HELP! WANTED: Tales of On-the-Job Terror

by Edited by Peter Giglio

  Caroline, recently divorced, weakened, probably because she was tired and lonely. She invited me in to her flat for a coffee. I remember thinking that it was a place to scurry away to, rather than having the personal trappings that would make it a home. There were no photographs or pictures on the walls and nothing that connected with Caroline on a personal level. It was as though she had decided to reject her old life, leaving only a shell, devoid of genuine personality, because her own emotional zeitgeist had shifted too far from her memories of, maybe, a happier past.

  At that moment, she was vulnerable and I took advantage. Unfortunately, I came far too soon and she never climaxed. A fucking disaster, in other words!

  The screen in front of me filled with a list of emails, all needing urgent attention, or so the senders liked to think. Bureaucratic arseholes, I thought, I’ll put them back in their little boxes. Thoughts of Caroline slid regretfully away. If only things had been different. If only the sex had been better. I could have been her rock. Instead, my creaking marriage continued relentlessly…

  A knock startled me from my bitter reverie. I turned to the open door and saw Patricia standing there. I smiled, the sight of her reviving me like an unexpected burst of sunlight through cloud.

  I stood clumsily, turning at the same time and catching my foot in the chair. I shook the offending furniture off, suppressing a curse of frustration.

  “Hi there, Patricia. Come in, please.”

  She moved into the room, her fine blonde hair framing a round baby-face, her eyes a startling, hypnotic blue. I knew she was half my age and there was no chance of intimacy, but I found myself, as often happened, admiring the upthrust of her tight little breasts.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, Mr. Courtland, but I’ve just come from the basement and there’s a hell of a noise down there.”

  She smiled disarmingly. I invited her to take a seat. She sat down, crossing her pale legs demurely. I wondered for an instant what it would be like to touch her up there. I felt myself starting to perspire and had to reign in the arousal that was threatening to embarrass me.

  “Um…okay, Patricia, shall we take a look?” The clumsy phrase echoed in my mind, imagining a very different association.

  “Please, Mr. Courtland,” she said, standing and walking towards the door.

  I followed her, like a sick puppy, forgetting to reinstate my terminal’s security screen—a disciplinary offence, if discovered but, at that moment, the last thing on my mind.

  ***

  “Mr. Courtland, the Health people have arrived.” Andria’s thin, disinterested voice called from behind the Reception screen.

  “Health people?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You mean Health and Safety, Andria?” I replied, with a tinge of sarcasm.

  “Yeah.”

  “Right, where are they at the moment.”

  “Waiting in the small interview room.”

  Bollocks, I thought. I’d hoped to descend to the slightly creepy basement with Patricia. Maybe offer a crumb of comfort… Impossible, of course. The legislation prohibited any suggestion of intimacy between members of staff. I’d worked for the Council for twenty years, trapped there by the promise of a decent pension one day. I was surprised that the incident with the Head Bitch hadn’t leaked out. I guess it was in both of our interests to keep quiet.

  I turned to Patricia. “Leave it with me. I’ll check it out later.”

  She smiled disarmingly and I wasn’t sure if I imagined a flirty flick of the eyebrows. “Okay, Mr. Courtland. Thanks.”

  ***

  By the time I’d dealt with the Health and Safety inspectors and checked and responded to the most urgent of my email messages, it was almost 11:30. I needed a break from the computer, so decided to venture down to the basement.

  Accessing it by swipe card, I found the light switch, flicking it on. A series of stone steps descended towards a fire door. The light cast a yellow glow against the cream coloured brick walls. I began descending, pushing open the fire door and making sure I ducked my head to avoid cracking it on the lintel above. A faded sign exclaimed MIND YOUR HEAD! above the door. I made a mental note to replace it with something more prominent and less faded. The residue of my encounter with the Health and Safety nerds still lingered like a bad taste.

  Beyond the fire door was a short corridor, swathed in gloom. I switched the second light on and the cream coloured brickwork became visible, curving upwards and creating a tunnel. The feeling of claustrophobia increased with the light, which seemed a contradiction; but, I reasoned, in the darkness, there was no detail to confound the senses.

  There were two alcoves on the left side of the corridor. These were hidden in shadow, but I knew that they were entrances to store rooms where the detritus from the organization above ended up. There were discarded files, old diaries, boxes of out-of date manuals, filing trays, and other “stuff” that people wanted to hide away. The smell of decaying, dusty paper pervaded these spaces. Again, I resolved to sort through it all, maybe circulating a vitriolic message about keeping work areas tidy and uncluttered…especially storage areas.

  A further fire door at the far end of the corridor accessed the main file storage area. A further light switch illuminated an average sized room containing four large metal cabinets filled with bloated, buff covered files hanging in card cradles that slid along metal runners. Here were the records of the dead, the dispossessed, and the unloved. Here were the stories of rejection, humiliation, and abuse. They hung in orderly rows, like mummified corpses awaiting burial.

  Though all records were now stored on a database, the council had decided not to destroy these old files. I supposed that it was because of the requirement to retain information and the fear of putting all their rotten eggs in one electronic basket (so to speak).

  Vertically attached to the end of these cabinets were wheels with turning handles. These allowed the storage units to be moved along tramlines sunk into the floor, thereby easing access to parts of the records and saving space within the confines of the room.

  I listened. There was no sound. I realized that I had never noticed any pipes down here and as soon as I thought that, I noticed two pipes, camouflaged with cream paint, running horizontally across the length of the back wall. The pipes were thick, appearing to be sewage pipes from the facilities above.

  “Well fuck me,” I muttered, surprised that their presence had eluded me for all these years. “Well I can’t hear anything.”

  Then it began; a thin whistle, like a vibration through water. The sound drilled into my head, setting my teeth on edge. I covered my ears, but the sound penetrated, seeping through until I felt my temples start to pound and the dull inevitability of a headache begin to rise.

  There was something else, though. As I adapted to the sound, a subtle hiss prevailed. The whistle faded and the hiss resolved itself into something more coherent.

  Somewhere, deep in my mind, something was whispering.

  ***

  There had been something strange about that night with Caroline. Although we were both willing, I was over-enthusiastic and she almost held back. It’s difficult to describe and there was a point at which I felt it shouldn’t have continued. As it turned out, I was right. The whole thing had been a disaster.

  As I’ve said, she was recently divorced from her husband, so the only infidelity was on my part, and I suppose there was a trace of guilt which I ameliorated with bitter thoughts about how unsuccessful my own marriage was.

  The strangeness was in her eyes as I came. They were glazed, unblinking, suffused with icy blue.

  “You bastard,” she groaned, as if in pain.

  I assumed it was because of my lack of control, but as I stood in the basement, I wasn’t so sure. The whispers had resolved themselves into identifiable words.

  “You bastard,” they said.

  ***

  “What do you want?” snapped Caroline as I burst into her office. A techie was in the pr
ocess of replacing various parts of her desktop computer.

  “Sorry, I...” My mutterings did not impress an already irascible Head Bitch. She stared at me and, as she began to notice my shocked state, the hardness in her eyes softened and she moved towards me.

  “What’s wrong, Howie? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Well I don’t know. I might have heard one.”

  “What?”

  “In the basement…from the pipes.”

  She faltered and the colour drained from her face. Now it was my turn to be concerned. I moved across to her, grabbing her arm and easing her into the office chair. The techie registered a fleeting interest and then carried on as if nothing had happened. After all, it was none of his business and these Council types were an odd lot.

  “Let’s go into the other room,” she muttered.

  “Okay. Are you sure you can walk there all right?” It was a stupid, patronizing question and some of the hardness glinted in her eyes once more.

  “Yes, I’m sure,” was all she said.

  ***

  “What was it you thought you heard?” Caroline sipped the water I had hurriedly fetched upon her command.

  “Whispering.”

  “From the pipes.” There was a vagueness to her words, as if her thoughts were elsewhere. Her face appeared gaunt in the shadows, framed by the silky darkness of her shoulder-length hair.

  “Yes. Do you know anything about it?”

  “Why would you think so?”

  “Because of what the voices said to me.”

  “What did they say to you?”

  I hesitated, then knew that I had to tell her and wondered if she would make the connection. “You bastard,” I said.

  It was as if I had slapped her. She recoiled, raising her hands to her face in horror. “No, it’s impossible!” she cried.

  Alarmed, I instinctively moved away. “What is?”

  “He’s come back, the bastard! He’s come back and I thought I’d got rid of him for good!”

  “Who? What do you mean?”

  She stood, knocking the chair over, and ran from the room. I followed downstairs to the Reception area, past a startled receptionist, and, after swiping her card at the entrance to the basement, she descended into the darkness.

  I fumbled for the switch, flooding the stairway with insipid light. Caroline had flung open the door at the bottom and run into the tunnel.

  “Fuck,” I muttered, my body shaking and a barely contained nausea filling my throat. I followed, illuminating the tunnel and then the main storage room as I went.

  Caroline was standing under the pipes, staring up defiantly. “What do you want?” she cried.

  “Caroline...” I began.

  She whipped her body around, and I recoiled from the sight of her blazing, bloodshot eyes. “Fuck off!” she screamed at me, then returned her gaze to the pipes.

  “No, I won’t. I want to know what all this is about. I deserve to know!” I wasn’t sure why I felt I deserved to know; it was a feeling that linked back to squandered passion and a wasted opportunity. As I stood there I realized that, despite everything, despite my amorous, some might call it perverse, nature, I actually loved the Chief Bitch.

  I moved forward, encircling her in my arms and pulling against her resistance. She turned. Her eyes had softened again and her cheeks were wet with tears, her makeup tracing black rivulets through the haunted landscape of her face.

  “Please,” she said pleadingly. “I can’t tell you. I just can’t.”

  Then the basement was plunged into darkness.

  ***

  We stood there, frightened and holding tight to each other. My mind was a whirl of conflicting emotions. There was something malevolent down here and it was coming for us. My logical mind dismissed this melodramatic thought as nonsense, but underneath, I felt the uncertainty of a trapped animal. Fight or flight; which should it be? But what was I actually fighting or running away from?

  “We should get out of here,” I said, my voice low and uneven.

  Caroline kissed me hard, with a passion that, despite our circumstances, encouraged an immediate and obvious reaction.

  “I’ll tell you why this is happening,” she said. “It’s because that big fat fuck has come back. That piece of shit that raped me in my own office!”

  She wrenched herself from my arms and turned once more to the pipes. “Come on then, why don’t you do this thing properly. You’ve haunted me for long enough and now, at last, they’ll find your rotten carcass in the pipes!”

  I stood, shocked and frozen to the spot, my heart beating heavily as a thin, yellow glow began to emanate from the pipes. Gradually, the glow resolved itself into a grey ectoplasmic shroud that oozed towards Caroline, hovering in front of her. From deep within its depths an angry red glow began to spread outwards. The air in the room felt desert dry as the heat increased.

  “Caroline,” I managed to say, “we’ve got to get out. This is...” Something bore down upon me. Invisible hands pushed hard against my shoulders. “Stay,” it whispered.

  “You bastard! Yes, those were the last words, weren’t they? You remember, do you? Why have you waited so long? Did you think I hadn’t suffered enough?” Caroline was raging at the entity, gesticulating frantically.

  The heat in the room was increasing and I was finding it harder to breath. I sensed the first wisps of burning as the files within their rolling tombs began to smoulder.

  Panic engulfed me. “Let me go!” I screamed at the invisible hands. The weight lifted and I bolted towards where I thought the door should be. I turned, ashamed at my cowardice, as the glowing entity engulfed Caroline and the files burst into flames.

  ***

  It’s been a year since then. For many months, my mind closed the memories off, as though remembering would infect me like a virus. Only recently has it come back and I’ve been able to cope with what still seems to be an impossible event. My psychiatrist is ambivalent. Aren’t they always? I don’t think he really believes me, and the suspicion that I am an arsonist remains. The only thing that prevented me being prosecuted was the testimony of James Mortlake, Caroline’s divorced husband.

  His confession that he and Caroline had murdered Bill Drinkwater, a fat, lonely, red-faced, bullying arsehole employed by the Council as a junior executive. That led to the discovery of bones and the leathery remains of flesh in the pipes. It transpired that the pipes had been disconnected from the main sewer system many years before and were accessible from above by removing the metal discs capping them.

  Caroline had told James of the rape a week after it happened, following his insistence that something wasn’t right. He had met her at work, after hours. The building was empty except for the two of them and Bill, who had been contrite, begging Caroline not to tell her husband. Needless to say, James went wild, storming into Bill’s office. There had been a very frank verbal exchange and an assault.

  The assault had proved fatal as Bill reeled under the hammering blows delivered by the fit, muscular James. Eventually, Bill had stopped breathing. The last words that his dying brain heard were the spittle flecked barbs, filled with hate like poison: “You bastard!”

  Using his skills as a butcher, James had returned home and collected the appropriate butchery tools and a large sheet of plastic. He and Caroline had moved the body to the basement before dismembering it. They had cleaned Bill’s office, removing all trace of the blood spatters.

  The pipes provided the ideal concealment. Once sealed again, there was no smell as the pieces of Bill dried out like jerky and his bones shed the flesh like old clothes.

  Quite how they knew about the pipes and how to access them, I don’t know. All I do know is that Caroline was always very resourceful. You don’t become a Chief Executive by not being so.

  So, there it is. Out at last. I’ve retired on medical grounds, living off a meagre pension that I seemed to pay into forever. Pamela left me, bewailing the fact that I could
n’t be trusted; a weak excuse, I suspect, for being unable to sustain our wreck of a marriage. I do still see the kids occasionally, but they treat me as though I’m some sort of pariah.

  The last I heard, James had hung himself in prison. That’s what I heard, anyway. Whether there was any supernatural agency involved remains unclear. There were unexplained scorch marks in his cell, rising from the pipes to the radiator and culminating in a sooty exclamation, like a pointing finger, beneath his fouled body.

  ***

  The Council arranged for the basement to be cleared out and refurbished. The pipes remain, for some reason. I think it’s to do with the structural integrity of the room or some such bullshit. The files are returning already. They fill up the space like bodies in a graveyard.

  No trace of Caroline was ever found, but the last I heard, when Debs contacted me (which she has been doing more and more recently), the pipes were silent.

  I often wake in the night, my heart constricted, labouring to beat as I try to drag air into my lungs, feeling the heat of something malevolent. The voices are very near. Like dust in a desert they whisper: “You bastard...”

  Trevor Denyer has been published in magazines including Scheherazade, Nasty Piece of Work, Enigmatic Tales, Symphonie’s Gift and Night Dreams. He received an Honourable Mention in the Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror and has appeared on-line at Time Out Net Books and Gathering Darkness. His work has appeared in several collections including Nasty Snips and Gravity’s Angels. He is the creator and editor of the critically acclaimed Roadworks, Legend, and currently Midnight Street magazines (www.midnightstreet.co.uk).