The Spirit Realm #2
(Each step made him feel like a fly on flypaper.)
Charlie had warned him as they climbed the stairs. But even as she spoke he could see things from the corner of his eye that made his breath catch in his throat. She held his hand in a vice-like grip, and would not pause as she climbed the steps. Matty felt his arm pull tight, and with each step, he lurched forward.
Things lurked in the shadows. The walls were alive with movement. Shadows undulated. The concrete rippled. Matty searched for the source of the movement, but his eyes seemed to be a moment behind it. His eyes moved to a spot just as something vacated it, or so it seemed. His gaze chased movement but never caught it.
“The further we go the more you’ll see,” Charlie had told him, “stay close and move fast.”
They approached the door to the second floor, and he heard it. It sounded like someone ripping wet cloth. Then he heard a cascade of tiny footsteps. Charlie looked over her shoulder, her hand tightening around his until he could feel the bones crushing together.
“It sounds bad,” she said opening the door before Matty could respond.
At first, he thought the lights that lit the corridor were red, then he realised. It looked as if something had exploded in the hallway. Red covered the floor and walls. The ceiling was specked in splashes and streaks of red. A slug of meat slithered down the wall then twisted and flipped end over end. Matty’s eyes followed it. He didn’t want to watch the teardrop of flesh slip down the wall but couldn’t pull his eyes away.
Charlie stopped and Matty walked into her. She raised a finger to her lips and Matty placed his free hand over his own. He knew it would betray him, and immediately it tried to when he saw the eyes.
He thought that they were reflections. Tiny pinpricks of light reflected from the blood-splattered strips of light that ran along the length of the corridor. One light flickered, and when the sea of lights that decorated the wall blinked he thought that was all it was. Then he looked more closely and he saw that the lights were not reflections, they were eyes. Hundreds of them lined the walls. Some were large, others were small, and many were grouped more than just two to a head.
He tried to back away, but Charlie pulled him close. Her arms wrapped around him and she took tentative steps forward.
The eyes followed.
“They’re minor creatures,” she said quietly. She was almost whispering.
“Can they hurt us?” He asked, and the silence answering the question stretched out until it snapped.
Charlie walked and Matty followed. His feet sank into the carpet. It was as though he was walking through damp grass. He glanced down and saw bubbles break where his weight forced the blood from under his feet. When his feet lifted he could feel suction holding them fast. Each step made him feel like a fly on flypaper.
They passed a pile of crimson. It moved under the flickering light. In the mound of meat, Matty saw an eye. He looked away and saw the eyes watching them from their place on the wall. There were animals, a menagerie of eyes, heads, ears, and bodies that defied Matty’s understanding.
As they walked, his young mind tried to understand what he saw. No creature was similar to the next. Few things aligned them, and so much separated them. The eyes were not eyes, they were the maws of mouths. They tasted the world around them and saw the world through the taste of it.
Matty recoiled from it, and Charlie’s hands clutched him tighter.
“There,” she said and nodded towards the door to the far end of the corridor.
He closed his eyes and allowed her to lead him.
The sounds were no better than the sights. He was not aware of them until he closed his eyes. Then they assaulted him. There were the sounds of movement all around him. In the sounds were words, and within the words were the sounds of hunger.
Matty wanted to cover his ears, but one hand covered his mouth while the other was clutched in Charlie’s palm. The boy had no choice but to listen, and the voices knew. They gloated at his fear, mumbling terrors that only Matty could understand.
“Keep your eyes closed,” she said.
His feet pushed blood from the carpet. His shoes were soaked in it, forcing the thick fluid up between his toes. His father had told him a story once that had haunted Matty’s dreams, it was of a soldier who fought in a long-ago war. His father had not told the story to scare him, but it had. Sometimes adults can be thoughtlessly cruel. The story was told of a man behind enemy lines. He waded through flooded trenches, his feet seeping deep into the sodden earth, before long the man was up to his waist, and it was only then that he realised that bodies floated all around him.
Matty would dream of this for months after, and now the dream was real.
In his imagination, he knew what was being crushed underfoot, and he could not bear the thought. He could feel bloated flesh bursting between his toes and he let out a muffled cry of horror. His hand clutched more tightly to his face, and his eyes opened a mere sliver.
The worst of the red was past them now, the door to the stairwell was near.
“We should have stayed on the stairs.” He mumbled, so quietly he doubted that Charlie could hear, but her face was close to his own, and her hearing was acute.
“There aren’t any shortcuts,” she said, and once again Matty was struck by how grown up she sounded, “everyone has to take their journey.”
The door opened and her final word echoed along the concrete stairwell. He could not feel the cold in his body but he felt the cold through his soul. Her hand clutched his but he knew her hand did not exist at all. Matty’s mind reeled at the thought of it. The eyes were there but weren’t, and they were no less real for their lack of existence.
He knew that made no sense. No more than the dream haunting him when the dream wasn’t real. But it had haunted him, though it was no more than imagination run wild.
The stairwell was empty, and the concrete was cold. No eyes were decorating the walls, and Matty could see no shadows moving unnaturally between the lights. Charlie pulled him up the first five steps and then froze. Sitting ahead of them on the first step of the second flight, was the young woman they had seen earlier. She was leaning against the outside wall, and her legs were pulled up against her chest as if the cold had sunk deep into her bones.
The woman didn’t move. She did not even seem to be breathing, and as Matty watched her it occurred to him that she seemed more real than her surroundings. Around her, the world seemed more colourful, but less substantial, while she appeared too heavy for the step where she rested. He expected her to sink through it any moment.
They moved closer, but even Charlie had slowed her ascent to a crawl.
“Is she dead?” He asked and immediately knew that she wasn’t.
“We would see her if she were,” Charlie answered, and Matty knew it was true.
The woman’s head slowly moved to the side, revealing her face. Matty thought that she was pretty, and not as old as he had thought, she didn’t look like a real grown-up, but she wasn’t a child either. She reminded him of the older girls in his old school. The girls whose boyfriends had motorbikes and dressed in ways that drew disapproving looks from the adults around them.
Her eyes flickered open, and for a brief moment, Matty thought she looked at him before her gaze drifted from the door down the stairs to the third-floor landing above them.
“Do you know who she is?” Charlie asked.
Matty shook his head.
“What’s she doing here?” She asked again, this time to herself.
“Can she see?” Matty asked.
This time it was Charlie who nodded.
“I think so,” she said, “look at her eyes.”
Matty could see it. It was the same look he had seen in his mother’s eyes. A far-off look that made him think of someone trying to solve a complex problem. Her eyes were fixed on something above them. Something that was just outside of his field of view. Charlie glanced in the same direction seeing nothing, then looked down at the woman.
“Can she see us?” Matthew asked, and Charlie darted away from the woman as she looked towards them. She shifted against the wall and one hand slowly raised towards Matty’s face.
“She can see you at least,” Charlie replied.
“Can you see me?” He asked, this time aiming the question at the woman, and he saw her head move slightly in a nod of assent. She looked at him with that same look of vague confusion, as if she could not understand what she was seeing.
I’m not real, Matty thought, not for the first time. I’m as ghostly as the world around us. She sees me as she would see a ghost.
“Can you see what I can see?” The woman asked back. Her words were slightly slurred, reminding him this time of his father. Matty nodded and tried to smile a kindly smile. The woman smiled back uncertainly, and Matty thought it wasn’t what she had seen that had unsettled her but something she had felt. She was not fearful, but confused. Whatever had happened to her had shaken something within her.
“What’s your name?” He asked her.
“Greta,” she replied without a moment’s pause.
“That’s a nice name,” Matty said, “I’m Matthew, but people call me Matty, and this is Charlie.”
Unfocused fear erupted across Greta’s face, her eyes moving around the cramped stairwell and Matty realised that, though she could see him, Charlie was invisible.
“Are you okay?” He asked rapidly, stepping deliberately into her field of view to distract her. She blinked and looked back at him, her sudden concern fading into confusion.
“Yeah,” she said, no more convinced by the word than he was, “I keep seeing strange things.” She paused and her eyes turned inward for a moment. “There’s something wrong here.” She glanced upward again, then back at Matty. Leaning towards him slightly, she said, “I think something is watching us.”
There are eyes everywhere, Matty thought. He had sensed it the first time he had stepped out of the cab in front of the building. He had thought it was just his imagination, and he had gotten used to the feeling, but it had not left him. He wished he still thought it was nothing but his imagination, he now knew better. He had been right, there were eyes everywhere.
He looked up again at the floor above. The stairwell was lit, but between the lighting were pits of inky darkness in which anything could hide. He stared into the corner opposite the doorway above, it was a wedge of black in which a man could hide, and in it, he thought he could make out a human form.
“Yeah,” Matty said, “I’ve been feeling that way too. I think the building has been watching me since the beginning.”
Matty glanced around. Charlie had pulled away to the far wall, making herself small against it. She gazed upwards with the same faraway look on her face as Greta. He wanted to speak to her but sensed that it would unsettle Greta.
“What are you doing here Greta?” He asked his gaze still on Charlie. The young girl who wasn’t a young girl looked more ghostly than ever. Her long black skirt made her appear as if she was floating in the darkness. A statue with her arms down at her sides and her chin raised.
Greta’s eyes narrowed as she examined his face, then they widened and a slight smile fell across her lips. She nodded slightly, then pushed away from the wall, climbing to her feet. Matty watched, unable to stop his eyes moving over her. She wore a frayed denim skirt and a leather jacket. She brushed her short hair from her face and it immediately fell back into place. She was taller than he was, but not by much. She was probably not much taller than Charlie.
“I’m going up.” She said, nodding towards the stairs leading to the next floor.
“Me too,” he replied, careful not to include Charlie.
The spirit girl glanced over and nodded before slowly mounting the steps. Matty followed with Greta beside him. The woman walked at Matty’s shoulder, a step behind. He felt comforted by her presence, but she also made him feel small. Adults made him feel small, and he wondered if he would ever become an adult.
He watched Charlie walking a little ahead of them. Her skirts flowed around her like fluid and he felt his heart swell at the sight of her. The emotion was similar to how he felt when he spent time with his mother. It felt right to him as if it was how things were supposed to be. Being with Charlie made him feel as if anything was possible. She would look after him, as he would her.
He felt Greta place her hand on his shoulder and move him forward faster. Her hand felt like his mother’s. Reassuring, comforting. He moved up the steps, unsure if he was Greta’s protector or she was his.
Charlie needed no protector.
Charlie was Charlie.
She reached the top of the steps, and Matty noticed her eyes were captured by the black wedge of darkness where he thought he had seen the figure. She skirted the space, edging towards the door that led to the next floor. She cracked the door open and peered through.
“That door opened by itself,” Greta whispered, and Matty glanced at her. The woman’s face was close to his own. She was on a step lower than him so they were roughly the same height.
She really can’t see her, Matty thought, how could she not see her?
He knew, but it was difficult for him to accept. He and Charlie were not the same. He could not understand the exact difference, but he knew that Charlie was dead.
She was dead.
He looked at her as she slipped through the door to the third floor.
She was dead.
His heart clenched at the thought of it.
He took another step, and the woman followed. The wedge of darkness was to his right, and his eyes drew to it as he passed. Greta stared at it, and he felt her hand clutch his arm. The sensation was distant as if he were half asleep. She urged him onward and through the door to the third floor, away from the darkness.
There was something there. He knew it. Something that watched them. Greta could see it. So could Charlie, and he thought he could see it himself. A face hung in the darkness. Its cheeks were sunken and its chin was angular but unmistakably human. It was the face of a man, and it was a face that was somehow familiar.
It moved its head to follow them as they passed. Matty paused as the others slipped into the corridor. The longer he stared into the dark corner the more vivid the figure became. It appeared to expand, the face drifting upwards, an incredibly tall man stretching to his full height. The face had become more defined, and its eyes were more clearly visible now. They stared down at Matty with detached interest. The boy saw in them the aloofness of a man who saw him as no threat and no use in him. Its interest in the boy was no more than that of a schoolboy watching ants crawl around in the crushed gut of roadkill.
He thought of the dream, of the bodies floating in the flooded trenches of that long-ago war, and he knew that the figure would see it as its fondest memory. He thought that the thing could see it now. That it could reach into his mind and draw it out. It was concentrated malicious intent, stirring the boy’s mind with a fouled and rotten ladle.
“Are you staying here?” The woman said, and Matty almost cried out in surprise. He felt what served him for a heart quicken. He breathed in. There was no air, nothing around him, but he was a spirit who still believed he was a boy.
“No,” he replied. His voice was cracked. It wanted nothing more than to hide.
He followed the two women into the corridor that ran the length of the third floor, letting the door swing closed behind him. Charlie stood against the wall, and the look on her face was the most frightening thing he had ever seen. Charlie thought she knew whatever had appeared to them in the stairwell. Charlie, the little girl who was not a little girl, looked at the closing door with an unmistakable look of fear, and when her eyes met his he saw in them the imploring look of a terrified child.