by Fred Crawley
“Be careful...” said the first.
“Stay back a second,” said the other.
Nathan wanted to scream. It seemed impossible that they couldn’t see what was laying in the middle of the road. The ghouls had been on the police man for less than a minute.
“Oh god,” said the police man who had approached the body. “Oh fuck!”
“What? What is it?”
“Fuck ... fuck.”
Nathan watched him raise his arm and shield his mouth with the crook of his arm.
“What?” said the first, moving forward slowly, curious and cautious at the same time.
“Hey,” said a voice by Nathan’s ear. He was so surprised by the sudden closeness that he almost cried out.
“Mother of fuck!” said the first police officer. He was now close enough to see for himself what the ghouls had done. “Is that...”
“Call it in,” said the second policeman, taking his arm away from his mouth for long enough to speak.
Nathan turned towards the voice that had spoken to him. There was a man standing in the shadows against the carpark wall.
“Come with me,” the man said.
Nathan didn’t move but he felt the paralysis break and he knew that if he decided to he would be able to move.
His first impression of the man was that he was more of a boy. He had a dirty face covered in cuts and bruises. His hair had been blond once but now it was dirty and hanging over his face in ragged clumps. He didn’t look much older than twenty.
“Are you deaf?” the boy said.
Nathan shook his head. He could still hear the police further up the street. They were on their radio now, calling for an ambulance and more officers to sweep the area. He realised that they couldn’t see him. If they could, then he would have been arrested already.
“Come on,” said the boy. He moved his head jerkily, beckoning Nathan to follow him.
“Who are you?” Nathan said.
“I’m the fucking tooth fairy,” the boy said. “What do you care who I am? If you don’t want to get arrested, then come with me.”
Nathan nodded. He felt sure that as soon as he moved one of the police officers would spot him but what other choice did he have?
“Come on,” the boy said.
Nathan followed him into the carpark and there was no sign that anyone had noticed him walk away. He could still hear the crackle of radio static and muttered voices as he followed the boy up the ramp.
The ceiling was low enough that he felt the need to duck, even though when he stood straight there was at least six inches above him. The boy didn’t look back. He was wearing a dirty brown jacket, faded and ripped jeans and a pair of heavy boots.
“Where are we going?” Nathan said.
“Somewhere safe,” the boy said without turning back to look at him.
At the other side of the carpark, the boy climbed out and Nathan followed him. They landed on a patch of grassy wasteland and kept walking. Traffic lights were flashing, but there were no cars on the road. He could hear the distant throbbing of music. Beneath the railway bridge, there were two bouncers standing outside a gentleman’s club.
“Why are you helping me?” Nathan said. They cut diagonally across the road, missing the bridge and walking past a used car lot.
“You look like you need it,” the boy said. He still didn’t turn back. He didn’t seem keen to engage Nathan in conversation.
Nathan persisted only because when he wasn’t thinking about what to say he was thinking about the police man and imagining what the ghouls had done to him.
“My name’s Nathan,” he said.
The boy stopped so suddenly that Nathan almost walked into him. They were on a narrow street with a metal fence on one side, protecting them from the railway, and a series of temporary buildings on the other. The boy turned around to look at him. He had a fierce red cut beneath his right eye. “Garrett,” he said.
Nathan nodded and waited for him to say more.
“Now listen, you’ve got to shut up. Okay?”
“Why?” Nathan said.
“Because if anyone sees us coming down here it’s not just us we’re fucking. Understand?”
Nathan shook his head. He suddenly wondered if it was wise to trust this boy. Maybe he would have been better off taking his chances with the police.
Garrett shook his head. “Fuck it, you don’t have to understand. Come with me if you want but don’t say a word or Courtney will be pissed and you don’t want to see him when he’s pissed.”
It crossed Nathan’s mind to ask who Courtney was but he took Garrett’s warning to heart. He didn’t know where they were going, but it had to be better than a police cell. He nodded.
“Good,” Garrett said. “Now come on.”
Nathan followed a few metres behind Garrett. If it turned out to be a mistake he doubted he would be able to outrun him, but he felt better having a chance.
After a while, the buildings to his left disappeared and were replaced by wild scrubland. A short while later, the fence on his right stopped as well and he could see the railway tracks on a bed of compacted stones.
It was dark, but the moon was out. There was no sound other than their footsteps and little to see other than the imagined face of the police man the ghouls had attacked.
Eventually, a building appeared in front of them. It seemed to pop into existence as if it had been summoned by magic or badly rendered in a computer game.
“You’re going to meet a man called Courtney,” Garrett said. “You be nice to him and he might let you stay.”
Nathan nodded. “Where--“
“You’ll see in a minute,” Garrett said. He seemed to relax, he was almost smiling. “You’ll be fine.”
They entered the building through a metal door which had been bent back and wedged open with a large chunk of rock. Nathan stepped over it and found himself in a corridor that was littered with stones. Light came in through the ceiling which had been worn away so that he could see metal support beams as well as the sky.
The floor looked as if it had been pulled apart. Nathan followed Garrett, picking his way over the loose ground. There was a window to his right. It had no glass in it and looked into a small room that was completely empty and had no ceiling. Further along there was a door but Garrett walked straight past it and Nathan followed.
There was a radiator barely attached to the wall. One of the pipes hung loosely beside it and it had rusted almost too black.
At the end of the corridor, there was another door. Garrett bent down and picked something up off the floor. When he stood, Nathan saw, he was holding a long piece of metal that looked like a crow bar. For one terrible moment, he expected Garrett to turn around and attack him but instead he pushed the thin end into the edge of the door and leaned forward. The door opened with a low pitched squeak of metal.
“After you,” Garrett said, still leaning his weight against the bar to hold the door open.
Nathan was uncomfortable walking into the dark space beyond the corridor. He imagined Garrett leaping on him, hitting him with the bar and beating him until he was barely alive. Then he would close the door and leave him in there until he died and his body rotted away to nothing.
“Hurry up,” Garrett said, his voice strained with the effort of holding the door open.
He squeezed past Garrett and into the dark space. The door creaked closed behind them and it took a moment for Nathan’s eyes to adjust to the darkness. Even when he could see vague shapes in front of him, he couldn’t see enough to tell where he was going.
“Careful,” Garrett said. “There’s stairs.”
Nathan reached out and felt a metal rail. It wobbled dangerously under his hands. “Which way?” he said.
“Right,” Garrett said.
He felt his way along the railing, cautiously testing the ground with his feet in case it suddenly dropped away. He found the stairs a moment later and began to climb down while they wobbled ben
eath him.
The railing was rough and rusted. Pieces of it rubbed away completely under his hand. Nathan wondered how long it would be before the whole thing crumbled to dust and just hoped that it wouldn’t happen while he was walking down.
The stairs spiralled down into the black nothingness. He seemed to walk forever but halfway down, there was a window and enough light for him to see that it was only a single story, two at most. He climbed off the stairs at the bottom and breathed a sigh of relief.
“Which way now?” Nathan whispered.
“Just follow me,” Garrett said. He walked away from the stairs.
Nathan couldn’t see how big the room was, but the ground was covered in a soft layer of dirt, thick enough to cover his boots. It felt like walking through fresh snow.
They crossed the empty space and stopped in front of another door.
“Remember, Courtney can be the best friend you ever had,” Garrett said. “Or he can be your worst enemy.”
Nathan thought about the ghouls and doubted that could be true. Garrett obviously didn’t know how bad his enemies got. He nodded.
Garrett pushed open the door and Nathan followed him through.
He had thought that the city had no indigenous homeless at all. Now Nathan saw that he had been wrong about that.
On the other side of the door, there was a vast space which was at least two stories high and wider than the length of a football pitch. On the ground, there were hundreds of men and women, sleeping bags and ground mats.
It took him a moment to appreciate the noise. It was like a vast, under-funded dormitory. He could hear people talking, their voices seeming to echo and multiply in the cavernous warehouse. He could hear people breathing deeply as they slept. He could even hear a baby muttering and grumbling.
“What do you think?” Garrett said.
Nathan shook his head. He didn’t know what to think.
“Come on, I’ll take you to Courtney.”
It took more than five minutes to walk the length of the room. There were people everywhere and Nathan found himself re-evaluating his initial estimate from hundreds to a thousand or more. And there was plenty of space left. They didn’t come within five metres of anyone laid out on the floor.
In the middle of the room, there was a piece of machinery that Nathan didn’t recognise. It was huge but rusting and abandoned. Its metal arms climbed towards the ceiling, spreading over everyone and holding them in a protective embrace.
Garrett stopped in front of a silver-haired man who looked up at them.
“Hello Garrett,” said the man. He nodded at Nathan. The people sitting around him stopped talking. “Is that him?”
Next to Nathan, Garrett nodded.
The silver haired man pushed himself up and the brown blanket that had been wrapped around his shoulders fell away. He was old but not frail. Nathan could smell alcohol on his breath. “What’s your name son?” he said. His voice was slow, drawling and deep.
The smell of strong spirits was so powerful that Nathan felt the need to step away, but he remembered what Garrett had told him and stayed where he was. “Nathan,” he said.
The man nodded. He ran his tongue over his top teeth. He had a short white beard made of curly hair and deep wrinkles around his eyes and across his forehead. “Courtney,” he said. He offered Nathan his hand.
Nathan didn’t know what to say.
“My friend tells me you’re looking for somewhere to stay,” Courtney said.
Nathan hadn’t told Garrett any such thing. But he was homeless and tired so he nodded.
“You can tell me why that is in the morning,” Courtney said. “You look like you need to rest.” He paused as if waiting for Nathan to say something but Nathan didn’t have anything to say. “Pick a spot on the floor and unpack your stuff. Don’t worry, you’re safe now.”
Courtney looked at him for a moment longer as if trying to work out a puzzle. Then he turned away and resumed his original position against the wall. Nathan turned away as Courtney pulled the brown blanket back over his shoulders and picked up a bottle of something. The talking resumed as Garrett led Nathan away.
Garrett showed him to an empty spot on the floor. He sat down but didn’t open his bag. He felt exhausted and the dim light in the building made it difficult to keep his eyes open, but he forced himself to stay awake.
The building felt as real as any other that he had been in, but surely it was too convenient. It was the first piece of good fortune he had experienced in weeks and that made him not trust it. He put a hand on the floor. It was cold, but that didn’t prove anything. Nathan wanted to believe that it was real and that he had found a place he could be safe, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was just another delusion.
Eventually, he couldn’t fight the exhaustion. His bones felt heavy and his muscles weak. He took out his sleeping bag and used his bag as a pillow. He closed his eyes. His last thought before he fell asleep was that when he woke up this would all be gone.
CHAPTER 20
THE STREET WAS EMPTY AND NATHAN WAS ALONE. He sat in the shadows beneath the awning of a department store and shivered. It was three o’clock in the morning and the only sounds he could hear were his own breathing and the pounding of his blood as it pulsed through his body. He was tired, but he couldn’t go back to the warehouse yet. More than a week had passed without him seeing a ghoul.
It had been a relief to wake up in the late afternoon after Garrett had brought him to the warehouse. He had stayed on the floor with his eyes shut, not wanting to open them and find out that it really had all been a dream. But it hadn’t. The place was as real in daylight as it had been in moonlight. Now he was settled and he’d spoken to Courtney. Told him what had happened and why he was homeless. He hadn’t mentioned the ghouls.
Nathan rubbed his face with the palm of his hand. He needed to rest, but he needed to see the ghouls more. More than anything he needed to see them and prove they existed.
He stepped away from the cold window that he had been leaning against. The high street was too open, too exposed. The ghouls wouldn’t come to it because there was nowhere to hide. If he was going to find one, then he would need to go elsewhere.
Nathan started walking towards the train station. He had begun to suspect that they resided somewhere nearby it. There were plenty of old abandoned buildings still waiting to be knocked down, plenty of places that they could hide. But since the murder it had become difficult to get near to the station without being seen by the police. They were out in force now and his disguise would only fool them for so long.
He walked towards the town hall, keeping close to the shops and buildings that wouldn’t open again for six hours. Nathan stopped suddenly when he heard footsteps. He pushed himself against the nearest wall and waited.
A young girl walked up the street. She was swaying from side to side and stumbling. Nathan could tell that she was drunk. He watched her walk past the bus stops and then put out her arm to lean against one and catch her breath. She looked young but she was in no danger that he could see and she was unlikely to notice him if he started walking again. If she did notice then she wouldn’t remember by the morning.
Nathan pushed himself away from the shop but froze when he saw the other shape walking behind the girl. It moved with a hunched, cautious motion that he recognised at once. Relief mixed with anger. The girl didn’t turn around. She either hadn’t noticed the sound or didn’t appreciate the danger it represented. Nathan could feel his heart in his throat.
Nathan walked towards them without thinking. She was leaning against the bus stop with her head down. He thought she might be throwing up. That was good, though, she was obviously very drunk and it might clear her head. Maybe she would see him coming towards her and get scared enough to run away. She wiped her mouth with the sleeve of her jacket, but she didn’t look up.
The ghoul stopped just behind her. Nathan could hear it breathing. It didn’t turn to look at him as he appr
oached, didn’t consider him worthy of its attention, at least not yet.
It was a male but not as big as the other one. Nathan was still several metres away, separated from them by the empty road and a railing that he only noticed at the last moment. He had to slow down suddenly to avoid tripping over and wasted valuable seconds climbing over it.
The ghoul was reaching out to grab her.
“Hey!” Nathan shouted. His voice echoed around the empty square. “Get away from her.”
The girl finally looked up. Nathan saw that she was young, probably a university student or maybe still in school. She had light red hair and a look of stoned confusion. She watched him marching towards her but didn’t turn and see the ghoul.
“What do you want?” the girl said, mumbling her words and dribbling at the same time. She no longer looked at if she was drunk, she looked as if she had been drugged.
Nathan wondered why she didn’t look at the ghoul. It was close enough to her that she should have been able to feel the warmth from its barely clothed body. She just looked at him and her face contorted into a scowl.
“Stay away from me,” the girl said.
The ghoul took a step backwards.
“Keep going,” Nathan said. He stopped next to her and she shrunk away from him. When he turned to look at her eyes, he saw that her pupils were the size of five pence pieces and were jerking rapidly from side to side. “Get out of here,” Nathan said.
“Don’t hurt me,” the girl said.
“It’s not me you need to worry about,” Nathan said.
The girl might have said something more, but he didn’t hear it. The ghoul jumped into the air and seemed to hang there for a moment. Nathan didn’t have time to move before he realised that it was coming towards him. The next thing he knew all of the air had been forced out of his lungs and the girl was screaming.
He wanted to tell her to shut up. The station wasn’t so far away that the police wouldn’t be able to hear them and come running. But he couldn’t tell her anything at all. His mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out.
He managed to turn his head and look at her while holding the ghoul at arms-length. She still looked scared, but now she was also concerned.
