I ran the fence line, the occasional headlight from a passing car illuminating the grey steel. Barbed wire ran along the top and looped in a spiral. I didn’t fancy climbing it. There had to be a gap somewhere. Halfway along I spotted a break beside one of the support poles. I crouched down and peeled back the wire and it gave enough to form a small gap. A small channel had formed in the dirt from bodies forcing themselves through. I bent down and slipped through the gap. I looked back up the road expecting a car to stop and tell me I shouldn’t be trespassing, but the cars kept on driving.
I skipped across the open ground to an old red brick building with a saw tooth roof. I slipped around the back and out of sight of the road and the cars. Weeds sprouted between the hard packed gravel. Stray shards of glass and rusted bits of wire glinted in the light spilling from the big building playing the incessant duff duff beat.
A rusted old padlock secured the big double doors. Beside the door a window had its glass still intact. I flicked on the torch on my phone and held it up to the glass. The space inside was large and empty. Anything once inside was long gone.
I turned back around and scanned the site. Little light made it this far from the street and darkness overwhelmed much of the ground before me. The silhouettes of entire buildings rose black against the night sky. There must be a dozen buildings cobbled together. And I didn’t know where to begin.
I kicked at a stone and it jumped and skipped and disappeared over a grassed ledge. It was the bank of a channel cut into the ground. Stagnant and scummy water sat in the bottom. Empty plastic bottles and leaves and other rubbish floated on top. At one end of the channel a large diameter pipe poked through the bank. Back from the pipe an old stone building stood apart from the rest. It looked old, the facade crumbling and the roof sheeting pocked with rust holes.
“That might be it,” I said aloud and crossed the open ground to the building. On the long side a large roller door covered in dents was clasped shut. On the short side facing the channel a rotted timber door hung loosely off hinges pulling away from the split and warped frame. I slipped my fingers into the gap beside the door knob and pulled and the door gave enough to stick my head in.
The inside was dark. Boards covered the high level windows and only small slivers of light came through. An I beam spanned between the short sides and a thick chain hung down ending in a giant metal hook. At the far end a steel stair led up to a partial mezzanine level with offices enclosed by lightweight walls. This was the stuff of nightmares. A dark abandoned building in the dead of night. But Merry might not have much time.
I stepped inside and crept over the exposed concrete floor. Under torchlight oil stains shone a deep black. High above something moved and my head flicked up to a bird’s nest nestled between the roof rafters. My heart skipped a beat and then proceeded to thump away at full speed.
My eyes strained and followed the torch light and then I found it. In the far corner beneath the raised mezzanine was a trap door cut into the concrete floor. There was a room somewhere below my feet. If I were an Umbra that is where I would make my nest.
I walked slowly and deliberately taking one step at a time and stopping and listening before taking the next. I reached the trap door and was overcome with the feeling of being watched. I swung the torch behind me. The door at the other end was ajar and just how I had left it. I let the light wander into dark corners and it found nothing.
The trap door was a slab of wood with a dark metal ring screwed into the top. I wrapped my fingers around the ring and pulled. The door didn’t give. I bent my knees and straightened my back and heaved and the door first creaked and then lifted. It was too heavy to hold ajar and look down so I pulled the thing all the way and flipped it and it fell with a thud to the concrete, the sound echoing off the brick walls.
“Shit,” I whispered, my breathing heavy from the effort. I stood for a moment peering at the black hole in the floor, waiting and expecting something to come forth and punish me for my stupidity in coming here all alone and poking my head where it wasn’t wanted. Nothing came. Instinct told me to run while I still could. But then I thought of Merry. I took a deep breath.
Inching towards the hole I turned the light down. It was some sort of cellar, the walls lined with brick and a floor of packed dirt. I crouched down onto hands and knees and lowered my hand into the hole and turned the phone to shine the light back under the building. I followed with my head. The cellar extended under about half the building and then stopped. At the far end a gate framed with steel bars spanned over an opening in the wall. It reminded me of the cellar below the lighthouse. But no scratches on the ceiling and no collection of bones on the floor and no Umbra.
There was not much height to the space. I lowered myself through the trap door and crouched down so my head wouldn’t hit the ceiling. The room was freezing and smelled of damp. I crept across the cellar holding my phone in front of my face. I reached the far end and peered through the bars. A small pit extended beyond the bars with a grate at the bottom. Below the grate I could hear the trickle of water. It was the pipe. I strained my neck to get a better angle but I couldn’t see anything. No Umbra. The pipe was large but not large enough for one of those creatures to hang upside down at full stretch. I sighed. I had been wrong.
I put the trap door back and pushed the front door of the building closed with my shoulder. I wiped the dust and grime from my jacket. Cars droned on from the road and the beat of the music thumped rhythmically. I scanned the site and swept the torch into the darkness. A large fence stood between me and the building adjacent. I couldn’t see a gap.
The torch flickered and then turned off. I’d run the battery to empty. Shit. This would be easier under sunlight, but I did not know if Merry had that long. These things fed like a leech and left you still breathing and when the blood was replenished they came again. But when they decided to kill, how quickly could they do it?
The headlights of the cars flickered in the distance out by the road. That’s where I went, leaving the abandoned warehouses behind. In truth I had no idea where the Umbra hid and I’d never find them in the dark. Defeated and tired I walked along the inside of the fence. I hoped Linda Tilley was on her way. I should have stayed on the phone.
I shuffled back towards my workplace. If Linda was coming this would be where she’d start. I rubbed my eyes. A cool breeze kicked up and the hairs on my neck tingled. I pulled up my collar and shivered. An unease crept up in my stomach. I stopped and turned. Out in the dark a silhouette stood between two old buildings. It wore a coat and an old style hat. The sort of hat that belonged in an old Hollywood movie.
The air emptied from my lungs and it was a few seconds before I breathed. My heart fluttered. It was watching. All the while I was looking it might have been watching, hiding in the shadows. Now it showed itself. It let me see.
I looked back up to the warehouse. There were no signs of the police. The lights in the loading dock illuminated grey concrete pavement. There were few windows, few features of any kind. It was a box housing boxes. Simple and efficient. A van pulled up and reversed in as a roller shutter raised and revealed forklifts carrying pallets of boxes packed by people like me getting paid just enough to take care of the rent and not much else. In that moment, with all that was going through my head and being watched by the Umbra, it occurred to me I had to work the following night. 25 boxes per hour for 8 hours.
I looked back the other way to the building under the spotlight, where the duff-duff of the bass sounded like a heartbeat. I consider yelling out, screaming for someone to come. But no one would hear. It was too far away.
The silhouette of the creature was there still. Waiting and watching. Was it the one I had injured? The one that had followed me home, who knew where I lived? The one that would keep coming until it had its revenge?
“What have you done with her?” I said. I raised my arm and pointed my finger directly at it. “You leave her alone. You leave me alone.”
It stood unmoved. My voice sounded weak and childish. I had no idea what to do next. It either didn’t understand or didn’t care. It was taller than me. The coat it wore bulged out at the shoulders. I felt small.
I turned to leave, to find the gap in the fence and get away from here. Three silhouettes blocked the path, dressed like the one out by the warehouse. I hadn’t heard them come. They crept forward, closing in on me. I turned back to the one I had yelled at only to see it was flanked by two more and they were on the move. They came from all directions. They encircled me. They stepped closer. In the distance the cars droned and the music played, but no one would come. We were in the shadows. No one would see.
I ran for a gap in the wall they had formed, kicking up loose gravel and almost slipping. They closed in like a well-drilled defensive line and one stepped forward and shook off the coat and unfurled its enormous wings. One wing had a long scar. It was the one I had cut with the key in Merry’s apartment.
It came at me like a grandparent going in for a hug. I took a step back and stumbled. The black eyes of the creature bulged and it swept its wings around and caught me before I fell and lifted me up and pulled me into its body. It wrapped me tight and I felt my bones push together. It pressed its face against mine and I smelled something sickly and sweet. The slit on the creature’s face where the mouth should be opened and it blew its gas into my mouth. Fatigue washed over me and I felt the life leave my arms and my legs. It felt as if warm water were being pumped through my veins. My brain screamed to fight but my body didn’t respond. I tried to yell but I only mustered a whimper and then could make no more sound. My eyelids grew heavy and closed and with a jolt I thrust them open once more only for them to fall again. Streetlights flickered and faded. A flash of light illuminated the white face and grotesque wings covered in red veins and then the light was gone. The world went from dark to black.
I woke face down on the ground, stripped to my underwear. I blinked and swung around my head, but found no light, only an impenetrable and suffocating darkness. I let out an involuntary whimper.
I scraped dirt off the end of my tongue with my lips. I rolled onto my back and hugged my arms around my chest. My limbs and torso were ice cold. I rolled to my side and pulled my body off the freezing ground and onto my hands and knees. My head swam. Even in the darkness I felt the floor spinning before my eyes. It had been taking my blood. The creature I had cut had come to take back what was spilled and then some.
I listened. There was a faint hissing noise, like air escaping a pressurized hose. No, like air escaping a bunch of pressurized hoses. I patted the ground in front of my face and then beside and behind me. Nothing. Another gentle whimper.
I crept forwards, groping in the darkness and sliding my hands along the ground as I went. My breathing came in short sharp bursts and I sniffed away falling tears. Then my shoulder pressed against what felt like a slab of cold meat. The object gave slightly and I recoiled and scrambled away from it until my back came into contact with a cold and hard wall. I waited, but nothing came. The hissing went on. I pulled my knees to my chest and buried my head between my thighs.
Then another sound. A lower frequency. Something vibrating. A phone. I scrambled towards the sound keeping one shoulder against the wall. Finally my outstretched hand grasped a pair of jeans that didn’t feel like mine. I fumbled with the belt and the teeth of open zipper scratched my hand and I found the pocket and retrieved a phone. It had stopped vibrating. I fingered the buttons and there was light.
I saw for only a second before thrusting the phone back into the pocket and extinguishing the light. I was in a long and narrow corridor lined on either side with red brick walls. The ceiling was low, lined with regular red steel beams. From the beams hung white sacks lined with red veins. Umbra, dozens of them. Sleeping or hibernating or doing whatever they did when they weren’t stalking their prey. Bones littered the floor. Human bones. Rib cages and skulls and long thick bones from legs or arms. And against the wall up ahead a human figure, collapsed on the ground, purple skinned with long jet black hair, frayed and matted and forming a black pool below the head. I didn’t see the face but I knew who it was. Merry.
I took the jeans in one hand and crawled to where she lay. I reached the body before I expected and brought my hand down on her face. She inhaled and I pressed my hand against her mouth to stop her exhaling a scream. She didn’t. She breathed a slow and weak sigh through her nose. I pulled away my hand and pressed my mouth against her ear.
“Merry. Merry can you hear me?”
She didn’t respond. I took her shoulder and shook it.
“Merry you have to get up.”
I lifted Merry’s limp arm and draped it over my neck and pulled her up off the ground. We crawled together in the dark, inching forwards using the wall as our guide. Merry wept gently. Every few paces she would stop and her body turned lifeless and limp. They had sucked the life from her and she had so little left.
“We have to keep going.”
It was slow and painstaking work. My back ached. Small stones stuck to my knees and dug into the skin. My toes dragged against the cold floor. They might be bleeding. I pushed aside bones that felt wet to the touch. Merry shivered and slumped to the floor.
“Leave me be,” she said.
“We’re getting out together.”
The phone vibrated. The screen lit up and shone dully through the jeans. I pressed it to my chest to muffle the sound and the light. Ahead a wall blocked our path. Whatever was at the end of the tunnel was close now. There had to be a way in and out and that was where we’d find it.
My outstretched hand touched the end wall. Rough brick like the side walls. I unhooked Merry’s arm and sat her against the wall. I lifted my arms and turned my palms up to the ceiling. My hands pressed against a grid of steel. The gaps were big enough to stick my fingers through. I gripped the bars and pushed. The steel did not give. I looked up and there was only darkness.
Again the phone vibrated. Fuck. I fumbled with the jeans and pulled out the phone. I recognised the number. It was the last one I’d called. It was Linda. She was calling Merry’s phone. She must be off work and trying to find us. If only I knew where I was. I had been at the abandoned warehouses behind work, but where was I now? They could have taken me anywhere.
I heard hushed voices coming through the grate. Then the sound of footsteps.
I lifted myself up and pressed my lips against the steel grate. “Help. Someone help.”
Hurried footsteps and then a torch shone in my eyes.
“James, is that you?”
I knew the voice. It was Linda Tilley. She had found us. She had heard the vibrating phone in the dark and she had followed it. The light from the torch flickered across my face.
“I can’t get this grate up. You have to get us out of here. There’s so many of them down here.”
“Is Merry with you?” Linda said.
“Yes, she’s here.”
Linda put down the torch and linked her fingers through the grate but it did not move. “It’s welded down.”
“There has to be a way out of here,” I said.
“Don’t panic, I’ll find a way.”
Hurried footsteps grew fainter and then louder again. Linda came back panting.
“It’s at the other end,” she said. “There’s a door. I’m coming in to get you.”
“No,” I said. I tilted my head and pointed my mouth to the grate so I could whisper. “You’ll wake them. If they wake now we won’t make it out of here. We’ll meet you at the other end.”
I knelt down and buried the phone in the pocket of the jeans and rolled them up into a ball. Merry half stood and reached up for the grate.
“No,” I said. “We have to go back the other way.”
“I can’t go back.”
“We have to.”
“They’ll take us again. They’re going to kill us.”
“We’ll do it quietly and we’ll do it together. We follow the wall until we are at the other end.”
We went back the way we came, side by side, crouching and using the wall as a guide in the dark. All around us the Umbra hissed hideously in their sleep. Time and space are harder to judge in the dark. I could not tell how long we had been at it or how far we had left. My focus was on the next step and feeling for the wall by my side and the ground beneath my feet and trying in vain to block out the hissing.
Merry gave a whimper and stopped. I tugged on her arm but she tugged right back.
“There’s one here.”
I felt out into the darkness with my hand and recoiled at the touch of cold flesh. It was rough to the touch. There was one blocking our way, hanging hard up against the wall. The hiss from its mouth so loud I almost had to cover my ears. I dared not turn on the light.
“What do we do now?” Merry said.
I thrust out my hand sideways and away from the wall. Empty space. I followed my hand, inch by inch. I went four half paces sideways and moved my hand forwards. More empty space. I edged forwards, holding Merry with my trailing hand. The hissing first dulled and then heightened once more and my fingers felt flesh. There was another one.
I stopped and turned to face Merry. “There’s more of them. We can’t run this maze in the dark any longer. We need the light. You have to be ready.” I unfurled the jeans and took the phone in my hand. “I’m going to turn on the torch and we are going to run.” I held up the phone. “On three. One. Two.”
I flicked on the torch before I made it to three. The adrenaline got the better of me. I pointed the light forwards. A cluster of white sacks surrounded us. There was no way through except to push them apart. Without thinking any further on it, that’s what I did. I shouldered through a small gap and we pushed two hanging sacks apart. Once we were through the two came back together and made a sound like a hand clap. The hissing intensified. Ahead were still dozens, hundreds, hung haphazardly from the beams above. We ran, threading our way through the gaps and occasionally knocking one and sending it swinging. All around us hissing. I could not see the end. Then the sound in the room changed. The hissing lowered and almost stopped. We had woken them up. I turned the torch to the side and one of the Umbra was on its feet, its wings spread and its big black eyes fixed on me. It screeched at the light and then came at us. I yelped and the phone slipped from my hand and clattered to the ground. The torch shone upward at the ceiling and I bent down to pick it up. Merry was ahead of me now.
“Keep running,” I said.
I took the phone in my hand and took one step and stumbled and fell to the ground. I felt the wing of one of them brush over the back of my leg and it sent a bolt of fear through my spine and I gave an involuntary squeal. Ahead a door opened and light flooded in. Merry was almost there. Around her Umbra were waking and unfurling their wings and righting themselves. I sprinted now towards the light. One of them stood and spread its grotesque veined wings and blocked my path. I had no choice but to try and run through it. I dropped my shoulder and closed my eyes and hoped. We went down together and I sprawled onto my hands and knees and tried to crawl out of reach but it’s wing wrapped around my ankles. I kicked, but it had me. I flailed with my arms but the creature tightened its grip and lifted its head and brought its face close to mine. It opened its mouth and I turned my head anticipating the gas that would put me to sleep.
Then I heard a thud and the grip loosened and my legs were free. Merry stood over the creature holding a loose brick. She had come back for me and caved in the head of my attacker. She gave me her hand and I stood and we came face to face with three of them blocking our path. Then loud pops like firecrackers. The three fell writhing and screaming, blood spurting from their white skin. Linda stood in front of the opening to the tunnel gun in hand. She motioned for us to come but we needed no invitation. Together we sprinted for the opening and piled out of the door. Linda slammed the door shut and took a discarded length of pipe and wedged it between the bottom step and the door.
We climbed the stairs and into an abandoned warehouse. Linda yielded her coat to Merry. The rising sun filtered through broken glass windows. Linda had come. She had seen the Umbra take me but she lost them in the dark. But she had kept looking until she saw the light from the phone.
Outside and under a brightening sky I collapsed to my hands and knees.
Merry and I took the train to Windhaven later that day. Ron let us stay at his hotel, where we are still. I called Keith to apologize for missing work and he was happy to inform me I had two strikes, one for not showing and one for not letting him know. I told him to give me the third then and there. I wasn’t going to pack any more boxes. He told me he could easily find a replacement and I’m sure he did.
Linda returned to the tunnel with the police to find the creatures gone. Scattered clothing and human bones littered the floor. It was like the abandoned lair of a serial killer. Linda’s version of events of that night fell on the same deaf ears as those who heard mine and Merry’s story of the Umbra in her apartment. No one is looking for them.
The Umbra are still out there somewhere, stalking their prey in the dark, extracting the blood of their victims. But not Merry and not me. We found each other in the dark and together made it back to the light.
I still sleep with the light on. I can’t yet face a dark room. I’m hoping Windhaven changes that. The friendly faces and the sea air are helping.