A Sliver of Darkness, page 5
“Why leave him in the pool?”
Her face hardened. “Because he didn’t deserve to be given to the Sea Gods.”
Leila nodded slowly. “I understand.”
Another sigh, a little more impatient. “I’ve had to learn to be tough, Mum—to survive. But everything I’ve done has been for other people, for the greater good.”
The greater good. Wasn’t that what the Creators always said?
Leila stared at her daughter and tried to contain a small shiver. “Does that include pushing me overboard?”
“I’m sorry. But it was the quickest way. I didn’t want you to worry about jumping or get cold feet.”
“You could have killed me.”
“I knew you were a strong swimmer.” A small shrug. “And you were going to be retired in a couple of days. It was a risk worth taking.”
There it was again, Leila thought. That hardness in her daughter’s tone. It hadn’t been there before, she was sure.
Addison smiled. “But it’s okay. You’re here now. With me. With all of us.”
“Yes,” Leila said, suddenly feeling unsure.
But where was here, and who was us?
“What’s wrong, Mum?”
“Are we safe here? We were told the air was unbreathable, the land was contaminated, what remained of the people, they were…monsters?”
Addison shook her head, eyes shining with anger. “It was lies, Mum. All lies. To keep you on board. To keep you under control. To keep them in charge.” She held out her hand. “I’ll show you.”
Leila hesitated and then took her daughter’s hand. Addison led her out into a long, light corridor.
“This place used to be a hotel,” Addison explained. “But now it’s ours.”
“And who lives here, exactly?”
“Our community. There’s about thirty of us. We work and live together.”
“Like a commune?” Leila said.
Addison laughed. “If you want to call it that.”
This was all so much to take in, Leila thought. On the ship she had never felt uncertain or stupid. She knew all the routines, all the people. She felt secure. Here, she didn’t know what she knew anymore.
She followed Addison obediently down a large winding staircase into what she supposed used to be the hotel’s reception. It seemed to have been converted into some kind of lounging area. Battered armchairs were arranged around a large makeshift firepit. Blankets and beanbags were scattered across the floor. A man and a woman in torn jeans and grubby sweatshirts, both shaven-headed, reclined on a half-collapsed sofa, sipping from mugs and smoking. They nodded at Addison and Leila as they passed.
“That’s Fred and Evie,” Addison said. “Their parents died not long after the Event. They learned to fend for themselves. Even developed their own language. Half of the time, the rest of us have no idea what they’re saying.” She chuckled again, but Leila didn’t find it very funny. Just sad.
They crossed the reception to the main double doors. Addison shoved them open, and Leila blinked against the bright sunlight.
“Welcome to our Garden of Eden,” Addison said.
They stepped outside. More unfamiliar smells assailed Leila’s nostrils. She raised a hand to her eyes and squinted around. Acres of green lawn, but not manicured and mown, as she had expected. Overgrown and untended, the grass thick with weeds. To her left, a few people worked in a large muddy area which she presumed was a vegetable patch. Mangy chickens, pigs and sheep roamed around, uncontained. As well as the aroma of earth and vegetation, she could smell the distinctly un-Eden-like stench of manure.
“We’ve cultivated some of the grounds to grow vegetables,” Addison said. “Plus, we have a few livestock and hope to breed more. We’re pretty self-sufficient.”
Leila blinked. For the first time in fifty years, she could stand on grass, as she had always dreamed of doing, but her feet felt rooted to the tarmac pathway. It was all so…primitive.
“It’s lovely,” she stuttered.
“Thanks. We’ve worked hard to get it like this.”
Leila glanced toward the high stone walls that surrounded the greenery. “And out there?”
Another chuckle. “Don’t worry, Mum. The streets aren’t prowled by bloodthirsty zombies. Come on.”
Addison turned from the gardens and strode down the pathway toward a pair of high metal gates. Leila followed her. Perhaps there was more, she thought. Addison might be happy in this hippie commune, but maybe there was more civilization beyond.
“Ready?” Addison asked. She pulled the gates open.
Leila stared around. Her heart slid to her toes.
The hotel stood at the top of a hill, offering a panoramic view of the city beyond. Or, what remained of it. Ruins, rubble. Crumbling buildings, gaping windows. Hoardings and billboards overgrown with weeds. Abandoned cars piled at the sides of the road. Rubbish, chaos. Leila spotted a fox or stray cat crawl over a heap of rusted cans, dragging a dead rat.
“This…this is—”
“Beautiful. I know.” Addison breathed in deeply. “We had imagined what it might be like, but it’s so much more.”
For a moment, Leila wondered if Addison was joking. And then the realization hit. Addison had never seen the world as it was before. Most of the people here were too young to remember it. And to Addison, whose whole life had been spent confined in the ship, this deconstructed world, this chaos and destruction, was beautiful.
Leila looked back toward the ramshackle hotel. No heat or electricity. No running water either, she presumed. She wondered how soon she would miss a hot shower or a manicure or evening cocktails in the Piano Bar.
“Are you all right, Mum?” Addison asked.
Leila swallowed. “Yes. It’s just…a lot to take in.”
Addison took her hand. Leila noticed how rough and calloused her daughter’s skin was. “I know it’s a big shock, Mum,” she said. “But don’t worry. You’ll soon settle in. And we’ll keep you busy.”
“Busy?”
“Yes.” Addison nodded enthusiastically. “There’s always work to do. There are no passengers here. And no one ever retires.”
Leila smiled weakly. “Never?”
“Never.”
They stared out across the ruined city.
Leila slipped a hand inside her pocket. But these weren’t her clothes.
The vial was gone.
Never, she thought. Never ever.
And suddenly, she felt very tired.
The Block
Introduction
I love Nottingham. It’s my hometown. I did all my important growing up there. Renting my first house, getting my first job, falling in love, having my heart broken and meeting my now husband.
It’s a great city. Visit, if you ever get the chance. There are some beautiful public spaces, great shops and awesome pubs. The people aren’t bad either!
Of course, like most big cities, there are parts that aren’t so picturesque.
In 2012, I was working as a dog walker, and I used to walk two very sweet rescue dogs in one of the less affluent areas of the city. Next to the scrubby hillside where I took them to play ball was an abandoned tower block. It was a pretty grim building. Long since empty, most of the windows were broken or boarded up. The bottom of the building was covered in graffiti.
The council had renovated a lot of the other high-rise buildings in Nottingham but this one remained, a dark eyesore, throwing the huddled terraces below into perpetual shadow.
At the time, the block fascinated me. I had no doubt it was a magnet for crime, squatters and drug dealers. But I also thought that it would be a great setting for a horror story. Maybe about a group of kids who decided to break in for a dare and found more than they bargained for.
Originally, I intended “The Block” to be a whole novel—middle-grade or YA fiction. I had been trying to get my adult novels published for years but had been told by one agent that my mix of horror and mystery just wasn’t publishable. I’d started to think that I might stand a better chance writing for kids—kids love scary stuff, after all!
I wrote the first three chapters and then for various reasons, not least because I had just found out I was pregnant, the story stalled. I had always planned to go back to it, but then I had my daughter, and finally signed a publishing deal, for my adult novel The Chalk Man (proving the agent wrong), and my life changed.
Still, “The Block” remained (a little like the high-rise that inspired it), squatting on my laptop. Every time I skimmed past the title, it bugged me that I hadn’t done something with it. But I didn’t have time to write a middle-grade novel alongside my other books. And then, one day, I realized that it didn’t have to be a full novel. “The Block” could work just as well—perhaps better—as a short story. And so, eight years after conception, I finally finished the story.
Afterward, I found myself curious. I decided to look up the old tower block and see what had happened to it. Unsurprisingly, I found that it is now being redeveloped.
But I also discovered something far more chilling. Not long after I gave up dog walking to have my daughter, the block was the site of a gruesome murder. The victim’s headless and armless body was found buried in a shallow grave nearby.
Seven years later, they found his head and arms.
In the scrubland where I used to walk.
Sometimes, fact is more disturbing than fiction.
No one remembered it being built.
People remembered before and after. But nothing in between. As if it just landed one night, planted itself in the ground and took root. A great big mountain of gray concrete, looming up over the back streets of Nottingham.
Tyler had a theory. Back then, there were so many tower blocks going up in the city, people didn’t see them after a while. Like the way you stopped noticing burnt-out cars around the Rec. One more, give or take, didn’t make much difference.
But then, over the years, all the others were demolished and only the Block remained. People always called it “the Block.” Never “the tower block” or “the block of apartments.” The Block. Solid, unyielding; an impenetrable shadow over the huddled terraces below.
Tyler’s gran said she could remember people living in it. But then Tyler’s gran also said she remembered being abducted by aliens and meeting Abraham Lincoln (whoever he was), so you couldn’t put a lot of stock in that. She was demented and often got confused between real stuff and stuff she saw on TV.
After everything that happened, I sort of knew how she felt.
* * *
—
It was Tyler’s idea. Tyler had loads of ideas and nearly all of them involved us doing something we shouldn’t.
“We need to get in there,” he said as we lay in the scrubby patch of wasteland behind the Block staring up at the gray sky, smoking some dope he’d nicked off his mum. “Get in there and have a look around.”
“Why?” Abid asked.
“ ’Cos it’d be fun.”
I didn’t think it would be fun. Looking up at that towering, dark monolith, rows of broken windows like bullet holes in the hide of some massive beast, I thought it looked the furthest thing from fun I could imagine.
But I didn’t say anything. I was the new kid in the group, still finding my feet. I wasn’t going to argue with Tyler. Or use the word “monolith” in front of him.
Tyler was a tall, skinny kid with a huge afro and a real gold tooth. He lived with his mum and demented gran, just up the street from us. Tyler’s dad was in jail and his elder brother got shot when Tyler was a baby. I’d never known anyone with a brother that got shot. Or that had a real gold tooth at thirteen.
Abid and Shannon were the other members of our gang. Abid’s mum was a dinner lady at the school and his dad owned a big discount warehouse out on the ring road. Shannon had blonde hair and was kind of pretty. She also had a fat cousin called Courtney who wasn’t.
Tyler said Courtney would give you a blow job for a can of Special Brew and a bag of chips. I told him she’d have to lay off the chips for a bit first. He laughed at that, flashing his gold tooth. I guess that was when we became friends.
* * *
—
Mum and I had only moved to Nottingham a couple of months before. We moved a lot. Because of Dad. He didn’t live with us anymore. But, somehow, he always found us.
“So, Danny, what do you think of our new home?” Mum asked, as she pushed open the front door of Number 8 Manvers Street.
I thought it looked just like our old home. Another crappy terrace in another crappy, depressing street. No double glazing. Electric heating. Stained carpets and peeling wallpaper.
“It’s fine.”
“Well, it’s all we can afford for now.”
“It’s fine, Mum.”
“When I get another job and…”
“It’s fine, Mum. It’s a frigging palace. Okay?”
“Danny, don’t you use that language with me—”
I ignored her and walked up the sagging stairs, poked my head into the bathroom, wrinkled up my nose at the avocado suite and then walked back into the front bedroom and sat on the floor. I pulled out a small penknife, rolled up my sleeve and cut a thin line down my forearm. The fresh blood trickled along the tracks of the old scars beneath.
Later that evening we bought fish and chips and ate it sitting on some bits of plastic garden furniture we found in the backyard. We’d left our old furniture in the old house. Mum couldn’t buy any more till she got a new line of credit.
The addresses changed. Nothing else did.
* * *
—
“So, you in?” Tyler was staring at me.
I got the feeling I’d missed something. That happened sometimes. I kind of tuned out, or “went away,” as Mum called it. “Uh-oh. Danny’s gone away again. Earth to Danny. Earth to Danny.” I used to think that was kind of funny, when I was about five.
“C’mon, man,” Abid said. “It has to be you. You’re the smallest.”
It used to piss me off that I was always the smallest. But over the years, being so short and thin had come in useful. I could get away fast in a crowd. I could hide in tight spaces. Once, I even managed to squeeze out of a cat-flap when I needed to make a quick getaway from Dad.
“You’re not scared, are you?” Shannon flicked her hair over one shoulder and took a drag on the remaining stub of joint.
“ ’Course not.” I didn’t even know yet what I was supposed to be “not scared” of.
“So, you’ll do it?” Tyler asked.
I hesitated. I wanted to say yes. Didn’t want to look chicken in front of them. But on the other hand, I didn’t want to commit myself to something I’d regret.
“I…err…I’m not sure, man.”
“Okay. Fair enough.” Tyler stood up. “Take a look first and then decide.”
* * *
—
It was a tiny gap. A small space where a breezeblock had been removed or fallen out. All the ground- and first-floor windows were bricked up. To stop squatters and druggies getting in. From the second floor upward, the windows were smashed or covered with plywood boards.
Somehow, I’d known that whatever Tyler wanted me to do, it had to do with the Block.
“So, you get in through there, take a rope up to the second floor. Then you drop it out one of the windows and we climb up.”
I stared up at the vertical slab of gray concrete. Three floors up was still a good thirty feet.
“It’s a long way to climb,” I said.
“It’s nothing, man. We’ll drag over some of them old wheeled trash cans. Climb up from there.”
“But what if there’s nothing to tie a rope to when I get up there? What if I can’t get out?”
Tyler gave me a look and spat on the floor. “If you don’t want to do it, just say, right?”
I looked over at Abid. He looked down at his new Adidas sneakers. I could tell he wasn’t so keen on the idea now we were actually standing here, in the cold shadow of the Block. The wind sliced around the corners of the building like a knife. Litter scuttled across the ground and piled up against the walls. A collection of wheeled trash cans squatted in one corner of the deserted parking lot.
“I’ll do it,” Shannon suddenly said.
I stared at her. “You can’t.”
She stuck out her chin. “Why? Because I’m a girl?”
“No. Because your shoulders are too wide. You’ll get stuck.” I took a couple of steps forward, crouched down and peered into the small, dark gap. The window was close to the ground. A basement window. Inside, it stank of piss and vomit and something else. Kind of sweet yet sickly too. Disgusting.
“What can you see?” Abid asked.
“Nothing. It’s pitch black.”
Except that wasn’t quite right. There was something. I couldn’t see it exactly, but I could sense movement, just past the edge of my vision. Rats, probably.
“So?” Tyler sounded impatient. “What d’you say?”
I looked back at him. What did I say? There was no way I was going in there. I’d have to be out of my mind. He could find some other moron to do it. It was a bad, bad idea.
“I’ll need a decent flashlight,” I said.
* * *
—
We agreed to meet at 7 p.m.
I didn’t have much trouble getting out. The four of us often hung out down at the Rec on a Saturday night. Mum wasn’t as keen about me being out on a school night, but she didn’t give me too much crap. Seeing as she was the one messing up my schooling by moving us about all the time, she couldn’t really.
