The Spirit Realm #1
(It’s the living we have to be afraid of.)
“The first time I saw this place I was so afraid,” Charlie hugged her knees to her chest as she spoke, re-enacting that moment from so many years ago, “I don’t know why it was different for me. Mother thought this was real life, and she acted out… that day, over and over.
“But it was different for me, I saw that I was somewhere wrong, and it was so frightening.”
The boy’s eyes were wide, and his head moved in a slow circle trying to take in the surroundings. He barely recognised it as Lucas’ room, but it looked molten. It reminded him of one of those scary surrealist paintings his father had shown him in a book once. He could almost believe he was dreaming, almost. It would have to be a very vivid dream. Complete down to the carpet’s weave, and though this seemed unlikely it was more acceptable to him than the alternative.
“But I learned that nothing here could hurt me. It can only hurt if you believe in it. It can only hurt you there,” she tapped her head, “no matter how scary it looks.”
She looked over the room, it was the same shape and size as the room he’d been in last, but the walls seemed to bow inward slightly, as if some great weight was pressing down on them. The table on which Lucas had shown him the diary now sagged. The books had sunk into the table veneer, the colours of their covers mixing with the wood grain.
“It’s the living we have to be afraid of.” She said, and the words sent a chill down Matty’s spine.
She was the girl he had met when he and his mother arrived. She was the same girl he felt an irresistible urge to be around. He knew what the feeling meant, kind of. But it was still mostly a mystery and getting more of one moment-to-moment.
She had folded her skirt around her legs in a ladylike fashion that had fascinated him the first time he saw her do it. Most girls wore jeans now, so seeing a girl wearing a dress was novelty enough but seeing one wearing something so lady-like in such surroundings threatened to break something in his mind.
She unfolded herself and rose, holding her hand out to him. Automatically he reached for it and noticed his hand shaking.
“It’s different for you too Matthew,” she said gently, “I don’t understand why, but I’m glad. I’m going to need help where I’m going.”
“Where?” He asked as he rose.
“Up.” She glanced towards the ceiling, as if to make certain there was no mistake, “The door will be open a little, only a little, but perhaps we might be able to slip through it.”
Taking her hand strengthened his resolve as if something had flowed between them. Once he was on his feet he felt her hand relax, but instead of releasing it, he held it tighter. She smiled and squeezed his hand in her own.
“It’s okay Matty,” she said. Her tone was kindly, and so adult that he felt a chasm between them that hurt inside. They were different, and he understood why, but could not admit it.
She was not a child, she just appeared to be one.
As she led him from the room he thought of Lucas. Had she been older or younger than Lucas when she had died? How old was Lucas? As he followed her along the corridor, passing the elevator, he watched her hair flowing. He could feel it brushing his face, but it couldn’t be happening.
It had to be in his mind.
She did not exist.
As they exited what would have been Lucas’ room Matty saw that everything was different. The paint on the walls was decayed, flaking and worn through in places, and the floor was worn into furrows through many years of use.
But it wasn’t just the appearance of the place that differed. It sounded different. From apartment 101 he could hear Barbara Nicholson shouting a single repeated phrase. “I carried you for nine months,” she would shout, “nine months,” and then she would repeat the final two words before she broke into a scream that ended in a broken gargle that made Matty’s stomach clench.
In the lobby the tall black man that Lucas had introduced as Chaz was inspecting his bloodied hands, as they passed he looked up and shook his head sadly. Someone else stood a few steps away, a shadowy man, short and hunched. As Charlie dragged him away Matty saw the man’s eyes gleam with maniacal joy. His hand was raised, and his index finger wagged at Chaz as if to say, “No”.
It was then that Matty saw the thing that sat on Chaz’s shoulder, it was small and had flesh the colour of meat about to go bad. Its face was close to Chaz’s ear and Matty could see its distended lips jiggle obscenely as it whispered to him. Its eyes bulged and rolled crazily before latching onto Matty and his companion. Matty held Charlie’s hand tighter. It was the only thing that made sense to him. Around him were the half-realised images of people. Images upon images, as if an artist had reused the same paper, drawing over old drawings, some of which were half-finished.
He pulled Charlie closer.
“Can you see them?” He asked, and she nodded.
The thing on Chaz’s shoulder pulled its lips from the man’s ear, its tongue flicked out and the distended lips pulled into a smile before he lost view of it as they moved further down the corridor.
“They can’t hurt you,” she said, “they are too busy hurting themselves.”
“They can still hurt?”
“That’s why they’re here.”
He could see each image like a glitch. A looped moment that told nothing of the tale it represented. The sound that flowed through the building was a jumble. Raised voices caught midway through a brutal argument shattered into sounds of rage and fear. A shotgun shot boomed and Matty wanted to press his hands to his ears, but that would mean he could not hold Charlie’s hand and feel its comfort.
They approached the door to the western stairwell, his eyes moved to the apartment he shared with his mother. Beside him the stairwell door opened, and Charlie stepped into it, but Matty did not move.
“Where did you take me?” He asked, and Charlie paused, a frown creasing her brow. “The pages,” he said, “where were they?”
She didn’t speak but her eyes flicked to his apartment door.
“That was our apartment,” she said quietly, “it was apartment seven back then.”
She tugged at his arm, but he stayed fast.
“Where did you die?”
“My bedroom, where I hid the pages,” she said.
“Where my bedroom is now?” He asked, but he didn’t need an answer, perhaps he didn’t want one. She nodded anyway.
There were questions, but he allowed her to pull him into the stairwell, and lead him up the steps. Their footfalls echoed, but the echo sounded wrong to him. The sounds had no more reality than the walls they bounced off, no more a reality than the girl he so dutifully followed. The door closed behind them, cutting off the noises from below, but the stairwell had its sounds of pain. Here it was creaking ropes that held heavy objects. Matty knew what those objects were, and he knew they once lived and breathed, but did so no more.
He averted his eyes from the rectangular gap between the flights of stairs that led to the top of the stairwell, he knew that if he looked he would see something swinging to and fro, and then he heard the sound that confirmed it. He heard the sounds of a woman’s heel hitting the metal handrail as her legs swung back and forth.
The door to the next floor opened, and Matty had the sensation of a balloon being popped within him as if he were a balloon. A thin bag of thoughts and feelings that something had thoughtlessly trampled. The sensation was quick, followed by a clattering of sounds. Footsteps that ran past him, no, through him and up the steps to the floor above.
It was a sickening feeling of his existence being pulled, stretched and torn. Only to draw itself back together without a trace of it ever happening.
But he felt it, and he never wanted to again.
“Here,” Charlie said. The word was uttered kindly. Her hands took him by the shoulders and drew him into the corridor. His breath came in gasps, but he felt no air being pulled into his lungs, and he realised that he was not breathing but going through the habit as if he were and with stupefied fear, he realised that he was no longer real either.
He saw himself lying across his mother’s shoulder. His body was limp and lifeless, and he knew why. He was no longer alive, at least, whatever had made that body himself had been separated from it.
Matty stumbled back into Charlie, who held him to her. Her body was no longer cold.
His mother held a knife out in front of her, and on the floor was another woman, someone Matty had not seen before. She looked younger than his mother and much smaller, but her face was hard and Matty thought she was frightening.
“Don’t you move!” His mother said, and the woman on the floor pushed slowly against the wall and raised her hands. Her eyes moved to the door, then back at Matty’s mother.
“No, you don’t understand, he’s not in his right mind.” The woman said. Her eyes were wide with panic, but Matty didn’t think the panic was for herself.
“Something is going on here, please.”
Matty’s mother hovered around the woman, he could see the uncertainty in her face. He had seen it so many times in the past. Those times he had done something wrong and had lied about it. Those times she had been uncertain whether to believe or not.
It was then that something beyond his years occurred to Matty. On some level, he understood this. His mother was a good woman. She wasn’t always right, and her decisions were not always the best, but she tried to be good, and Matty knew that this counted for something.
He thought about his father when he broke the TV and knew she had made a bad decision that day. He understood it might have been the only decision she could have made, but it had been wrong. There had been something wrong with his father. Matty knew it, as had his mother. His father needed something they couldn’t give him, but they could have helped him find it.
He saw the woman who stood before him, and she was not just his mother. She was a woman who had seen things that perhaps she should not have seen and done things she should not have done. He saw her as something more than his mother, he saw her as someone who existed before he was born and might exist after he had gone.
Matty’s mind reeled.
The world around him bowed and undulated as if it were made of fluid rather than matter. The walls barely supported the ceilings above them, and he could feel the floors give slightly under his weight.
It was not real, but then Matty was no longer certain about the real world.
His mother held the knife, and the knife hovered over the young woman’s throat.
“Listen to me,” the woman said slowly as if speaking to someone who had become unhinged, “this isn’t him. You don’t know Ryan, he’s not like this. Something was done to him.”
“I know Ryan a damned sight better than you do girl,” Natalie responded curtly.
“How?” The question was uttered in a small voice, and Matty thought she knew the answer.
“Because he’s my husband.”
Matty watched the young woman’s face drop, instantly something flashed across his mother’s face. It wasn’t an expression he had seen from her before, and he didn’t understand its meaning, but it was clear that understanding had passed between the woman and his mother.
“We have to keep going.”
This was Charlie speaking, and again she took his hand and tried to pull him towards the stairwell door, but again Matty resisted her. He could see the walls darkening under the flickering fluorescent. The floor rippled. It could have been a trick of the failing light, but Matthew didn’t think it was. The walls moved. It was a slight movement, but it was there, he could see it. Then something pushed against the surface of the floor. It pressed up from beneath. A series of lumps appear, then recede, then appear again.
“They’re fingers,” Matthew said under his breath, and his mother’s eyes darted around her as if she had heard him. He knew she couldn’t, there was no way she could, he was no longer real.
The lumps appeared again, five of them. They pushed upward.
“We have to go,” Charlie said again, and this time Matty caught the concern in her voice, “it’s waking up Matthew. Its doorway is opening.”
“We have to help,” he said as she pulled him away. The fingers stroked through the surface of the floor. They looked like five shark fins moving in perfect formation. They grew as the fingers pushed further through the surface. They moved towards the young woman who was half lying across the floor. The fingertips slipped further from the floor, wrapping around the woman’s ankle. Her eyes darted to her leg, and her hands – still raised – twitched towards her ankle.
“We can help them best by helping Lucas,” Charlie replied, her response was far too grown up, and Matty felt the weight of what she was pressing down upon him. “We go up, slip through the door and help from the other side.”
Matthew’s mother was still searching. Unsettled by something she had sensed. Then the woman on the floor screamed, and Natalie’s attention snapped back to her, and she moved away as the young woman shrieked.
“The other side of what?” He asked the woman who looked like a little girl. Charlie pulled him by the hand towards the stairs.
“The other side of everything Matthew,” she said as she led him up the stairs.
Natalie knew. She could feel it at the base of her skull. Matty lay limply across her shoulder, his face almost touching her own, and she knew he had not spoken, but she had heard him. His voice was distant, and she could not understand what he had said, but she knew it was him.
Her eyes darted down and she saw something scamper across the carpet towards the woman sprawled across the floor. Natalie dropped the knife and reached for the woman. She dragged her to her feet as a group of objects moved towards her. At first, Natalie thought they were mice marching in a strangely tight formation. Five dark shapes moved in an inverted “V” over the threadbare carpet. Then what they were became clear, and reality ceased to make sense.
“That’s a hand!” She moaned, and the younger woman looked down and noticed the knife. Her movement was so swift that Natalie could not have stopped her. She plucked the knife up and slashed at the five mounds that were pushing up through the carpet. The carpet threads tore, some cleanly severed while others pulled free in long strands. The mounds popped like tiny balloons and then settled onto the warped floorboards. The young woman held the knife out towards the floor, her back almost to the woman who had previously held her restrained.
“That looked like a hand,” Natalie said again, this time less certain in the conviction.
Natalie and the young woman stood like statues, staring at the torn carpet.
“I’m getting out of here,” Natalie said as she backed towards the stairwell door. The young woman watched her but didn’t move. “Are you coming?”
“No,” the young woman replied. She drew out the word as if it were a question to herself. “Ryan needs me.” And then she pushed past Natalie and took the stairs to the floor above.
Natalie clutched Matty’s limp body to her chest. She could feel his heartbeat, and his breath was warm against her cheek, but there was no other indication of life from the boy. “Matty,” she said, her voice so low that she could barely hear herself speak, “Matty, are you in there?”
She squeezed him tight with both arms and let her eyes move over the cracked walls before kicking the stairwell door open. She heard fast, heavy footsteps above her, but she took the flight of steps leading down. She didn’t know where she was going, there was nowhere to go, but there were no allies for her in Gatehouse Apartments and no friends to turn to.
What she briefly thought might be a haven was nothing more than another trap. She pushed through the door to her floor and turned towards her apartment. They had very little in there they needed to take, most of it could be easily replaced.
Her key was near to where she had dropped it. She plucked it up and entered her apartment.
Not that it would be hers for much longer.