Jermaine went up twelve floors to make a delivery. He came back down carrying something the tenants had plans for.
At twenty-two, Jermaine had already spent four years of his adult life in prison. He blamed a broken home, an absent father, a stillborn daughter and the company he kept. A life of drugs, both in and out of prison, hadn’t helped, but now he was clean, almost. Chasing the Dragon and ganja were his vices, not a needle in his veins. He’d had none of either today, not today, of all days.
Half an hour earlier, him, Mickey Bee, Black Rob and Tiny had drawn lots for the delivery. A week ago Tiny had drawn the short straw, a week before that, Black Rob. Even before the drawing, Jermaine knew this was his time, just like he knew Mickey Bee cheated when he set the toothpicks up.
Jermaine hadn’t complained. Rather he just sucked it up, took the drugs, and pedalled his bike towards Greenwood Tower.
Everyone had a scary story about Greenwood Tower: it had quite the reputation. He faced it now with trepidation. Twenty stories high, it had dark grey walls, dirty windows. The lower floors on the left side were black with soot damage, the broken windows there gaping, jagged holes. Hundreds had died apparently, screaming for their lives as the flames engulfed them.
The intimidating structure was built in three sections. The centre held a stairwell to the roof, the sections flanking it: flats. A grey mass of clouds filled the afternoon sky above the building. The clouds promised rain, as had the spots of water that assailed him on his ride over.
Greenwood Tower was supposedly abandoned, so thought the council, the police. Some rumours said a cult of cannibals lived there. Rumour said a lot of things.
Jermaine hid his bike in the bushes near the entrance. The bicycle was old and had a damaged back wheel, but still, dumping it in plain view would probably see it stolen. He brushed himself down as he left the bushes, stamped his feet on cracked concrete to remove the muck and dead leaves from his shoes. He had the drugs tucked away in a gym bag strapped to his shoulders. There was a hammer there too, in case he encountered trouble.
The building’s doors were missing; the entrance pitch black beyond the empty frame. He mounted the steps warily. A junkie could be lurking inside, or worse, a whole gang of them. Jermaine detected no movements though, and relaxed as he finished climbing the steps. Mosaics flanked the entrance, the tiles old, cracked and dirty. The mosaic to the right was smeared with muck, or shit maybe. The mosaic on the left depicted small, brightly coloured birds, hopping between trees. A picture of Greenwood Tower stood in the background, an improbably large, orange sun hovering over it.
Some vandals had altered the scene, giving the sun a mean, scowling face. The tower had a skull and crossbones drawn across it.
Jermaine grimaced at the latter – the skull had three eye sockets.
He paused at the building’s threshold, and not for the first time, cursed his luck for getting the short straw. The smells of mildew and urine hovered around the entrance: a far from encouraging start. A little light was visible deep inside the building, the rear entrance, he guessed.
“Aw fuck it.” Jermaine shrugged and stepped across the threshold. The foul odours became a stink, unseen objects crunched underfoot. A shuffling sound from his left froze him to the spot. His eyes, adjusting to the dark a little, spied a bundle of rags. The reek of urine was stronger there.
He stared at the bundle warily, then walked on, scanning the area as he moved. Straight ahead stood the base of the stairwell, a glass cubicle with stairs inside. As the light filtering out from the far exit increased, the spaces around him grew clearer. It wasn’t an improvement.
Junk littered the floor; stains smeared the walls. He paused when he noticed the lift against the wall to his left. The drop-off was on the twelfth floor: a lot of walking in this shithole of a building.
It’s not going to work, he thought, but approached the lift regardless. He jabbed the call button, and waited. No lights appeared, no telltale ‘ping’ of operation. What had he expected? As he turned towards the stairwell, something hissed at his ear. He spun round, instantly on the offensive.
A small, tattered form stood before him. The man, obviously a tramp, wore a ragged, stained black coat. His straggly brown hair and beard were greasy with dirt. He reeked of urine.
“You ain’t one of ’em,” the man whispered.
Jermaine caught a whiff of decay from his breath.
“What? Just piss off,” Jermaine replied, feeling disgusted and angry.
The tramp shook his head dismissively and raised a dirty, clenched hand.
“They came in the fifties. Like some tribe they were, more like a cult.” He unclenched his hand, revealing a dirty palm with a stylised eye tattooed at its centre.
Jermaine backed off a few steps – the tramp’s breath was making him nauseous.
“Little kiddies disappeared,” he continued. “But that’s not the worst of it.” The tramp cackled, and the laughter became a painful sounding, liquid cough.
Jermaine had had enough. He turned from the tramp, now doubled over from coughing, and strode towards the stairwell.
“Go sell your soul,” a ragged, strained voice said behind him, followed by more wretched coughing.
Jermaine reached the stairwell door in a hurry, pushed the greasy handle and squeezed through before it was fully open.
Unnerved at the encounter, he turned to see if the tramp had followed. The corridor looked empty, the man having disappeared back into the shadows.
Jermaine sighed with relief. Feeling calmer now, he scrutinized the stairwell. It smelled clean, but the white tiles were smothered in dirt. The staircase, white with a stainless steel banister, descended to a basement as well as up.
Time to get this over with. He took a final look through the glass, and mounted the stairs.
His footsteps echoed as he walked. The windows on each landing were covered in dirt, somewhat purposefully he thought, making visibility poor. He smelled soot, or thought he did. The ghostly odour invoked visions of burning corpses, screaming children. Rubbish appeared on the steps: crushed beer cans, torn up magazines. On the fourth floor, he nearly slipped over something. Jermaine checked his heel and found a used condom stuck there. Disgusted, he scraped it off on the edge of a stair.
The incident sullied his mood. By the time he reached the eighth floor, the silence and monotony had begun to weigh on him heavily.
Twelve, twelfth floor. Why couldn’t they come down and meet me?
A gasp, followed by hurried footsteps, sounded from above. Jermaine halted, waiting for further noise. With none forthcoming, he continued up the stairwell.
A few floors later he experienced a sudden, overwhelming sense of claustrophobia. He knelt, grabbed a scrunched up newspaper from the floor, and wiped it vigorously against the window. The dirt’s removal brought scattered, diaphanous light to the stairwell.
Jermaine sighed, composed himself, and resumed his ascent.
After so much monotony and shadows, the twelfth floor was an assault on his senses. The windows were wiped clean here, the light making him blink, hold back a sneeze. To his left and right, doors led into the building proper, and not the grimy glass types he’d passed during his ascent. These belonged to houses. There were even patches on the paint where the numbers had been pried away.
Now I’m here, which way should I go? Toss a coin? Jermaine snorted. Fuck it, he decided, and headed for the door to his right.
The handle was brass, tarnished from decades of use. He turned it, pushed, but found it locked. You’ve got to be kidding me. A flush of anger urged him to kick the door in. He was about to raise his leg when he heard bolts sliding back on the other side. The door inched open, and half a face appeared in the gap. A musty odour reached his nostrils, a greasy combination of cooking and unwashed flesh.
“What?” demanded a sharp female voice, and the door opened further. A thin lipped, wrinkled face was revealed, surrounded by a mass of grey, tatty looking dreadlocks.
Jermaine, momentarily taken aback by the woman’s rheumy glare, pulled himself together.
“Look you want your fucking drugs or not?” he said, and loomed towards her.
Rather than being intimidated, the woman cackled and revealed a mouth of stumpy brown teeth.
“Oh we want it!” she replied, stretching out the last few words.
The lustiness of her tone sounded disgusting.
“Come on then,” she continued, and disappeared behind the door.
He shook his head and followed. The corridor he entered had yellow walls, a threadbare red carpet. Lined with red doors, a couple of intersections split the corridor’s left hand side.
The woman wore tight black ski-pants, a ragged multicoloured jumper. Her feet were bare and as gnarled-looking as her fisted hands. Yellow ceiling lights illuminated the path as he followed her shuffling gait. The corridor was an ugly, foul smelling place. The carpet, where it wasn’t worn away to threads, felt crunchy underfoot. The walls around him were stained with handprints, dark smudges.
“This way,” his guide muttered, and turned left at the first intersection.
Another smell appeared: a musky, cloying incense. Jermaine decided that once he got home, he’d change his clothes.
A few doors stood open along the corridor, and thoughts of ambush increased his already growing trepidation. A low moaning issued from one, the next: a chorus of chanting voices. Jermaine paused at this doorway and peered inside. He saw flickering candles, low, humped shapes. The scent of incense reached his nostrils, a sweet, flowery smell laced with marijuana.
“Hey!”
He turned from the door to find the woman leering at him.
“C’mon Jo-Jo, nothing for you there,” she said, and continued down the corridor.
Jermaine felt suddenly light-headed. It was partly from the marijuana, but that name, Jo-Jo… his grandmother had called him that when he was little.
The light-headedness became a dull throb. He stumbled a little as he walked.
The woman, halting at the corridor’s termination, turned to him. Her smile was hideous.
“Go through, Aleister awaits you,” she said, her grin accompanied by a hungry glare.
Jermaine stared back. Her pupils, he noted, were oddly sized, shaped like slits. They throbbed in the few moments before he broke eye contact.
A black sheet covered the doorway before him. Pulling it aside, he smelled smoke and incense, the familiar scent of weed. The room beyond was large, shadowy and square. He blinked and frowned. Images torn from pornographic magazines covered the floor, walls and ceiling. These in turn were daubed in red symbols, Chinese he thought, or maybe Arabic.
A cough drew his attention to the centre of the room. A fire there licked the edges of a large steel washtub. A man-shaped silhouette sat behind the tub. The fire seemed wrong, just standing there indoors, unprotected.
“Are you Aleister?” Not waiting for a reply, Jermaine stepped across the pornographic floor, removing the bag from his shoulders as he walked.
He paused before the fire, felt the smoke sting his eyes. The figure behind it, dark but for a bright pair of eyes, didn’t move or speak.
Jermaine cleared his throat. “I have your coke and ganja. Three hundred quid is the deal.”
The figure chuckled, then stood. The flames illuminated a tall, black-skinned man, his head and beard a mass of white dreadlocks. Beyond him, Jermaine saw the dark, angular shapes of bunk beds. There were movements there, the indistinct swayings of people in the throes of copulation, or agony…
“Three hundred,” Jermaine repeated, adding, “If you want it.”
The man smiled warmly. “I am Aleister, young brother. What we don’t buy we harvest from below. It’s our journey.”
Thinks he’s a cult leader, Jermaine thought, some new age freak hippy shit.
“We preceded the flower generation, brother,” Aleister continued. He grinned, revealing gold teeth that glittered in the flames.
Jermaine’s guts turned to ice. Is he reading my mind? He swallowed the fear and reached into his bag.
“Here, take them,” he said, and balanced the cellophane package in his hand.
“Pass it over,” Aleister replied, still grinning.
“Through the flames?” Jermaine was shocked by the idea.
“Be strong brother.” Aleister laughed, and stepped around the fire.
The man wore a dark grey bathrobe. It was tied loosely, his body naked beneath. His fingers had long, curved nails. The left hand rose, and Jermaine saw a bundle of notes there.
Aleister leant forward, and Jermaine felt the drugs leave his hand.
Unaccustomed to feeling so vulnerable, he backed off a few steps.
Aleister laughed again, and Jermaine smelled something rotten on his breath.
“Take your money, Jo-Jo. You were always a good boy.” The hand holding the notes rose, became a palm.
Jermaine snatched the money, and saw a familiar eye tattooed upon the dark flesh.
He turned from Aleister and hurried from the room, laughter issuing loudly behind him.
The corridor stood empty. Jermaine felt thankful for it. He strode on quickly, eager to return to the stairwell. The last time he’d felt this shaken was when his daughter died. He was so unsettled, he hadn’t even checked the money, wouldn’t until he was away from the building.
Mickey Bee will give me hell if it’s short, but… A shriek, issuing from a doorway to his left, froze him to the spot. Jermaine glanced round the corridor then stepped cautiously to the door. Flickering light issued from a narrow gap between door and frame. He nudged the door open. Expecting candlelight, he saw static-filled television sets, piled at the back of a small square room.
His eyes narrowed. A table at the room’s centre held a small, female child, her bare flesh deathly pale in the flickering light. A man leant over the girl’s head, his back to the door.
Motherfucker, Jermaine thought.
A wave of anger replaced his outrage.
He held his breath and shrugged the gym bag from his shoulders. With slow, deliberate movements, he poked his hand inside the bag, deposited the money and retrieved the hammer. He dropped the bag to the floor.
The man had hold of the child’s head now. Jermaine heard muted protestations.
He swallowed his disgust and loped quietly forward. The impact that followed the hammer’s swing was anything but quiet. The man groaned and toppled to the floor. Jermaine knelt, sent his anger through the hammer. The ‘crack’ of his next blow filled the room.
Silence followed. Jermaine stood, let the bloodied hammer fall from his grip, and turned to the table.
He gasped. The girl was a puzzling, macabre sight.
Bald-headed, she had three eyes, the surplus one positioned high above her nose. All three were tightly shut.
First he felt revulsion. It turned to pity as her body wracked with sobs. He now noticed the objects around her head, tools of torture, or worse. There was a large hacksaw, a hand operated drill, plus instruments he didn’t recognize. They looked surgical, but barbaric.
Jermaine turned, stared at the man’s corpse, unable to process what was happening. Whatever it was, he had to rescue this poor abused creature. First he untied the bonds at her wrists. These were easy: just strips of rag tied around thin wrists and screw-eyed bolts. The bonds tying her feet were the same, and Jermaine soon had her off the table and in his arms.
The girl felt limp, light, and very cold. There was a sour smell about her, something acrid, like vinegar. He was about to leave the room when he noticed the gag protruding from her lips. He returned her to the table and reached for her mouth. The gag popped out in a wadded lump, wet with saliva. Her lips remained open, the girl taking deep breaths from a mouth of tiny, needle-like teeth.
Jermaine retrieved her, hugged her to his chest, and stepped to the door. She sighed and chittered as he exited the room. He made gentle shushing sounds, checked the corridor was empty, and headed down it.
What am I doing this for? He couldn’t explain why he was rescuing her, or for that matter, where to take her once he escaped the building.
One step at a time, he thought, and peered around the intersection. The coast was clear, so he made hurried steps towards the exit.
The exit stood ajar – just as he had left it. Nearly there now. A loud chirp from the girl made him glance down. He stifled a cry.
She was staring at him, her head tilted, her expression curious. Her eyes had slitted pupils, large, orange coloured irises.
“Uh…” Jermaine found himself at a loss. The eyes blinked in unison, and the girl smiled.
A sudden dizzy spell made him lean against the wall for support. When the wooziness passed, his doubts disappeared with it.
“I’m here to help you,” he said, and nudging the door open with his elbow, entered the stairwell. He headed down the stairs, quickly but not fast enough to risk tripping. Jermaine felt safer the more he put the awful place behind them.
Three floors later, he stopped in his tracks. Oh shit, oh shit. I left the money!
He scowled, stared up the stairwell. All that cash! Mickey Bee would kill him, quite literally, if he didn’t get the money or make it up.
I could leave her here, go back up. His chest ached at the thought of abandoning her. He just couldn’t do it.
Sudden sounds from above, yells and clattering footsteps, solidified his decision.
Jermaine moved faster now, counting the floors as he descended. The adrenalin rush of escape helped him along. This, he thought ironically, was the first time he had escaped for doing something good. Soon enough, he was nearing the ground floor, the sounds of pursuit distant but still a threat.
He slowed on the final steps, feeling a relief that quickly turned to horror.
A group of figures waited near the base of the stairs.
Oh shit. There were six in total, the tramp from earlier at their forefront. His companions were dirty-faced, their clothing matted and torn. Each held a weapon: a small penknife in one hand, a broken bottle in another… more than enough to take him down.
Jermaine looked up. The footsteps were growing closer.
The tramp cleared his throat, his rotted mouth grinned. “We want that thing you’re holding.” He cackled and coughed. “The eyes are the best part. Join us and see.”
Jermaine hugged the girl tighter. She struggled in his grip, and keeping a wary eye on the group, he reluctantly helped her to the floor.
One of the derelicts moaned. Their heads were lowered now, watching the girl with predatory eyes.
Jermaine felt a small hand take his own. He gripped it firmly.
“You’re not getting her,” he said. “Back off and let us through.”
Their leader cackled, and then, they lunged as one.
The girl shrieked, an ear-jarring sound that shook her small frame. The attackers dropped to the floor, their weapons clattering against the tiles. Jermaine’s ears rang painfully, but the others? Their injuries, my god! Blood poured from a dozen eyes and nostrils. They were dead, or close to it.
Jermaine swayed where he stood. He felt wetness on his upper lip, wiped his hand there and found blood. Then he realized: he’d been holding the girl with that hand.
He shook off his wooziness and searched the stairwell. Slapping footsteps sent his gaze right, where he saw the top of the girl’s head as she descended to the basement.
The sounds of pursuit above had paused, for now.
Jermaine examined the carnage around him, the blood trickling over the tiles, then turned to pursue her.
The stairs descended into the unknown, but he didn’t pause. He reached the base of the stairs, turned and rushed down another flight. The deeper darkness here forced him to slow. The atmosphere around him grew thick with the reek of rotten vegetables.
The girl was nowhere to be seen.
“Hey, where are you?” he said as he descended the final steps. Though visibility was poor, he discerned a pair of double doors ahead. He took a deep breath, strode forward, and pushed the doors open.
The rotten stink hit him like a wall. Jermaine pushed through it to find himself in a long, rectangular room. Flickering candles arrayed the floor in random places. The light revealed cardboard boxes, old furniture and washing machines dangling tubes and circuitry.
“Hey. You in here?” he said, and heard a low chittering ahead.
Jermaine turned to the doors, opened one a few centimetres and listened. Were those footsteps? Voices?
Shit, he thought, and examined the floor beneath him. He spied a length of window frame and retrieved it. Damn, aluminium. It was light, fragile, and wouldn’t hold the doors long. He slotted it through the handholds anyway.
As he moved forward, he saw rotten fruit and vegetables littering the floor, black bananas bunched up like swollen corpse-hands.
The chittering sounds repeated from the far side of the room. Jermaine headed on, and witnessed a sight that brought a lump to his throat.
Two large metal cages stood near the far wall. Each held cheap-looking plastic toys, dolls and fluffy animals. Bait, he thought, and when his gaze fell on the space between them, he realized just what was being baited.
The girl sat crouched before a dark red door. A large, familiar symbol was painted across it.
An eye, the eye, the black, Egyptian-like symbol the little girl’s captors had tattooed on their palms.
Jermaine stepped forward, knelt beside the girl. She warbled softly, continued staring at the door.
It appeared she wanted to go through but an unseen barrier was stopping her.
The eye, Jermaine realized. Things clicked into place then, about those above, the girl, and others like her.
They’re taking your kind, doing horrible things to you.
A loud crash sent him twisting round in panic. The doors to the stairwell were rattling, pushing inwards.
Oh no.
The girl chittered loudly. He turned to see her reaching for the door. That invisible barrier halted her.
“Heh, hey,” Jermaine said, and taking her by the shoulders, moved the girl aside. He reached for the door’s brass doorknob, and pulled.
The doors behind him breached with a thunderous crash. A moment after, a mass of bodies came charging through the red door. Knocked backwards, Jermaine hit the floor heavily; felt clawed hands and feet stampeding over him. He heard screams, then silence.
A gentle chirping sound returned him to consciousness. In the distance, he heard wails of human agony. Small, cold hands shook him.
It took a few moments for Jermaine to realize where he was, what had happened.
He climbed to his knees, looked around in panic. The screams issued from the shadows beyond the basement doors. This was a relief, of sorts. The girl stood nearby, watching him with her eerie orange eyes.
Warm air wafted through the nearer doorway. Jermaine saw darkness beyond the frame, a hint of distant, yellow light. He stood, and the girl took his hand.
“That’s your home, right?” he asked, and she nodded.
The girl pulled his hand, indicating she wanted to enter the doorway.
Jermaine remained still. From the stairwell’s direction, a particularly blood-curdling scream ended abruptly.
His companion chittered, tugged on his hand.
Why the hell not, Jermaine thought, and without further hesitation, he accompanied her into the darkness.
