‘Seren?’

  But she wasn’t there. He could sense that now. Perhaps she never had been. He was all alone, with the scritchy-scratchy darkness that teased him with its swelling magnitude and threatened him with new horrors. He reached out and grabbed the joist his shoulder was wedged against, planning to use it to feel his way back to the hole. He had to get out. But as his hand gripped old, dry wood a crackle like that of a Geiger counter erupted, an animalistic growl that made his body shrink back and his skin bristle painfully. The throaty sound came from everywhere and nowhere, swooping down from somewhere amongst the rafters perhaps and bringing with it a strong smell of rot and decay. John found he could no longer breathe and was beyond all comprehension when a sickly, decrepit, old-woman voice croaked into his ear: ‘She’s mine.’

  _

  …

  _

  John awoke with a start, sweaty and disorientated an
d struggling with the duvet. Bland dawn soaked through the thin fabric of the curtains and he heard a gull ha-ha-ing outside. Holding his right hand up, he was relieved to see no blood. And the ceiling was a full stretch of white artex. Closing his eyes, he rolled onto his side and sighed.

  He lay still for a while, contemplating whether to attempt more sleep or just get up. Then jolted upright, his stomach knotting.

  The ceiling!

  It wasn’t right. It mocked him with too much unspoilt whiteness. And the walls. Vertical stripes imprisoned him on all sides.

  Not again. Please not again.

  He scrabbled from the bed and stood on shaky legs, unsure what to do. Then came two short raps on the door. An uneasy silence followed. He hardly dared move. Maybe if he ignored…

  Tap, tap, tap.

  ‘Who is it?’ His voice came out high and he hated that it betrayed him, hated the rising fear that crept up his throat like sour bile. He swallowed and waited for a response, then watched as the handle turned. The door nudged open slowly, stiffly, deliberately, prolonging his suspense. And the hinges creaked menacingly, as if in collaboration with whatever lay beyond. He felt sick with dread. What new terror was this?

  Pamela Tanner.

  She was standing outside his room, a large cardboard box held in her arms. ‘Hey handsome,’ she said, ‘special delivery for you.’

  John edged backwards, no less worried.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Her voice was golden syrup and her green eyes shone dark and luxuriant, an unnatural colour that shouldn’t exist in the daybreak’s lazy light. ‘This is better than first class service, don’t you want to see what I brought you?’

  He shook his head.

  She laughed and stepped forward, her tanned, bare feet exotic on the room’s grey carpet. She was wearing the same tight black dress as before, but her black hair was now lacquered into a bouffant with a tiny golden crown resting on top.