The thing in the chair convulsed and wobbled as it spoke, unable it seemed to manoeuvre itself, it relied on Adam pushing it. He was thankful of the task, as it helped to steady him on his own shaky legs. The pain never diminished completely, but each time something crawled out from within - to then be scooped up and greedily devoured - it pushed it back across the threshold to be something more manageable. The ivy continued growing and wrapping itself around his knees and thighs, so he felt now that the limbs were fast becoming an extension of himself. They were becoming truly his limbs. His legs.
They passed Apartment Six, and the Denys thing began to garble almost incomprehensibly. It lifted mangled stumps that
I could swear were arms just a moment ago
dripped and sagged in all sorts of wrong places, and tried to point (or so Adam presumed) towards the open door. They stopped outside and Adam peered in. The door was open.
It was what lay beyond that cemented another layer of abstract confusion on to Adam’s already overloaded mind.
He left Denys in the hall, and removed the paintings from his back, leaning them against the coated and leaking chair that Denys had announced himself on.
“Whmph rrr lymph gmgph?” Denys-thing said.
“I’ll be back in a second. I just need to check something out.”
Adam walked into the black apartment, his footsteps echoing on stone floors. Somewhere up ahead music played. He had heard it before.
The exhibition.
No sooner than he had thought that than a spotlight suddenly illuminated above him, as another - this one angled to the wall - came on. Then another. Then another. Dim shapes swam into view and became tangible. Black ghosts. Murmurs of conversation. Up ahead. This corridor was empty bar the large paintings on the wall. Paintings that he had seen recently. Portraits infused with machinery.
I’m back here. The apartment is a gateway.
The black shapes that converged upon him were blown apart by an unseen breeze, and still Adam walked on, emerging in to an all-to familiar foyer. The room off to the right was where the commotion was coming from. Someone was talking, holding court, and he recognised the voice immediately. Yet there was also another sound. A hushed urgency. Concern. Closer to the door.
His hand on the doorframe, Adam angled himself inside, just standing marginally within, enough to take it all in.
It was there, pride of place on the wall behind the two men, the shorter and - dare he say it - pudgier of the two was talking at length in a loud voice brimming and spilling with self importance. The other man, with the shocked cloud of static hair, smiled indulgently as he in turn looked to the other man, and then out at the assembled crowd.
There she was. Standing between them. In front of the painting. In front of the staircase. His staircase. Yet this one wasn’t his. It was d’Marcan’s staircase.
Daphne.
Yet now Adam’s attention was suddenly drawn to the nearby commotion. To the space that had emerged in the crowd. Attended to by what appeared to be two of the staff of the gallery. The figure sprawled on the floor. One trouser leg rolled up slightly, revealing the expensive prosthetic leg. The figure wasn’t moving, and if it was breathing, Adam couldn’t tell. The staff were trying to give him room, to give him air. Their faces a mask of concern in direct contradiction to the sheer indifference of the assembled crowd. The dark figures that had made a circle around the figure on the floor drew back over like a curtain, hiding it from view.
Adam’s attention was drawn once more to the woman who had begun to speak.
“I thank you all for coming, it means so much, to my dear friends Lon Raschold, whose beautiful gallery you find yourselves in, and Vemier Mamoulean, whose insight and constant reinterpretation of these works have, in time, driven and spurred Trent on to create this magnificence in front of which we stand. Not just myself, but Ivy, who I’m sure you’ll agree looks rapturous tonight. My wonderful daughter, the spitting image of her father in whose shadow we stand. Come up here sweetheart.”
Daphne beamed at a small figure in the crowd, who took to the stage beside her to a round of polite applause, forks on expensive champagne flutes. A murmur of sighs and ahhhhs as she took a polite curtsy, wearing a green floral dress. She stood back down in the crowd and Adam lost sight of her. Something twanged within him.
“With this, his staircase,” Mamoulean began, “Trent d’Marcan is inviting us to ascend with him, to follow in the footsteps of his daughter, the very girl in the painting. There is light above and we must ascend with her. What awaits at the top is -”
“Admnph rrr lymph cmgfgh?”
Adam turned around and the Denys-thing was flapping excitedly, keen to resume their progress towards the elevator, whipping those melted not-hands around in his enthusiasm.
Looking back towards the doorway, Adam found it shut, securely taped shut on all sides. Old tape, covered in green spores and lichen. The door had been sealed for some time and would don’t be opened easily. It looked abandoned. He grimaced, pain shooting up from his limbs, and unconsciously ran his hand down one of his legs until he found what he sought, plucking the slow moving body from his bare skin and putting it into his mouth.
Picking up his paintings and putting the tube strap over his shoulder, he pushed the Denys-thing to the elevator and pressed the button. It had become less animated now, and it’s frenzied whipping of it’s drab and miserable limbs were down to a half pace. Adam thought about saying something as he waited, before realising he had nothing to say. Despite that, he felt good. There was purpose here. He had his paintings finished, and they would be accepted and praised. She would like them. She would love them. That was all he needed. There was his intent. There was his validation.
The elevator appeared and he pushed the Denys thing inside, turning the chair round and watching the door as it shut slowly. He looked down the gloomy hall as he did so, towards his apartment, and suddenly realised that he in all probability wouldn’t see inside it again. He wasn’t sure he minded. He had never really felt at hime there, and now that Iris Fleet was decomposing on his bed, and his kitchen was ripe with maggots, blowflies and who knew what else, there was very little reason to return. He hoped Iris was very happy there, and wondered if Mike was going to find her, like he had said he would.
Arriving at the ground floor, he went to push the Denys thing out the lift, and realised that there was no point. At some unseen moment in the descent, it had seemed to die, and almost melt in to itself. On the black slime encrusted chair, there was nothing more than a mound of clotted gloop. He reached down and touched it, running his finger across it and bringing it up to his mouth. His tongue darted out almost surreptitiously and licked a little from the top.
It was sweet. Even sweeter than the honey he had consumed before. Grabbing a handful of it, he crammed it in to his mouth, not caring as it ran down his chin. He offset the sweetness with a couple of leg-bees, enjoying the chemical rush. He felt even better than he had a moment ago. In fact, he felt bloody fantastic. He was on his own slip slide and it was a fucking hoot.
There were two figures in the hallway ahead of him. He recognised both.
“Mr Campion!” The closest one bowed slightly as he approached. The thin man was standing outside his apartment door, opposite Apartment One. His hands were clasped at his front and he was wearing a light shirt and dark bowtie that had seen better days. “I trust you are well? I’m so glad that you seem to have finished.” He paused, thin eyebrows arching over hollow sockets so dark that Adam could barely see the eyes within. “You have finished?”
Adam nodded, patting the tube on his back. “All ready to get paid,” he said, smiling.
“Excellent,” the arachnid man said. He nodded to his right, towards the front door. “Afraid you won’t get out that way. You never could.”
Adam followed his gaze and saw the front door to the apartment building. Impaled on it was the plump woman, now completely covered in black ooze. The had a large length of steel tubing through her head, out of which poured more blackness, pooling on to the floor. Her chubby fingers hung at her sides, twitching, and she was emitting a deep buzzing and gurgling noise from her throat.
“Is that not the way?” Adam asked Fletch.
He shook his head. “Not for you.” He motioned forward, for Adam to turn.
Apartment One was open. A cloying heat radiating from within.
“There’s another way for you. It’s always been the way for you.”
Adam turned back to the old man. “Thank you,” he said, still smiling. “You didn’t have to do this.”
The old man’s face bore an expression that Adam couldn’t place. If forced, he would have said it was almost melancholic.
“Neither did you,” he said.
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