Six

Some time after midnight, the residents stopped bothering Seth, and the smell of sulphur and old smoke on the upper floors of the west block dispersed during his third investigation, as he hunted for its source in the rubbish stores. But the inertia that prevented him from concentrating on the Evening Standard increased once he was back behind his desk. His head was soon dropping across his chest every few minutes. Which was odd; he never usually dozed until around 2 a.m. at the earliest. Must have been the virus his body was busily cultivating into something more than just a temperature and scratch at the back of his throat.

He decided to nap for a few minutes. Then he’d wake up refreshed and able to keep his eyes open, at least for another few hours.

He fell into a deep sleep.

It lasted for what felt like a few seconds, before a swish of movement nearby and the darkening of a shadow across his closed eyelids woke him.

Seth sat up, alert.

The reception area was empty.

He shivered, and then relaxed back into his chair.

And dozed off again.

But awoke a moment later. Because this time he was certain a face was pressed against the glass of the front doors opposite his desk. But when his eyes snapped open and he lurched forward in his chair, noisily clearing his throat, all he could see in the dark glass was his own reflection peering back: a solemn, thin face with dark eyes.

Unsettled, he went downstairs and smoked two cigarettes and drank a cup of coffee. But despite his best attempts to stay awake, within moments of returning to his chair behind the reception desk his chin began to drop. And he slipped off a ledge and eased into a welcoming depth of sleep.

Until once again he heard the brush of clothing right next to his ear. And a voice. Someone said, ‘Seth.’ And then again, ‘Seth.’

Sitting bolt upright in the chair, his heart thumping, he peered about. Stood up, already mumbling an apology as if expecting to find a resident in a dressing gown leaning over the desk. But there was no one around. He’d imagined it. But how? The mouth had been right against his ear; he was sure he’d even felt the speaker’s cool breath.

The glare of the white electric lights in reception bruised the back of his eyes.

Still uneasy, he returned to his chair and turned the television on. Clawed at his face with two hands and shook himself. But it was as if he had no choice and there was no controlling his mind’s insistence on slumber. Or on the dream that came with it.

From the corner of the wood, a small figure emerged. Wearing a grey coat with the hood pulled over its face, it just watched Seth as he stood in the stone chamber with his hands clutching the cold bars of the gate that kept him locked inside. Stepping from one foot to the other, Seth swallowed and secretly wished the figure would not disappear or pass by.

Trying to smile, he found he had no control over his facial muscles; it must have looked as if he were about to cry. He stopped trying to smile, and waved. Embarrassed when the hooded figure never so much as moved, he let his hand drop to his side and wondered whether he should crouch in a corner and never bother anyone again. That’s why he was here.

The figure moved forward away from the trees. Slowly, it wandered through the long grass, avoiding big clumps of dark wet nettles, until it reached the edge of the stone steps. The urns upon them held dry brown stalks. The figure looked up at him. Inside the hood, Seth could see no face.

‘What’s ya name?’ the boy asked.

‘Seth.’

‘Why you in there?’

Seth looked at his feet. He paused to swallow, then looked up and shrugged. ‘Dunno.’

‘I know why. You got scared and crazy. Same as me. You’ll be in there for ages. And then some place much worse.’

Inside the stone prison, Seth began to feel something cold skitter about his stomach. His skin goosed and his vision flicked about. It was hard to breathe.

‘Makes you shit-scared, don’t it?’ the boy asked.

Tears burned Seth’s face and he gripped the bars of the gate so tightly that all the feeling disappeared from his hands. He kept squeezing even though he knew it would leave bruises. ‘It’s too late,’ he said, in a thin voice that broke around the edges.

‘It ain’t,’ the hooded boy said with defiance. ‘I can get you out.’

‘But we’ll get in trouble,’ Seth replied, and hated himself for saying that.

‘Who gives a shit? And anyway, no one thinks of you. Not no more. You’re forgotten.’

Seth tried to say no but knew the hooded boy was telling the truth.

‘Do yous want to come out?’ the boy asked, rummaging in a deep pocket.

Snuffling back his tears, Seth nodded.

From his coat pocket the boy withdrew a large iron key. But Seth never really looked at the key; he couldn’t take his eyes from the boy’s hand. It was purple and yellow and just the sight of it made him feel sick. The skin had melted and then gone hard again. Some of the fingers were stuck together.

Crooked fingers folded around the key’s large butterfly-shaped handle and turned it in the lock of the gate. The mechanism made a groaning sound before the barred portal swung open.

Too frightened to move his bare feet from the marble floor of the chamber, Seth remained inside for a while, shivering. The boy retreated to the bottom of the stairs and looked up at Seth. He put his hands back inside the pockets of his snorkel coat and assumed his usual posture: relaxed but expectant.

The sky over the wood turned dark. Either night was coming or the clouds brooded closer to the treetops.

The hooded boy began to look over his shoulder and watch the woods. Seth instinctively knew he had to hurry and make up his mind. Did he stay or leave? It was as if another much bigger gate had been opened in the world outside the chamber and if he wasn’t quick enough it might close again and leave him stranded. And together for too long in the same place, they could attract attention. He had a sense they might be spotted at any minute by someone in the trees.

Seth ventured out through the gate and into the grass on weak legs unused to exercise. He thought of his limbs as spindly sticks of vegetable left to go soft in the bottom of a fridge.

He stood in the grass and marvelled at how the stalks felt on the soles of feet so used to stone, at the pluck of the breeze against his naked skin, and at his excitement at the sight of a path that led into the thick, deciduous foliage of the wood.

The hooded boy moved toward the trees. Anxiously, Seth followed.

From the edge of the wood, he took a last look over his shoulder at the chamber and its little yellow light. Further up the path, the boy encouraged Seth to follow by doing nothing more than waiting and staring at him until they stood by each other on the path inside the damp wood.

‘Where are we going?’ he asked the hooded boy.

‘Away from this place.’

Seth swallowed and tasted panic.

‘If yous go back we won’t be able to get you out again. Yous’ll stay in there. It always happens. There are lots of people trapped. I see ’em all the time. They don’t know how to escape.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Only a bit of yous is still alive, Seth. The rest of yous is here, always. And when you die you’ll come back to this place again. For a long time.’ The hooded head nodded in the direction of the marble cage. ‘That’s what happens. Then yous get the darkness, when you can’t see nuffin’. Or remember much. Then it’s like you’re in the sea at night. Cold and drowning and no one comes to help yous.’

Nervously, Seth began to take short steps back and forth.

‘I’m your mate, Seth,’ the boy said, in a more decisive, grown-up way. ‘You’re lucky we came. Yous can trust us.’

‘I know. I know. Thanks. Really, thanks.’ Seth felt better and grateful, but awkward too. He wanted to ask so many questions but didn’t want to annoy his new friend who’d let him out of the chamber. ‘Who. what I mean is, you said we and they?’

As if he had not heard, the hooded boy continued to move along the path away from the chamber. Overhanging branches and wet bushes whipped against the nylon of his coat. Seth continued to follow until they were moving faster and had gone so far from the chamber he wondered if he’d ever find it again. Dew soaked him and nettles stung his shins.

‘Don’t be scared, Seth. It’s just strange at first. Everything will look strange to start with. But after a while it’s OK. I was only ten when I got stuck. I was stuck in a concrete pipe near a playground.’

‘Really, a pipe?’

‘Then I was done in with fireworks, by me mates.’ The hooded boy slowed down. He took his hands out of his pockets and Seth saw a flash of deformed joint and purple flesh before the long sleeves fell down to cover his fingertips. ‘Now you’re out of that place you’re gonna see things as they really are, Seth. When people like you and me are on the outside of the places we get put, we see it all. Then we do what we were supposed to do.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. And you’re going to paint what you see. They’s gonna show you how. You’s gonna be brilliant, mate. The best. They told me. And then you’ll do stuff for us too, like.’

‘Yes!’ Seth said, suddenly excited, although it was not clear to him what he was going to do.

‘It’ll be really scary at the start. But you’ll never want to go back. I never did once I was let out of that pipe.’

Seth nodded, enjoying the new sense of liberation he felt outside the chamber. Yes, there was a real difference now; a real freedom he could not properly define. It was unformed but its new presence made him shiver with pleasure. It was something he’d waited most of his life for and then forgotten about. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt enthusiastic about anything.

Soon, the wood started to thin around them. The air became colder and the sky lightened to a watery grey. ‘This is my bit,’ the hooded boy said. ‘I wanted to show yous where I got stuck. Most people go back to a place when they die, like I’s told you. And can’t get out. Till those places go all dark. And you don’t want to be in the darkness, mate. Nah-ah. I seen it. That’s the end of everyfing. But we’s going to show you how to move around all the others down there, mate. They’s fucked. Don’t mean you have to be, like.’

They emerged from the wood and onto a wide plain of waste ground. Sparse, struggling grass grew from mud that pulled at his bare feet and made him slip about. In the distance, to their left, Seth could see a cluster of sheds with plastic sheets on the roofs and polythene windows that were ripped. Between the sheds were allotments grown over with weeds. Straight ahead of them, he could see a playground.

They walked towards it. Every few feet they would pass a coil of dried dog shit and shards of glass from smashed bottles. The hooded boy started to skip and hum to himself. He seemed pleased with the way things were going.

In the playground there was a slide and four chain-link swings with plastic seats hanging from an iron frame, and a roundabout made from rusty sheet metal with wooden bars across the top. It had been solidly anchored into a concrete square. The bright paint on all of the apparatus had chipped down to brownish metal and then been varnished with the grease from many little hands. There was a giant sandpit full of broken glass and slugs. Part of a smashed plastic doll languished in a rain puddle. Its head was cracked. Seth could see a dark hole through its curly blonde hair. The wound looked real. An eye was missing too. The violence of the thing made him shudder. Beside the doll were a few pages from a porn magazine. Glancing at it, Seth saw a woman with her legs open and one finger between her big purple lips.

‘Shit hole, ain’t it,’ the boy said.

Seth nodded and followed the boy out of the playground until they came to two enormous tower blocks rising so far into the clouds the height of them made him squint. There were no lights on and they looked derelict. Graffiti covered the walls up to the height of a child and there was rubbish blowing about the pathways between the buildings.

Seth looked at the things around his feet – crisp packets, cans and tins with faded labels, a tyre, something from a car engine, a smashed television and a pair of tights that had been soaked by the rain and dried out so many times it took him a while to work out what the crispy thing with long tentacles was. The remnants of a child’s scribblings, drawn with coloured chalk – pink, yellow and blue – had stained some of the paving slabs. The rain hadn’t managed to wash it away. And it must have just rained. All the concrete was wet and there were still some puddles on the pavement. Seth assumed the place was always damp. He shivered. Wrapped his arms around his ribs. Even in summer it would be horrible. The closer they got to the buildings the stronger the smell of urine and bleach became.

As they walked between the giant tower blocks, a gust of wind whipped between the walls and made Seth cringe from the cold. When he looked up, the buildings seemed to be tilting and ready to fall down on him. He put a hand against a pebbled wall for support.

Next they came to a small, brackish stream that dissected the endless, flat, dull landscape and its struggling grass full of excrement and glass.

The mud of the banks and bed of the stream were bright orange and smelled of the spaces beneath kitchen sinks where plastic bottles are kept. Under Seth’s feet, a lethargic trickle of water moved between a rusty paint tin and a broken pram that had been made for a child to wheel its dolls around with. Purple canvas hung in rags from the white plastic frame. Further down the stream, Seth could see a large grey sewer pipe. Inside the mouth the concrete was stained orange. He looked down at the hooded boy, who nodded without speaking. What a place to die.

They crossed the stream. As far as he could see the view never changed: disused allotments, empty playgrounds, litter, and tower blocks dotted about the stagnant plain. It went on for ever.

‘There’s toilets too,’ the hooded boy said, without turning his head to look at Seth. ‘I never showed you them. And in some of the flats I found people.’

‘They trapped too?’

The boy nodded.

Seth shuddered. ‘Can’t you get them out?’

The boy shrugged. Then he said, ‘Nah. They’re done for. I found a mongol kid with a plastic bag on his head that he couldn’t get off. He couldn’t understand anything I said to him. And there was an old lady who breathed in fumes from a boiler. She was just lying on the lino in some sick. And I found a man too that I didn’t like. He was sitting in a chair by a gas fire and asked me to look at his pee pee.’

‘Can we go? I’m cold,’ Seth said.

‘Yeah. Just wanted to show you my old place.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Most people can only see these places in the dreams they forget in the morning. And when they die it’s too late. They come back and wait for the darkness.’

They walked back the way they had come, towards the wood. ‘Who got you out of here?’ was Seth’s final question as they left the waste ground.

‘A man,’ the hooded boy replied. ‘He’s an artist. Like you. And some people you know done bad things to him.’

‘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.