Down and under.
Down and under.
That’s where this masked man is taking me.
Anxiety hits. Panic grips. I can’t do it. Can’t. I have a fear of being trapped underground. Going down and under. No windows.
My jittery gaze skates over my shoulder to the building’s entrance that seems to be beckoning me urgently. Whispering, warning me to run, run away. I know it’s not real, a figment of the familiar paranoia and disorientation that’s hijacked my mind and body.
But you need this job, Rachel. It’s a necessity, not an option.
What do I do? Go down and under? Bolt away? I make myself look at Keats’s back, who’s unaware of all the dramarama behind him. Make sure he doesn’t see what I do next. I tap the pad of a finger just above my right eye. Yeah, I know, looks crazy but it isn’t. I’m stimulating a pressure point that helps to calm me. Because you see, I need to be calm. I’m going down. And under.
Keats heads into a yellowy gloom, down a long narrow staircase, hemmed in by twin walls of naked chipped centuries-old bricks that have a disjointed relationship to each other like overlapping mismatched discoloured teeth. I can do this. I’ve got to do this.
With a final tap and a prayer, I follow. Instinctively search out the light.
There it is. A naked muted-coloured light bulb, dusty, fixed to the wall. Focusing on the light is like focusing on air, a sensation of lean fresh oxygen coming through. My gut sucks and pushes air in a more regular motion.
I begin my descent. No polish on these stairs. Scuffed and scarred is their pattern, from the footwear of the living and those that are long dead. A tired rusty handrail to guide me, carefully I place my black flats on stairs that were created for smaller feet than mine. It’s a break-my-neck steep fall if I lose my footing.
Every cell in my body rebels with each step. My stomach threatens to splash its contents over the walls. The bones in my knees tremble. The coldest sweat breaks, running into my eyes. My parched throat spasms, begging for water. It’s barely twenty steps down but this journey feels like a martyrdom.
Keep going. Keep going. Keep…
Finally – praise be if I was a churchgoer – I reach the bottom. Teeny tiny balls of trapped dust drift in the air like drunken fairies. I cough lightly behind my hand. It’s then I figure out we’re in a corridor, a tunnel that would fit in a coal mine. Coal mine, coal mine, my mind hysterically grinds. Down and under. Deep in the earth.
The horror storms back. My senses become heightened, go into overdrive. I start smelling things that aren’t really there. The foul aroma of death lunging up through the ground shackling about my ankles, twinning up my legs. The damp decay riddled in the age-old walls sticking and choking to the flesh inside my throat. Hearing things that aren’t really there. Icy-cold water drip… drip… drip to the synced beat of my troubled heart. Start seeing things that aren’t really there. The way ahead a wonky narrowing tube of darkness that leads nowhere. The lumps and bumps of the bricks growing, slimy tumours that threaten to engulf me on both sides.
What horrifies, claws at me, most of all are the screams. Of the twenty-two dead sweatshop workers. Terrifying. Deafening. Joining together until they’re the raucous squealing noise of the wheels of a train, its death journey a head-on collusion coming straight for me.
My fingertip rushes above my eye. Tap. Tap. Tap. This isn’t real. It’s all in your head. My feverish gaze latches on to the weak light of yellow lamps fixed to the ceiling.
Air. Air. Air. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
Keats’s stride is confident – he’s done this walk many times before. I haven’t. I continue to follow, breathe easier as I see there’s a portal of escape waiting ahead – a steel door. I nearly lose my footing when I barrel into a large object. Instinctively, my palm touches the wall for support and I wish it hadn’t; the overpowering wet chill from the bricks worms into my body. I snatch my hand away and gaze at what I’ve hit. A series of barrels stacked against the wall. Barrelled into barrels. Yeah, that would be a lol moment if I weren’t so freaked out.
Keats stands by the steel door waiting for me. He gestures to me to follow. With his features hidden, framed in the half-light of the doorway, he’s the double of a demon. I look backwards, towards the heavy shadow that marks the way to the staircase, my means of escape. Then I remember there are demons waiting for me in the outside world as well. My body stops protesting, heavy and inert as I follow Keats into the basement.
The basement is a cavernous space. Correction: cavernous. Mustn’t refer to spaces that are dark, enclosed. Underground. It’s rectangular and large and probably goes beyond the footprint of the building and out under the street. The walls are whitewashed with bare bricks poking through in places. I think I can see scorch marks from that murderous blaze all those years ago. But of course I can’t, my overdramatised mind working overtime again. The lighting is a blend of blue neon lights on the ceiling, flickering screens and red pinpoints shivering away on servers and routers. In other places its shade is outright gloom. The ceiling is pure Chicken Lickin’ sky falling, so low that it’s almost as if I can stretch on tiptoes and touch. Or near enough to crush me. Suffocating overheated stale air presses down on me too. Tap. Tap. Tap. Against the pressure point in the crease of my arm this time that I hold behind me so Keats can’t see.
There’s other tapping in here, the sound of fingers against keyboards. There are rows of desks arranged like a classroom where my darting gaze estimates sit about a dozen guys. Some are dressed in suits and ties while others wear clothes that are so untidy even calling it casual is being generous. No-one looks up or acknowledges my presence, like I’m a ghost passing through. Suddenly it hits – they’re all men. Not a solitary woman among them, which means I’ll be the only one of the opposite sex working here. Unease slithers menacingly through my bloodstream.
Keats introduces me to no-one.
A man with no face, workers who ignore me, a room that is intimately acquainted with death, what a contrast to my earlier carefree mood. So much for walking on sunshine.
Keats leads me to a desk in the middle of the back row where he switches on a computer. As it comes to life, he gestures for me to sit. He sits at the desk next door, which I’m assuming is his own workspace. His head goes down, the edge of the bandana over his lower face flapping once. Am I really sitting next to a man with his face almost concealed? Surreal.
He types on his keyboard. A high-pitched whooping sound draws my attention to my own screen. There’s a dialogue box with a message.
Keats: Mr Barrington would like you to finish a report in a folder on your desktop called ‘Project’ by the end of the day. Any problems please send me a message in this box.
I scowl over at Keats, not that he’s looking my way. Why isn’t he just telling me like other human beings do via the mode of moving their tongue and lips? That’s when I figure it out. Keats hasn’t uttered a word to me yet. Not a ‘good morning’, a ‘how do you do?’, a basic ‘hello’. No face. No talking. What the bloody hell is this?
Then I feel guilty. Perhaps I’m being unfair, even cruel. Maybe his illness prevents him from speaking. Or he’s on the spectrum. A genius tekkie but socially very awkward? Still, it leaves me feeling like whatever control I’ve clawed back is once again slipping through my fingers. I write back.
Me: Thank you. Will do.
I consider popping on a smiley emoji, one of those with a full mouth of teeth that looks as if it’s just dropped some acid, but think better of it. He doesn’t respond. Cracks on with work. So do I. That’s when I notice the continuous low humming noise coming from the walls. My palms go clammy as I type. As I sense the walls breathing around me, pumping blood from a stone heart I can’t see.