Time knows when it is being waited on. It slows to a dawdle and resists any and all appeals to hurry along. The two hours in the basement diner called Rogerios was excruciating. But it gave me time to think. The Umbra hunt people who are alone. Merry didn’t want to be alone. The Umbra hunt at night and Merry went to and from work in the dark. Did she know it came for her?
If it took blood it would explain why she was so tired and why her face was pale and her skin bruised when I went in to check on her. If I’d stayed in her room like she’d asked, it might have thought twice.
When I walked up the stairs and out onto the street I’d be alone, but the sun would be up. If Tilley was right then I’d be safe. But she was basing this off some stories told to her when she was small. The sort of stories that can be half-truths to achieve the desired effect. I didn’t have much choice but to go up to the street. I couldn’t very well spend my life drinking tea in a basement.
I’d done my last shift for the week and had a couple of days off. On a normal break I’d stay in my room and alternate between video games and sleep. My body would fight to get back onto a normal rhythm only to get shunted back onto night shift come Monday. But I couldn’t stay at home this break. It knew where I lived. I would go to Windhaven. I would go and find Ron.
I waited an extra 15 brutal minutes after sunrise and paid my bill and climbed the stairs. The day was clear and cold. The street was busy with people rushing to morning markets and tourists searching for a cheap place for breakfast.
On the train I eyed everyone on my carriage in turn. I was looking for a white face with no nose under a hat. All regular folk going about regular lives. I rested my head against the vibrating window and let my eyes close.
The apartment was quiet. The Italians slept late on weekends. I threw some clothes and personal items into a bag and made straight for the station. I lucked a train to the coast ready on the platform for immediate departure. I scanned the crowded station for signs of anyone or anything following me and, seeing nothing suspicious, I boarded the train.
Out the window the view turned from dense city to sparse industrial to outer suburban and finally to green fields. I rarely left the city, there was never a reason to. Weekend trips away were for couples and families or groups of friends heading to watch their favourite sports team. None of that applied to or interested me. And weekends away were a cost difficult to bear on a warehouse packer’s salary.
The train rocked and groaned and the white noise almost put me to sleep. A couple of times I closed my eyes and started to drift into sleep only to see the winged white creature stumbling across the apartment in my mind’s eye and I immediately jolted awake with a sense of unease thick in my stomach. I tried to work out how many hours of actual sleep I’d had all week, but my addled brain soon gave up. I watched the electricity poles whip by and counted down the minutes until Windhaven.
The hotel was easy to find. It occupied prime real estate on the front row behind the esplanade and directly opposite the pier. The grey stone beach stretched out in a semi circle with the pier at its centre. On the right edge a rock cliff rose steeply and was topped by a white lighthouse. The Light’s View made sense as a name. A small stone stair led up to the bright white door. The face of the building was painted yellow with window shutters painted to match the door. Small flower beds lined each window sill, empty now in the depths of winter.
A small reception desk nestled into the right of the narrow hallway. Behind the desk sat a man in his fifties with a pair of wire framed glasses perched on the end of his nose. He tapped a pen against a partially filled crossword puzzle. I cleared my throat as I a approached.
“Can I help you young man?”
“My name is James Smith. Officer Tilley told me to..”
“Linda,” he said, cutting me off. “Linda Tilley is my daughter. My name is Ron.” Ron held out his hand and smiled. I shook it. He released my hand and propped his elbows on the desk and leaned in and furrowed his brow. “Linda told me you saw one? When and where?”
I rubbed my eyes. Now at my destination my body and my brain screamed at me to sleep. “I guess it was a couple of nights ago.”
“My boy, you look like you haven’t slept in a week.”
“That’s not far from the truth.”
“Come with me.”
Ron lifted a hinged section of the counter and shuffled out into the hallway. He picked up the bag I had dropped to the floor and unclipped a set of keys from his belt as he walked down the hall. At the end of the hall he opened a door and leaned in and switched on a light. He held out a palm and motioned for me to enter.
The room was small with a low ceiling and a bed pushed into one corner. I entered and Ron followed, placing my bag on the foot of the bed. Opposite the bed was a second door and Ron opened it. “There’s a bathroom here. We don’t usually let this room out, it’s the only room in this place without a window. Linda sleeps here when she visits. Here you’ll be safe and sound. I’ll be at the desk if you need anything. Get some rest and we can talk.”
Ron closed the door quietly behind him leaving me alone. I lay down and fell asleep in my clothes and with the lights still on.
I slept through the rest of the afternoon and the entire night. When I woke I went out into the hall and by the oversized clock hanging on the wall at the end of the hallway it was a little after 8. Ron sat at his desk, arms folded and chin propped against his chest. A subtle snoring noise came from his nose.
I coughed and Ron woke with a start. He checked his watch and stuck his head out into the hallway and looked up at the small window over the door. Soft morning light filtered through. “You slept like the dead.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to keep you here all night.”
“Not to worry boy. Work in the hotel industry long enough and you grow used to the long and sometimes strange hours. Come with me and we’ll get some breakfast.”
Ron exited via the hinged counter and strolled to the front door. He paused and listened and grabbed two umbrellas from a container in the corner. He handed me one. “You’ll be needing this.”
Light rain blew in on a strong breeze. The wind came in off the ocean and was ice cold. The day was brightening but the streetlights lining the esplanade still shone. Waves crashed against the rocks of the shore and the foam crackled as the water retreated only to be tossed against the rocks once more.
We walked for only a minute before Ron turned into a small cafe. Ron took my umbrella and dumped it into a receptacle beside the door. Ron waved an elderly man behind the counter reading a newspaper through wire rimmed glasses perched on the end of his nose.
“I’ll have the usual Les.” Ron turned to me. “What would you like?”
“What are you having?”
“Pancakes.”
“Perfect.”
“Take a seat. I come here a few times a week. Nice little place and it doesn’t get busy in the winter. Wait here.” Ron tapped the table and went and spoke to Les.
I sat and listened to the rain pattering against the window. The room filled with the unmistakable smell of pancakes. My stomach grumbled. Now that my body had its fill of sleep it told me I needed to eat.
Ron returned and eased into a timber backed chair. He reached into his coat pocket and took out a book and slid it across the table. The crumpled paperback had a black spine with white lettering that read ’Diary From the Lighthouse’.
“Before I was a hotelier and when the lighthouse was still operating, I used to work up there. It was my first job out of school.” I read the author’s name. Ronald Tilley.
“You wrote this?”
“When I started up there they said the ghost of an old sea captain haunted the lighthouse. A terrible storm wrecked his ship against the rocks. You’ll share your bed with Captain Maddox they all said. I never saw any ghost, but we weren’t alone in that lighthouse. We were a two man team and I worked with a man by the name of David Hitchens. Hitch was a sullen old fellow and drunk more hours of the day than he wasn’t. I told him to quit because he’d wake up sallow with a sickly hue about him. And tired. Always tired. The Maddox curse he called it.”
I looked up from the book. My mind went to Merry and her purple skin and her complaints of fatigue.
“Around that time, this was more than thirty years ago, it was a not so irregular occurrence that locals would go missing. The police always had an explanation. So and so went walking up on the rocks or went out fishing and got too close and slipped or a wave took them. They always went missing at night and they were always alone. But no one ever found a body. Not one washed up on shore.”
Les came from the kitchen carrying a tray bearing two plates loaded with pancakes and a boat of syrup and placed them on the table. He looked at the book and winked at me. “Don’t let the old man fill your head with fables and fairy tales.”
Ron scoffed and crossed his arms. I put down the book and rolled a pancake and shoved it in my mouth.
“Would you like me to wait until we’ve eaten?”
I shook my head.
Ron continued. “In a place like this, when people go missing people start asking questions. And people start watching over each other. And then the sightings started. Figures in the night. Sometimes a pale figure in the moonlight, sometimes a strangely dressed person on the pier. It was the ghost they said. Only it wasn’t a ghost. Turn to page 145.”
I wiped my hands on a napkin and picked up the book. I flicked to page 145 and there was a sketch of the creature. The thing I’d seen in Merry’s apartment. It stared out at me with big black eyes, the red veins etched in black ink. My stomach clenched.
“Is that what you saw?” Ron said.
“That’s it.”
“We heard things at night in the lighthouse. Hitch said it was old Captain Maddox and I should leave him be. Then one day a man by the name of Greer shows up on the doorsteps and said he followed a man up to the lighthouse. His wife was one who had gone missing and he spent his nights searching for whoever took her. Hitch told him we hadn’t seen anyone and turned him away. I thought there might be something to it. I set to reading over some of the old journals from the keepers who had come before. One of them mentioned a cellar. I didn’t know of any cellar. Turns out there was a room at the base of the lighthouse used to store food before there was much of a town. Then the town came and they had no need for the cellar and they boarded it up. I searched for it and I found it and I went down. I heard them there in the dark, hissing as they slept. There must have been a dozen of them, hanging upside down like bats do, their wings wrapped around their bodies like they were cold. Below them were bones. Hundreds of bones. We found out later they were human. I half-screamed and stirred them and they came at me. Hitch saved my life. I couldn’t save his.”
Ron removed his glasses and cleared his throat. From his chair he could see the book open on my knees to the page with the drawing.
“They call them the Umbra. An old archaic word that means phantom, or darkness. The old timers named them. I found stories dating back hundreds of years. They excrete a gas from the slit at their mouth and it puts you into a deep sleep. They strip you and wrap their wings around you and slowly suck out your blood through thousands of tiny suckers all over their skin. The coloured skin you wake up with are tiny bruises. They choose a mate, someone who is often alone and they feed off them. It can be for years, taking what they need and leaving you with just enough to keep going. Sometimes they kill their prey, maybe by accident, maybe because they want to move on. At the end they take you back to their nest, maybe you’re alive, maybe you’re already dead, and they suck you dry.”
“One of them has mated with a girl I work with.” I closed the book and watched the rain collect on the window and run down in streaks. “One of them followed me home.”
“You’re safe here. They are never found far from their nest.”
“You said there was a nest up by the lighthouse.”
“There was a nest, there isn’t now. I check the old cellar from time to time. No one ever saw one around these parts after we disturbed them. They moved on. The police didn’t believe me when I told them what I saw. They figured there was a serial killer on the loose collecting victims and taking them down to the cellar. They pinned it on Hitch. They locals called the cellar Hitch’s Boneyard. But then the sickness stopped and people stopped going missing and everyone forgot. And I wrote the book and they called me a crackpot.”
Ron raised his eyebrows and nodded to Les, who was back at the paper on the counter.
“And now the Umbra are in the city?” I said.
“It surprised me at first to hear one was seen in the city. Maybe it makes sense. Here a person goes missing and everyone knows and people ask questions. We’re a community. Big cities aren’t that. In a city its easier to get away with murder. Maybe they’ve always been there. If I were you I’d stay away for a while. Especially if you hurt one. You’re free to stay at the hotel as long as you like, no charge.”
“I have to go to work on Monday.”
“Might be an idea to call in sick.”
I was about to tell Ron about Keith and the three strikes policy, but thought better of it. I rested my fork on the plate. Out the window the day brightened and the shadow of the lighthouse towered into the sky.
“Can we go up there?”
“I suppose we can.”
We drove up a small access road that ended at the foot of the lighthouse. The rain had stopped but the cold wind bit at my cheeks. A set of timber stairs led up and a plaque on the right hand side detailed various facts about the structure and its years of service. A large padlock hung on the door. Ron fished a set of keys from his pocket.
The brick lined interior provided welcome relief from the wind. A metal staircase wound its way up to a timber platform high above us. Ron flicked at the keys and moved to a door pocketed into the far wall. It opened into a secondary structure once used as a kitchen and sleeping quarters. It was a large open space, much of the furniture and equipment now gone.
Ron pointed to the far corner. “The kitchen used to be there. Over here was a giant closet for our coats and boots. It stood over the trap door to the cellar and we never knew it was there.”
Ron bent down and pulled at the handle. Years without regular use had made the trap door stick but with a grunt from Ron it yielded. Ron flipped the door up and peered down. “You can go and take a look if you want.”
“You don’t want to come?”
“I’ve seen it. If you walk to the end there’s an opening to the outside. There used to winch up the supplies from the ship below and bring them in.”
I lowered myself into the cellar. It was dark and close and claustrophobic. I heard my heartbeat in my ears. A beam of light filtered in from somewhere down the far end illuminating a strip of the packed dirt floor and the rock walls. There were scratches on the underside of the floorboards. I imagined the pile of bones left behind after the Umbra fled. I shuddered.
I followed the light and came to a small opening in the wall. A grid of steel mesh covered the gap. The wind blew in and brought with it droplets of sea spray thrown up from the waves crashing on the rocks below.
Ron’s muffled voice came softly through the trap door. The floorboards creaked as he paced around the room above. Then he called out. “James, you better get up here.”
I lifted myself up and Ron had his phone pressed to one ear. “It’s Linda. Your friend. What was her name? Your friend Merry has gone missing.”
Ron walked me from the hotel to the station. Locals bustled about under a brightening afternoon sky and greeted Ron with a hello or a nod. A few gave my unfamiliar face a curious glance.
When we were in sight of the station Ron turned to me. “You should stay. Leave it to Linda and the police.”
“A few nights ago Merry asked for my help and now she is missing. I have to try and help. It’s the right thing to do. Isn’t it? Watching out for each other?”
“I was brought up to believe so. Be careful boy. They’ll be looking for you.”
Ron tapped my shoulder. I entered the station and boarded the train to the city.
It was dusk when the screeching brakes brought the train to a stop in the cavernous central station. By the time I got home it would be dark. Heavy rain pelted the steel roof above creating a dull drumming noise. I navigated the gates and was on the platform waiting for the train that would take me home without even thinking about it. I’d be underground for the next hour or so.
The stairs at the exit were wet from foot traffic. I ran out onto the street with my bag over my head and waited impatiently for the lights to turn red so I could cross. Water dripped down my arms and soaked my back.
I jogged home so preoccupied with the rain I hadn’t looked for any figures in coats or old style hats. On the footpath outside the door to my apartment I looked back. Sheets of rain tumbled down illuminated by the streetlights. Nothing else moved. No one was out walking their dogs on a night like this.
I shook my coat and my bag at the base of the stairs and stamped some of the water from my shoes. I’d get an email if I tracked water across the apartment. I removed my water logged shoes and carried them up the stairs.
The door to the living room was shut and the flickering light from the television lit the opaque glass panel cut into the door. The Italians were watching something. Just as well. I wasn’t in the mood for any small talk about my weekend.
My room was cold. The heating only came on when someone flicked the master switch and I had no control over that. I didn’t even know where it was. They were probably huddled together in the living room under blankets and would only turn it on a little before they were due to go to bed. I shivered.
I dumped my bag on the bed and fished my phone from my pocket. Ron had given me Linda’s number. She was on duty tonight but she would be happy to tell me everything she knew about Merry. I dialled and it went to voicemail. I hung up without leaving a message.
I closed the front door softly and skipped down the stairs. The train ride had given me time to wonder where Merry might be. I didn’t know her well but there were a couple of places I could check. That was if they didn’t already have her.
The rain had eased and I checked the time. As my eyes fixed on the phone screen something moved at the edges of my sight. I snapped my head around and my eyes darted up and down the side of the building and the tall timber fence that led to the backyard. Nothing moved. I hesitated and then stepped to the fence and jumped and lifted myself up so I could see beyond. Light spilled from the rear window of the ground floor apartment but dark corners remained. I held for a few seconds and nothing moved. I lowered myself down and ran to the street.
I suspected everyone. It was cold and people had scarves wrapped high on their necks and woollen hats pulled down low and only small slivers of their faces remained. Would I pick out an Umbra if I saw it? In the dark it would not be easy.
I took the train to work. The warehouse was quieter on the weekend. A skeleton crew processed orders for Monday morning. I’d worked a few weekends. There was a different feel to it but at the same time nothing changed. Boxes and quotas and beepers and the watchful eyes of management were a constant.
Behind the new and brightly painted warehouse where I packed my boxes, a sprawl of semi-dilapidated structures cobbled together on otherwise vacant lots. Some had been abandoned for years. Graffiti adorned the brick walls and broken windows left shards of jagged glass where a rock or a brick had found its target. These buildings were the former homes of car and steel manufacturers, jobs lost to overseas markets where labour could be had far cheaper.
A tall chain link fence bordered the site to deter trespassers hoping to tag a building or steal something or find a dry place to sleep rough. I walked the fence and looked through the mesh, straining in the darkness to see any signs of movement. I saw nothing.
I heard it before I saw it. The duff duff duff of heavy base. Around the bend was the building illuminated by the spotlight. The place where people went to party deep into the night. It was here I thought I would find Merry.
At the front were a set of huge double doors painted red. I pushed on one side and then the other and neither budged. I took a step back. I held out my hand to try the door again when I heard the sound of laughter and crunching gravel from the side. A boy and a girl appeared arm in arm. They staggered forwards pulling and pushing each other but somehow staying upright. I watched them pass and then walked around the side from where they had come.
The side door was all the way at the rear of the building. I had to leave the comfort of the spotlight and enter the darkness of the night punctuated by the flashing lights coming from the windows high above. The door was open and there was no one on guard.
Inside the music vibrated through my chest and surrounded my body like a blanket. Smoke filled the room and stung my nostrils. Strobe lights hung from the steel trusses above. A small group jumped and swayed out of sync on a raised dancefloor at the back. On the far side, staff wearing black stood behind long fold-out tables. They cracked cans of beers taken from ice buckets and poured them into plastic cups. Ratted old couches and recliners stood against the walls, each cradling a slumped body.
I went to the bar. A girl came over, her nails painted as black as her hair. She cracked a beer and poured it and held it out. I put up my hands and shook my head. She lowered her eyebrows and tilted her head forwards. I took the cup and fumbled in my pocket for a note and slid it over. She scrunched it into a pocket in the front of her black apron.
“Do you know a girl called Merry?” I said.
The server put an index finger to her ear and turned her back.
I sipped the beer and walked the room. The people on the couches were pale and dressed in black. They stared up at the lights from below dark eye shadow. Some looked me up and down as I passed and others seemed to not see me at all. I circled the dancefloor and could not see Merry among the flailing limbs and teeth turned fluorescent under the lights.
She wasn’t here. I took a sip from the cup and moved to the exit. At the back a set of stairs led underground and above the door the word toilet was scrawled as if by a child with a crayon. At the top of the steps I could see down to a hallway below. A man was on the floor propped against a doorframe taking in huge gulps of air. He reminded me of Alister who had worked with me on the warehouse floor.
I set my cup on the corner of the table and descended the stairs. The man had his eyes closed and shook his head from side to side. I put a hand on his shoulder. His eyes stayed closed and his head continued to shake. He muttered incoherently. He inhaled sharply as if startled. I looked back up the stairs and no one was there. I threaded my arms below his armpits and set to lifting him from the ground.
“Leave him be.” A set of hands pushed me against the wall opposite. I hit the bricks with a thud and landed on my elbows. A man in dark jeans and oversized boots stood over me.
“You leave him be,” he repeated and stomped his way up the stairs. Moments later a second thinner set of legs followed. I looked up. It was Merry.
I got to my feet and climbed the stairs. Merry walked to the exit and out the building and I followed. I caught up to her and I grabbed her arm and swung her around.
“Merry.”
She turned and blinked her big eyes at me. Her eyebrows turned up in the centre. “James? I’m sorry it took me a moment. I wasn’t expecting to see you here. What are you doing?”
Under the spotlights her skin swelled below her eyes. I took a step closer. Red veins streaked across the whites of her eyes. Her skin was pale. Her face was gaunt.
“Why did you leave the hospital? People are looking for you. I’ve been looking for you.”
“I couldn’t stay.” The warehouse rose in the distance, white and yellow walls shining under artificial lights. “They fired me.”
“I know.”
“I don’t have anywhere to go. I can’t make rent. I don’t know what to do.”
She turned and hugged herself against the cold. She wavered a little on her feet.
“Come with me. We’ll go to Rogerios. I’ll buy you pancakes.”
“You don’t owe me breakfast.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Go home James.” She took a couple of steps and stopped. She turned back. “What is your surname?”
“Smith.”
“Generic.” She smiled and crunched the gravel on her way to the path beside the road.
“You’re in danger.” I said, holding out my hand.
She stopped and turned back. “What?”
“You’re in danger. We’re both in danger. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I came to find you. There’s a reason you’ve been so tired. There’s a reason you’re afraid of the dark.”
“Go home James. I’m not your problem.”
I skipped a couple of steps. The sound of heavy footsteps crunching the gravel came from behind. A pair of strong hands shoved me against the wall. It was the man in the oversized boots.
“Why don’t you stop sticking your nose where it isn’t wanted.” He scrunched my coat in his fists and held me against the wall. He turned to Merry and nodded and she looked at me and then turned and walked towards the road.
“Merry wait,” I said.
The man in the boots punched me hard in the stomach and I doubled over. The man knelt down and talked slowly and softly into my ear. “You don’t belong here. This is the last time I see you. Understand?” He stood and buried one of his huge boots into my side. It hit like a hammer and left me gasping for air. The man chuckled and kicked at the gravel as he went back into the building.
I struggled to my feet and with an arm tucked by my side where the boot had hit and I stumbled to the road. I looked down to where Merry would walk to go home. The street was empty. I looked back up to where the warehouses were and still no one. Merry couldn’t have got away that fast. Had I blacked out?
I half jogged along the fence beside the old warehouses. I strained my eyes to take in whatever I could among the shadows and darkness. Then something moved. I pressed against the chain link fence and watched a dark mass moving fast. The mass moved close to a streetlight and I caught a glimpse. Old style hat. A thick coat. And from beyond the coat came a white flap of skin, like the wing of a bat. And it was dragging Merry.
“No,” I shouted.
Merry and her captor disappeared behind a building and into the darkness and were gone.
I pulled out my phone and dialled officer Linda Tilley. She answered. I was to the point.
“I’m at the abandoned buildings behind work. They took Merry. I’m going after her.”
I hung up.