Forty-three

Stephen paced the cramped living room, the hems of his uniform trousers whisking past Janet’s inert toes where they protruded from beneath the tartan blanket draped over her lap.

‘And now there’s no sign of Seth at all. I’d guess they took all of him. Amazing, isn’t it? That things like that can actually happen. I mean, I checked the tapes this morning before I erased them and did a switch. He never left the building. You can see him going out of reception to the lift on camera three, with that girl, Apryl, and then nothing. He never came back down. Imagine that, dear. He never came back down.

‘But he’s not in flat sixteen either. I checked every inch of it. Empty. What must have come in folded itself all away again. Took what it wanted and then just melted away without a trace. The police want to see Seth. But they’ll have a bloody job finding him.’ Stephen laughed, but there was no humour in the sound that came out of him.

He sat down on the sofa, the material worn shiny by the anxious occupation of his buttocks over the last ten years. ‘The girl left here in an ambulance. And she wasn’t a pretty sight.’ He took a swig from the whisky bottle in his large hand and winced through the after-burn in his throat, before pointing the sloshing bottle at his silent, motionless wife, who merely watched him with her quick eyes. ‘Now I’d guess that things didn’t go to plan, dear. I knew the moment her boyfriend, or whoever that chap was, got me up in the middle of the night. No, dear. I’d hazard a guess things didn’t go to plan up there last night.’

And then he was just about to ask his mute wife if she could smell that. that terrible stench of something both burned and rotten. But stopped himself when he saw the little figure appear just beyond the radius of the standing lamp’s glow, in the tiny hallway before the front door.

It stood still, and made no sign that it would fully enter the living room, for which they were both grateful. Considering the miasma that preceded its appearance, the head porter expected the uncovered head to still be steaming.

Stephen stood up and swallowed. Janet started a frantic keening sound from behind her sternum. She began to rock back and forth in her wheelchair parked by the window, using what few muscles in her abdomen still functioned after the last of the three strokes she had suffered in succession, shutting down ninety per cent of her nervous system the night she’d ventured into apartment sixteen and encountered her dead son for the first time.

‘Jesus.’ Stephen took a step back from the grinning apparition. ‘Jesus Christ.’

‘You wish,’ the blackened head said.

There was no hood encasing its face any more. It looked like the hood had been completely torn away from the coat. As had one sleeve, along with the arm that had been inside it. From within the socket, something dark glistened. The rest of the parka was blackened and smeared with long, ugly stains, as if wet hands had wiped their palms down the outside of the garment while seeking purchase. But the worst part, the feature that made Stephen whimper out loud and drop the bottle of whisky, was the head from which the voice issued.

The whites of its eyes and the gleaming little teeth in its pained grin made the tar-black ruin of the surrounding flesh all the worse for the contrast. ‘I’s come with some news, like.’

‘We don’t want any. Not any more. Nothing from you.’ Stephen swallowed and wanted desperately to remove his stare from the tottering mess in the doorway. ‘It’s over. Finished, you hear? I’ve done what was asked of me.’

‘Nah-ah. Fings have changed, like.’

‘Not for me. We had a deal.’

‘Is all fucked up, innit. Unless you can get that tart back here, and put her in that room with them fings, you’s going nowhere. But I don’t fink she’ll be wanting to see that place again. Do you?’

Stephen shook his head slowly, as the full impact of his dead son’s words sank in.

‘You’s gonna be all right, like. No one knows you have anyfing to do wiv it. But someone’s got to keep all them markin’s on the walls, like. And under the floorboards. Else, who is gonna do it for us?’

‘No. No more. You have Seth. We had a deal.’

The crispy dark skull grinned. ‘Seth’s outta the picture now. All’s we got is you.’

Stephen dropped to his knees, his hands clenched together in entreaty. ‘Tell him. Tell that thing. No more.’

‘Go and tell him yourself. In the darkness. Where I just been, like.’ The child looked at where its arm had once been, and then down its stained coat, and chuckled. ‘You’s going nowhere, Dad. You’s gonna stay here and look after Mum. Happy families, like.’

Epilogue

‘Jesus. Jesus fuckin’ Christ,’ Archie said, looking up at the walls. ‘I just never get used to it.’

Beside him, Quin didn’t speak. Just blinked a couple of times as if staring into the glare of the sun.

‘What ya think it is?’ Archie asked, his hands on his hips, standing at the foot of the unmade bed in the abandoned room.

Quin didn’t or couldn’t answer. It had been four weeks since rent had been paid on the room, and about as long since anyone could remember seeing Seth leaving or entering the building, or using the kitchen. And they had told the police as much when they came looking for him.

He should have taken more of an interest in Seth, but hadn’t wanted to pry. Everyone had their reasons for living at the Green Man. Reasons that were their own. There was never much choice involved in residency here. And Seth had always been a good tenant. Paid up on time and never bothered a soul. So he didn’t mind him falling behind on the rent for a while. But four weeks was taking the piss, and he didn’t want the Old Bill looking round the pub again either.

There had been no one in the room when Archie let the police in a month back, or at any other time since whenever he had tried to raise a response or peered inside the room from around the door. People had done it before; lived here, sometimes even for years, and then vanished without a word. The cellar was full of stuff left behind by previous tenants. There were no records kept at the Green Man or questions asked. That was the beauty of the place. You could take time out here. As long as you paid your seventy quid every week and didn’t bother anyone, then no one was going to be your keeper.

But now he came to think of it, hadn’t Seth said something about being a painter? Once, a long time ago. Maybe. He couldn’t remember. But he’d definitely been painting something up here. On the walls, and even the ceiling.

‘What should I do wi’ his stuff? Archie said, and pointed at the jumble of clothes in one corner, and at the dried-out paints, the stiff brushes, the mess of sketches strewn across the spattered dust sheets, the white saucer piled high with gnarled cigarette butts, and the rucksack beside the fridge. ‘Quin?’

‘What?’

‘I said, what should I do wi’ it?’

Quin broke his stare from the reddish colours on the chimney breast. It was like looking at an autopsy. ‘Put it in the cellar. In case he comes back to fetch it.’

Archie nodded, then looked at the wall across from the door. ‘Poor bastard was twisted. Don’t think we’re gonna be seeing him agin.’

Quin looked at the side of Archie’s face, wanting him either to elaborate or to exchange a look of mutual understanding. But then he wasn’t really sure what he wanted. Not at all sure of what was on these walls, or in his own mind as he looked at them. The pictures made him feel uncomfortable and unwell at the same time, like he was suddenly worried sick about something. And yet, he wasn’t entirely sure what he was actually looking at.

Archie shook his head. ‘What is that, a face or summat? Maybe a dog. Looks like it’s got teeth in it.’

He was talking now to ease the shock that had accompanied their turning on of the lights and opening of the thin curtains. They should have been angry at the way these walls had been defaced, or full of mirth at the preposterousness of what Seth had done. Even full of admiration at the skill involved in the way he’d got these things up there to hit you so hard when you looked at them. Took your breath away they did. But Quin couldn’t feel much now beside a deep discomfort he had no words for, and a desire to shut his eyes tight. He didn’t want to see any more. ‘Leave the dust sheets where they are and get this covered up today. You’ll have to use two coats of the white emulsion left over from the kitchen.’

‘It’ll take a roller.’

‘I don’t fuckin’ care what it takes, just get rid of it. I want this place let by Friday. Kenny’s cousin has left his missus and is looking for a place. He can have it.’

Archie nodded, still staring at the walls. Quin left the room.

‘Christ,’ Archie said to himself, and shook his head one final time before removing his glasses. He’d paint the room without his specs on. At least then he wouldn’t have to see too closely the things that climbed these walls and crawled across the ceiling. But even when they’d been covered over, he wondered if he’d ever forget them.

APARTMENT 16

Adam L. G. Nevill was born in Birmingham, England, in 1969 and grew up in England and New Zealand. He is also the author of Banquet for the Damned, an original novel of supernatural horror inspired by M. R. James and the great tradition of the British weird tale.

In his working life he has endured a variety of occupations, including from 2000 to 2004 both nightwatchman and day porter in the exclusive apartment buildings of west London.

He still lives in the capital and can be contacted through www.adamlgnevill.com