by Adam Nevill
‘Who?’
‘He’s gonna help yous. He’s your mate. Yous’ll meet him, Seth. Soon. But you’s got plenty to do for us first.’
Sitting up with a start, it took Seth a moment to realize where he was. Looking around him, he saw familiar things: the semicircular desk that he sat at with the house phone and the metal panel for the intruder and fire alarms connected to every apartment, a portable radio, the yellow walls of the spacious reception area, fake plants, an orderly pile of Tatlers and London Magazines on a cane coffee table, and the security monitors on the desk before him, glowing yellow-green. Anxious, he expected someone to shout at him, or at least be standing before his desk shaking their head because he had fallen asleep on duty.
There was no one there. Both lift shafts were quiet behind their sliding metal doors. The fire exits at the foot of each staircase were closed. The front doors were locked. No one had been into reception and seen him sleeping.
Glancing at the clock, he could see it was nearly four o’clock. He’d been asleep for over three hours. The ache in his lower back attested to time spent in the same cramped, seated position. He breathed out and straightened his tie. Rotating his head slowly, he heard a crunch inside his neck before his muscles warmed and became flexible again. Then he stretched his legs. Both knees had gone stiff from hanging over the front edge of the chair while it was reclined.
He had never slept so soundly at work before. Not to wake up for hours was new, unthinkable. And that dream again. He recalled bits of it; remembered enough of it to know he’d dreamt of that place again. The stone chamber, the mausoleum, set on the edge of the wood. But there were differences. The boy with the hood and the burnt hand hadn’t been in the first dream.
It was that kid who’d been watching the pub; his subconscious had inserted the figure. With remarkable clarity, Seth remembered what it was like to be a child again. It had all come back in the dream. And he had been crying with frustration as he slept. Against his cheeks the salt tracks cracked when he yawned. He almost wanted to sleep again to recapture the exhilaration of escape, the comfort of a new companion, the anticipation of adventure.
But he began to shiver and could barely swallow. His throat felt peeled. His face burned with fever. He wanted to lie on the floor and die. A lingering sense of duty made him scan the monitors. Glancing over the bank of screens, he could see no one in the black-and-white street outside, or in the mews that ran behind the ornamental garden, or in the basement garage.
And then he paused, and looked to his left. Sniffed. Stood up. Hastily smelled the arm of his jacket, and then both of his hands. They stank – of sulphur, maybe gunpowder, and the thick greasy smoke that belches from open cooking fires. He reeked of it, and so did his desk and the reception area, all the way down to the lift doors.
SEVEN
There were no mirrors in the bedroom, as far as Apryl could tell in the thin morning light struggling through the parted drapes, so she went to the bathroom and checked the sills of the window behind the blinds and the little cupboard that contained floor rags and a bottle of disinfectant – but still no mirrors. So she rifled about in the two end bedrooms for another five minutes. But there still wasn’t a single mirror to be found.
She returned to the master bedroom and sifted through the boxes of cosmetics for a hand mirror. Nothing. But she noted a vacant space at the back of the dresser, between two wooden uprights, in which she was sure an oval mirror must have once been fixed.
Curious, she returned to the bathroom and found four small holes in the wall above the sink. Drilled holes with brown rawlplugs still pressed inside. Holes for screws that once held a bathroom cabinet in place. A cabinet that most likely featured mirrored doors.
On the wall behind the bath, she noticed two more holes. These were wider, for longer screws that went deeper, to support a larger mirror. It too had been removed. And yet the room had not been decorated or newly painted, so the mirror and cabinet had not been removed in order to modernize or brighten the place with a lick of paint or some gleaming tiles. The watery yellow walls, blotched with clouds of dried damp, had remained unchanged for a long time.
Back out in the hallway, she took a closer look at the long walls reaching down to the bedrooms. Their surfaces warranted nothing more than a cursory inspection the day before because they made her feel uneasy. It was the stains and the worn paper peeling off in places that affected her. Had Lillian been so unwell, so incapable for so long? It was hard for Apryl to accept, considering how precise and neurotically tidy her granny Marilyn had been, and how elegant and beautifully groomed Lillian appeared in the photographs.
But the mystery of the missing mirrors insinuated itself uncomfortably through her mind when she noticed a total absence of any other decorative feature on the walls in the apartment. Not a single picture frame or ornament in the hallway. Or in the kitchen or the three bedrooms. She hadn’t noticed that the day before. And now, the closer she looked at the ageing paper in the cluttered hall and at the disorderly bedrooms, she noticed further evidence of screws and steel fittings that had once held paintings, mirrors and ornaments that her great-aunt had taken down at some point and removed from the apartment. And she was certain that when she searched the boxes and cases in the two storage bedrooms she had seen no watercolours, no seascapes, no hunting trophies, no oil paintings, or whatever it was with which Lillian and Reginald had once furnished the walls of their home.
They had been removed, not merely taken down from the walls, but eradicated from the apartment itself. Stephen said Lillian had been a hoarder, that she had thrown nothing away during his time as head porter. Which left the storage cage under the building as the only possible repository for the pictures and mirrors. Frowning, Apryl fingered the small black iron key attached to the same ring as her front-door keys.
‘And the Mrs Lillian throw the nothing away,’ said Piotr. He sweated so much. His suit looked unbearably tight and his face was pink and moist. She thought of a hot-dog sausage, with its reddish meat bursting through the membrane of skin. And he never stopped talking with a forced jollity devoid of humour or wit. Her polite smile began to hurt her face as he irritated her with so many questions, usually about money, with no pause for an answer. ‘And maybe the Mrs Lillian keeps the gold here, no? Maybe one of the boxes is full of the money, eh? Then you don’t need the lottery tickets, no?’
And down to the basement they went. To what the staff called the ‘cages’. Beneath the millionaires’ world of dark carpets and teak doors, of heavy drapes and marble floors, they entered a netherworld, coexisting below the luxury and silence of the world that it served above.
Down here the walls were of painted cement and the floor was rough and stained with oil and scuffing; wires and rubber-coated cables swung in loops from the ceiling. African cleaners moved slowly with buckets and detergent bottles, their skin coal-black but sheening purple under the lights. Steel doors warned of high-voltage dangers; a vast boiler wheezed and smouldered and sent a ripple through the concrete under the thin soles of her Converse sneakers. And then there were the cages. A labyrinth of black mesh cubicles filled with bicycles, boxes, and looming objects concealed by dust sheets. One cage for each flat. She hoped Piotr would leave her alone once the cage was open.
‘Ah, here is your one.’
More boxes, and long sheets draped over packing cases. There was just enough room to stand inside the cage with the metal door open. ‘Thank you, Piotr. I’ll be fine now.’
‘But you might need the help to take the boxes, no?’
‘I’ll be fine. Really. I’ll swing by the desk if I need a hand. But thanks.’ She had to repeat this three times as he hovered, too close, sweating and smiling and flitting his small eyes past her to the contents of the cage. When he finally waddled away, wiping the sweat from his forehead, she wondered where the thrill of discovery had gone. Just looking at all the stuff made her weary. It was like moving house, only a hundred times worse. Because altho
ugh these things legally belonged to her, she didn’t feel like they were really hers, and there was so much, and she didn’t know what to do with any of it, or if any of it was valuable. A reckless part of her suggested she just junk the lot and then go out sightseeing.
Starting from the edge, she began to lift the sheets and was soon amongst piles of aged drapes and musty bed linen, old-fashioned skis and tennis racquets in cases, fishing tackle, tartan blankets, a wicker picnic hamper, two old tea sets, tarnished silver trophies and six pairs of wellington boots. Beneath and behind all of this she found the missing mirrors. Eight of them of various sizes and shapes, packed in brown paper, neatly tied with string, and carefully stowed away.
And within flat wooden cases with the hinges so old and corroded they were mostly dust, she found the paintings that once adorned Lillian and Reginald’s walls. Seascapes and line drawings of Grecian figures, lithographs and RAF squadron plaques. Then there was the largest picture. The one at the very back she reached last of all, in the early afternoon, when her stomach burned with hunger and a litre bottle of Evian rolled empty at her feet. Her discomfort was immediately forgotten the moment she unveiled the painting and was confronted by an image of Great-aunt Lillian and Great-uncle Reginald, depicted in their glamorous prime by a skilled hand. This was the first time she had seen them together in colour. For a few seconds Apryl stared without blinking.
It was a full-length portrait. Lillian’s beautiful, imperious face stared out, as if unimpressed with the sordid location now inflicted upon her eternal image. Ice-blonde hair was pulled back beneath a sparkling tiara, and her forehead was porcelain-smooth. A perfect nose, the thin arches of her clipped brows, and full red lips completed a composition of arresting beauty. White satin gloves shone to her elbows, a necklace glittered around a princess’s neck, and a long white dress hugged her wonderful lines and curves. But it was the arctic eyes that astonished Apryl. It hurt to look into them; it was impossible not to. Eyes filled with curiosity and intelligence. Passion, too. But above all else, they were vulnerable. Deeply.
She attributed an impending tragedy to the figures, knowing these qualities in Lillian would flounder into a slow madness after her beloved husband’s death. It was as if the painter had been commissioned just in time to capture the last of her extraordinary intelligence and beauty before it became something else entirely, until she would eventually suffer a confused and frightened death in the back of a hackney cab.
And Apryl struggled to believe there had ever been a more handsome and distinguished man in uniform, standing beside such a society beauty. A hint of prettiness in his eyes and long, dark lashes were offset by the masculine angles of jaw and pronounced cheekbones. The slight bump of a nose that had been broken and healed crooked was an imperfection not detracting from his beauty but adding the same character as a duelling scar. While flecks of silver speckled his temples, most of his hair was as black as fresh oil.
Their hands were together. Fingers entwined. A sudden glare of intimacy that Apryl’s eyes were pulled toward. Somehow incongruous in such a formal pose, but not inappropriate. A sign of devotion they were unable to contain even at this moment of their immortalizing.
A lump came to her throat. She whispered ‘Sorry’ to their faces. Sorry for rummaging through their private possessions. For planning on selling these things they had collected together and once cherished. She felt like an intruder, a trespasser, a vulgar little urchin with dusty hands and smeared cheeks where she had wiped at her hair falling from beneath the red headscarf.
Their home and its furnishings, most of its valuables and bric-a-brac, all from a different time and world, would have to be sold to the highest bidder. But not this painting, and the elegant dress-mirror, nor her great-aunt’s clothes that she would model before it. They were going back to the States, so the poor branch of this family could marvel at these once proud and beautiful people who shared their blood.
Outside, night had fallen early, at about four o’clock, in a dense ocean of black, and now the rain pattered against the windows of the apartment. Inside, the radiators and pipes glowed too hot to touch and banished the chill into the corners and near the windows of Lillian’s bedroom. Apryl had warmed her bones with another hot bath and a spicy Lebanese takeout, but at the prospect of dressing in Lillian’s clothes she’d been edgy with excitement, like a young girl given permission to play with her mother’s make-up. This was her time. Tired after a day in the basement rescuing another weight of memorabilia to assess and discard, she would fill her evening with the styles of the past. And in this solemn place she was a bright little ghost, come back to prepare herself for evenings and days long gone.
By the time the clock chimed ten she had tried on the dark suits, sleeveless dresses, and sparkly gowns, overlaid by fur coats and complemented with hats and their smoky veils that instantly made her eyes mysterious in a way no eye shadow could. It was uncanny how they fitted. Tight, but not uncomfortably so, over her trim hips and small athletic bust.
She covered the bed with tailored tweed, wool, cashmere, silk, satin and clattering wooden hangers. Put her hair up in the easiest forties’ victory roll she could manage with the hairpins from one of Lillian’s porcelain pots. Then creamed, brushed and powdered her pretty face and upturned nose with her own cosmetics, and found herself unable to resist a dab of Lillian’s scent from a crystal stopper on her neck and upon each pale wrist.
In Cuban-heeled shoes or glittering silver sandals, depending on the outfit – a fitted suit with box jacket, a floor-length ball gown with diaphanous shawl – she strode, pranced, pirouetted and sat with affected poise before the oval mirror she’d rescued from the cage, while the drab backdrop of an old woman’s bedroom formed a brown murk around her reflected silhouette.
Against the muscular curve of her calf muscles her aunt’s nylons gleamed in the thin light. Sheer as cobwebs but slick as glass, making her legs look more aerodynamic than the imitations she bought back home ever could. With nails red as clots of blood, cheekbones rouged and eyes dollish in the false lashes she found in a drawer that also contained long opera gloves, she twirled and danced a three-step jive. She was transformed, and her great-aunt was suddenly alive all around her, and inside her.
Transported by her finery, she took no account of the time and gave no further thought to the heaving of boxes, the calling of antique dealers, and the complications of dispensing with real estate that would come in the days ahead. She emptied her mind of all but the atmosphere and imagery of the past so suddenly filling her imagination and lightening her soul. In the painting that Stephen had hung above the cluttered dresser, her great-aunt and uncle looked down in silence.
All this excitement . . . until she was forced to stop in her tracks. To pause and do a double take like a flapper in a silent film. In the mirror she saw her face suddenly seize with shock at the movement behind her reflection.
Quick in motion, a rushing forward from the gloom. Intangible apart from its thinness and the suggestion of something reddish where one would have expected a face to be.
The brief sight of this form in the polished mirror made her turn and cringe like a cat expecting a blow.
And when she took a second look into the mirror she saw nothing in the dour light but the wardrobes on either side of a rumpled bed. And herself, petrified and alone.
Breath rushed back into her body and her balance returned. She stood up straight and felt ice crystals shiver and then melt all over her warm skin. She swallowed the tightness in her throat.
It had been nothing. The faint glow of the stained lampshades had fooled her into seeing something in the mirror where there was nothing. But still she teetered across the room and hastily departed, running down the hall to the front door, where she paused, breathing hard.
In this long-silent place of shadow and clutter, had someone been hiding all along, crouched down on thin limbs, with something red fastened tight about a face that only a nightmare would cherish?
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br /> EIGHT
Three other passengers on the bus were aware of him talking to himself. They pretended to be unmoved by his muttering presence. Embarrassed by the realization that his inner voice had become audible, Seth stopped whispering and looked out of the bus window instead, peering down to the street to keep his mind distracted from its inward meanderings.
What was happening to him? It was hard to say. Hard to remember what he was like before this. The normal business of humanity had begun to appear strange to him. Alien. He wondered if he was more enlightened now, or just losing his mind.
The entire front of his face burned and the skin was tender. In his joints, any movement created a painful grinding of the ball in the socket. Every muscle felt like it was being assaulted by a yellow acid that responded angrily to exertion. A pulsing headache forced his eyes into a squint or closed them entirely near strong light. And the further he travelled from his room the worse he felt.
Below in the street the beggars sat, their legs under dirty white blankets on the cold pavement; but at least they seemed capable of salvation, of a second chance, when he had finally been consigned to an incurable demise, a disintegration both physical and mental. That’s what it felt like. A long and tangled series of disappointments, habits, unfortunate choices and periods of introspection had brought him to this.
He couldn’t stop his thoughts now; they raged and changed direction and reappeared unexpectedly like a bush fire. And it was as if the last vestige of his former self only survived to impotently monitor the transformation.
Furious with himself, he tried to fathom why he had left the Green Man. Fever had prevented him from getting more than a few hours of fitful rest between his shifts at Barrington House. And every time he woke during the day, he’d found his sick, sweating body had turned the bed into a cold swamp, while the sunlight filtering through the thin curtains of his room seared his eyes and made him groan and then cry out with a pillow held over his face. If he kicked the blankets off for relief from the heat, he would quickly freeze and be forced to pull the damp bed linen back over his cramped body. Eventually, he’d risen at three in the afternoon to gulp water and swallow painkillers. Perhaps then, some deluded sense of duty, some sad parody of a Protestant work ethic, had obliged him to dress and leave his room for work.
