There were two of them.
They were huddled in the “library”. It was called the library because it had two bookshelves containing publications with catchy titles like Accounting Practice 2009–2011, Vols XXIV–XXVI. Despite containing all the most recent rulings on advanced accounting practice, whoever printed the books still felt the need to bind them like the Victorians did, and emboss the titles in gold, so they created a rather old-fashioned feel on the Ikea-style shelves.
The two arguing were a man and a woman. The man wore… a suit; the woman wore… a suit, and in that was all that could really be said. Not a pink tie nor a brass cufflink flashed to suggest any mark of individuality. Their voices were tuned down low and urgent except for the occasional flare, which was immediately hushed by the other. The woman was in her mid-thirties, the man in his late twenties, and if they could have huddled any more in the corner they’d chosen, they would have had to develop triangular spines. Had she the chance to inspect their wallets, Sharon might have learned that her name was Camilla; his Eddie. As it was, when she looked, the only thing she could see about them was…
… a single slipper soaked with the rain…
… child’s mitten left on the railing…
… greasy chicken wrapping in a dirty old box…
Blood on the carpet. It crackles underfoot. You have to lift your shoes clear of it and it sticks like gum, sticky gum and…
Sharon looked away, the taste of greasy chicken suddenly mixing with something far, far worse in her mouth. She swallowed the urge to gag right back down to the pit of her stomach and edged closer.
The man said, “I didn’t believe it either, but now Gavin too?”
As Sharon felt the walls of reality try to press in against her, she shuffled this way and that against the shelves until finally she discovered a movement, slowly circling the edge of their conversation, which maintained invisibility without crippling her at the knees. She made a mental note to shake Sammy by the throat until he told her how to stay invisible without movement.
“It’s a myth,” spat the woman. “It wouldn’t; it can’t.”
“I’m not saying I disagree with you, but you saw the reports. They were torn apart!”
“So you are disagreeing with me, Eddie?”
“No, no, I’m just… Well, yeah, I am. We took away its mistress.”
“Did we?” she snapped, and aware that her voice was once again rising above civilised levels, leaned in tight and rapidly hissed, “Did we though, did we? Because I thought we did, but then when you look again what did we actually do, because we don’t have her, do we? We don’t have her and I’m looking at the figures from the last quarter and I’m telling you it’s not enough, so if we did then we didn’t, but anyway why would it? Why would it come through now? Not that I’m saying it did, because it can’t!”
“Then how do you explain it? First Gavin, then Scott, and last night Christian thought he heard howling. How many does it have to get?”
“It might be something else.”
“You don’t believe that,” snapped the man known as Eddie.
“The Midnight Mayor?”
“The Midnight Mayor doesn’t tear the fucking heads off the people he kills; he doesn’t play cat’s cradle with their intestines!”
“Just because it came for them doesn’t mean it’ll come for us.”
“Of course it’ll come for us!” wailed Eddie, then pressed his hands over his mouth as if by holding back the words, he could hold back the thought. The woman flinched, waited for his breathing to slow as through his fingers he whispered, “It’ll come for us and it’ll keep coming and how do you stop it? We did this, we let it out and it killed them both, and now it’s going to howl and keep on howling until we get her back. We have to get her back.”
“We can’t.”
“We must!”
“You’re not listening! We can’t, we can’t, not while—”
Coffee in hand, someone passed by so close to Sharon she felt the breeze from his passage on the back of her neck. She shuddered, straining to stay unseen, relaxed. The man and the woman smiled at him uneasily; the woman gave a mechanical little wave. Their colleague waved back, kept on going. The two huddled deeper, their bodies pressing almost into each other in an urgency to stay apart from everything else.
“What if we just tell him?” whispered the man.
“You want to? You really want to do that?”
“Maybe he’ll understand?”
“Maybe he’ll wear you for wallpaper, and anyway…” The woman paused, her head snapping round. For a moment she looked straight at Sharon, and her face flickered in doubt. Then her eyes slipped away; but it was there, an instant, a single moment. She had looked and, more importantly, she had perceived. “Did you…?” she murmured.
“Did I what?”
“Did you see…?”
“See what? Jesus, I can’t handle this.”
“Stop it! Stop it, it’ll be…” Again the woman’s head turned, searching the empty air. “Listen.”
“What?”
“I said, listen!”
“I don’t hear…” Then he too trailed off. “Footsteps?” he murmured.
“Do you think it’s him?”
“Listen!”
He listened.
But by now the footsteps were gone.