I fling the funeral programme onto the floor as if I’m being burned alive. I scrunch up in the smallest ball I can on my side on the mattress.
‘Make it go away. Please make the memories go away.’
The first thing I see in the basement the next day is the devil sitting, showcasing his horns and tail as he swings casually in my chair. I shake my head, knowing it’s not real. I’m a bit doped up on BBs and too much CBD oil, off-centre, because it’s the only way I’m going to get through the day without the painful images of the past that spewed out last night crawling back. What does catch my eye is there’s no Keats. Chair empty, computer a blank, shut screen.
I feel a twist of anxiety that the woman who is prepared to help me isn’t there. I don’t know where this comes from – she’s plainly stated she doesn’t want to become buddies – but Keats has that certain something, the very French je ne sais quoi, I believe will do battle for me in a heartbeat against the malevolence ingrained in this tomb. How can I ever forget the way she took on Michael in his office kingdom, a masked assassin who slayed him with mere words.
I take my seat and bury my head in the latest report Michael has tasked me to do. My head may be buried but my mind’s somewhere else. The cannabis oil does its work, loosening my brain cells enough for me to run through possible ways to try to unlace the lock of the relationship between Dad and Michael.
Speak to Dad: No go – the Frank Jordan I heard here frightens me. ‘She’ll feel my claws across her face and they’re razor sharp as you know. As for you, don’t make me break you, Michael.’ That level of violence leaves acid bile corroding inside my throat. If someone had told me my dad, my loving gentle dad, would behave like that I’d have called them a bold-faced liar. No, I’m the liar. I’m deluding myself. I know the level of violence Dad is capable of from incidents in my own life. Jed’s broken nose is testament to that. Besides, Dad would probably turn the tables, get me on the back foot and somehow make me believe it was all stuff ‘n’ nonsense. At some stage I know I’ll have to confront him, but the time’s not right, not yet.
Put Michael on the spot: He has no allegiance towards me so why would he cough up the truth? I can see the scene now, him dismissing me with an aloof wave of his hand and sour cut of his eyes. Worse still is, he may send me packing and how will I then find out the truth if I’m no longer here?
Joanie.
My mind skids to a stop. Now that’s a definite possibility. Sure, she’s loyal to her boss but she’s gathered me under her wing too. Maybe…
Something on the computer in front of me captures my attention. I can’t believe this, that bastard zombie is up to his video tricks again. He’s re-running the same film… No, this one is different. The air stalls in my chest, hot and burning, at what I see. It’s a different woman this time. No way… Can’t be… But it is. Oh God, she looks like me.
The spit of me is terrified. Back pressed against the wall, mouth wide, eyes bulging, fingers clawing the air as a masked man advances in deliberate menacing slo-mo towards her. My pulse picks up speed when I see the blue lights strung out across the wall above her head. My gaze bolts away from the screen to the blue lights in the basement. Back to the screen. Are they the same lights? Has a woman been brutalised in this basement? A woman who’s the double of me?
Shivers plunge down my spine, my breathing ragged, erratic. The zombie’s chair creaks and squeals as he slowly turns to me. Seizes my horrified gaze with his smugly smiling own. Move, Rachel, move. Get out of there. But I can’t. I’m frozen in the nastiness of his stare.
He wheels his chair towards me. Tilts his head to the side as he sizes me up. Pungent garlic on his breath, no doubt from what he ate the day before, skins over my face as he whispers, ‘Have you got a problem?’
I might be scared but no way am I going to let this moron see me shaking in my charity shop shoes. So I tell him, with the bravest voice I own, ‘Are you hurting women down here?’
His smile spreads as greasy as rancid oil. ‘And what if I am?’
‘Michael has already warned you to stop doing this.’
The zombie’s face wiggles into my space so closely that the faint splat of freckles on the bridge of his nose must surely be the mark of the devil. ‘Say anything to anyone and you better be ready to have eyes in the back of your head on the way home. No telling what type of accidents may be waiting to befall you in the dark.’
That’s it. I’m up and out of my chair. Beyond the steel door.
Clutching the tunnel’s damp unfriendly walls, the jump of my lungs and fear leaving me breathless and in a fog of sweating cold. I don’t want to be scared but I am. I see it, me leaving work, walking, walking, not checking behind me and, in the moment it takes to click a finger, he’s there, a man-monster materialising from the shadows. Dragging me down through the trap door. Along the tunnel. Into the basement. Donning his macabre mask.
Stop. It. That isn’t going to happen. Because you’re marching upstairs right now to demand Michael sort this crap out once and for all. Then the thought of Joanie comes to me. Any problems, she emphasised, I should come to her.
I find Joanie in the kitchen, pouring milk into a steaming cup of tea. Immediately my tongue itches with the remembered sour taste on my first day.
Joanie is alert to my distress immediately and puts the carton down. ‘What’s wrong, Rach?’
I’ll be her ‘Rach’, her anything, if she can put this right for me. I let rip about the scene I left downstairs.
Her eyes widen. ‘But I thought Michael told them to knock it on the head or he was going to show them the door.’
I nearly respond that he should’ve shown them the door the first time. The furious words die behind my lips. I inhale deep and steady instead so I can make what I utter next really matter. ‘It’s not right that anyone should be threatened in their own place of work. And I think it was filmed here.’
‘Here?’ I’m glad she’s as horrified as I am. ‘How can that be? The building is locked up and secured tight at night. There’s no way of getting in.’
I draw back my next words, stiffening with a new alertness. There are times in life when you’re on one road but then, out of nowhere, a more promising pathway opens up. And the door that Joanie has pulled back reveals the world of this building at night. Secure and locked up she calls it. What more can she tell me?
Tightly controlling my emotions this time, my tone sure and super friendly. ‘We wouldn’t want more tragedy happening in this building. It already has a terrible history.’
‘What do you mean?’ Her question is hesitant, alarm lengthening her neck.
‘The plaque outside.’ Stage whisper. ‘The sweatshop fire.’
Her eyes swim around, then widen with understanding. ‘Oh, that fire. Awful. Can you imagine it, Rach, being stuck in that basement filling with raging fire with no way out?’ A shudder visibly ripples through her.
I’m sure she sees the bob of my throat as I swallow heavily at the image her words dump on me. ‘What if the building weren’t so secure and there was someone living here—?’
‘What? You mean at night?’ Her mouth finishes with an O shape of disbelief.
I step closer. ‘In this day of homelessness, it’s not unheard of.’ I shrug. ‘Or a member of Michael’s family might be living here at night.’
I know, way too close to the bone, but as much as I like this woman, I don’t think she’s clever enough to pick up on where I’m leading her. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not stating that Joanie’s stupid, it’s more like she’s a woman who takes pride in not deep thinking too often, a connoisseur of living on the sunny side of the street.
Her nose twitches slightly as she glances at me quizzically. She clears her throat. ‘Why would anyone in Mr Barrington’s family be living here?’
I’m in there quickly. ‘So, who’s in his family? A dad… mother—’
She gets there before me, doing that strange shoulder shift of hers that tells me she’s going into professional Joanie mode. ‘Mr Barrington’s father was the best person I’ve ever worked with. A caring gentle soul who – God rest his long-departed soul–’ ah, so Michael’s father has died, ‘would do anything for me.’
Keep going. Tell me about his mother.
But Joanie picks up her cup and over her shoulder says, ‘I’ll tell Michael what you told me. He won’t be back until later this afternoon.’
And with that she’s gone, leaving the milk carton on the counter. I know no more about Michael’s mother than I did before.