“You’re so predictable Kat. I knew you’d find yourself here, on this particular floor. Apologies for my tardiness to this reunion, I’ve been cleaning up a rather large mess you left while travelling here.”
My skin crawled as Albert spoke, he filled me with the opposite of the warmth Derek did. The world became cold and hopeless.
“Is everyone ok up there!?” I asked, desperately hoping that my stunt with the lift hadn’t hurt anyone.
“All but one.” Albert replied, smiling wryly. “Aren’t you going to thank me? Yet another disaster cleaned up by yours truly. It could’ve been a lot worse.” My heart sank as I went through a Rolodex of residents in my mind. It was like I was being told off. I was about to ask who got hurt, but I couldn’t find the words in time before the brothers eurrupted into a bitter row.
“Let them go home Albert; they’ve learned their lesson, they won’t look for me again.” Derek interjected firmly.
“Are you some kind of idiot.” Albert retorted, rolling his eyes. “All the chaos this girl has caused and you think I’m going to just let her head back up there to cause more… when she bought such a beautiful gift.” He took a few steps towards Ellie, gazing in wonder, and Derek stepped in front of her.
“You aren’t coming anywhere near her.” He hissed at his brother through gritted teeth.
“What is she?” He stopped moving and directed his question at me.
“I’m a girl and my name is Ellie.” She shouted from behind Derek defiantly, poking her horns out to the side. She was audibly annoyed at being referred to as a what.
“I’m sorry! It’s great to meet you Ellie.” He edged a little closer again and got down to void level, just like Derek had not long ago. There was no instant connection this time though, just a twisted fascination in his eyes. He spoke as if she wasn’t even there. “Exquisite. She’s natural.”
“Of course she is.” Derek responded, stepping back as he continued to guard the little girl. “Nothing you mess with works out very well, does it?”
“That depends on your definition. Your successes all panned out pretty poorly don’t you think, little brother?” He snapped back.
“What are you talking about?” I blurted, confused. I had no idea what they meant by natural or what they were arguing over. In fact; I had personally always found Ellie’s demonic appearance quite unnatural myself.
Albert scoffed maniacally as Derek looked at the floor. The sibling dynamic was so visible, you could see Derek being put into a place of little brother, trying to hide behind the peak of his flat cap. Regardless he valiantly continued to shield Ellie. Finally, Albert stood up and addressed me directly again.
“He hasn’t told you anything has he? About this place, about how it throws out creations you could barely imagine.” He looked around him as he referred to the building below that we had been trapped in and continued.
“You have no idea of the power this land has. The power it gives to people who stay. Ever wonder how Prudence Hemmings managed to throw a fully grown man off a balcony and chase you up all those stairs - at her age? Or why Mr Prentice becomes that other thing? Or why me and my lovely brother here aren’t long dead?
“They’re just all too stupid to notice. They have no idea what’s right beneath them. They won’t ever realise the potential.”
My mind reeled at his words, maybe the building really could change its inhabitants. To be honest I spent more time than I’d like to admit wondering how I hadn’t found it easier to escape Prue, I was permanently scarred from the altercation after all. Despite my contempt for Albert, I recognised that what he was saying made sense.
I noted the residents he mentioned. All of them had spent decades in the building. It wasn’t a far stretch at all to believe that it could’ve irreparably altered them somehow. There were others that I could think of, however, that had been there just as long and seemed as normal as you or me, all the questions hurt my mind.
I heard a yelp and some pained moans and turned to flat -51, where Essie was frantically trying to wrench herself up off the floor. Every time she got close another bone would crack and her jaw would edge slightly lower. Blood oozed from the wounds.
“Just let them go. This is pointless.” Derek tried to interrupt, to keep things moving. I wouldn’t let him. Looking at my friend being tortured by her own body had only made me angry again.
“No! What do you mean she’s natural?” I shouted at him, curiosity about their conversation getting the better of me. Derek spoke as Albert smugly grinned in the background.
“Kat… we can do things. It doesn’t just end with an extended life, we can manipulate some of the people and things that pass through here. That’s why I was able to give Prudence the way to get Lyla back. It’s why those things listen to me.”
Derek pointed at Albert before continuing.
“He gave that cult the ability to burn the whole floor with their minds… and I gave the residents that died new life as the cats. Since he left to stay down here he’s been messing around with anyone and anything he can get his hands on. I’ve tried to stop it over the years, but… I don’t always manage.
“Those people you dealt with on the floor below the basement… they were all his failed experiments. Those poor people were once residents upstairs that ended up here by mistake. Fifty years worth.”
Albert couldn’t let him continue. He was bursting with the need to gloat.
“I wouldn’t say they failed! They’re all beautifully grim. I thought you were a fan of giving things new life, little brother.”
There was little to no feeling in his voice. His sharp tone and dusty suit made him almost like a caricatured amalgamation of every Disney villain recorded.
Except in Disney films the villain didn’t win, and looking at Essie, writhing in pain on the floor of not her doorway; Albert had won already.
Derek stayed silent, I could see he felt guilty for even being associated. He just looked at me in desperation.
I tried to fathom what they were saying.
“So… Jamie was unnatural?” I asked timidly, taking in the inference that his monster form had been nothing more than a byproduct of Derek’s power. Just another twisted experiment, like the mangled people whose screams rang in my ears. I wondered if he had felt pain like they did.
Albert erupted into laughter and once again clapped mockingly.
“There’s that intelligence I liked about you when we first met! It’s in there girl! Now you get it, can you explain to me where your little friend came from?” His words were patronising, but he couldn’t hide his curiosity.
He took another few steps towards Ellie as Derek stood bravely in front of her. “It’s not often I find one I’m unaware of. I don’t know how I’ve missed her. Especially when she was able to do so much damage to my other creations. You should’ve seen what she did to one of the pair that inhabit the lift. I have to have her.”
Ellie reached a clawed hand forward and pushed Derek aside with such force that he was taken off his feet. She hissed, just as she had with the rat creatures and the mangled people. Albert winced, but stayed stoic as his face filled with joy.
“You’re mean!” She shouted at him. My heart melted a little that she thought that those two words were fitting for the situation, if only things were as simple as they are in the mind of a seven year old.
Derek stumbled to his feet and watched closely, in awe of Ellie’s blind courage.
Albert once again dropped to his knees to face her. She stood defiantly, her voids fixed on his cold eyes. He started to reach his hand out towards her. She growled softly in response.
“NO!” I screamed. Visions of her disintegrating in front of my eyes filled my mind. I couldn’t let him touch her. I started to run towards them but Derek grabbed me and held me in place as he whispered in my muffled ear.
“He won’t hurt her, but he will hurt you.” I looked at his stumped hand and listened, despite my discomfort. I thought back to the article about Albert’s son’s death and for the first time, I wasn’t sure I trusted Derek. How could I know for sure that he wouldn’t hurt her? I was ready to jump forward and throw Ellie out of the way at any point.
Albert stopped just millimetres short of Ellie’s face, his fingers hovering in front of the deep black voids. His eyes were filled with wonder, the expression on his face was how I must have looked the first time I saw her too.
“It isn’t just you is it Ellie?” He mused. A smile erupting across his face. “There’s two of you.”
I should’ve been alarmed, worried that he had realised she was a twin. I should’ve pondered how he knew, but at this stage semantics were pointless. Instead, his lack of knowledge about Eddie’s existence filled me with relief that he hadn’t been harmed upstairs. If he had, Albert wouldn’t have been so fascinated by his sister.
“Eddie wouldn’t like you either.” She said bluntly, breaking the magic in his eyes.
Before I could make a single move Derek had leapt across the room and got between them again.
“Let them go.” Derek said calmly, one more time. “They don’t belong down here.”
“I’m finding it hard to believe that she didn’t come from down here. And I promised that one..” Albert tilted his head in my direction, “a fate just like hers.” He pointed at Essie, who had bloodied red tears running down her face as she squirmed on the floor. I watched the jagged edge of her snapped thigh bone scrape against the carpet, pulling it further out of her skin and I cringed hard.
Derek didn’t respond to his brother, instead he grabbed Ellie’s clawed hand and walked her towards Essie’s flat.
“What are you doing?!” Albert cried out in a condescending fashion, scrambling up from his knees and following. I couldn’t bare to see him get closer.
An anger bubbled inside me and the entire floor went dead silent. All noise was replaced by a deep mental echoing of the screams of the mangled people. I thought of all the suffering the landlord had caused and watched as he edged towards that pure, innocent, demonic little girl. And I saw red.
I sprinted at him and threw myself forwards tackling him to the floor from behind. Raising a clenched fist I punched him hard in the face. I had never hit anyone like that before, I’d never felt the red mist that those who get angry describe, until that moment.
I wasn’t sure what I thought my interference would do, I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to kill him, and that I probably wouldn’t be able to do any damage at all, but Ellie had saved me so many times already that night that I couldn’t let him get to her.
Albert’s cold, dead looking eyes bore into my soul and he let out a joyless giggle as he wrestled me to the ground so that he had the upper hand. He hovered his hand over my face just like he had Jamie, pinning me down with the other.
I wondered if it was the last thing his son had seen before he died; Jamie, Essie before the torture, all of them. Had this been it? Could the last real memory they had be those cold eyes.
I prepared to die. Since moving into the tower block it was something that I’d done more than most, but this time felt permanent. Everything but Albert went black. I squeezed my eyes shut tightly and tried to think of the things I wanted to remember, the people upstairs that had become family to me.
Death never came, instead I felt a crushing and release as someone grabbed Albert from above me and threw him against the wall.
I sat up panting, in shock that I was alive. I was disoriented and my ears continued to ring. I opened my eyes. The artificial light started to penetrate the black and all I could see was Derek’s tweed flat cap, on the floor beside me. My heart stopped.
The next sound I heard was familiar, but somehow bigger than ever before. I blinked a few times to see Ellie, claws raised menacingly in the air, roaring at Albert, who had been grabbed by his brother and had in turn overpowered him.
She was much taller and wider than usual, a gigantic figure towering above all of us, and her human features that came through the demonic ones were greatly reduced. If I didn’t love her so dearly I would be tempted to describe her as terrifying and monstrous.
Albert took his attention away from Derek, a smug and slimy smile forming ear to ear as he marvelled at the giant girl. He moved towards her in a trance like state.
Ellie opened her mouth as she stood above Albert with her claws, revealing long sharpened teeth with prominent fangs in the front. Somehow her voids for eyes seemed infinitely deeper.
Then she bit him.
Her sharp fangs pierced Albert’s skull, sending blood and brain matter spattering across the corridor and all over me, Essie and Derek.
She didn’t stop there, ravenously she laid into him with her teeth, pinning him hoisted up to the wall with foot long claws, by his limbs. She had as good as crucified him and was consuming parts.
Bone and organ littered the floor and walls and what was left of limbs twitched as she severed nerves. I watched in horror and awe. A symphony of screaming, growling and crunching breaking through my muffled hearing.
When he stopped moving and what remained slid down the wall, leaving a trail of blood, Ellie’s size reduced as well almost instantaneously. Neither me nor Derek had any words as the now little again demonic girl stood beside a corpse of her making.
She ran towards Derek with her arms outstretched, bloodied mouth, and embraced him. He held her tightly, his kindly eyes filled with the shock of what he’d just witnessed. After a minute or so she broke from Derek and turned to me and helped me up before doing the same.
It felt good. To know that she was safe.
She stopped hugging and stood facing us both before speaking, voids facing the ground.