Hero In [Part 3]

It’s been a fair few weeks since I last wrote anything down. Luckily, everybody thinks I’m dead, somehow getting me mixed up with whatever got left behind after I found Wispa eating cats in an old theatre. Well, I shouldn’t say eating… more like changing. I might write about it one day, but I’d rather concentrate on what’s important. Either way, there was enough burned meat left over in that place for anyone to be confused. A few days afterwards, I saw my own obituary and realised just how neatly it had all been wrapped up. I didn’t exactly know if that was a sign of good luck or something else acting behind the scenes, I just knew it was one less weight to carry on my shoulders. And I needed that.

I’m carrying something else now. I feel it in my blood, not an infection like the others but more like… well, an idea. It won’t leave me alone. I can taste it and hear it. It’s a scratchy whisper that sits behind my ears and radiates down my back like a strange chill. Every night these nightmares take me away and I see such terrible things. A cityscape of unnatural shapes and withering eyes dropping out of the sky, tearing through the upper atmosphere with a halo of divine fire as it roars towards the verdant green world below. I see fleshy shimmering trees and cosmic storms and abyssal nightmares that threaten to swallow me whole. And… it wants out, out out out of me like the blooming cap of a mushroom.

I think I did something bad.

I don’t really remember doing it, but the image of the heroin washing down the sink is clear in my mind. For a long time I thought it was just a dream but something’s been happening to the people in this building. I’ve been noticing, bit by bit. It started with the very air turning heavy and dark until it felt like living in a bunker. The lights started to flicker all the time and even during the day the hallways had a bleak and inky atmosphere. The shadows were unnaturally deep, and a little girl who lives a few floors down has become obsessed with them, spending her every waking moment staring into her own shadow cast against the hallway wall.

When I first saw her I tried telling her not to look, I tried telling her to stay away from the shapes in the rippling dark. But her father quickly appeared at the door and even though he politely asked me if I needed anything, I could still see the reproach in his eyes. I couldn’t stop myself from apologising since I looked like a wretched thing, but I think that only made it worse. I left quickly, sparing one last glance at the poor girl who stayed rooted to the ground as her father begged her to come inside. Sometimes when it’s quiet I can hear him through one of the open windows, asking her to come back inside over and over again.

Why did I pour it down the drain? I’m on the top floor. This stuff has a mind of its own. It was never going to just go away. It’s in them now. It’s in them all. The first few times I left, people just seemed down, or slightly odd but it soon started to get weird. The cat woman who lives on the ground floor was lying in the atrium one day, people walking past her like she wasn’t there. I ran over to help her and noticed the stench of urine and the sickly-sweet smell of infection as I lifted her up. She came to and thanked me as I helped her to her flat where I carefully lowered her into a tartan recliner. A few seconds later and she was asleep and I was left standing in the rancid and decaying mess that was her home, which was odd because I’d been in there before and it had usually been quite clean.

But there were heaps of trash tumbling over what spare furniture there was, until even the television was just a screen embedded in stacks of old magazines and bagged-up mouldy clothes. Looking around, I was struck by the strange absence of cats who’d always been friendly (and numerous), and on a hunch I followed a God-awful smell into the bathroom. For some reason she’d pulled a thick rubber sheet over the tub, dust gathering in its sunken and discoloured centre. It was bound tightly to the porcelain to keep its contents hidden, but there was no denying it was the source of the smell. Just as I reached out to peel it back the old woman appeared behind me and grabbed my shoulder. She didn’t verbally ask me to leave but she still wordlessly led me to her front door and pushed me through. When I turned to say goodbye she closed the door, its creaking hinges filling the silence with awful finality.

By then the only other person around was this quiet Korean guy who lived on the fourth floor. The once or twice I’d previously glimpsed his flat there was always gym equipment in there, and the tremendous noise from his gymnastic routines had apparently driven some of the other tenants insane. Still, he was always polite to me and when I caught his eye he and I nodded at each other, although I noticed a strange sort of tightness to his skin that hadn’t been there before. The sweat beading along his forehead made me feel feverish just to look at, and his eyes darted around the same piece of mail he’d been holding as if he couldn’t quite read the words. Realising he wasn’t going to speak to me, I waved silently and carried on with my day.

After that, whenever I passed his floor, I noticed the sound of his routines getting worse; coming and going at the weirdest of times. It was always this irregular banging that sent the lights in the hallway shaking and swinging. I would have expected the complaints to get worse, but by then there were no more apartment meetings and no one to complain to.

A few people, at least, seemed oblivious to the change in atmosphere for a long time. Looking back I can understand that; even now I’ve never quite admitted to myself the truth of what that heroin did to my clients, nor what it did to my neighbours. The woman who lived opposite me kept going to work until recently, living her life and even going on dates although she looked sicker and sicker with every passing day. The first time she spoke to me (well, politely and properly) was to ask if I could hear the ticking in the pipes; her face springing out of the dark of the stairwell to catch me by surprise one afternoon. I laughed at first, trying to play down my nervous reaction, but she kept staring at me with hopeful eyes. When I shrugged and said no, her shoulders sagged in disappointment before she turned away and shuffled back into her flat.

The following day a plumber came bursting out of her flat with half his tools falling out of his bag. He ran down the stairs with the rhythm of a tambourine, clanging down each step, eyes wide and a strange brown fluid trickling down his face and neck.

“Please,” she cried after him as he passed me on the stairwell, “please I need help! It won’t stop ticking!”

I carried on upwards until I met her at the top and asked her if she was okay. There were bags under her eyes and she looked unusually manic.

“Just a problem with the pipes,” she smiled. “Are you sure you can’t hear anything? It’s just it’s driving me insane.”

“I’m sure,” I said.

“Would it help if you heard it directly?” she asked. “That way you’d know exactly what it sounded like? Please?” She reached out and took my hand and it was all I could do to stop myself recoiling from her greasy touch, but the desperation in her eyes was painful to look at so I hesitantly nodded and followed her into her flat.

I couldn’t help but notice that the plumber had left half his tools on the floor, laid out on several old towels. “This way,” the woman said with a smile before tiptoeing over random clutter and rubbish so she could gesture towards the sink. “Come,” she added while moving me into position. “Now close your eyes and just put your head right here and… wait for it, it’ll come clear as day.”

Sure enough, she was right. There was a sort of tapping sound that felt closer than it ought to have, the hairs along my neck raising in alarm. After only a few clicks I raised my head, shivering at the odd sensation crawling down the back of my neck, and gave a close-lipped.

“Sure,” I said. “I can hear it.”

“Oh thank God!” she said, bursting out into relieved laughter. “I thought… you know I genuinely thought I might be going insane, like I was hearing things. But,” she paused to push me out of the way before lowering her own head close to the drain. “Maybe if you can hear it too we have a chance of finding what’s making the sound.”

Slowly, I watched as something thin and almost hair like emerged from the basin and playfully made its way to the side of her head. I nearly cried out loud as it struck out and slid directly into her ear canal before vibrating like a plucked guitar string. A strangely pleasant expression passed over the woman’s face as she spoke. “Oh God,” she said, “it sounds so clear to me. I don’t know why it’s so hard for anyone else to hear it.”

“I’ll keep an eye out,” I said, nodding anxiously while backing away, desperate to leave and using all of my willpower to not begin swatting and thumbing at my own ear in disgust. But the woman paid me no attention as her eyes glazed over and she remained bent over the sink, relaxed to an abnormal degree. Even as I shut the door I noticed her pissing herself while humming a quiet, haunting melody.

That night I heard the ticking again. I also noticed the plumber’s bag—the one he’d carried as he passed me—tucked away in a storage closet in the lobby, empty of its contents and covered in dried blood. I doubt he made it out alive, and for a long time I had to stop going out altogether. If I’m honest, which I suppose I should be, that was for the best. I’m not as in control of my own actions as I was and even though I just spent those sleepless nights wandering around, I know deep down that I was actually looking for more of that stuff, hoping I’d stumble across it in some gutter just like Rolo had. I’d like to say I don’t what I’d do if I found it, but I keep having nightmares about dropping it into the Thames and watching such strange things bloom from the waters.

Like I said, maybe it’s good something else started to take all of my attention. Only a few days after I stopped leaving I saw that the guy from the fourth floor had built a barricade out of old furniture and his gym equipment on the stairwell. He ignored me when I asked why. At first I thought he had a nasty plan to keep us all trapped on the upper floors but when I tried to climb over it he simply stood back and let me. I would have kept going were it not for the strange shapes I glimpsed shuffling around in the lobby, far far below. Slowly, I tried to reverse course but along the way I dislodged a chair that went tumbling down the steps before crashing onto the landing below. Whoever was on the ground floor reacted by starting to run upstairs towards the sound. A quick glance behind me and I saw the barricade-guy fleeing straight into his flat. Something told me to do the same and I ran the last few flights to my own place before slamming the door shut.

I stayed there, body pressed against the door, while I caught my breath. Outside I could hear someone shuffling slowly up the stairs followed by a long silence, but when I looked out of the peephole I saw only the slightest hint a person standing in the dark, the failing light revealing only a clear outline of their shins. Whoever they were they must have stood there for hours, standing in perfect silence. In the end I fell asleep with my back pressed to the door and awoke in the morning to find them gone. Returning to the barricade I carefully looked down the stairwell and saw more figures roaming in the dark below, but this time I made sure to stay silent so as to not draw their attention.

Before I left I noticed that the gym guy’s front door was open. Pushing it aside I carefully peaked inwards only to find him lying face down with a fire axe buried between his shoulder blades. I tiptoed over to him and tried to lift his head only to drop it in horror a second later. Whatever had attacked him had hollowed his face out like a boiled egg, and something in the carpet had started growing into the vacant space. Struggling to not vomit or retch or make any other noise, I grabbed the axe and left as quietly as I could.

Sooner or later I knew I was going to have to leave that place, quite possibly burning it to the ground on my way out. Something was working its way through these people and was not being gentle. Not long after I found the gymnast dead, the woman who lived opposite me came stumbling out of her flat screaming and hollering for help. I ran out to meet her and practically tackled her back through the doorway into her own place. I let her fall to the ground where her agonised wailing tailed off to sleepy whimpers while I shut and secured the door as quickly as I could. There I waited for a good fifteen minutes before I heard the sound of something slumping its way up the stairs. This time when I checked I saw at least four pairs of legs standing in the dark, but behind them was a slither of light from where I’d left my own door open.

“Fuck,” I whispered to myself in anger, watching as some shadowy figure approached the door and pushed it open, going inside my apartment just a second later. Meanwhile the other three remained outside, fixed to their positions like the Queen’s guard.

The situation grew only weirder when I turned and found the woman no longer lying behind me. Somehow she’d gotten up without making a sound, or perhaps I’d been too distracted. It was then that I saw that her flat had been smashed up using a claw hammer that was still half-buried in some of the plasterwork. It was clear she was tracing the outline of the pipework, and a closer look at the sink revealed that she’d removed the u-bend and revealed an enormous mass of oily black hair. Worryingly, it contracted on my approach like the tentacles of a sea anemone responding to a threat, the contorted mess of strands shrinking away into the pipework with a sound a bit like a violin screech.

My attention was caught when I heard a sound from the bathroom, and I quietly hurried over only to see the woman sat on the toilet and weeping quietly. She looked at me almost as if she wanted to speak, but as her mouth opened I noticed a glistening mass of fur bulging outwards from her lips. Before any of it could pour out over her chin, she shut her mouth tight while the look of desperation in her eyes waxed to new heights. I took a step forward unsure of what the hell I could actually do when she seemingly fell into the porcelain bowl. Her eyes widened even further in terror and she went to cry out in desperation only for a liquid-like glaze of hair to sprout from her mouth and trickle down her neck and shoulders. In less than a second she was pulled further into the bowl, her hands reaching upwards, clinging onto the toilet-roll holder.

Before I could draw another breath, she was torn into the hole below and a torrent of blood showered upwards, striking the bare bulb hanging above and casting the whole room in a crimson darkness. All that was left was a hole in the wall where the toilet-roll had been, and a swinging bulb that creaked with each swaying movement. Looking down into the toilet I could see only a soup of blood and pulped tissue and a few swimming strands of hair that swam amidst the water like blinded worms.

I would have left that instant, but the figures were still outside my front door and while it was hard to tell, I was pretty sure they’d shuffled around, moving closer to my hiding place, perhaps in response to the sound of the woman’s death. Despite the thick door between us, I didn’t feel very safe while I waited them out, and in the end I had to settle for sleeping fitfully with my back against the door. You can imagine the kind of dreams I had, and when morning finally came, I sprang awake with the desperate relief of someone escaping a dark and prolonged nightmare.

I quickly went to leave the woman’s flat but noticed a few strange things. First, there was hair leaking out of the exposed piping around me, and while it was only a few inches long it had a strange habit of following me around as I moved. And second the door leading into my apartment was wide open but the view beyond was pitch black, despite there being a lot of windows and it being early morning. Something about the veil of darkness that hung across the open portal made me feel averse to entering, and yet the creaking and groaning pipes and the blood-soaked toilet bowl served as a reminder that I couldn’t stay where I was.

It was the top floor, with a long way down and I had nowhere to go if whoever was in the lobby started running up towards me. Ideally I needed a distraction, a way to get those things up to the very top while I was way at the bottom. A quick look around showed that the woman’s apartment had a gas stove, so I acted without too much of a plan and lit a candle a few metres away while leaving the gas running. I also threw a few old newspapers around the area to help set up some kindling. After that I carefully tip toed a few floors down to the barricade, noting that it was smashed to pieces. In the apartment nearby I found the rotting corpse of the gymnast turned into all but mush, some strange cilia-like fungus having penetrated deep into his skin and bones.

Even as I stepped onto his carpet (wondering if he’d always had carpet) I noticed small hair-like strands working to get into my shoes, but they didn’t get far. I didn’t exactly feel comfortable hiding out in that place, especially as I noticed that those same hairs had started taking the furniture apart piece by piece, but for the time being it seemed like I was safe. All I had to do was wait.

For some reason the sound of a fire alarm took me by surprise, and I came to slumped half-way down the door with my hand clinging to the handle like it was a life-preserver. Sluggishly, I dragged myself up, feeling a sharp stinging feeling a sharp plucking sensation along the laces of my foot. Somehow those hairs had found a way through my shoes’ seams and into my skin. The effect was oddly relaxing, and I had to fight hard against the intense apathy that threatened to overtake me. Frustrated, I kicked my feet and removed the hairs before opening the door just in time to see dozens of dark figures running up the stairs. Anxiously, I waited for a few more minutes until I was 100% certain that it was safe to go, carefully making sure I never let my feet stay in one place for too long.

When I left, I struggled to balance the need for stealth and speed, and I found it hard not to go thumping down the stairs with total reckless abandon. But I had no idea what state the front door was in, and the more time I had to plan my escape the better off I’d be.

It didn’t take long for me to recognise that I was high. And between the panic and the strange lethargy that threatened to put me asleep, I failed to notice an odd obstruction part way down the stairwell. Thump. Something hit me in the head with the consistency of a rotten coconut. I was already a few steps passed it when my reflexes set in and I turned around only to see the familiar face of the girl from who’d lived just below me. She was hanging from the ceiling, upside down, and for a moment I thought she was wearing some kind of oversized ball-gown. But the closer I looked, the sooner I realised that ball gowns rarely have such high collars, and those collars rarely have teeth.

Her eyes were panicked and wide, darting from place to place, pleading for anyone or anything to help. Her head was just about the only thing visible, and as I raised my eyes I saw that something shaped like a pyramidal slug was hanging from the ceiling, rows of beady mollusc eyes ringing its salivating mouth which was ineffectually trying to gum the rest of the girl into its stomach. I didn’t have anything to help, but I reached out to try anyway.

As soon as my hand got close enough the mouth opened up and the girl fell out. All that remained of her was a half-dissolved skeletal shape who immediately curled up into a foetal position and began to sob mindlessly. Swathes of her innards were exposed revealing glistening white cartilage and tendons streaming between ribbons of pink and salmon red. She looked like a giant wound with a face and I would have stayed to help if that hadn’t lunged for me and I fell backwards, thoughtlessly crying out. It was slow, inching across the roof with the speed of the slug, but it wasn’t the real threat. I’d cried out, and from above I could already hear the rapid approach of distant feet.

With no thought for stealth I threw myself down the remaining flights until I was in the lobby. Taking only a brief moment to despair at the enormous barricade of wood, concrete, and steel that had blocked the front door, I quickly noticed that the apartment of the old cat lady I’d not seen for weeks was still open. I ran straight towards it and once inside, quietly closed the door. I took a second to catch my breath, wincing as I heard those things running after me but at least there was no sign of them looking for me in the apartment. I hoped to hell the old woman wasn’t around, but I knew she had a window that opened out into the alleyway and escape was closer than ever before.

But, with all the rubbish around I had no hope of spotting it in the dark. The walls were covered top to bottom in filth and hoarded trash, and after taking only a few steps I struck a bag full of cans and sent a noisy avalanche reeling. Not only did something outside the apartment hiss and shriek in excitement at the noise, but I noticed a strange lumpen shadow start to quiver in the darkness. I’d taken it for a pile of clothes in the dark, but as it began to move I realised it was something alive.

I had to think quickly. I needed a hiding place. I ran to the bathroom, slammed the door shut (wincing at the noise) but found the nearby window wouldn’t budge. Already someone, or something, was at the door just behind me banging away and it wouldn’t take much at all to shatter the latch. If I just had a few minutes to fiddle with the lock, I knew I could have opened the window and left with ease, but I was panicking and it soon became clear than in just a moment I would no longer be the sole occupant of that room.

I turned to the bathtub. The straps binding the loose sheet to the tub had been loosened and I threw it back to reveal a molten bubbling soup of cat, bones, and fur. I had no way of knowing it was safe, but I lowered myself into it, retching from the smell and the sickly sensation of the viscous sliming clinging to my skin.

I managed to pull the sheet back just as the door was blown inwards. In the midnight darkness of that sodden room I could not make out much except for a few humanoid figures milling around as they looked for me. Eventually one turned towards the bath and I had enough sense to duck at just the right moment, pushing hard to distance myself from physical reality as I was forced to lower my whole face into the liquefied remains of over a dozen cats. But at that stage all I had was a kind of mad faith in myself, and even when it came time to lift myself out, knowing I’d have no way of checking whether it was safe or not, I left my fate up to chance and went for it.

When I finally emerged, doing everything in my power to keep my movements slow and calm, I was relieved to find the bathroom empty. Quaking with terror and joy, I slid out of the tub as carefully as I could before making my way over to the window. Without the cacophony of a pursuer just moments behind me, I was easily able to find the latch and pass myself through, stopping only when I was out in the alleyway.

Already there were sirens, and quick look up revealed the entire top floor was covered in smoke and flames. For a moment I considered walking towards the emergency vehicles close by, but at the last minute I decided not to and instead I fled by jumping a nearby wall while desperately thinking of ways to get a shower.