Harvest (41 page)

Neil winced at her statement
and poured another mug. Jane was cool, he reasoned. She was good
looking, curvy, funny, pretty-smart and gave great head. He
lingered on that last thought and his jeans tightened on his
hardening groin. Karen was all that too, but there was more. There
was a spark. Fuck that, there was an inferno when they got
together. If Jane was like a comforting open fire, then Karen was
napalm. Anytime he thought of her (which was a lot) his groin
burned. Neil smirked to himself; his firmness became an
uncomfortable brick in his jeans. He tried to think of something
else to make it subside, but it was the kind of aching excitement
that needed relief to quench it. He took the two mugs through to
the lounge where Jane lounged on the sofa, lit gently by a single
standard lamp and the flicker of the TV. She unfurled and took the
proffered mug from him. “Thanks, love” She took a brief sip and
laughed. “God, you got a bit horny out there didn’t you!”

Neil felt her rub at his crotch
before he could sit down. It felt good. She stealthily slid his fly
open and her hand started working him. He stood there, paralysed
with the sensation as she rubbed within his jeans. He closed his
eyes and thought of Karen.

Neil pulled away gently and put
his mug down. He looked into her round confused face and tried to
give a convincing smile but it was strained and weak. It sapped the
life from his erection and his groin crawled with cold receding
blood. He zipped his fly back up. “There’s something I want to say
to you.” He tried harder to smile but thought he might look insane.
The door knocker rattled and he sighed with relief at the
interruption.

“
Who would call at this
time of night?” Jane asked.

Her face didn’t show
frustration but concern. He knew why. He told her not to worry, but
he had lost his erection the moment he had heard the door go. He
straightened himself out in his jeans and headed out of the room.
“It will be nothing.” He didn’t know if he was reassuring her or
himself.

By the time Neil had reached
the hall he had reasoned that it wouldn’t be anything to do with
the craziness of the building. That kind of thing happened to other
people. His heart pounded in his chest like the heavy bass of a
nightclub. What if it was Karen? She had been pushing for him to
end things with Jane so that they could be together. No. No, Karen
didn’t want Jane to know about her, she wouldn’t come and force the
issue. Whoever would be at the door Neil was glad of the break, it
gave him more time to find the words that would end their
relationship. Whatever he said he would probably end up wearing the
coffee he had just made – just as well he made it extra milky;
didn’t want a burn. He laughed inside but then felt kind of sad
that he was going to lose Jane; he had become comfortable with
her.

He stared through the spy hole,
but couldn’t see anything. Strangely it seemed to be dark in the
corridor. He opened the door and a part of the dark broke away and
lunged into the hall, too quick for his eyes to register any
detail. Something hard swiped across his throat and he stumbled
back with an explosion of white-hot pain in his throat. He fought
to draw a breath and a fluid red line lashed out from below his
line of sight. He pulled his open hands up to it and watched the
pulsing line break upon his fingers in a splashing spray of vivid
red. He lost his balance and fell backward onto the carpet,
scrabbling along the floor panicking and dying.

Jane blew on her coffee and
took a sip. It was already drinkable. Bit milky but it was nice. A
thought danced in the back of her mind at why Neil had been so
strange this evening. He was nervous, no doubt about it. It
couldn’t be anything bad. They hadn’t even had a row the whole time
they had been dating. Perhaps he was going to do what she hoped he
would do, after all they had practically been living together at
each others flats the last year or so. She reached for her mobile
and quickly thumbed a text into the screen: “I FINK HES GONNA POP
DA Q!” Would he? She had talked about it with her best friend the
day before, her friend had been doubtful of his intentions of
commitment towards her. She would show her! She laughed quietly and
girlishly to herself as she called up Karen’s name and sent the
text to her.

Jane watched the shifting
images on the TV. She was anxious for Neil to return and ask the
question that she wanted and hoped to hear. A fat black fly bumped
into her face, she swatted it away and watched it land on the
coffee table where another one crawled lazily. She swatted at them
with her magazine. “You coming back, Neil?” There was no answer, it
might have been one of his mates calling round and Neil was trying
to get rid of him. The television held her attention until his
absence began to eat at her. “Neil?
Neil?
” She waved away another fly. There was one
crawling across the TV too. She saw the handle of the door turn
slowly downward, as if the door was being opened with the intention
of her not noticing it. “Stop mucking around and get yourself back
in here.” She laughed, but it came uneasily. Neil should know not
to creep around like that what with everything that had been
happening. She didn’t know why he had been so insistent at being at
his flat tonight; they had spent most of the week at hers because
of everything that had been happening at The Heights. She wouldn’t
let him bring her here again until everything had settled down. She
turned back to the television and let Neil do his thing, whatever
that was going to be. The door swung slowly open and death, in a
cloud of bloated flies, took three lightning swift strides to her
side.

The sound of a tip of
metal being scored across concrete dragged itself into the
perimeter of Rachel’s senses. Her nerve faltered and she stopped
her ascent a few flights short of Cat’s floor. Sharp but fleeting,
the noise caught her attention before slithering quickly and
illusively away. She stood there, alone in the isolated enclosed
stairwell, her thoughts dashed to her mobile phone in her bag. She
could call Kelly. She dismissed her anxiety with a stiff-upper-lip
gusto. What would she say?
That she could here a
sound?

She scoffed dismissively at
herself, but the humour trembled on a foundation of weak resolve as
she hauled herself up the banister. An unsettling awareness of not
being alone crowded in on her and slowed her steps. The sense was
quickly followed by a new sound in the shadows. A soft shuffling on
the stairs above her.

Rachel held her ground as step
by step a slow stubbed footfall sounded, each step bringing the
source of the sound closer to her. On the landing ahead of her a
shadow moved. The pace of the staggered noise changed as the drawn
out scuffing steps moved from the stairs and onto the landing ahead
of her.

A meek woman around Rachel’s
age stepped into view, shambling onto the staircase with Rachel in
pink fluffy slippers. Rachel caught her breath and tried her best
to restrain the pull of an inane grin of relief. The woman’s face
was ashen and drawn, her hair tired and fragile looking. Her body
huddled over with her arms folded under her chest in a cowering
walk. Her eyes were evasive but aware as she walked around Rachel.
Rachel managed to turn her self-amused grin into a pleasantry
toward the grey woman as she shuffled past her in the direction
Rachel had just come from.

Rachel’s wrist jerked, snatched
into a strong grip by the woman who was now impossibly in front of
her again, as if time had leapt backward like a needle on a
scratched record. The woman held Rachel in place and shook her head
slowly from side to side, her face and eyes hard and
expressionless. Rachel swallowed the shock and allowed her eyes to
stray from her face toward Cat’s landing, as if she instinctively
knew that was the direction the woman warned her against. She
glanced back to the woman and found that she was gone.

Rachel looked down and caught
sight of the woman, impossibly further down the stairs withdrawing
backwards, sliding along the wall with a sickening slithering noise
as her cardigan dragged along the smooth white concrete. She was
still shaking her head in warning. Her eyes, grey and haunted,
stared up into Rachel’s face. She slinked across the landing below
until she was out of sight. From experience and intuition Rachel
knew that if she went after her she would find the landing
empty.

The sound of concrete being
scraped snatched her attention back to her original heading. Her
heart was quivering from the apparitions unnerving warning, and her
mind teetered on fearful imagination of what could be waiting for
her. She bolstered herself to discover the source of the haunting
noise. One measured foot after another she climbed the final
approach to Cat’s landing.

The light on the wall above the
door was dead, and the square of light from the window set into the
fire escape door only served to deepen the shadows around it. For
seconds that seemed like uncomfortable minutes she waited for her
eyes to find whatever made the noise while the gloom pressed
forebodingly against her.

The landing was empty.

With a sigh of relief Rachel
clutched the handle and pulled the heavy door open, light from the
sanctuary of the bright corridor spilled over her.

Scraaaaatch
.

Sharp metal scratched across
gritty concrete at a volume that raked at her ears and her nerves
with its proximity. Rachel froze. The sound was on the landing with
her, it had come from floor level from behind the door she held
open. Her palm became slick and her grip on the handle faltered.
Her hand was very near whatever was making that noise.

She stilled her quavering
breaths. All she had to do was walk forward. Three quick measured
steps and she would be in the apparent safety of the bright
corridor, near people’s homes and the help the safety they
represented.

There had been nothing behind
the door only a moment before. If there was something there now
then it had to be spiritual. The woman on the stairs had unnerved
her and her trust in the safety of the spiritual world had been
shaken by events in the building. Despite her fears she had to see
what was tormenting her. She let go of the handle.

The door drifted closed on her
escape route and the gloom crept back out of the shadows. What was
she doing? The spirit world wasn’t the benign plane that she
understood. Not in this building anyway. She had already received a
warning. She didn’t have any defence against whatever was at work
here. Whatever lurked in this building was beyond anything she had
ever experienced. Every supernatural horror film that had ever
frightened her strobed through her mind. She was doing what the
stupid heroine would do! Rachel’s heart leapt into her throat and
she fumbled for the door.

Scraaaaatch
, came the noise. She froze within
the quiet that followed. It had been just to her right. She only
had to turn her head to the right and whatever made that noise
would be at her feet. Dread paralyzed her. The noise punctured the
quiet then left her dangling in silence again, seemingly daring her
to look. She could feel a presence by her side; a
‘something’
at the perimeter of that
other sense beyond sight and sound. Whatever it was hadn’t done
anything to her. Yet. Maybe it liked to taunt it’s victims before…
She waited for the noise as someone might wait for the next heart
stopping drop on a rollercoaster. It didn’t come. She hesitantly
lowered her gaze towards the ground.

Scraaaaatch.

She lurched in fright as the
sound leapt out at her from the tip of a golden sickle being scored
along the ground in a wide arc by a figure sitting hunched on
crossed legs in a dark hooded robe, seemingly dressed in the shadow
that he sat within. The figures face was hidden but the narrow
tongue of white beard that hung out from the dark hood told her it
was the same phantom that had appeared to her at Craig’s flat the
night Amy had been taken. The figure let the sickle rest on the
floor and held its hand up to Rachel, offering her something.

She eyed the familiar
figure warily, her confidence returning as she fell back on her old
belief that the spirit world was benign. She reached out and found
a small object deposited into her palm. The old man’s cold rough
fingers withdrew leaving a single small stone in her hand. The
stone was engraved with the
‘
Jera’
r
une. She could see that the rune that
represented the harvest was symbolic of what was happening. “But
why? Why are children – people being taken?” The figure didn’t
answer.

The engraving changed
before her eyes, the two separate symbols ran smoothly together
like beads of mercury joining as one and formed a line with a
triangular shape jutting fin-like from one side. She recognised the
symbol as
‘
Thurisaz’
and its significance branded itself
upon her. The rune symbolised destiny through suffering, the
endurance of chaos and the confrontation with the monster.
The monster.
Her hand burned in a
wild flash-fire of pain, as if the rune itself was evil and reacted
against Rachel’s innocence and purity. She let the hot rune fall
and it passed seamlessly into the ground like a ghost. Shaken, she
turned sharply to the sage for an answer, but he had followed the
rune and she was alone once again but for the dread prophecy
of
‘
Thurisaz’
. That she would face the
monster.

Chapter
Thirty One

Five doors down from Cat’s flat
the fluorescent tube of the corridor flickered, buzzed and died,
plunging the section of corridor outside Liz Dancey’s flat into
thick darkness.