Authors: S. L. Grey
‘Okay,’ I shrug. ‘No big deal. Someone’s obviously moved them.’
‘Who, though?’
‘How the fuck would I know? Management works in mysterious ways.’ I grin at him, and he gives me a watery smile back.
We’re about to head down into the stairwell when my phone beeps. Both of us tense up.
‘Here we go,’ I say to Dan.
My hand shakes as I pull it out of my pocket. Dan watches me carefully as I click through to the message.
‘Fuck!’
‘What?’
‘It’s Zinzi. She wants to know if she can borrow my fucking dress.’
‘Oh.’
Despite the shit those phone messages put us through last time, I can’t help the stab of disappointment.
‘Let’s go,’ I say, holding the door open for him.
‘You think this time we should go straight for the market?’
‘Sure. It might be a shortcut.’
‘I’m not looking forward to seeing that horrible old rat-eating bitch again.’
‘Chill out,’ I say. ‘We know how to deal with her.’
I start heading down the steps, taking them two at a time. I realise that my ears are straining for any sign that something might be following us – something like that crazy old rabid
hobo. But all I can hear are Dan’s footsteps and the sound of our breathing.
‘Does this look different to you?’ I say.
‘How?’
‘I dunno.’ But the stairwell doesn’t just look different, it feels different. The stairs smell like concrete stairwells always smell – like piss and damp – but last
time they stank of something fishy and dead. And the light isn’t fading as we head deeper.
‘Okaaaay,’ I say. ‘You think we’ve taken a wrong turn?’
The stairs don’t finish in mid-air. They go all the way down to the ground, and instead of a black tunnel crawling with rats, there’s a bland grey door in front of us.
‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘Maybe they’ve completed the stairs since we last came here?’
‘Maybe.’
But the door’s battered and scruffy; the paint peeling and scratched. There’s even rust on the hinges.
And there’s something else.
‘Last time, I’m sure we went much deeper,’ I say. ‘It was as if the steps went on for ever. Remember?’
‘We were scared shitless last time.’
‘You’re not scared now?’
He shrugs. ‘Ja. But at least this time we know what we’re letting ourselves in for.’
‘Do we?’ I pull open the door and walk through.
‘What the fuck?’
The bundles of rags are gone. So is the rusted old car. So are the drums and their stinking smoke. And there’s certainly no sign of the old woman. There don’t seem to be any rats,
either. And the place hums with electricity; the strip lighting stuck onto the low ceiling has the look of emergency lighting about it, but it’s way brighter than I remember it being.
‘Is this the right place?’
‘It must be,’ Dan says. He gestures around him. ‘I mean, the structure looks the same.’ He pauses. ‘I think it does, anyway.’ He wanders into one of the
abandoned shops, stepping over a half-empty bag of cement. ‘Isn’t this where we were going to eat that shitty food?’
‘I think so,’ I say.
The place looks exactly like what it is – a half-constructed mall food court. But the dust and dirt and filth and ash are gone. The concrete floor looks newly swept. It’s the same
place without the… trappings. It feels empty, abandoned. Spookily so. The closest things to any sign of life are the conduit wires snaking out of the walls.
Dan’s phone beeps. Now it’s his turn to scramble in his pocket.
‘It must be them!’ he says, glancing at me, excitement in his eyes.
His look of disappointment is almost comical. He waves his phone. ‘It’s Mom.’
‘What’s she want?’
‘Wants to know what time we’re coming home for supper.’
We glance at each other, and I swallow the giggle that’s burbling up. Dan’s looking stricken. I don’t want him to lose his nerve now.
‘Fuck it, Dan,’ I say. ‘We must have taken a wrong turn.’
‘Impossible,’ he says. His eyes skate around the cavernous space, and he starts heading toward one of the pillars.
‘Where you going?’
‘Check,’ he says, bending down and picking something up. He holds it aloft. ‘Recognise this?’
It’s a watch. ‘Fuck. Is that your watch? The one that old bitch took?’
‘Ja,’ he says. ‘Look, Rhoda. Someone probably came down here, did a major clean-up. It has to be the same place.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. But there’s more than just a niggling feeling of doubt. ‘So if this is the place where we saw that horrible old woman, then the market must be this
way.’ I start heading towards the large, open-plan area to our left.
‘Wait!’ he says.
It’s strange walking through it in the light. ‘Last time we were here it felt way bigger,’ I say.
‘Ja, but we had to feel our way in the dark, remember?’ Dan says.
Something occurs to me. ‘But what happened to that door?’
‘What door?’
‘You remember. There was a door that led to nowhere – it was bricked up.’
Both of us scan the space. The wall alongside us is smooth, the plaster unbroken. None of it looks newly applied.
‘You know, Rhoda,’ he says, ‘we were really freaked out. We were traumatised. And you were…’
‘I was what?’
‘On drugs,’ he mumbles.
‘I’d had a bit of coke, Dan. That heightens perceptions, it doesn’t warp them.’
‘Whatever. Look, just now we’ll come to that ramp downwards and that fucked-up sign…’ Dan’s voice trails away.
‘Looks like we’ve found it,’ I finish for him.
We both jog towards the slope that leans down to the next level.
Dan gets there before me. ‘Hmm.’
‘Well?’
‘See for yourself.’
The sign is way smaller than the first one, and reads: ‘Construction workers only. Trespassers will be prosecuted.’
Dan’s already heading down the slope to the next level. I have no choice but to follow. There’s a white door straight in front of us.
Now that does look exactly as I remember it, thank fuck.
As I sprint to catch up with him, I almost trip over something in my path.
It’s the lamp – the one we’d cadged from the old hag.
‘Look!’ I shout to Dan.
‘See?’ Dan says, sounding triumphant. ‘I told you we were going the right way! It’s just the different light playing tricks on us.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘You’re right.’
He lights another cigarette and we bounce it between us. Now we’re here, neither of us is in any great hurry to go through the door.
I stub the fag out under my heel, and reach over and touch Dan’s cheek. ‘Okay, Dan,’ I say. ‘Deep breath. At the top of this stairwell we’re going to enter that
mirror room. You sure you’ll cope with that?’
‘Yeah,’ he says. But his smile is forced.
‘Okay.’
I reach behind me and he takes my hand. I pull the door open and we head up the stairs. I try to ignore the fact that the once-gleaming white tiles are grubby and covered in mildew (that can
happen in a week or so, right?), and in no time we’re facing the door at the top.
Neither of us mentions that the sign is gone.
‘Ready?’ I say.
‘Yeah. Let’s do this.’
I half close my eyes in case we’re about to be hit with that blinding light, and push open the door.
chapter 30
DANIEL
It would have been a relief to find the mirror room, to be chased by that slavering monster. To run along corridors populated with zombies and dead mannequins, to get
threatened by the malicious Management. We would have known we were on our way back there.
But as one door after another just opened out onto another concrete corridor leading back to the half-built food court and the deserted parking lot, we started coming back down to earth. Like
waking up from an exhilarating dream, desperately trying to cling to its frays before they all drift away in the cold morning breeze. I could see it in Rhoda’s face: first a forced optimism,
then as the reality hit home – that we were going nowhere, that there was nowhere but here – she couldn’t mask her dis appointment. Those bubbly dreams of champagne and high
fashion, of being in demand, of being pampered like she deserves melted out of her face. Some of the joy drained out too. I realised for the first time that running made her happy.
I tried to convince myself that we had imagined it all, my weak mind always ready to make a compromise, but I knew in reality we had simply lost our chance. When we ran away from that other
mall, we became uninvited: we had had our chance at belonging to their world and we had rejected it.
The ninth day of waiting.
We’ve still got a choice. There’s always a choice. We can either go back home, face our punishment, or stay here, hoping against hope that Management will call us again. I
won’t manage a brief, vicious life in prison hell. So we wait. If we wait just here, if they change their minds, all it will take is a step through the door.
We’ve built a decent-enough nest for ourselves out of cardboard boxes, newspapers, drop cloths and plastic sheeting left behind by the builders. We’ve found a safe route to the trash
compressor. There are more than enough half-burgers and chips, boxes of leftover popcorn and jumbo soft drinks to survive on. But there’s no soap or toothpaste, very little fresh water, and I
feel the food eating me from the inside.
Rhoda looks like she’s done this before, nestling into the plastic bed with a contented sigh when she sleeps. I hate to think of how she’s lived. She opens her eyes and sees me
watching her and tells me to fuck off with a smile. I go to our piss-hole in the never-was restaurant we’ve dubbed The Seashore. We sit there sometimes, looking out over the parking lot,
listening to the subterranean thrum of the traffic locked away outside.
‘Watch out, Dan, that seagull’s going to shit on your head,’ Rhoda warns.
‘Yeah, well, this dolphin’s just bitten your leg off, so there.’
‘Dolphins don’t bite people, fuckwit,’ she complains.
‘This one does. It’s a starving, mutant, underground dolphin. All it eats is the burger boxes we throw away and it has developed acid saliva that can shear your flesh off with one
lick.’
‘Okaaaay…’ she drawls, and we don’t laugh. The Guardian is always ranging the corridors in our minds.
We sat at this table when the grey woman came to speak to us. I remember banging my head on the ground as I tripped over. Right there. I’m sure I do.
Time folds into itself here. Our phones still tell us the time when we switch them on occasionally, always hoping in vain for some message, some invitation, but when you’re just waiting,
time and dates are just meaningless numbers. The neon strip lights always burn. Rhoda and I have walled our flatlet with thick black plastic sheeting, so we get some darkness when we need it. We
measure our rhythms by the muffled growl of the traffic outside – the outside that we never see down here. The building sighs and ticks and shifts like a body, alarms its gurgling stomach,
the rumble of delivery gates its gaseous exchange.
It’s my turn to do groceries today. I come back from the garbage enclosure with a bagful of half-burgers, some warm blue milkshake and half a bottle of flat sparkling water. I’ve
also found some outdated flowers – carnations, but still – and a cluster of melted-together tea-lights. I set them up on a table in the food court while Rhoda dozes. She’s been
sleeping a lot lately, finding comfort in dreams, passing the time while we wait.
My shuffling about wakes her; she smiles to see the little galaxy I’ve made in the food court and comes over to join me, stretching groggily and rubbing her hands over her head. She digs
in, putting aside some of the unused tomato sauce sachets. A suck of ketchup makes a good pick-me-up.
I sometimes think of Bradley, stuck on that bookshelf, gasping, his legs kicking. I didn’t mean it. He shouldn’t have been so important in my life. He should have been nobody to me;
but there it is, he became my fate; he took my life for his own.
‘You look sad,’ Rhoda says.
‘No. I’m fine.’
‘You want to leave, don’t you?’
I’ve thought of the options so often, and I know this is the best one. ‘No.’
‘We’ll get back. I’m sure of it.’ But I’ve never heard her speak with less conviction.
‘We weren’t just dreaming?’ I say.
‘No.’
I say nothing.
‘Thanks for the flowers. You’re the nicest boyfriend I’ve ever had. Even introduced me to your mum.’ She stops talking like she’s said something wrong.
‘It’s okay,’ I say. I’m worried about my mother, but what would hurt her more? Me here, missing as far as she’s concerned, or me in jail being raped, getting Aids.
I’ve stopped listening to the voicemails she leaves on the phone. I can’t listen to her pleas, the tears in her voice, the slur of her words when she’s been drinking, the promises
to ‘get me the best lawyer in Joburg’. To her trying to convince herself that the police must have made a mistake, that her son, her Daniel, couldn’t possibly have done anything
wrong.
At the same time I’m thinking of the poison inside me. How long do we wait here? How long must we eat rubbish? It should be the least of my worries, I suppose, but ever since my dad died,
I’ve felt cancer hiding in my bones, a time bomb in my blood. I’m in terror of being poisoned by my own body, and I’m terrified of feeding the fire inside with all this filthy
crap.
‘We’ll get out of here, won’t we?’
‘We will, Dan. It won’t be long. Or we’ll make another plan.’
That night when we switch on our phones I have a message. Rhoda hears the beep-beep and hurries across from the brazier where she’s starting a fire. ‘I told you,
Dan. Game on! We’re in.’
I don’t know how to disappoint her. It’s another text from Mom, but Rhoda reads the news on my face and slouches back to the fire. This time I thumb
the message open.
I wish I wasn’t hurting her so much. I want to phone her, or maybe a message would be better.
has expired.