probably
felt no need to lock doors and bolt windows.
I pushed open the door, and waited
for the squeal of those hinges. It didn’t come; the door swung silently open on
a vaporous cloud of dust to reveal a messy galley kitchen that led onto a
cluttered hallway with mildewed cardboard boxes stacked against the walls. To
the right of this hallway was another door, this one a homemade affair constructed
from thick lengths of timber and painted a dull yellow. I rode my luck,
expecting this door to be unlocked too. It was, so I opened it.
A steep concrete staircase led down
into a fathomless darkness; as I stepped down I briefly questioned my actions
then pushed the thought away. I was acting on pure impulse now, shutting off my
mind and going with my gut instinct. If I stopped, I would panic: if I
panicked, I would bolt – probably drawing attention to my presence in the
process. All I needed was one look, a single glimpse into what I knew must be
the control room of this sinister organisation. Then I could go to the police
armed with proof, and bolstered by the knowledge that I wasn’t imagining some
convoluted conspiracy and these people actually existed.
The stairs led into a large
basement, and it was blacker than night down there; there was no natural
illumination, and I doubted that I would find a light switch even if I were
foolish enough to try. So I walked into the gloom, so afraid by now that I
couldn’t halt my momentum, like a man running full-tilt down a very steep
incline. I was simply a series of actions, with little thought behind them.
Soon I was lost in the dark, unable
to even guess at which direction was out. After a while I began to see shapes
form out of the darkness: sketchy figures propped against the seeping black
walls. There was no sound in there but that of my own ragged breathing, so I
knew that the figures were corpses; immediately after this realisation, I
became certain that they were the bodies stolen from the morgue. I slowly
counted the outlines that sat slumped against the bowing brickwork: there were
six of them. Half a dozen.
My feet slipped on the slimy earthen
floor as I advanced further into the room, looking for an object to take away
with me as solid evidence. Something crunched loudly underfoot, and I pitched
sideways in a clumsy fall. As I went down my right hand pushed against, then
slid off some vaguely familiar shape on the floor. My fingers poked into moist
holes, and I felt teeth rattle against my wedding ring. A face. There was a
face on the floor.
I looked down, unable to help
myself. Blind eyes stared back at me, an open mouth yawning emptily into the
chill air of the room. It was only then that I realised I’d been walking on the
dead all along; mutilated bodies lay in a thick carpet of decay on the basement
floor, and as my eyes at last became accustomed to the darkness I realised that
not one of them was Caucasian. I was lying on a crust of murdered immigrants.
And that was when I saw al-hakim. Or
rather what was left of him. The top half of his torso stood upright amid a
heap of severed limbs to my immediate left, his torn face sporting what were
obviously teeth marks. Bleached bone showed through like plastic where hungry
mouths had scooped out hunks of his wrinkled golden brown cheeks.
I looked again at those six immobile
figures that leaned against the wall; at their lurid sports casuals and stained
Burberry baseball caps. Something strained at the centre of my mind, a thought
that couldn’t quite escape its cage. And then they moved. The bodies. All six
of them, twitching and jerking like marionettes as they attempted to get to
their feet. But still not breathing, not any of them. They were dead; but they moved.
Towards me.
It was only then that I managed to
regain control of my senses, and ran blindly across the corpse-layered floor,
looking for an exit. The figures reached for me as I fled, loose white fingers
groping for my living flesh, but I kicked
felt no need to lock doors and bolt windows.
I pushed open the door, and waited
for the squeal of those hinges. It didn’t come; the door swung silently open on
a vaporous cloud of dust to reveal a messy galley kitchen that led onto a
cluttered hallway with mildewed cardboard boxes stacked against the walls. To
the right of this hallway was another door, this one a homemade affair constructed
from thick lengths of timber and painted a dull yellow. I rode my luck,
expecting this door to be unlocked too. It was, so I opened it.
A steep concrete staircase led down
into a fathomless darkness; as I stepped down I briefly questioned my actions
then pushed the thought away. I was acting on pure impulse now, shutting off my
mind and going with my gut instinct. If I stopped, I would panic: if I
panicked, I would bolt – probably drawing attention to my presence in the
process. All I needed was one look, a single glimpse into what I knew must be
the control room of this sinister organisation. Then I could go to the police
armed with proof, and bolstered by the knowledge that I wasn’t imagining some
convoluted conspiracy and these people actually existed.
The stairs led into a large
basement, and it was blacker than night down there; there was no natural
illumination, and I doubted that I would find a light switch even if I were
foolish enough to try. So I walked into the gloom, so afraid by now that I
couldn’t halt my momentum, like a man running full-tilt down a very steep
incline. I was simply a series of actions, with little thought behind them.
Soon I was lost in the dark, unable
to even guess at which direction was out. After a while I began to see shapes
form out of the darkness: sketchy figures propped against the seeping black
walls. There was no sound in there but that of my own ragged breathing, so I
knew that the figures were corpses; immediately after this realisation, I
became certain that they were the bodies stolen from the morgue. I slowly
counted the outlines that sat slumped against the bowing brickwork: there were
six of them. Half a dozen.
My feet slipped on the slimy earthen
floor as I advanced further into the room, looking for an object to take away
with me as solid evidence. Something crunched loudly underfoot, and I pitched
sideways in a clumsy fall. As I went down my right hand pushed against, then
slid off some vaguely familiar shape on the floor. My fingers poked into moist
holes, and I felt teeth rattle against my wedding ring. A face. There was a
face on the floor.
I looked down, unable to help
myself. Blind eyes stared back at me, an open mouth yawning emptily into the
chill air of the room. It was only then that I realised I’d been walking on the
dead all along; mutilated bodies lay in a thick carpet of decay on the basement
floor, and as my eyes at last became accustomed to the darkness I realised that
not one of them was Caucasian. I was lying on a crust of murdered immigrants.
And that was when I saw al-hakim. Or
rather what was left of him. The top half of his torso stood upright amid a
heap of severed limbs to my immediate left, his torn face sporting what were
obviously teeth marks. Bleached bone showed through like plastic where hungry
mouths had scooped out hunks of his wrinkled golden brown cheeks.
I looked again at those six immobile
figures that leaned against the wall; at their lurid sports casuals and stained
Burberry baseball caps. Something strained at the centre of my mind, a thought
that couldn’t quite escape its cage. And then they moved. The bodies. All six
of them, twitching and jerking like marionettes as they attempted to get to
their feet. But still not breathing, not any of them. They were dead; but they moved.
Towards me.
It was only then that I managed to
regain control of my senses, and ran blindly across the corpse-layered floor,
looking for an exit. The figures reached for me as I fled, loose white fingers
groping for my living flesh, but I kicked
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