by Stephen Laws
Not liking hard booze, Eleanor Parkins had opted to drink the punch instead of the illicit whisky and beer that the others had bought and brought to the party, bought and brought with the grudging but wilting approval of management. Unbeknownst to her, drinking the acceptable punch was more intoxicating than drinking the (grudgingly) acceptable whisky and beer.
“Having a good time?” asked one of the office juniors.
“Yes, Billy. Feel funny. But nice . . . you’re a good lad.”
“And you’re a bloody good typist. Thanks for what you did. “What do you mean?”
“That miscalculation in my report. You said it was a typing error. I’ll never forget that . . . you, taking the blame.”
“Listen, we all make mistakes.”
“Come on, Eleanor, have a drink.”
“It’s alright for you. I’ve got to get home and start making a meal for six. They’re expecting me. How’s it going to look when I stagger through the door singing Beatles’ songs?”
“So what’s wrong with The Beatles?”
“Nothing! I was around when The Beatles first came out, I’ll have you know. I bet I know more lyrics than you do.”
“Knew you were more trendy than I was, Eleanor. Come on, have one of my drinks.”
“You monkey! Are you trying to get me tiddly?”
“Who, me? You’re joking. I just want to say ‘Happy Christmas’.”
Eleanor looked out at the billowing grey and black clouds which were sweeping through the sky. She thought of the bad weather, the oncoming storm and the fact that Christmas could not begin at home without her. She thought about how long it might take her to get home on public transport tonight. Wouldn’t the buses be crowded? She thought about the bad traffic, but didn’t really care about that since she had a lovely home to go to. Geordie was working shifts tonight. He wouldn’t be home until later. The ‘kids’ would already be home. They’d said they could cope without her, that she should just enjoy herself at the office. She should leave the turkey to them and just enjoy herself, even though they didn’t really know what to do with it.
Then she saw his young and grateful face and thought: I’m worth something here. Another ten minutes won’t matter. She looked down at her glass, then out through the windows at the gathering clouds. She heard the rumbling of thunder in the skies. “Alright,” she said. “Just one of your drinks.”
EIGHT
The whisky was not having its usual effect. Alec had struggled with himself to regain that fantasy, fuelling his depression with extra swigs of the bottle. He wanted to be away from this place, even though his job after the parties were done would be quite simple. All he had to do was regulate the heating, shut it down for the Christmas period and then check all the floors to make sure that all the bastards had gone home; check to make sure that they weren’t still lying under desks asleep or screwing, and if they were, to send them packing . . . a job which, when he thought of it now, he quite relished, bearing in mind how they had snubbed him tonight. The basic shift of cleaners—all that could be obtained on Christmas Eve night—were due at seven o’clock for a basically perfunctory clean-up. The empty bottles and the plates of crisps, and the vomit . . . all of that could wait until the bastards got back to work again. There was nothing in anybody’s contract that obliged them to clean up after that kind of mess—particularly since tips had been unforthcoming. After that . . . well, after that, Alec would make his way to the local workingmen’s club for a few drinks, and thereafter on to home and a warm meal provided by his wife Mary. After that, no doubt they would both fall asleep in their chairs until it was time to switch off the buzzing, no-transmission television, and go to bed. Somewhere along the way, he would have to find a Christmas present for his missus; maybe one of the lads in the club would be selling something cheap ‘off the back of a lorry’, as well as some of that cheapo Christmas wrapping paper.
The warmth and the cheapening, deadening effect of the whisky was at last reasserting the fantasy that had escaped him for a while. The thrum, thrum, thrum of the boilers and that penetrating, sub-tropical heat had overtaken him now. He drifted away into a blissful sleep.
That sleep was timeless. He was back on the tramp steamer, sailing through seas that had never been that colour in real life. Everything was fine . . . but something was making him uneasy now . . . something he could not quite place. What the hell was it? He looked around the ghostly engine room of his dreams, each detail so perfectly clear . . . and at last he had found the source of his disquiet. It was the bloody engines (boilers) again. They weren’t making that oh-so-familiar, pleasant, lulling sound anymore. He rushed to the valves in his dream and began trying to adjust them. They were frozen solid. Angrily, aware that the dream might dissolve at any second, he began twisting at those valves; but they refused to budge.
“Come on, you bastard! Come on! Come . . . on!”
And Alec was suddenly awake again, down there in the suffocating heat of the boiler room beneath Fernley House. His hand was groping out at his side towards the boiler. It was still hot.
But the boiler had switched itself off again.
What kind of games were they bloody playing?
Oh God, no. Please. Please . . . not on Christmas Eve. If there’s anything really wrong with these bloody things, then I’ll have to try and get an engineer out.
Alec moved across on unsteady legs to the other boilers. They were all switched off and, although hot, already cooling.
Come on. Give me a break. Just switch yourselves on again for a little while longer. Just long enough to clear the building, then I can switch you over to timer and leave you for a nice little Christmas break. Then we can see to you after Christmas is over. Now wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t it?
“Wouldn’t it?” he shouted aloud.
And then the noise began.
At first, Alec thought that it was simply an echo somewhere in the boiler room, even though he knew that there were no echoes down here. Any sound made was swallowed up as if the place was lined with cotton wool. He stood still and listened. Was it someone outside perhaps, banging on the walls? Yeah, that’s what it was. A bunch of drunken yobs outside, banging on the walls. But he knew that it was not that either.
The noise sounded like a door slamming somewhere; a large, heavy door. As he listened to it slam again, it seemed to him to be like a massive door on some huge safe in the vaults of the bank. The muffled, hollow-sounding boom came again.
And again.
The sound was repeating itself every ten seconds or so. Was he just imagining it, or was the sound getting louder . . . somehow closer?
Alec looked around again, moving now to the boilers and placing his hands on their hot sides. Was it coming from inside? Was that the reason that they had shut down? Yes, that had to be it. It was the mechanics of the bloody heating system. The whole bloody thing was breaking down after all.
The sound was becoming uncomfortably loud, uncomfortably close. Now they sounded like giant footsteps. Alec staggered around in a circle, trying to find exactly where the sounds were coming from. But it was impossible to pinpoint the source. The booming noise was coming from everywhere . . . and nowhere.
BOOM!
“Jesus, that hurt!” Alec clasped his hands to his ears, and spun around again.
BOOM!
“OH MY GOD!!”
The boiler-room walls seemed to be shivering with the sound of what were now terrible, eardrum-stretching explosions. The walls were not shivering, but the vibration had affected Alec’s eyesight as he staggered back against the boiler and the whisky bottle rolled from his makeshift chair. It shattered on the floor, but the sound of it was completely lost as . . .
BOOM!
. . . Alec shrieked in pain, hands still clasped over his ears, and staggered to the stairs.
BOOM!
Pain was clutching and grabbing at his brain. He knew now in blind panic that first his eardrums and then his brain must burst.
BOOM!
Alec reeled against the wall, missing his footing on the first step. He twisted in agony to regain his balance, the breath now like molten lead in his one remaining lung as he crumpled to the boiler-room floor.
“No more!” he cried out again. “Please, no more, I can’t . . .”
BOOM!
“I CAN’T STAND IT!!”
And then the noise stopped, leaving only one long and fading, impossible, echo; as if that great steel door had finally been slammed shut and locked. The crashing echoes inside Alec’s head subsided. Gasping for breath, still feeling that molten lead in the ragged hollow where his lung had been, he rolled over. Hugging his side, he retched on to the floor at the foot of the steps. It was an almost-pure stream of whisky. Gagging, with nothing left inside now to get rid of, he looked around the boiler room. His vision was blurred; nothing seemed to make much sense. When at last his vision had cleared, he could see nothing to account for the terrible noises . . . but fear still remained. There must be something devastatingly wrong with the heating system and the boilers. Damn it all, he knew something about ships’ boilers. The noises could only mean that there was some freakish pressure build-up in one or all of them. Maybe this calm was merely the calm before the storm . . . a brief pause before the bloody pressure inside the things built up to an unbearable level.
There was bound to be an explosion in that boiler room at any second.
Still gagging, still hugging the unbearable pain inside his chest and his head, Alec pulled himself shakily to his feet and clambered up the steps towards the main doors as fast as he could manage.
“Please . . . please . . .”
At any second, he expected that blast; expected the sheering pain as he was blown to pieces.
But the boiler room was quiet; only the hiss and tick of the boilers as they cooled.
If they’re cooling, there can’t be a pressure build-up. There can’t be . . . oh God, please . . . “PLEASE!”
Alec cried out aloud, afraid that the noise would start again. He squeezed his hands to his ears again, just in case. If it came again, he knew his brain must burst.
Alec fell against the outside door, forgetting in his confusion that it opened inwards, not outwards. Sobbing, he heaved it wide against the wall and stumbled out into the main ground-floor corridor. Leaning against the wall, he sucked in mouthfuls of air, waiting for the explosion. He stood crumpled against that wall for a full two minutes, trying to summon up reserves of strength to move. Still no explosion. At the far end of the clinically tiled corridor, he could see the main reception desk and the glass frontage of the building. There should be at least one night porter on duty. But he could see no one at the desk and no reflection in that glass frontage of any movement behind it. Outside, darkness had fallen heavily and sleet was being driven against the windows. Alec looked across to the elevators. There were two of them . . . the lights above each indicated that they were stationary on Floor 7. He willed one of them to descend. But they remained fixed there.
“. . . anyone . . . ?”
Words would not come yet. The molten metal inside his chest swallowed them before he could speak.
Somewhere out there in the night, thunder rolled in black, mountainous skies.
Alec pushed himself away from the wall, casting one fearful look back at the boiler room and staggered down the corridor towards the main reception desk. Heaving himself around the corner to face the main desk, his first impression was confirmed. There was no one there.
Probably next door, getting pissed.
Lifting the lid on the counter, Alec stumbled through and let it crash down behind him. There was an ante-room behind that office and he bundled it roughly open as he entered.
“Look . . . there’s something wrong with the . . .”
The office was empty.
“Shit!”
Alec blundered back to the desk and grabbed the telephone receiver, wincing again at the pain and tasting salt in his mouth.
The line was dead.
He rattled the receiver, trying to get a dialling tone. There was only a blank and seemingly bottomless hiss of static. For some reason, Alec almost expected to hear the dying, crashing echoes of that terrible sound from the basement on the line. The thought unnerved him enough to slam the telephone receiver down again. This was bloody ridiculous. He reached for the internal telephone, punching out the number for the maintenance room on the floor above. Even if there was nothing wrong with the boilers, he would still be remiss in his duty if he didn’t arrange to have the building cleared. He waited for the ringing tone, but the line wasn’t connecting; just that faraway, static hiss. Alec redialled . . . and then redialled again. The internal line was also dead. Again slamming down the receiver, Alec made his way cursing back down the corridor, pausing only briefly at the boiler room door to listen. There were no sounds from below. The elevator lights were still fixed on Floor 7. When he pressed the button, one of the lifts began an immediate descent. Should he use the elevator? Or should he use the stairs? What would happen if there was an explosion when he was in the elevator? When the elevator doors pinged open, Alec was already gone, standing in the blue-blackness of the staircase well; his hand on the rail.
Bent forward, hugging the pain, he sucked air into his remaining lung and listened to the sibilant, ghostly echoes of his breath rising up the empty stairwell; vanishing into dissipation fourteen storeys above. He stabbed at the master light switch beside him . . . and all the lights in the stairwell from the ground floor to the fourteenth floor came on. Alec tried to call out, but could not find the breath. He began a slow ascent of the stairs to the first floor.
Thunder grumbled ominously outside and Alec paused on the stairs; sick fear inside that the terrible sound might be returning. But the thunder rolled, bottomed out and subsided; like a giant turning in its sleep . . . and the other noises did not come again. Alec continued up, gripping the stair-rail tight and hauling himself up each step; his rasping breath now filling the stairwell with its sibilant echoes.
He rested again on the first landing; turning to look at the next flight of stairs which led to the first-floor double-doors: Beyond that, the loan firm and the building society office which comprised the first floor. He could hear the distant throbbing of disco music; could see the faint red-green-blue reflection of lights on the glass-panelled door. Casting one fearful glance back downstairs to the bottom of the stairwell, expecting the walls to collapse inwards as the boilers exploded at last, Alec began to climb again; step by careful step, heart hammering.
He reached the first floor at last and groped for the interior door with a grip that felt as weak as a baby’s. The door opened slightly, the disco music pulsed through the gap and then the door slapped back again from his fingers. He leaned against the door, breathing hard—and then tugged it open again, kicking his foot into the gap to keep it open. For a while, he remained there, staring at the toilet door opposite to him. Surely there must be someone in there; someone who would see him as they emerged on their way back to the party?
He couldn’t wait too long. For God’s sake, those boilers . . .
Afraid, angry and exhausted, Alec staggered to the frosted-glass door of the loan firm with its kaleidoscope of lights shining through. Beyond, some screeching bastard of a rock star was singing about how great it was at Christmas time.
Alec shouldered through the door. It swung back on its hinges and crashed against the wall.
The red, green and blue lights swirled from the improvised disco in the centre of the floor. There were bottles and plates of crisps and nuts on the tables. Christmas decorations fluttered from the ceiling; green tinsel climbed the walls like some strange growth from a Japanese science-fiction film. The voice from the turntable told Alec to . . .
Come on, come on . . . let’s have a great time. . .
But there was no one in the office.
Now suffused with a rage that ignored his pain and his fear,
Alec blundered into the middle of the room . . . and bellowed. For all the world, it sounded like an enraged bull looking for matadors to maul. Here he was, trying to save these bastards, and he couldn’t find them. He was convinced that they were all somehow trying to keep out of his way. To hell with the boilers! Let them blow apart and kick out the floors of the office block. Let the whole bloody building collapse. Fourteen floors collapsing under the feet of these prancing, drinking, uncaring, selfish bastards. They’d all end up in the basement where they’d confined him. The whole bloody lot of ’em. Never mind who earned most, never mind upper, middle or lower working-class. Never mind all of that. They’d all end up in the bloody cellar, bloody jam-packed in rubble. All the same. Why the hell should he care?
Alec strode with failing dignity to the glass-partitioned office marked ‘Chief Administrative Officer’ and kicked the door open like a gunfighter. There was no one there.
Alec staggered back out into the corridor and headed towards the fluted-glass door which read ‘Underdown Building Society’. Bracing himself on the lintel, he hammered against the glass with the flat of his hand. The sheet glass quivered and rattled. But no one answered. He banged again, harder, drawing in breath and grimacing at the pain.
“Come on, you . . .”
Alec shouldered it open, still consumed by rage. He burst into the office.
It was empty.
He could see a beer keg on one of the long collating tables. He could see plastic glasses, and a damp patch on the floor where the keg had spilled. He could see the Christmas decorations on the walls.
But there was no one in the room.
“You’ve got to get out!” he shouted, voice returning. “There’s something wrong downstairs. In the boilers.” His voice seemed flat. Next door, the disco music continued to thump through the walls.
“Come on!” he shouted again. “Where the hell is everyone!”
He stamped back out into the corridor, any threat of imminent danger pushed firmly to the back of his mind now as he caught sight of the elevators. One was still on Floor 7 . . . but the other was somehow sitting on Floor 1, waiting for him.
