He heard the door of Derek Dagger’s apartment across the hall opening. It remained open a crack. The woman was silent. Suddenly, he thought of a way to break the silence. He dug into his pocket and withdrew the pair of children’s socks that she had lost the day before. Derek Dagger’s door opened a little wider.
“I think these belong to you,” he said, holding them out to her. She was obviously surprised as she took them from him. At that moment, the door across the hall opened up completely, and suddenly, Derek was standing beside him.
“Thank you for your trouble,” he said in a deep voice. “Please leave now.” Christian was taken aback by the terse dismissal. As he opened his mouth to reply, Dagger repeated himself without looking at Christian: “Go!”
The calm voice made Christian shudder. Completely confused by the ominous tone, he took a step backwards, almost tripping on the first step of the staircase. He caught his balance and went up to the third floor. When he turned around briefly, he saw Dagger grab Angelica by the arm, and shove her back into her apartment so roughly, that she fell to the floor. Then the door closed behind them.
Christian stared at the closed door for quite some time, then he returned to his own apartment. After that strange experience, he decided to leave the second half of his round of introductions for the next day.
Chapter 7
Extract from a police interrogation protocol. Witness: Christian Shaffner
Of course, when I moved into this Dark Place, I had no idea what was waiting in store for me. At first, I didn’t notice anything more than the odd argument between residents, and just once, there was a screaming match in the stairwell, but I noticed nothing more, even after living there for a few weeks. The residents were rather strange. But I didn’t find that so unusual.
The days passed by without any contact between Christian and the other residents of the building. He had managed to find a new job – a temporary position, just for two months, as a packer in the logistics department of a company that was situated nearby.
However, shortly after he started, he came down with tonsillitis, and was unable to go to work or even to leave the apartment. It was both interesting and unsettling, at the same time, not knowing exactly what was going on in the house. People went up and down the stairs, but seldom higher than his floor. From the apartment directly beneath his, he thought he could hear the footsteps of a child, although the Klines allegedly had no children. From above him, he heard the wailing of an old cello. Unidentifiable sounds came from the apartment next door, where the woman who had warned him not to take the apartment lived.
While he was ill, his friend, Martin, came to visit him twice, bringing groceries and medicines with him.
“Every time I come here, there’s a different car in front of the house – big expensive things,” he said. “It would be interesting to know who they belong to.”
“I’ve asked myself the same question,” Christian replied, settling himself on the sofa. “Perhaps the local pimp,” he laughed.
“No honestly!” Martin said, with a surprisingly serious tone, “I’m not here all that often, but every time I visit you, a different man leaves your neighbors’ apartment.”
“Do you think she’s a prostitute?” asked Christian doubtfully. Martin simply looked out of the window and didn’t reply.
“I must still go and introduce myself to her,” Christian said.
“I hope she doesn’t charge you!” Christian deliberately ignored Martin’s comment.
A few hours later, he was alone again. And soon, the opportunity to introduce himself to his neighbor arose.
Chapter 8
The day after Martin’s visit, the mailman rang Christian’s doorbell.
“Would you be prepared to receive a package for Eileen…” he was having trouble reading the name on the package label, “… Evans?”
“Sure! Why not?” Christian said, and signed his name on the electronic receipt machine. The mailman had put the package on the floor, and when Christian lifted it to carry it into his apartment, he noticed how heavy it was.
“Have a good day,” the mailman said.
Christian went back to his laptop to answer some emails that had come in over the past few days. He soon forgot about the package, and only remembered it when he heard footsteps in the hallway. He went to his door and looked through the peephole. Eileen Evans had just unlocked her door, but it didn’t look as if she’d been out. A man came out of the apartment and tried to kiss her, but she turned away at the last moment, so that he kissed the air. Her gesture was smooth, elegant, as though she had done it a hundred times before.
The man, a burly type with a neck like an ox, made a move, as if he was going to hit her in the face. But he reconsidered, and stomped out of the building with heavy steps. Eileen disappeared into her apartment.
Half an hour later, Christian rang her bell.
He could hear doors closing outside, and somebody trying to creep to the main door as quietly as possible. He imagined Eileen peering at him through the peephole, just as he had done earlier. At last, she opened the door.
He hadn’t really seen her properly until then. She was wearing a red pullover and blue jeans. She was neither particularly tall, nor particularly slim, but it suited her. The most remarkable thing about her was her hairstyle. Her short, pitch black hair was heavily gelled, and parted in the center. It had been bound into a tight braid. He eyes, made up in black, emphasized her severe, yet attractive appearance. But most of all, he was surprised by her clear, melodious voice, although it sounded very dismissive.
“What?” she asked impatiently.
“I’m Christian Shaffner. I live next door. The mailman gave me a package for you.” She regarded it suspiciously.
“You can call me Eileen. Everyone here does,” she said casually, looking into the emptiness behind him. Christian felt uncomfortable in her presence.
She bent to pick the package up, but she couldn’t.
“As light as a feather,” Christian said, trying hard to hide his sarcasm. She straightened up again and looked at him. At last, she smiled almost imperceptibly, and stroked a few stubborn strands of hair out or her face, hooking them behind her ear.
“Would you help me?” she asked. By this time, her dismissive attitude has disappeared entirely. Suddenly, she reminded Christian more of a girl in need of assistance. Without answering, he picked up the box, and carried it, with difficulty, into her little entrance hall.
“Could you put it here, on the kitchen table?”
“No problem,” he was straining under the weight of the package, but he hefted it up onto the table. Eileen’s telephone began to ring.
“Eileen,” she said curtly.
Then she closed the door behind her, leaving Christian alone in the kitchen. He sat down on one of the two chairs. The kitchen basically consisted of a built-in wall unit, two shelves full of bric-a-brac, a bulletin board, a table and two chairs. He noticed the almost sterile cleanliness. There were no used dishes in the sink, there were no lime spots to be seen, there were no glasses standing around, and there were none of the usual household items in sight.
Eileen was still on the phone. He stood up and walked over to the bulletin board, which was full of newspaper clippings.
“Eileen fulfills all your wishes,”, “Eileen breaks all the rules,”, “Your wish is my command. Just dial 0900-Eileen.” There were several others, but he refrained from reading them.
“She really is a prostitute,” he said to himself, and somehow, he found the idea of living next door to her arousing.
Before he could sit down again, Eileen was standing at the door.
“Surprised?” she asked, without looking at him. She sounded bored, but there wasn’t the faintest hint of reproach in her voice. Christian really was surprised. Very surprised! But he didn’t want to admit it. He preferred to let her think he’d always lived next door to a prostitute.
“If you only knew how much trouble I’
ve had! You can go now.” Only when he was back inside his own apartment, did he ask himself why she had thrown him out of her apartment like that. Without saying thank you or good-bye.
Chapter 9
A few days later, Christian bumped into Mr. Benton, whose first name was Kyle. He’d found that out because a letter intended for Benton, had ended up in his mailbox.
Kyle Benton was about his age. He always had a girl in tow, probably his girlfriend, but she was considerably younger than he was. Christian had seen them in the stairwell once, and although they had seen him before, they’d simply walked by with bowed heads, without greeting him.
“Do you perhaps know when the janitor will be back?” he asked Christian now. “The cooker fuse in my apartment has blown.”
“I’m afraid not,” Christian replied, “but perhaps I can help you. What kind of fuse is it?”
While they were talking, Kyle’s girlfriend stared at the floor, only risking the occasional brief glance at Christian’s face. She clung onto Kyle’s hand like a little child.
“Sixteen amps,” Kyle said.
In his mind, Christian ran through the fuses that were lying on his fuse box.
“I think I should have one,” he answered finally. “I can come up to you in a while.” Hearing his reply, Kyle’s girlfriend reacted for the first time, sending a pleading look in his direction.
“Do you have time this evening?” Kyle asked.
“Yes, sure!”
They said their farewells, and Christian climbed the stairs slowly. The girl occupied his thoughts for quite some time.
At around 8pm, Christian rang Kyle’s doorbell. He’d already made sure that he did, in fact, have the appropriate fuse. Kyle opened the door.
“Great that you have the time,” he said, holding his hand out in greeting.
As they walked into the apartment, Christian said: “Actually, it isn’t dangerous to change a fuse like this one.”
The apartment consisted of a long hall, with the bedroom and a living room with an imposing wooden table leading off it. Through the open kitchen door, he could make out the PVC flooring.
“Yes, but we didn’t want to bypass it,” Kyle said calmly, as though that would have been the normal thing to do. He gazed at the fuse. “Would you like something to drink?”
“Yes, please!” They went through to the living room into the kitchen. There was a selection of pots and pans in the sink and there were some glasses standing beside the cooker which, obviously, was turned off. Kyle gave him a glass of water. While he was drinking, Christian noticed that Kyle’s girlfriend was watching him. Finally, she mustered up the courage to speak, and asked shyly: “Are you a stranger?”
Christian looked confused at her face that was framed by blond curls.
“What do you mean?” he asked after a while, not sure how to address her.
“This is my half-sister, Tanya,” Kyle said with a smile, before she could answer. “And this is Christian Shaffner. He lives in the apartment under ours.” Suddenly, Christian felt uncomfortable, because he had presumed that the young woman was Kyle’s girlfriend.
“Aha!” he said, for want of anything better to say.
After he and Kyle had changed the fuse, Tanya came up to him again.
“Do you know where the other child is?” she asked slowly. By now, Christian had realized that Tanya was mentally handicapped.
“No,” he answered truthfully.
Hours later, after he’d already retired for the night, he was awoken by an alarm clock ringing somewhere in the house. Lying there in the dark, he remembered Tanya’s question.
“Do you know where the other child is?”
No, he didn’t. There were allegedly no other children in the building. With this thought on his mind, he dozed off again.
Chapter 10
A few weeks later, Christian’s girlfriend Caroline came to visit him. He’d met her at his brother’s birthday party a month before. Caroline lived 150 kilometers away, so they were limited to weekend visits, most of which they spent at her place. The previous weekend, Christian had visited Caroline at home, and this weekend, she came to him.
Eileen was taking leave of one of her “callers”, in her usual abrupt manner, as they entered the apartment. She looked over at them at the exact moment that Christian kissed Caroline. He flinched as he saw the look on her face through the corner of his eye. He thought he detected a hint of jealousy and disappointment there. Caroline must have noticed something too, because she asked Christian about the other residents a little bit later.
“Who is the woman next door?” Christian raised his eyebrows and pulled a miserable face.
“That’s Eileen Evans,” he said, sensing an unpleasant conversation coming his way.
“And, what does she do for a living?” asked Caroline, with a look on her face that told him she already knew the answer.
“You don’t want to know…,” he answered, trying to avoid the issue. Caroline leaned against him and he put his arms around her.
“Ah!” she replied. He sensed that she was uneasy. “Why do you live here anyway? It’s an absolute hell-hole.”
“I’ve got nowhere else to go at the moment. And I only moved in recently. But at least I have a job now.” He couldn’t ask her if he could move in with her. He hadn’t known her long enough – only a month – so it was much too early to start thinking about moving in together.
“Why don’t you have anywhere else to go? There must be another apartment for you somewhere. And besides, the job you had is over already.”
“Yes, perhaps,” he said, avoiding the issue again. “I searched for a long time. Apartments are expensive, and the cheap ones are gone in a flash.”
“Well, it’s your decision.” She was irritated. “But your neighbors are strange. Creepy!”
“I know. They’re hiding something from me.”
Caroline froze when she heard his words. She pressed herself closer up against him. It was already dark outside and once again, fat raindrops were driving against the windows, almost aggressively, as though they wanted to be let in so that they could flood everything.
One after the other, the windows in the building darkened, as the residents went to bed, one by one. While Christian and Caroline made love, Eileen lay in the bath on the other side of the wall, in complete darkness, smoking one cigarette after the other. Each time a cigarette had burnt down to the filter, she ground the but against her breast, to put it out.
Morton Gould was sleeping in the apartment beneath his, his out-of-tune cello back in its case. As Christian climaxed, and Caroline pretended to, Tanya Benton dreamed about the child, whom she believed that she had once seen. Kyle had forbidden her to ask anyone about it, and she’d gotten into a lot of trouble because she had asked the stranger about it a few weeks previously.
Kyle had hit her, and her face still hurt, even though her left eye looked almost normal again. The stranger must know something. He was her last hope. But he was going to become friends with Kyle, and then he’d be lost to her. Tanya liked him, and she hoped that he liked her too.
Kyle lay in the next room, drifting somewhere between consciousness and sleep. He considered going to Tanya to apologize, but he was too tired. He hadn’t wanted to hit her, but he wasn’t able to deal with her not doing as she was told. “She deserved it!” said a loud voice in his head. Immediately, a softer voice countered: “Really?”
Finally, Derek Dagger and the Klines switched their lights off, almost simultaneously. The building was pitch dark.
Part Two
Chapter 11
In the early afternoon, it seemed that hardly anybody was at home. Christian was there, because he didn’t have a job at the time. Bored, he watched some of the countless quiz programs and talk shows on television. It began to rain again.
It took a few minutes for him to realize that someone was screaming. He heard a sound, as if someone had been thrown to the floor in the apartment next door. It
seemed that Eileen was in trouble. He pressed his ear against the wall. Yes, Eileen definitely seemed to be involved, in whatever was going on. She was in danger!
He switched the television off, so that he could hear what was going on more clearly. At last, after distinguishing two different voices – Eileen’s and that of a man – he decided to go and ring her bell.
As soon as he rang, the sounds inside the apartment stopped abruptly. But the silence didn’t appease Christian in any way. In fact, he would have preferred it if the commotion had continued. There was something threatening about the silence. He was sure that there was something suspicious going on inside his neighbor’s apartment – perhaps even dangerous.
“Eileen?” he called softly, knocking on the door. “Is everything okay?” No answer. “Eileen!” he shouted suddenly, and began hammering on the door.
Not a sound came from the apartment, but he heard a door opening on the floor below him. It was Derek Dagger. He came up the stairs slowly.
“What’s wrong? Why are you shouting like that?” he asked impatiently.
“I think Eileen has a problem,” he answered angrily, “a few moments ago, I heard screaming and now it’s dead quiet in there. Something’s wrong! Perhaps we should call the police!”
“Nonsense! She can take care of herself,” Derek said slowly.
From his tone, it was clear to Christian that he wasn’t going to discuss it. He’d made up his mind. And clearly, he wasn’t going to explain or justify his answer.
“Go back into your apartment. If she really has a problem, she’ll know how to deal with it. She isn’t a child. God knows she isn’t a child.” At that, Derek went down the stairs again and closed his door behind him.
“But, what if she can’t help herself anymore?” Christian thought to himself, his mind filled with doubts. He didn’t dare to defy Derek Dagger. He went back into his apartment. He didn’t understand why he was so intimidated by him.
A Dark Place: Thriller Page 2
