Adam was unsure how long it took him to drag the box across the floor to the elevator, but by the time he had actually physically handled it into the lift car, what light there had been from outside was fading fast, rendering the entire underground space in near darkness. Sweat was pouring off him and his arms ached to the point where he wondered if he had managed to do some irreparable damage. He had also worked up an appetite like never before, and wondered - far from he first time - if there was any food in his kitchen, or if he would be expecting a delivery.
It had been habit over the past two years to order food in from one of the supermarkets in the vicinity. At first, he had used his phone to go online and select which items he wanted to order, buying them on his credit card. Over time however, I became apparent that he just ordered the same items week after week. He took to calling up, and just arranging payment for his usual order. Then, he had just set his card up on a standing order and the supermarket delivered it weekly. He couldn’t recall the last order he had received, and wondered dimly if his card was finally mixed out. It wouldn’t be a surprise. It had to max out sooner or later, and it’s not like he was doing anything to pay off any of the balance. His work had been sporadic after the accident. He had been working on
something
beforehand and had never picked it back up again, instead taking on newer, easier work from not just his agency, but anyone who contacted him. He had his laptop running and would take work through email, orb via his website. Only small jobs that he couldn’t turn around quickly, put minimal effort in and still reap the rewards. Nothing big. Not like this. He didn’t know why he was taking it up, only that he had a feeling that this was the one he should finish. This was the one that was outstanding, and the message was surely relating to this. The message written in neat intelligent script inside a card that his
dead
daughter had drawn for him.
FINISH IT
He would. He would need to contact her again. Her. If he had a number. If his phone (or any phone) would let him.
One step at a time.
One wheel at a time.
Humour was always a part of it. Early on, when he had attended those class sessions run by Dr Iris Fleet, none of them had retained any of their humour. Faces were stern, teeth gritted, and each word uttered was in complete earnest. There were no jokes, no laughing at their own - or anyone else - expense. That had all come later. Much later. Tentatively at first, muttering to each other. Cajoling themselves into trying harder, or making themselves feel better when they failed. After a while, they began to project it outwards, as they became more confident in what they were doing and the recovery they were making. You can always joke if you think you are moving in the right direction. It’s if you stop that there gets to be a problem.
Mike never joked. Mike was too hard on himself. Mike had lost his dominant arm and was struggling to adapt. Mike had been a musician, a guitarist, and had already decided that he would never play again. Would never be able to make music again. Adam wished he could at least remember his second name, but it was gone. Just like Mike’s face. A faint suggestion of eye placement, of cheekbone height, not much. He couldn’t recall him completely, but he had given up, so perhaps it didn’t matter.
Humour. At his own expense. So what? It’s not like he had anyone else to talk to anyway.
Close. The lift just a few feet behind him now. The heavy box dragged across the ground. He had to admit that even if he was in full health, and had the use of all him limbs, he would have found it difficult, such was the weight of it all. Yet it would be worth it. If he could contact
Who?
whoever had given him the job. He would find his phone and he would try Jane. It probably came through Hounsett. She would know. It would have come via her. There was also the small matter of the fact that he was now looking at continuing a project he had begun two years ago. Even if it was still a valid ongoing concern, they would have got someone else in to do it, surely.
Unless it’s something that only you can produce. Perhaps it’s been put on hold, until you could be contacted again. They had tried the agency but with you severing ties with them, they were forced to use other means of contacting you. Perhaps the agency had given up your address in one final act of defiance. ‘Fuck you Adan, if you won’t work for us, we’ll just hand your address out to anyone that asks. Screw you.’
He wouldn’t have put it past them just to first off hand his address out to unknowns, and to not tell him they’d done it. The more he thought about it, the more he was convinced they had just done this to spite him, and he had done the right thing by telling Jane to shove her latest contract up her arse.
The box was finally inside the lift, and he pressed to corresponding button for his floor.
He wished he he gone upstairs to try and get some hep for the box, as it could have
you did though
saved him a lot of time and effort. Yana would have been in, he was sure of it. After all had he not heard her doing whatever it was she did earlier on that morning?
YOU DID THOUGH
He still didn’t know what on earth was making that sound, but soon decided it was none of his business. Perhaps, being from somewhere in Europe, they were the kind of people to hang their rugs and mats up, maybe even duvets as well, and bath eh dust and dirt from them? He knew it was a sweeping generalisation, but couldn’t shake the image all the same. It would certainly explain the noise and the regularity of it. It’s not like there was any where to dry large, bulky or heavy items. There was a drawing square out the back of the building, but that was more overgrown with weeds than anything, and he didn’t think he had used it, or had seen anyone else ever use it. Not Denys and Yana, not the Bensons before them, and certainly not him on the ground floor.
Yes, he could have done with the help.
YOU DID GO AND ASK HER, BUT HE WAS BE-
The lift groaned. The lift growled. It ascended. He wasn’t sad to see the doors shut on the basement. He regulated his breathing, trying to bring his hearth rate down as he moved up. He presumed he would be going all the way to his floor, and was surprised a little when it stopped on ground. He wondered if someone had pressed the button and changed their mind electing to take the stairs instead. Even though he wasn’t convinced they actually had any stairs.
The door opened on to the hall. It was filled with shadow, only a dim orange glow from outside.
I wonder if he is in, Adam thought. He couldn’t understand why the bulb hadn’t at least been replaced by now. Surely him of all people would have done it, seeing as how it was right outside his flat and no-one wished to open their door to darkness.
Perhaps he likes the darkness.
The lift doors began to shut once more when the door halfway down on the left opened slowly. A small pale crack of green light spilling into the hall. Adam quickly and subconsciously pressed the button to hold the door as a large shape emerged from the doorway. An incoherent noise at first drifted from the figure to where Adam sat, causing him momentary confusion, and even a little disorientation, until that same figure stepped under the same glow, revealing it to be Denys, his large bulky figure un-mistakable, as were his overalls and large heavy work boots. Adam continued holding the door, expecting Denys to trudge in that distinctive mannerism of his towards the door. To his surprise, the other man instead turned towards the door, presenting Adam with his sweat and first stained back. He closed the door to the apartment and walked slowly and with surprising grace to the front door. Before Adam could digest what he had just seen, the other man was gone.
Did he really do that?
Adam couldn’t decide if he had seen correctly, but it appeared as though Denys had briefly turned to the door of apartment two - just for a few seconds - and drawn the outline of something on the door with his finger, before turning and heading out. It was abstract, and quick. A symbol ol of…something, whatever it was.
The lift door began to shut again and Adam blocked it with the box, just as he had done with his prosthetic legs the last time. He moved into the hall and pushed the box back in to the lift this time, allowing the door to close. He couldn’t risk any damage, not to any of this stuff. Too valuable. He moved down the hall to the space between the doors of both apartments. The floor had fresh dirt on it again. This time both leading to the elevator and leading to the front door. The freshest footprints leading away.
Of course.
For some reason he doubted that it was actually Denys that he had seen leaving the room, but he had no concrete reason to think that, despite the fact that
I’ve just met him upstairs
he had a niggling feeling that it couldn’t conceivably be.
Nonetheless, he was here, again, and this time he was going to try and get inside the empty apartment. He had to know what was inside. He had to know what Denys
or not-Denys
did in there all day
every day
because he sure as he didn’t seem to be going anywhere to work like Adam thought he had been.
The door was still open. He had left it open. The sickly green glow spilled into the floor.
“Fuck it,” Adam sighed, and pushed himself into the threshold. Pushing the door further open with his chair like he had
done upstairs just earlier
tried to do last time. This time he would not be deterred.
The soft sighing of a door opening behind him did nothing to stop him, and he entered the small entrance hallway and shut the door behind him. He strained and turned as best he could, seeing that there was a chain on the inside, which he hooked into the mounting. He noticed it also had a shoot bolt below it, and decided that as he was committed now, he may as well fire that home.
As soon as he had done so, the handle turned violently up and down, as though quite a bit of force was being put upon it from the other side. The door rattled in it’s frame, pushing against the bolt. It was all Adam could do to remain where he was in the small green hall, noticing the wallpaper peeling from the walls, black with mould underneath, damp and cold. The door itself was old split wood, the bolt rusted, the frame similarly split. Weight was put on the door from the other side, more frenzied rattling of the handle. Pushing against it. The door against the bolt. The bolt and chain straining. Adam moved back…
…and waited.
Nothing happened.
The door rattled a couple more times and then it was still.
Adam held his breath, listening intently, yet scared to move too close to the door. He was listening for the sound of footsteps diminishing. Or the door opposite opening and closing. Anything to indicate that whoever had tried the door had now moved away. There was nothing. Just the complete absence of sound. No movement.
He sat there in his chair, bathed in the green light from the entryway. Once more his eyes were pulled to the peeling wallpaper and the black mould beneath. The light itself was coming from the single naked build hanging above him. Some sort of algae substance had worked it’s way down the cable and smothered the bulb. Yet not enough to extinguish the light. Similarly to Denys apartment (for, as far as he knew, this one was beneath it, separated by one other floor that he presumed also shared the layout), there were two doors that lead away from the small entrance area
you know because you were just -
and they were both shut. He tried the one on his left first of all, yet it would move more than an inch. Whilst the floor beneath him was naked floorboards, there was a thick piled carpet beneath the door that seemed to gather up and catch beneath it when he tried to push it. He managed to move it another inch then gave up. Water seeped out of the carpet on to the bare floorboards. Dark water. It stank of the ground. Of deep dark places where no light shone.
Or light would never shine.
The other door.
He pushed it. Locked. He pushed it harder, but the door wouldn’t give. After all this, he was trapped in this tiny entrance vestibule. He couldn’t go back either. To go back would be to face whomever that was behind, outside, who had been so insistent to come in.
Fletch. Apartment two. If that’s who it was.
Adam knew how irrational it was to be threatened by the sole occupant of that particular apartment. He knew that he had no real basis beyond his own fevered imagination. That didn’t stop the feeling of dread that took root in his guts and worked it’s way through his bones
like ivy
In spite of that. He exhaled slowly, thinking of what to do. His own damn curiosity had gotten him there. It was his own fault completely. He had gone to the basement to get some of his things and ended up here.
Something caught his eye. Under the door, from the waterlogged carpet. There was black water there, but not just black water. To the right, the side closest to the hinge, something else was running. Slower and more viscous. He pushed that door again, throwing all his weight behind it. It moved about a foot in and he recoiled from the dead ait that came rushing out to meet him. There was darkness beyond, no light from outside, even though he could dimly make out the shape of it trying to claw it’s way out from behind windows that were either painted or boarded over.
He pushed his chair into the doorway. He felt the carpet shift under his weight and unconsciously recoiled at the imagined feeling of it beneath his feet. Something which wasn’t too hard to imagine, as he still had the memory of his nightmare lingering in the forefront of his mind. The door was still so stubborn, but he was winning. The balance had shifted and it had seemed to ride over the gathered carpet that had caused it so much resistance before. Another hard push, both hands on the rims of his wheels and his full weight into the door.
It gave and he fell through the doorway, off his chair and sprawling on to the floor.
Everything went black, as he fell into absolute darkness.
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