Apartment 103
(Be Strong And Of Good Courage.)
Lucas woke from a dream where the grass would fall away under his feet as he walked. Each step would reveal a pit beneath him, a darkness that ran on forever. He walked softly but moved his feet fast. He knew if he stayed too long in the same spot he would fall through the break in the crust of the world into the pit. Above him the blue skies were unblemished, and the sun felt warm on his face. Beneath him the deathly cold of the earth reached up to him, eating away the very ground on which he walked.
When he woke he looked at the carpet for a long time before he picked up the courage to stand on it. Before he even did, he retrieved his Bible from his nightstand and read the first chapter of Joshua, his favourite in times of weakness. Only then did he press the tips of his toes to the grey carpet, to test its solidity. Lucas then said a silent prayer beside his bed and began his day. He had compiled a list the night before, arranging them in order so he could group like jobs together. Work concerning water came first: broken taps and the waste pipes up on the second floor, then electrical, of which there were few. Then he could move over to room 107 and continue the renovations.
His frugal breakfast was next, he never liked eating early but did because he knew he must, and he washed and dressed before making a phone call that he knew would serve little purpose.
He was ready to leave his apartment within half an hour of opening his eyes. He took his keys from the hook beside the door and clipped them onto his belt. Then, with one hand on the latch that would open the door, he paused. He knew he would see them and sometimes seeing them was not easy. The things he saw could stay with him. Often, he would be unable to push it away. His faith gave him comfort, but his faith also sat at odds with what he saw. It instructed him that there was nothing to see, but still, he saw them.
He left his apartment and passed the archway that led to the foyer. Barb and Bart were there, as they always were. Bart has his feet on the battered coffee table with a copy of Angler Monthly folded back on itself in one hand. Barbara had the novel, the very same one she always had. It was folded open about a third of the way through, and Lucas had never seen her turn a page of it.
Lucas was uncertain whether he should announce his presence or slip by unnoticed, part of him wanted to stand and watch them. He could not help but be interested, and – not for the first time – he wondered if his lack of family drew him too closely to the families of others.
Barbara shifted in her seat, and she saw him loitering in the hallway, and her eyes lit up.
“Have you met them?” She said, and Lucas wondered if he was seeing a glimmer of what she looked like as a young woman. She seemed invigorated by the news that was bursting from her. Her eyes were bright, widening slightly to punctuate her words.
“Met who?” He asked. In truth, he already knew, it was his job to get 108 in working condition for the family’s arrival. But the life in the old ladies’ eyes was infectious.
“The youngster in 108, the one with the little boy?”
“A youngster with a youngster? How does that work then?”
“Oh, you! You know you’re all youngsters to the likes of me and Bart.”
“Speak for yourself, woman,” Bart interjected, but Barbara ignored him.
“I chatted with her yesterday, but I haven’t seen her since.”
“No?” Lucas suspected he knew why that might be. Encountering Barbara Nicholson could feel like an assault on the uninitiated. “I think it was a long journey, they’re probably worn out.”
“So,” she let the word roll out, “where are they from?”
Lucas smiled.
“I don’t think that’s my place to say, Barbara. Do you?”
Barbara returned the smile.
“Well, maybe not.”
“Ask her next time you see her, assuming you can entice her out of 108.”
Lucas saw something pass behind Barbara’s eyes, a flash of mischievousness, and Lucas glanced over to her husband. Bart peered over his fishing magazine, his eyes on his wife. He then turned his attention back to Lucas.
“Go boy, escape while you can.”
Lucas made his way to the elevator doors and hit the call button. He could already hear Barbara speaking conspiratorially with her husband. He could not make out the words themselves, the acoustics of the hallway twisted them, and Lucas knew that if he dared close his eyes, he would hear the sounds as haunting whispers.
The car stopped on his floor and there was a series of thumps from within the elevator shaft. The doors opened, paused about a hands-width apart and then pulled open as if under strain. He stepped in, feeling the car give the smallest amount under his weight, then hit the button for the floor above.
The doors rolled closed and there was a second of stillness that lasted just a moment longer than was comfortable before there was an uneven movement upwards.
He was the only one who used the elevator. Only four occupants were on the second floor, and Lucas had never seen anyone on the higher floors. He suspected that even if all the apartments were filled no one would venture into the chrome cubicle. Sometimes it felt as though he was taking his chances when he stepped into it, and he wondered if his habitual use constituted a kind of death wish.
There was a squeal of metal on metal, then a grinding noise as if something was digging into the brickwork of the shaft, then silence.
He had made calls to find a maintenance crew to service the elevator. He had done his best. The doors rattled as the car moved during the winter, so he tightened the rails and secured the door more firmly. Then as the summer heat hit the door would stick, and sometimes he would have to force them open.
Perhaps using the elevator would loosen them, so he used the elevator with the hope that it would help.
The car trembled to a stop, and there was a moment of silence. There was another shriek of metal on metal, and the doors opened. Lucas slipped between them and along the corridor to room 204. It was empty but currently used for storage so he kept it locked.
Inside it was stripped bare. Even the partition walls had been removed, leaving skeletal remains on which he had pinned the building plans. The large sheets of paper were marked with his scrawl. Items were circled and indecipherable notes had been written under them. Some of the circled items were crossed through, indicating they had been completed, but there were many left to do.
Lucas consulted it, tracing his fingertip over the paper, it bowed under the pressure and pondered how he would approach the problem.
The water waste pipe of the floor he was on ran along the ceiling of the ground floor corridor. Usually, it was covered with a suspended ceiling, but that had been removed and not replaced.
Earlier, he had called the only company able to deal with his problem, but they had told him no one was available. He had expected as such. No one wanted to deal with anything within the walls of Gatehouse Apartments, leaving Lucas to deal with things with his mediocre skills.
So, it was up to him. He selected a small tower of plastic buckets, each seated inside the next, and two hefty screwdrivers. Then he grabbed the medium-sized of his three ladders and left the makeshift workroom.
He hit the button for the elevator and waited. Above the doors, he saw it had been called to the attic rooms. There was no reason for anyone to have travelled up there, no one ever went further than the second floor, but the elevator would often be found on odd floors. He suspected he knew why that might be, but when asked, he would blame the ancient wiring and the lack of maintenance.
He waited. The ladder was hooked over his shoulder so he could look between its steps to the corridor to his left. He considered taking the stairs but dismissed the idea when he saw the shadow.
He caught sight of it between two steps of the ladder. The steps were used but well maintained, and gleamed under the fluorescent lighting. At first, he thought the shadow was a dead spot caused by his eyes adjusting to the light. Then he realised it was an altogether different type of dead spot.
There was a larger infestation of shadows further up the structure, with very few on the ground floor. If he had travelled to the top floor, he would have expected to see something, especially if he were working in one of the apartments, but on the lower floors, it was a rarity.
Usually, he saw the apparitions staring out of the windows. It was as if they were mesmerised by the living world. He rarely saw their faces, and a prayer would banish them. They would startle him, but not frighten him.
This one did. It was looking at him as it appeared to lean against the door that led to the stairs. If a person leaned there the door would open under their weight, but the apparition had no weight, and Lucas knew the positioning was not for the shadow’s benefit, but for his.
There were no features, but Lucas still saw it smile. It had no lips, no eyes, but he could still make out its eyes on him. Its expression was that of a cruel child, Lucas could not see this expression, but he could have described it to its finest detail all the same.
It was there and not there.
Lucas wondered what would happen if one of the residents opened their door at that moment. Would they see it too?
There was little chance of this happening. Three apartments on this floor were inhabited, and none were inhabited by anyone who cared much for the outside world.
He and the shadow watched each other. Lucas wanted to glance upward to monitor the progress of the elevator, but he didn’t dare. He knew the moment he took his eyes off the shadow it would move closer. He could not explain how he might know such a thing, but he did know it. He knew that his gaze kept it at bay.
Lucas heard the elevator car squealing down its concrete and metal pit. It ground to a stop, and Lucas glanced at the doors. It was only a moment, a blink of an eye, but it was all it took.
The hairs on his arms stood on end, and his heart slammed into his rib cage. It was beside him, close enough that he could feel its breath if it had any. It was a shadow upon shadow, layers of darkness where each layer had its tale. Lucas tried to speak, but words would not come. He recited the first chapter of Joshua in his mind. His arms prickled with whatever dark energy kept the shadow intact. He saw images in the shadow, sad faces, beseeching forms with raised arms. Then he was drawn deeper. The layer beneath the figures was a landscape of ash, the carcass of buildings pressed through it like shattered teeth. Then Lucas was drawn deeper still.
The ladder rattled as his body shook. From the corner of his eye, he saw the elevator doors slowly part. A hands-width and they paused, far too narrow an escape. The pause went on for another layer of darkness, then another. Then, mercifully, the doors continued their journey in opposite directions.
But Lucas’ body would not obey his instructions to flee.
“Mister, are you okay?”
The boys’ words reached through the darkness and clutched at him. Children are a gift from the Lord, Lucas thought, they are a reward from Him.
Lucas took one step forward, his eyes never leaving the beast of shadows. Without looking he reached down and hit the button for the ground floor. The doors waited, taunting him, then began their slow meeting.
Through it all the shadow looked at him, only for its view to be severed when the metal doors closed between them.
Lucas slid the stepladder from where it rested on his shoulder and leaned it against the metal wall of the elevator car, then dropped the buckets down next to it. Lucas felt the legs beneath him threaten to buckle. They no longer felt like his own, they were over-used, and under-maintained rentals. His mind filled with images he had seen. Under the ashen landscape was a fire burning the land, and beneath was the thing that breathed the fire.
The boy watched in silence. Lucas couldn’t guess his age. He had never been good at such a thing. He had not spent much time around children and thought they came in two distinct variations. They were babies or kids. This one was certainly a kid.
“Okay, kid.” He said.
“Yeah, I’m okay.” The kid replied. “But are you okay?”
Lucas considered the question a moment before responding. He wasn’t certain that he was okay. He wondered whether he had ever been. It was a serious possibility that someone who had seen the things he had seen would never be well.
“I don’t know.” He replied. He knew he couldn’t outright lie to a child, even to a child who was also a stranger to him. “I’m better than I was though.” And that – at least – was completely true.
The boy nodded, apparently satisfied with the reply.
The elevator ground to a stop and the doors reluctantly opened on the corridor of the ground floor. Lucas grabbed the ladder, but the boy had already grabbed the pile of buckets. They stepped out into the hallway.
Already the experience was beginning to fade. The images would return. No doubt at some point in the early hours of the next day, but for the moment they were vague impressions that Lucas could push aside. In doing so something occurred to him.
“Did you go all the way to the attic?”
The boy held the buckets in both hands, his elbows crooked so the bottom of the buckets wouldn’t hit the floor. He looked up at Lucas, and the man could see in the boys’ eyes that he was considering whether he should lie to him. It was another of those moments where Lucas couldn’t explain why he saw this so clearly, but he did.
“Yeah,” the boy replied, “I was exploring.”
“You shouldn’t.” Lucas kept his voice neutral; he wasn’t in any way angry at the boy, there were no signs to say the top floors were off-limits. “It’s a mess up there, the roof leaked badly last year and some of the floor looks ready to break through.”
The boy nodded.
“You fixin’ the place?”
“Doing my best. You from 108?”
“Yeah.”
“Your mother knows you’ve been wandering around?”
“No.” He paused, then added. “You gonna tell her?”
“Did she tell you not to?” Lucas asked after a few seconds of thought.
“I told her I was going to explore.”
“Then I guess there’s nothing to tell her,” Lucas concluded, his gaze moving over the bare pipes and cables running along the ground floor ceiling. He could see a green discolouration at one joint and placed the stepladder under it.
“So, what are you doing?” The boy asked.
“Something is blocking the big pipe there,” Lucas said, pointing towards the section of corroded pipe. “See the patch of green? It’s where water has pooled inside and eaten through the metal.”
“Water can do that?”
“Sure. Pass me that screwdriver.”
The boy reached into the topmost bucket and pulled out a screwdriver as long as his arm. Lucas took it and began loosening the bracket that held the pipe secure. As he worked the boy watched. His head was tilted slightly to one side. The tip of his tongue poked from the side of his mouth. The screwdriver was passed back to the boy, and without a word he took it.
Lucas pulled at the length of the pipe, popping it from its bracket and twisting it loose. He leaned down and dropped the pipe onto the ground beside the ladder.
“Can you fix it?” The boy asked as Lucas stared into the open pipe still secured to the ceiling. For a moment Lucas didn’t answer. In truth, he couldn’t, what he saw robbed of his voice.
A section of sludge lay congealed against the base of the pipe. It was a problem that ten minutes of dirty work would clear away. But this wasn’t what froze Lucas’ tongue against the roof of his mouth.
A face stared back at him from the darkness of the pipe. It filled it. Its eyes almost pressed against each side of it. Its mouth was stretched wide in a grin. It was not real. It was another phantom, and he knew the boy would not be able to see it, but this made it no less gruesome to those unfortunate eyes that could.
It smiled, its tongue slithering out slug-like. Lucas felt his bile rise as it licked the inside of the waste pipe as though it were a delicacy from a five-star restaurant.
“Can you fix it?” The boy asked again. The sound of his voice was one of innocence, and Lucas grasped at it. Be strong, Lucas. He told himself. Be strong, and of good courage.
The face withdrew, sliding back into the darkness, and the last thing Lucas saw of it was the mad gleam in the drunken orbs of its eyes.