Darkfall

by Stephen Laws

“Oh God, Jimmy. It’s too late. Too late . . .”

  Jimmy gripped tight, trying to slow them down, afraid that his gloves would rip, keeping his face back from the cable to avoid any skin contact.

  “The Darkfall is going to destroy the building, Jimmy.”

  “We might . . . might . . . get away . . .”

  “I can feel it coming, Jimmy. I can feel it.”

  Jimmy tangled his leg on the cable again to act as a brake, praying that his trousers wouldn’t tear.

  TWENTY FIVE

  Cardiff looked back down at Rohmer. Although he could not understand why the things on the staircase had stopped, he sensed that the Rohmer-thing had some kind of control over them.

  Jimmy and Barbara had vanished into the darkness and Cardiff prayed that they would make it. He knew now that his own position was completely hopeless. He had climbed past the double-door aperture on the thirteenth floor. At the top of the shaft, he could never reach the trapdoor in the concrete platform. Even if he did, where could he hide from Rohmer? His only other recourse was the double-doors on the fourteenth floor . . . and the prospect of being torn apart on the staircase by Rohmer’s horde.

  And everything above ground will be dissipated, Barbara had said.

  Maybe the finality of that, the finality of “dissipation”, was the most hideous of all.

  “Climb, you bastard! Climb!” Cardiff snapped at himself.

  His only comfort lay in the possibility that the building might collapse before they could get to him.

  Lungs aching, chest burning, Cardiff continued to climb.

  TWENTY SIX

  Rohmer’s mutated claws were hindering his attempts to climb.

  Cardiff had almost reached the fourteenth floor, and the thing that had been Rohmer did not want him to fall before it got to him. The answers were to be found in the sweet Tasting of Cardiff’s blood and meat.

  Angrily, Rohmer growled at the steel claws that gripped the rails. Deep inside, the insect essence of Rohmer wanted to climb, knew that it should be able to climb just as it was able to see and hear and breathe through the ventricles in its sides and waist . . . but its inability was filling Rohmer with rage. .

  A chunk of concrete exploded on Rohmer’s shoulder, knocking one claw away from the railing.

  He roared in fury at his awkwardness, climbed again to the double-door recess on the thirteenth floor and clambered into it. Looking up, he could see that Cardiff was no more than twenty feet above.

  Rohmer would take him from the door recess on the fourteenth floor.

  TWENTY SEVEN

  “There!” shouted Jimmy. “There it is!”

  Barbara finally looked as they slid down the elevator cable, to see the battered and dented roof of the elevator car. Chunks of concrete had impacted on the roof, twisting it out of proportion. Crumbled chunks of it lay on top and were jammed around the sides. The cab itself was tilted at an angle.

  “We’ve made it, Barbara! We’re down!”

  Jimmy gripped tight on the cable, rashly heedless now of the prospect of torn gloves.

  They jerked to a dangling halt, four feet from the battered metal roof.

  Jimmy tried to disentangle Barbara from him. But she was still clinging tight.

  “Come on, Barbara. Let go.”

  “I can’t . . . I’m sorry, Jimmy . . . I just can’t . . . let go.”

  “Yes, you can. Lemon-squeezy, remember?”

  And now Jimmy was able to lower Barbara away from him, down towards the roof. She let go, dropping with a hollow clang on all fours. Jimmy swung down to her, his legs weak. He collapsed to his knees beside her, breathing heavily. Their arms were around each other now, and their kiss was savagely passionate and relieved. They parted, and now Jimmy was swatting the chunks of rubble away from the roof, searching for the service hatch.

  “It’s, happening, Jimmy,” said Barbara quietly and desperately. “Here it comes . . .”

  TWENTY EIGHT

  Cardiff saw the Rohmer-thing clamber into the thirteenth-floor recess, and vanish from sight.

  Instantly, he knew what was going to happen. He looked up at the recess on the fourteenth floor, then at the trapdoor in the concrete platform. That platform was now a crazy-paving of cracks. Concrete dust was falling continually in billowing, choking clouds.

  Heavy, monstrous breathing on the staircase.

  The gibbering, piping and squealing of the things below.

  The thunderous avalanche of Darkfall thunder above.

  The Darkfall will destroy the building, Barbara had said. The building will collapse.

  Dissipation.

  Below, the possibility that Jimmy and Barbara had made it somehow to the basement.

  The elevator cable swayed in the centre of the shaft.

  A yawning chasm of darkness below.

  The blank face of the car driver who had killed his wife and child. The blank face that stood for the idiotic Face of Meaningless Death at the hands of meaningless men, monsters and idiots.

  Cardiff did not even consider the feasibility of the idea when it sprang into his mind. It simply came. In a desperate, flooding rush . . . it came.

  “Lisa!”

  Cardiff let go the metal rails and flung himself at the elevator cable, catching it with both hands. It shuddered violently. Cardiff swung around it.

  Gripping tight, he dropped like a stone.

  TWENTY NINE

  Cardiff’s mind reeled, the yawning black chasm spinning up to meet him as he fell. Somewhere above, he had a fleeting image of the Rohmer-thing thrusting its head into the elevator shaft and screaming in rage, and now the elevator cable was shredding his gloves as he dropped.

  Below, he could see a tangle of mutated arms and claws grasping back through the aperture for him as he fell, saw a crazily tilted view of the thing that had been Gilbert; its monstrously elongated face and jaw snapping at him. He lashed out as he spun down the cable, felt his heel connect with that face, heard the strangled scream . . .

  . . . and dropped past them into the shaft.

  Howling and shrieking.

  His own terrified voice, or the sound of the things above?

  He must be dead.

  Dead and dropping into the Pit of Hell.

  The fabric of his gloves was completely shorn away now. The cable was biting into his flesh and shredding his hands. But the contact of his flesh with the inert material of the cable was so brief at any one point that it could not “meld”, could not hold and absorb him as he fell.

  The shaft spun up to meet him.

  He could not breathe.

  Something was burning . . . was it his hands?

  Were his hands on fire?

  Screaming again.

  The Pit.

  Was

  It

  Bottomless . . . ?

  THIRTY

  Jimmy jammed the twisted iron bar he had found on the roof into the hatch and leaned on it with all of his weight. The hatch groaned, creaked and then burst open. Jimmy threw the iron bar into the cab . . . and then felt the elevator cable vibrating on the roof. Barbara grabbed his arm, crying out loud, and Jimmy jerked his head up expecting to see a ton of concrete on its way down into the shaft.

  A figure was hurtling down the cable towards them.

  A whirling, kicking, spinning figure that looked like . . .

  THIRTY ONE

  Cardiff saw the blurred outline of figures down below, of the square compartment on which they were kneeling, and knew that he was dropping too fast; knew that the speed of his fall would kill them all when he hit.

  The figures whirled from his vision again and gritting his teeth, Cardiff gripped as tight as he could, straddling his legs around the cable.

  The cable tore through his hands, through the flesh, and to the bone. The material of his trousers singed and burned.

  “Chhhriissssttt!”

  Jimmy and Barbara cowered back against the roof of the elevator, expecting the impact . . . and
Cardiff jerked to a halt six feet above them, his legs entwined in the cable, his hands jerked away from the cable itself. Barbara leaped to her feet and grabbed for him.

  “Mr Cardiff, Mr Cardiff! Your hands . . . oh God, your hands!”

  Jimmy was at her side now, reaching up and pulling Cardiff free from the cable. Were his legs broken?

  “Don’t . . . don’t . . .” said Barbara, voice catching, “. . . don’t let his hands touch anything.”

  They lowered him to the cab roof. His eyes were glazed, and he was mumbling as if in a fever. Jimmy checked his legs. The fabric of his trousers wasn’t torn, and it didn’t seem as if anything was broken. But his hands were raw pieces of bloodied meat.

  “Christ, Cardiff. You’re a hell of a bloke.”

  Above them, the sounds of howling had stopped. But the sounds of Darkfall thunder, and the juddering, cracking sounds of the disintegrating concrete platform filled the throat of the shaft.

  “Barbara, you go first, down into the elevator. That platform’s going to . . .”

  He stopped.

  The elevator cable was vibrating again.

  Something else was coming down.

  “Rohmer,” said Jimmy through gritted teeth.

  Barbara dropped quickly through the hatch and into the elevator cab. Jimmy grabbed Cardiff’s legs and heaved them over the side of the hatch. “Sorry, mate. No time. Tuck those hands under your armpits.”

  Cardiff weakly did as he was told and Jimmy seized him by the collar of his jacket, swinging his dead weight down into the hatch as if he was a sack of potatoes.

  Barbara grabbed his legs . . . and Jimmy let go. Cardiff sprawled to the cab floor, and Barbara quickly grabbed for him, making sure that his face and hands were clear of the floor.

  The vibration of the cable was intensifying.

  Jimmy grabbed the hatch cover, looked up once, and then dropped into the elevator cab, clashing the hatch cover behind him. He landed badly, and felt pain stabbing into the calf of his left leg. Wincing, he stepped over Barbara and Cardiff on the floor and flung himself at the double-doors. He tried to drag them apart, but they would not open. Anxiously scanning the darkened interior of the cab, Jimmy saw the twisted iron bar that he had thrown down earlier, seized it and lunged back to the elevator doors again. Jamming the iron into the crack between the double-doors like a crowbar, he tried to lever the doors open.

  The doors opened two inches. Rain and wind gusted through the gap from the ground-floor reception area . . . and then the doors jammed solidly.

  “Shit!”

  “What is it, Jimmy?” Barbara was cradling Cardiff’s head in her lap, keeping his hands away from the floor.

  “The elevator’s jammed between floors. Between the ground floor and the basement. Must have been the concrete dropping on it from above.”

  Jimmy stepped back to look, the iron bar dangling from one hand.

  “There’s only three feet or so of the elevator below the. ground level.”

  “Get down here with us Jimmy,” hissed Barbara. “On the floor.”

  “What?”

  “It’s coming, Jimmy. The Darkfall power is reaching its peak, just like I said. We have to be below ground level! The building . . .”

  “If it comes down while we’re trapped in here, we’ve had it. We have to be right in the basement at least if we . . .”

  And then something landed on the roof of the elevator with a jarring thud that made Jimmy stagger to keep his feet. The cab had dropped two or three inches only under the impact. More concrete or . . . ?

  The elevator hatch was flung back with a loud crash.

  A cloud of cement dust gushed into the cab, choking them.

  Nothing else moved up there.

  “Jimmy, Jimmy! Get down! It’s HERE!”

  Waving the dust from his face, Jimmy stepped forward with the iron bar held like a weapon.

  Yes, it was a chunk of concrete, that was all.

  “JIIMMMYY!”

  Jimmy stepped gingerly forwards again, carefully craning his head to look up through the aperture.

  And then a monstrous human-insect face thrust through the aperture, liquid cement dribbling from encrusted jaws. Jimmy recoiled, and Rohmer screamed in rage at them. The Rohmer-thing began to clamber face-first through the gap. Jimmy lashed at that monstrous face with the iron bar, felt it connect with the thing’s mandibles. Rohmer screeched, and now one of its claws was through the hatch, slashing out for Jimmy, steel talons grasping and clutching. Jimmy dodged, lashing out again, the iron bar hitting that claw, metal on metal, with a ringing clatter. Barbara cowered down, shielding Cardiff ‘s face, as Jimmy lunged at Rohmer again jabbing the iron bar like a spear. It sank into Rohmer’s Spider face, and he thrashed backwards Withdrawing his arm and head, dragging the bar out of Jimmy’s hands. On the roof of the elevator, Rohmer tore the bar away and flung it into the darkness of the shaft.

  Jimmy stood defiantly below, hopeless but waiting.

  Rohmer gathered himself in rage, stared down into the hatch, and howled in fury. He lunged down towards the hatch once more. This time he would take them all.

  A half-ton of concrete fell into the shaft from the collapsing platform above.

  One second later, the Darkfall erupted with all its ferocity on the office block.

  THIRTY TWO

  The gathering energies of the Darkfall around and above Fernley House office block had reached their peak. Focused in inexplicable ways on what had been happening inside the building and the emotional energies which were expended there, the multiple energies coalesced into a blue surging fireball which flooded into the howling ice-storm whirlwind raging around Fernley House. Instantly, it completely engulfed the building.

  The fireball exploded, unleashing all of its energy in a multiple lightning strike into the brickwork.

  Blue Darkfall electricity exploded into the offices, into the corridors, into the very fabric of the building; vaporising anything that might be ‘alive’.

  And Fernley House blew apart as if it had been hit by a bomb.

  All of the windows in the Polytechnic across the motorway imploded with a shattering roar.

  The nearest buildings on the outskirts of the city centre shuddered, some suffering structural damage.

  Rescue vehicles from central, regional and local police headquarters, which formed the cordon on the outskirts of the Darkfall were tipped over on their sides in the blast.

  Seismic readings for the area were unparalleled.

  And then the storm was gone. Instantly and completely, the whirlwinds and the sky-shattering lightning were no more.

  Only a light snow fell, almost vertically, from an untroubled and windless sky.

  This time, the snow was staying, giving the streets and the roofs and the motorways a white sheen.

  THIRTY THREE

  Darkness.

  Complete and utter darkness.

  But there were no more sounds of thunder; no more sounds of a rumbling avalanche, or the screeching, gibbering sounds of things from nightmare. Only the quiet dribbling hiss of water somewhere, and a creeping, dank, winter chill.

  “Are we dead?” asked Barbara, and felt Cardiff move in her arms.

  “No,” said Jimmy from somewhere else in the pitch darkness. “I don’t think so.”

  “The way I’m hurting,” said Cardiff, “I would say not.”

  “Where are you, Barbara?”

  “Over here, Jimmy. Follow my voice.”

  She heard movement, and at last felt his touch on her arm.

  “Are you alright?”

  “Yes, I think so,” replied Barbara. “I can’t . . . can’t really tell. There was a noise, and I can’t remember what happened.”

  Jimmy reached out in the dark and felt cold metal.

  “We’re still in the elevator cab. The roof’s been squashed down above us.” He reached up and tapped on metal again, a mere three feet from his head. “One side of the cab’s been stoved in
over there. There’s huge chunks of concrete and rubble pushing in, like there was an avalanche or something. God . . . I think . . . I think we’ve survived it. There’s no more thunder, no more Darkfall.” And then Jimmy’s memory flooded back. “Rohmer!”

  “He’s dead,” said Cardiff. “I think the concrete platform caved in on top of the elevator. It killed Rohmer and drove us right down into the basement. You were right, Barbara. We were slammed underground and it saved us. But it was a stroke of luck we were trapped in here and couldn’t get out.”

  “Why?”

  “The elevator is reinforced. It probably saved us from being crushed. If we’d been in the basement I don’t think we would have survived.”

  “Will we survive, Mr Cardiff? Are we buried alive?”

  “I don’t know, Barbara. I just don’t know . . .” Cardiff winced at the savage pain in his ruined hands. Barbara shifted her position in the darkness and began to tear strips from her skirt, fumbling for Cardiff’s hands in the utter blackness and then binding them.

  “The Darkfall has gone, hasn’t it, Barbara?” asked Jimmy.

  “Yes, it’s gone. I can’t feel . . . anything . . . anymore.”

  “Then there must be people out there waiting for the storm to blow out, like Gilbert said. If we sit it out,’ they’re bound to come and rescue us.”

  A Silence now, and Jimmy’s words seemed to hang emptily in the darkness.

  “Do you think it’ll come back?” he said again at last.

  “Yes,” said Barbara. “It’ll come back. Unless we change.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t really know. It’s just, a feeling I got when I was . . . was touching it. The Darkfall’s more than Rohmer and Gilbert said. There’s much, much more to it than that. I don’t know if I can really explain it properly. But there’s more to it than the scientific stuff they were talking about.”

  “Electricity,” said Cardiff. “The Darkfall is the Dark Side of Electricity. That’s what they said.”