Beneath The Surface

by Simon Strantzas

  “Who . . . are you?”

  Hawksley turned, his tongue too thick to speak.

  “Who . . . are you?” the man repeated, eyes bulging, ruddy skin glistening as if he were fresh from the womb. Hawksley stammered the answer.

  “I’m looking for Mr. Davis’s office.” The man’s eyes were blankly uncomprehending and Hawksley faltered. “He should be expecting me.”

  The man emitted a strange snort at last, shoulders jerking, and said: “Come . . . with me.” He walked off without waiting to see if Hawksley followed. When they passed through the bend in the corridor, taking them out of sight of the doors, the pounding noise behind them resumed.

  “That door . . .” the heavy man said, taking a pause before finishing each sentence in a flurry of words, “was the door to the factory. You . . . needn’t go in there.”

  “A factory? Why is there a factory here?”

  “The company . . . has other interests, other . . . world-wide interests. We . . . must handle different types of work. There . . . is little I can say on what transpires within.”

  The path twisted through a series of hallways of varying lengths. Hawksley was still feeling disoriented when they stopped before another door, this one with only enough frosted glass for a small window and the name DAVIS stenciled in block letters across it. The man removed a key from his pocket and turned the lock, then delicately opened the door as if he were anticipating the escape of some small animal. He slipped through the gap.

  “Come . . . in.”

  The man who was presumably Mr. Davis took a seat behind the desk, but it wasn’t until he retrieved a single file folder hidden in the drawer that he spoke again.

  “You . . . would like to resume your job?”

  “Yes, I would.” Hawksley did his best to sound sincere.

  “You . . . will be the second. There . . . is already a data-entry employee from your company here.” Mr. Davis pressed his fingers into his eyes and rubbed them until they turned blood red. He snorted again.

  “When . . . are you able to begin?”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Yes . . . tomorrow. This . . . will do.” He took Hawksley’s hand across the desk awkwardly between his own. They were damp and cold and they added to Hawksley’s discomfort. “You . . . will start tomorrow.”

  • • •

  The pouring rain slowed the bus down, yet he managed to arrive just as the clock struck nine. Down the gauntlet of pale windows, the furthest door on the right was his new office, and Hawksley found the small room constricted with its oversized desk and terminal. He removed his coat and hung it in the corner.

  He sat down and ran his hands along the damp wood of his desk. Placed in the center was a copy of the employee handbook, its yellowed onionskin pages more like a bible than a set of regulations. He moved it to the bottom drawer, well out of reach. Beside the desk, affixed to the wall with yellowing tape, was a curled list of employees. Over time, names had been crossed off it with a shaking line and their replacements illegibly written beneath. Hawksley ran his finger down the page, leaving a faint streak of grime behind, but he recognized none of the names other than Mr. Davis’s. He pulled the old telephone towards him and dialed the number.

  The line rang without answer.

  A sharp series of knocks startled him. A blurry silhouette stood waiting behind his door, and Hawksley opened it to find a face he barely recognized smiling widely and topped by rusty hair spurred with tufts of grey.

  “You made it here too! It’s great to see a familiar face. I was beginning to feel like the only one who’d come over.”

  “Hello, Daniels. Nobody else is here?”

  “Not that I’ve seen so far,” he said, resting his arm upon the frame, “but I haven’t been everywhere yet. None of my team came, that’s for sure. Lucky bastards all found better jobs.”

  Hawksley smiled weakly. “That’s too bad.”

  “Yeah, for me!” Daniels laughed. “Listen, I know we both got stuck coming here when everyone else got out, but don’t worry about it. It’ll be okay. You and me? We’ll stick together, all right?” Hawksley shuffled his feet, unsure of what to do. He barely knew the man, yet now he felt tied to him by the past. He wanted to escape and instead life was trying to suffocate him. “I’ve got to get back to work, but we’ll meet up at lunch and I’ll show you around . . . well, at least as much as I’ve figured out so far. If you need me, I’ve got the office right across from you.” Daniels pointed with his thumb. “We’re neighbors!” He clapped Hawksley on the shoulder and walked back to his office. “I love these walls, at least,” he said and stepped inside, closing his door behind him.

  Muted shapes passed across his windows all morning as Hawksley tried to focus on his work. The new computer system was not much different than his old software, and he picked up its nuances fairly easily. Still, every so often, he encountered an error that filled the screen with pages of some alien language, and he was forced to reboot the computer to regain control. He wondered if the cause was his fingers, spreading the disease of misfortune to everything he touched. It wouldn’t have surprised him. He felt tainted, as though everything he did was a mistake waiting to be discovered.

  True to his word, Daniels returned just after noon, knocking at Hawksley’s door. “Come on,” he said, “I think I can get us to the cafeteria.”

  Scattered footprints and puddles — remnants of the rain outside, marred the floors. Hawksley felt lost immediately — at some point he’d stepped from the familiar into the unfamiliar, and now had no idea where he was. The hallways carried a faint pervasive thumping, like that from beyond the factory door. He feared if Daniels left him he might never find his way out.

  “The cafeteria is just up here. I think.”

  From out of nowhere, a set of double doors stood wide, light spilling into the storm-dark passage. The sound of voices crackled towards them, and Daniels’s step quickened. He smiled as he crossed the threshold, and it hung there, awkwardly, when he found no one to greet him.

  The entire room of people sat watching the two men, row after row of employees clumped together in groups. They were of different ages, different statures, but all shared the same silence. Hawksley swallowed. Daniels seemed unfazed.

  “Hey, there,” Daniels said, approaching the nearest of the tables. “We’re from — “

  “We know who you are,” said the oldest of the faces, the word maintenance embroidered in heavy script above his breast. All other eyes stared blankly. “We’ve seen you around.”

  Daniels hesitated. “Do you mind if we sit here?” The table snickered and Hawksley wished he could fade away.

  “Sure,” the old man said, an odd smile in the corner of his mouth. “Take a seat.” He pulled out an empty chair beside him, a chair coated with thick milky grease. The table burst into laughter. “We’ve been saving it for you.”

  Daniels looked from face to laughing face, all full of scorn. Then he turned to Hawksley and said, “Maybe we should go.”

  Hawksley didn’t need more convincing.

  Outside, though, Daniels’s confidence returned. “They’ll warm up, Hawksley. It’s only a matter of time. I’m sure of it.” Hawksley, however, had his doubts. “Come on, I want to show you something.”

  Daniels hurried ahead, looking back only intermittently to ensure Hawksley followed. “I’ve spent my lunches here trying to make some sense of these hallways. Whoever put it together — I think he designed mazes or something. It’s crazy! I’m pretty sure I got the hang of them, though.” He turned suddenly, taking an unseen passage. It gave the impression he had been swallowed by shadows.

  They arrived, quite shortly, at the factory doors, much to Hawksley’s discomfort. Daniels tried the first lock, but it did not yield.

  “I always hear work going on in here, but I have no idea what they’re doing.”

  “Mr. Davis warned me away from that door earlier,” Hawksley said. “He told me not to worry about what it containe
d. It’s something for one of the other branches of the company.”

  Daniels ignored him. “Listen,” he said. “Can you hear anything now?” Hawksley stopped, closing his eyes and tried but couldn’t. The noise of industry was not there; the door was as silent as the rest of the building. “Maybe they’re on lunch, too?”

  Hawksley checked his watch. “We should go back.”

  “In a minute. I want to check the other one before we go.” He sized up the second door. “I know it says it’s a supply room but I saw a bunch of guys go in yesterday — too many for it to just be a closet. Maybe it’s another door into the factory. What do you think?”

  Hawksley was unconvinced, but Daniels’s eyes had already filled with curious excitement. He pulled at the supply room door, shaking it on its hinges. “Damn it!” he said. “Is everything here locked up?” Hawksley resolved to unshackle himself from the situation.

  “I’m going back.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  They returned to their separate glass offices. Hawksley slumped into his chair and sighed heavily. He tilted his head back as far as it would go until he could no longer close his jaw, and remained that way, eyes shut tight, waiting for the muddle in his head to clear. Above him, the ventilation rattled to life, and he opened his eyes. There along the drop ceiling was a faint brown water stain, its shape spreading across the tiles. It looked dry for the moment, and Hawksley tried to ignore it and return to work, but could not shake the heavy threat. It hung there as though the stain was barely preventing a torrent from dropping down. He searched the soiled telephone list for the number to the maintenance department, but was hesitant to call. He had not had success dealing with them once already. He watched Daniels’s foggy shadow move behind the frosted partition, and then sighed again and stood.

  Finding the maintenance department was easy; it was not very far from the bank of glass offices, sitting just around the corner, bridging the way to the labyrinth that the factory was hidden within. He found the department’s wooden door standing open an inch, drab light falling across the hallway. He knocked, then pushed the door and peered in. There was no one there.

  He was about to leave when he saw, unattended upon the desk, a ring of keys. Hawksley stood still and looked at them, absently wiping his hand along the side of his trouser leg. Faintly audible behind him was the pounding like a reminder of all he had lost. He grabbed the keys and hesitated only a moment before putting them in his pocket.

  Hawksley hurried back only to notice his office door was wide open but no one was waiting inside. Daniels’s office was closed, and its lights were out. Hawksley sat at his desk, twisting the keys in his hand. He shouldn’t have taken them, yet he was unable to return them. Perhaps later, and hopefully before their disappearance was discovered, but until then he needed them — how much, he hadn’t realized until that moment. There were so many questions and he had always had so few answers. It tired him. He placed the keys in his upper desk drawer, hoping they would not be missed until he could use them the following day.

  A crowd of people stood gathered on the path toward the bus-shelter at the end of the day. They were huddled in the rain, surrounding the supine body of a man, a pool of darkness radiating from his head. He wore coveralls and had the word MAINTENANCE sewn above the breast. Hawksley gasped, yet seemed to be the only spectator affected by the accident. No one else was concerned, though their hands still silently attended to the body.

  Hawksley breathed to speak when the words died in his throat. He saw, in the darkness and rain that surrounded them, the man’s head cracked open like an egg, liquid seeping out. Light flickered, casting the illusion that the grey flesh in the wound was pulsating arhythmically. Then, that flesh slid against itself like the coils of a reptile. Hawksley blinked the rain away, but before he could focus once more the crowd had clustered, blocking his view. A set of hands then pushed Hawksley back hard enough that he nearly stumbled to the ground.

  “Go home,” his attacker said, face wet with rain. “Nobody needs you.”

  Hawksley shrunk away, the crowd of people disappearing into the storm as he approached the bus-shelter. Somewhere in the distance a series of sirens wailed across the city, yet none arrived before Hawksley’s bus departed.

  • • •

  Two things surprised him the next morning: Daniels’s failure to come in, and that there was no mention of the previous night’s accident. The building went about its day as usual, ignoring Hawksley, which left him free to plan his infiltration of the factory.

  He waited until mid-afternoon, when everything was at its quietest, then stood and slipped the key ring into his pocket. His walk was nonchalant past the rows of offices, yet shapes still moved towards him behind the glass, a series of shadows, watching.

  Hawksley quickly lost his way in the corridors, wandering directionless without Daniels to guide him. The sound of thumping came and went, but provided no indicator of the path to its source. It wasn’t until he found the cafeteria’s twin doors, quite by accident, that he managed his way through his memories and found the route to the shadowed corridor Daniels had taken him down.

  The corridor did not look familiar, yet he found at its midpoint the factory door. It shook from the pounding noise as though it promised answers.

  He produced the key ring from his pocket. It felt heavy, and he chose a key at random, then inserted it into the lock. The corridor fell silent immediately. The lock, though, would not turn. He tried another key, then another, until he had exhausted them twice over. He shook the handle in frustration, and the thumping returned, mocking him. His fists slammed against the door, air hissed through his teeth, then all at once his rage dissipated, and his shoulders slumped. He let out a long slow breath and looked over at the supply room door. He remembered Daniels’s theory.

  The lock on the supply door greedily accepted the keys, and on the fifth try the mechanism sprung open.

  The room was far darker than he had expected, filled with the pungent odor of stale lake water. He ran his hands along the dark walls until he found the light-switch. A single forty-watt bulb flickered to dim life, painting the room and its contents a sickly yellow. There was row after row of empty fish tanks, running the length of the space, filth in the joints and corners as though something had crawled from them a long time ago. He hurried through the aisles to the back edges, looking for the door Daniels hoped would be there, but there was nothing other than a shaking brick wall, and it separated him from the room he so desperately wanted to enter.

  Hawksley dropped the key ring outside the door, suddenly exhausted. He wished he could be free from the lead weight that rode his shoulders. There seemed to be no release from it; every step felt like it weighed hundreds of pounds, and Hawksley was sure that as he walked those heavy footsteps could be heard echoing throughout the building.

  Finding Mr. Davis’s door surprised Hawksley from his stupor. He looked around, sure that he was in the wrong hallway, yet there was the door, and as Hawksley peered through the small frosted window it seemed every piece of furniture was also accounted for.

  The only difference was the large object that lay long across the middle of the floor. It looked like a lumpy mass, a rolled carpet or sack, but it was impossible to determine exactly what it was through the scored glass. Through some trick of the light, shadows squirmed at the rounder, more misshapen end, but there was no other movement or indication Mr. Davis was inside.

  Hawksley heard footsteps echoing through the hallways coming towards him. He moved off quickly, then realized he no longer had the key ring. He sat at his desk for the rest of the day, waiting nervously for a reprimand that did not come.

  • • •

  The next morning had not gone well for Hawksley. Freshly awake from torturous dreams, he found he had risen far too late and couldn’t make up the lost time before he arrived at work. He passed Daniels’s dark office and found solace in his own. He tilted his head back and closed his tired e
yes.

  They snapped open when he felt something cold hit his forehead. He jumped to his feet and wiped his greasy brow, then looked up at the thin bubble of liquid that was already reforming between the ceiling tiles. As its size increased, it began to slowly descend towards the floor, stretching like a spider on its silk. Hawksley gingerly touched his foot to the puddle beneath the chair, his shoe coming away with a slight stickiness, yet he could not guess what the viscous substance was.

  Careful to avoid the stain, he stretched a foot onto his chair, then swung the other onto his desk before casters rolled the chair away. He pushed up on one of the ceiling tiles and looked for the source of the leak. A weight slid along the tile's length, and when he removed the panel a book fell to the floor, landing cover-first in the shallow puddle. Liquid trickled over a thick ceramic pipe in the drop ceiling, and Hawksley tied his handkerchief around it as a temporary seal.

  He leapt down from his desk and crouched to retrieve the book. It was greasy, covered in the stale liquid, and he wiped it clean with a handful of facial tissues. He turned the volume over and, on its cover, written in block letters, was printed: EMPLOYEE HANDBOOK.

  He shook his head, flipping through the soggy, thin pages indiscriminately. He stopped when he noticed the fine handwriting printed in the gutter, as close as it could possibly be to the spine. The words were tiny, barely noticeable, as though the author wanted the notes to remain undiscovered. Hawksley looked closer and tried to decipher those smears not made incomprehensible by the leaking pipe. The text ran page after page, one line at a time, and Hawksley pieced together as much as he could. What he gathered made little sense, and he could not determine just when it had been written.

  . . .know whats happening — the message, as much as he could understand, read — or if i mean but everything seems . . . since i think i . . . hiding where i dont think it will be found . . . i managed to conceal . . . from him when he left for a few . . . and snuck away soon after . . . god i hope you know what im about to do scares me . . . i keep hearing . . . while im asleep but i cant . . . see inside of it . . . i had to look . . . but no one was there . . . i thought i heard something before i could try and i . . . ran away . . . im leaving these things together so i . . . later but if . . . the only thing that makes me doubt myself is my own eyes . . .