Unspeakable Secrets of the Aro Valley

by Danyl McLauchlan

  The elevator reached the ground floor. He slid the door open, stepped into the foyer, and froze when he spied Campbell at the far end of the lobby. He was standing with his back to the lift, supervising a quartet of disciples as they retouched the mural. They had paint stains all over their clothes, and paint cans lay scattered at their feet. Danyl sized up the group, who faced away from him, and measured the distance to the exit at the far end of the hall.

  Had Campbell heard the lift door open? Would he turn around? Apparently not: they all seemed engrossed in their task. Danyl reversed slowly, silently across the hall, then turned and, casting a backwards glance and doing a double-take at the sight of a gigantic, mostly nude Churchill sprawled on the trompe l’oeil stairs directly above Campbell’s head, hurried towards the door, stepping on the pads of his feet. He could see daylight through the dirty window of the main doorway; hear the traffic on the distant street. He was halfway there . . .

  ‘Writer!’ Campbell’s nasal voice echoed across the concrete planes of the foyer. Danyl gritted his teeth.

  ‘Writer! Oh, writer! Attend to me!’

  Campbell strode across the foyer, heading for the door. He clicked his fingers and motioned for Danyl to follow him. Danyl cursed his luck and fell in behind.

  ‘Where were you going, writer?’

  ‘Just out for a walk.’

  ‘A walk? Well, a walk you shall have. Ha ha.’

  Campbell led him out the exit and around the side of the building. The construction gangs were back: a team of men in orange vests were mounting a tall steel gate over the driveway leading to Aro Street, and a large scaffold stood between the tower and the side wall.

  ‘What’s all this?’

  ‘Security,’ Campbell replied grimly. ‘We’re locking down. Nobody gets in. Or out.’

  ‘Why?’

  Campbell did not answer. They walked beneath the scaffold, heading towards the rear courtyard. It was an unseasonably warm day so the elite nerds—the ‘DoorMen’—of Project DoorWay had laundered all their clothes and hung them out to dry on the fire escape, seven levels of rotting boards and rusty steel ladders that disfigured the eastern face of the tower, from which swayed dozens of pairs of wet black jeans, heavy in the breeze like vampire bats. A drop fell on Danyl’s head.

  ‘Keep up, writer.’ Campbell sailed across the courtyard like a proud ship, heading for the sponge pools; Danyl bobbed along in his wake. They picked their way over and around the array of industrial equipment. Tendrils of steam rose from the pools; the sponges hung from ropes stretched lengthways across the surface of the water. They were cloud-shaped, pale yellow and looked like the sculptures of untalented children. The machines hummed discordantly, a sound Danyl felt in his teeth.

  Eventually Campbell stopped and looked around. He leaned close to Danyl and said, ‘We can talk here.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘The police raided us today. Did you know that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Of course not. You’re only the official bard. You’re only here to Document. Important. Incidents. Why should you care if the police storm the building?’

  ‘Campbell, I’m sorry.’ Danyl tried to sound as if he was actually sorry. ‘I was upstairs writing. No one told me. What did they want?’

  ‘Interesting question.’ Campbell appeared his usual aloof, hateful self but, Danyl observed, his hands shook and his bulging fish-like eyes were wilder than usual. ‘They wanted our test subjects. They had a legal permit to search the building on the suspicion we were mistreating animals, namely the Wister rats in the biochemistry lab. They had so-called animal welfare workers who were empowered to confiscate them.’

  ‘They took your rats?’

  Campbell smirked. ‘No. Happily that phase of our research is over. The police were too late. We sacrificed all our animal models last night. They’re sectioned and stored in the freezers.’

  ‘Sacrificed? You mean you killed them all?’

  ‘Almost all. One of them eluded me.’ Danyl noticed that Campbell’s hands were covered in flesh-coloured Band-Aids. ‘He’s hiding somewhere in the building. I’ll deal with him at my leisure.’

  ‘What will the police do to you? Will they close you down? Prosecute?’

  Campbell’s smirk intensified. ‘Foolish writer. It’s not a crime to kill rats and freeze their corpses. This is still a free country, just. No, we got lucky. But this confirms something I’ve suspected for some time.’ He took Danyl’s arm and drew him close. ‘We have a traitor among us.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes. Someone told the animal welfare fanatics and their pro-rat sympathisers in the police force about our work here. And this isn’t the first such incident. There are others you don’t know about. Theft of equipment and reagents. Destruction of data. Sabotage. There is an enemy in our midst. Don’t worry,’ he added quickly. ‘I don’t suspect you. I know you’re not capable of such guile. But this changes things. I’ll have to push ahead with the next stage of the project. You’ll need to be more involved.’

  ‘Oh. Great.’

  ‘And I’ve taken all your work down off the intranet. Don’t worry, it’s all backed up, but you’ll have to give me your laptop.

  ‘My laptop?’

  ‘It could be seized as evidence. I’ll hide it in a secure location, somewhere off-site. Don’t fret, silly writer—your fine work on The Book of the Campbell Walker will never be lost. But the police might return here with wider search powers, and everything you’ve written could be admissible.’

  ‘Sure.’ Danyl nodded. ‘I’ll bring you my laptop first thing tomorrow morning.’

  ‘No, it has to be tonight. I’ll also need any notes or printouts you may have made. I’ll review them and burn anything incriminating. That goes for your other book as well.’

  ‘My other book?’ Danyl felt a horrible, weightless feeling in his stomach. How did Campbell know about his secret book? He steadied himself on a sponge-nutrient pump.

  ‘Yes,’ Campbell explained cheerfully. ‘Whatever you’ve been working on all this time. I’ve overheard you mention it to Verity. It needs to be vetted for DoorWay security.’

  ‘Oh, that book.’ Danyl affected a casual, almost bored tone and hoped it hid the hysteria bubbling up inside him. ‘That’s nothing to do with DoorWay. You don’t need to trouble yourself with it. And it’s a very very personal project. Private. Extremely.’ The satchel on Danyl’s shoulder felt very heavy.

  ‘Private?’ Campbell chuckled. ‘Read your contract, silly bard. Anything you’ve written in the past year belongs to me. I own it. But I’ll respect your privacy. Any embarrassing content will be strictly between us and my fellow DoorMen.’

  Danyl nodded. He thought about the dozens of chapters in his book mocking Campbell: the fake speeches, the scene where Campbell masturbated while staring into a lit match. The sunlight seemed very bright now, and the noise from the machines ebbed and roared like waves crashing against his ears. He was aware of a distant bird—a gull—wheeling in the empty sky.

  If Campbell read the book then all was lost. He would assert ownership and order it destroyed. He would sue if any version of it were ever published. He would co-blame Verity and cancel the sale of his house, then throw them both out onto the street. Disaster. Utter disaster. He remembered from nowhere a quotation from Karl Marx: ‘All that is solid melts into air.’

  ‘Of course.’ Danyl’s mind raced: how to salvage this situation? ‘I just need to go out for a few minutes,’ he said, gesturing vaguely towards Aro Street. ‘I’ll come straight back and bring you my laptop and notes.’ He intended to deposit the latest draft of his book in Verity’s archive and then throw the laptop out the window. The perfect plan.

  ‘Request for leave denied,’ Campbell replied smugly. He took hold of Danyl’s arm. ‘This is a security emergency, writer. I can’t have you running off
to who knows where. I need you here—the next phase of our research begins tonight. You’re not ready for this, but that can’t be helped.’ He spun Danyl around to face the building and lurched towards it, half-dragging Danyl along with him. ‘It’s time, writer. It’s time for you to see the second level.’

  Danyl ducked beneath the roller-door and turned on his torch, adjusting the beam to keep it tight. The basement looked the same as it did two days ago when he had hobbled out of it on crutches, grinning and tugging his running shorts up from around his thighs. Now he prowled through the darkness, confident and strong, picking his way through the debris littering the floor.

  The basement was L-shaped, and the vehicle lockup was hidden around the corner opposite the elevator. As Danyl neared it he saw light ahead and heard voices. He switched off his torch, moved behind a pile of moulding boxes and peered over them.

  The illumination came from the elevator, which was stopped at this floor. Dirty yellow light spilled from the bulb in the lift, but the voices came from further away—from the patch of darkness around the corner.

  From the campervan in the cage.

  Danyl crept towards the edge of the wall. Then a bright flash of light threw stark shadows across the concrete. He ducked back out of sight. More voices, indistinct words, impossible to make out amid the echoes. He reached the wall, pressed his back to it, poised to flee, and peeked around the side.

  There was the cage: a dark bulk in the far corner. The steel roller-door leading into it was open—and so were the doors of the van. Shadows masked its interior. Two black-robed SSS cultists stood beside it, their voices a low murmur. One of them raised his hands to his face and another flash of light filled the basement. Danyl shrank back.

  A camera. Pictures. They were taking pictures.

  Two days ago the campervan was derelict, abandoned, covered in spiders and dust. Now Campbell’s disciples were down here taking photographs of it at midnight. Why?

  And what was Danyl’s next move? Should he wait for them to leave? Retreat? Go home now, empty-handed?

  His eyes fell upon the empty, brightly lit elevator. Or maybe he should go further, up into the tower? Make for Campbell’s penthouse tonight. Try to recover Stasia’s stolen letter, as per his promise. This wasn’t as crazy as it sounded. The lift was the safest way in, but if he summoned it from the basement it might make the cultists on the other floors suspicious as to who was down there and when the lift arrived it might be filled with black-robed thugs. But here it was, yawning open, waiting for him. All he had to do was get inside, press a button for a higher floor and the cultists in the van would assume that someone else had summoned it. Simple.

  Was it worth the risk? He thought about the levels above: dark mazes teaming with cultists. Then he thought about Stasia’s mouth; her warm, powerful tongue. I will be so very grateful.

  He scurried to the wall beside the lift and darted across the lit area in front of the door. No shouts from the cultists—they were occupied with the van. But now he was close up he saw that his plan was doomed. The inner door to the lift was closed. A lattice of rusty steel bars connected by rusty steel hinges, it would be impossible to open silently. The cultists would hear it, see him and alert the whole building. His plan was doomed.

  Or was it?

  A perfect solution unfolded in his mind. He slunk away from the elevator, retreating back to the mounds of rubbish in the middle of the basement and, moving soundlessly and keeping low, set to work.

  He picked through a pile of polythene tubes stacked against a pillar. They still reeked of the briny sea-sponge water they pumped into the sponge pools a year and a lifetime ago. He selected a dozen of the thinnest pipes and, making sure the cultists were still busy inside the van, laid them out on the basement floor in the shaft of light cast by the elevator, about eight metres from the doorway.

  Then he returned to the shadows adjacent to the lift and peered inside. It was lit by a single naked bulb mounted high on the rear wall. He needed something that could reach it, something that would fit between the bars.

  Danyl crouched down and deftly untied the wire cord keeping his over-sized, stolen trousers up around his waist. He stood, held his trousers up with one hand and looped the cord into a noose that he slipped through the steel frames of the door. He pinched his tongue between his teeth and reached towards the bulb. As the cord’s shadow snaked across the dusty wooden floorboards of the cage, the light left multicoloured after-images on Danyl’s retina. His own shadow loomed vast across the breadth of the basement. He was totally exposed. But the noose was almost there. Any second now . . .

  His weight shifted, pressing against the doorway which rattled and jangled in a symphony of metal. The cable fell short of the bulb and slapped against the wall.

  ‘Hey!’

  The cultists! They’d seen him. He threw himself against the frame and cast the cable a second time. A hit! He tightened the noose as footsteps rained on the floor behind him, and then he jerked on it with a savage yank, breaking the bulb from its mount and plunging the basement into utter darkness.

  Danyl! Moving quickly, thinking clearly, he dropped the cord and fumbled for the door-latch. The footsteps stopped. The SSS cultists called out, confused, babbling, ‘Who killed the light? Who’s there?’

  Fools. His fingers found the latch and he opened the door. The clatter of the steel rang out in the void. He stepped into the elevator, but at some unknown point in the previous few seconds he had absently let go of his trousers and they had dropped around his ankles. He tripped and sprawled forwards, landing on the floorboards with a heavy thud.

  He shook his head, dazed, then gasping for air, he squirmed around on his belly like a cunning but desperate beached fish. He grabbed the door frame and yanked it shut.

  A voice shouted, ‘He’s in the lift!’ And then Danyl was blinded by light. The cultists had torches, worse luck.

  A second voice yelled, ‘Where is he? I can’t see him.’

  Ha! They’d trained their beams above his head. He stayed low; their voices were replaced by the sound of footsteps. The torch lights bobbed as they ran towards him, closing fast. Then he heard a skittering, slithering sound as their feet landed on the black polythene poles, and the beams of light spun into the air and vanished into twin explosions of plastic and glass. The outraged cries of the cultists turned to screams, briefly, then moans of pain.

  Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha. Danyl allowed himself a moment of triumph, lying on the lift floor and drinking in his victory. Delicious. Then he climbed to his knees and groped for the controls. Where were they? Which side of the door were they on? Nowhere! They were nowhere! He forced himself to stay calm. Breathe. The cultists groaned in the darkness.

  He felt around again. This time he found the controls and ran his fingers over the buttons. Now here was another problem—which floor should he pick? Any one of them could be teeming with SSS goons. He tried to recall which floors were dark when he approached the building. The fourth, with the fifth ablaze with light? Or was it the other way around? Danyl hated to second-guess himself, but maybe he hadn’t thought this plan through, entirely.

  Then he realised—there was one floor in the tower no one would willingly visit; one floor that would always be empty. He knew his destination, and with a mixture of exultation and dread, he pressed the button for the second level.

  The lift shuddered and began to rise.

  21

  The second level

  Danyl slid down the elevator wall and sat on the floor, his heart pounding, adrenalin rampant in his veins.

  He had won. The cultists in the basement were trapped there. Maybe they would escape somehow, but by the time they could raise the alarm Danyl would have raided Campbell’s apartment and fled the tower. He would be long gone. Poor, sad fools. He laughed.

  A hand wrapped around his leg.

  Danyl stopped laug
hing and started screaming. The hand tightened its grip and dragged him across the floor. Danyl kicked at it with his free foot but missed in the darkness and connected with his own shin. He screamed louder, as the cultist—who must have flung himself through the darkness to the lift and grabbed onto the bottom of the elevator—pulled Danyl’s foot through the doorway. It dangled in mid-void. Danyl wondered how long he had until the lift ascended into the shaft and amputated his limb at the ankle. Two seconds? Three? He scrambled for leverage, his fingernails scraping the boards, but he found no purchase. He braced his free foot against the door and pulled back. The hand slid down his calf, then grabbed onto the over-sized trousers bunched up around his ankles.

  Ha! A classic strategic blunder. Danyl pulled his legs free from the pants and snatched the dangling foot free and back into the lift. The cultist wailed with outrage as he fell back into the blackness, clutching the stolen trousers. The cry ended with a thick, wet slap and another howl of pain.

  The elevator stopped on the second floor. Total silence. Total darkness.

  Danyl climbed to his feet. He brushed the dust from his bare legs, opened the door and switched on his torch, shining it out into the void.

  ‘Behold,’ Campbell cried, stepping out of the elevator and raising his hands like an orchestra conductor in mid-crescendo. Danyl followed. He slid the door shut, stood beside Campbell and tried to understand what he saw.