Feeding Frenzy #4
At first he felt envious and lonely, but after a while he began to enjoy his solitude.
The work was undemanding and he liked not having to make conversation with people he hardly knew.
He found that after the first half-hour he got into a routine that became mesmerising, almost soporific.
Over and over again he would slit open a box, sort out the haphazard mixture of books inside and place them in the correct sections on the shelves.
Eventually he reached a state where he felt irritated each time he was interrupted, though he did his best to hide it.
He had been in the Sort room for just over an hour when Ellie came in.
“How you doing?” she said brightly.
“Okay,” he replied, trying to smile.
He hoped that would be sufficient, but she stood and looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. Adam was aware of her eyes on him, but didn’t acknowledge them in the hope it would discourage her. However a few seconds later she said, “You don’t have to work in silence, you know.”
When he looked at her blankly she said, “There’s a CD player and a bunch of CDs in the desk drawer.”
“I’m fine,” he said. “I like the quiet.”
She looked at him as though he’d told her he liked having needles pushed under his fingernails, then she shrugged. “All right, please yourself.”
“Just because I’m not like you doesn’t mean I’m weird,” he muttered, but not until she had gone.
He tried to get back to work, re-establish his routine, but he was unsettled now, distracted.
Maybe it was time for a break. He’d been working in here for over two hours and nobody had come to relieve him.
He was bracing himself to step out into the over-bright clamour of the shop when he heard a sound behind him.
Shoulder-blades tingling, he spun round, then stood perfectly still as his gaze scuttled over the metal shelves, the piles of boxes, the stack of cardboard, the plastic bin full of rubbish.
The sound he had heard had put him in mind of the dry slither of a snake.
It had lasted for only a second or less, but he had heard it clearly.
Could it be possible that a snake had got in here?
Did they even have snakes in the city? Of course, he may simply have heard the quick scuttle of a mouse, or even the sound of a book sliding from an unstable pile.
He thought about telling someone, then immediately decided against it.
He felt isolated enough as it was; he certainly didn’t want to become known as the loony who thought there was a snake in the Sort room.
Pulling his sleeves over his hands, as though that would make a difference, he edged around the table towards the place where the sound had come from.
When he reached the waist-high pile of flattened cardboard boxes he’d been adding to all morning, he gave it a swift kick.
He imagined something shooting out from behind it, perhaps flying at him with wide-open jaws, but nothing did.
The metal shelves along the back wall towered above him, and his head jerked on his neck as he looked up, down, left, right.
He knew it was either ridiculous or foolhardy even as he wheeled the metal steps from the corner and clumped up them to take a closer look at the upper shelves, which were a foot or more apart and stacked with piles of books.
As he leaned forward it occurred to him that he was acting like a character in one of his books, like the kind of character whose actions seemed too stupid to be real.
But if he was a character in a horror story, would his behaviour seem stupid to a reader?
If so, it would surely only be because the reader would know they were reading a horror story and therefore had an idea what to expect.
As a character he couldn’t be expected to expect the unexpected, because what happened in horror stories didn’t happen in real life.
At once he felt dizzy and clutched his head with his left hand a split second before his right curled around the hand-rail of the metal steps.
With the dizziness came the merest whiff of ink and paper, which was the smell of his earlier headache.
At the same moment he had the oddest impression not only that his previous thoughts had not been his, but also that he was being toyed with or mocked in some way.
Perhaps continuously breathing in the smell of chemicals involved in the manufacture of books was like a mild form of glue-sniffing.
Whatever the reason, he needed to clear his head.
His legs felt like lead as he clumped to the bottom of the metal steps and pushed them back into the corner of the room.
The instant the steps ceased their clattering he heard the sound again, or something like it.
For a second time he whirled round, but just as before saw no indication of movement.
The sound had been so brief that he had to recreate it in his mind to realise how it had differed from the first sound he had heard.
Rather than a slithering, this had been more of a shifting, as though something much larger than a human being was turning over in its sleep.
He might almost have believed that a number of the boxes were haphazardly stacked and were moving against one another, perhaps prior to toppling, if the sound had not appeared to come from floor level.
Go get a coffee, he thought. Forget about it.
This is not your problem. He would do that very thing just as soon as he’d pulled aside a couple of the boxes that had been stacked on the floor beneath the bottom shelf, to satisfy his curiosity.
He gave the boxes he was intending to move an experimental kick first, promising himself that if he heard movement from behind them he wouldn’t touch them.
He remembered Ellie telling him that he didn’t have to work in silence, that he could listen to music if he liked.
Perhaps that was why no one had heard the sounds before, because they’d always had their row blasting out.
He bent down, grabbed the corners of one of the cardboard boxes that was protruding from beneath the bottom shelf, and heaved.
Christ, it was heavy! Nevertheless, by using all his strength he was able to shift the box an inch at a time.
Eventually the widening chunk of darkness behind it grew lighter, as if it was the box’s crumpled, sticky shadow thinning as it stretched.
Sweating, Adam bent more than double to peer into the still-dim gap, and his eyes widened.
Set into the floor was a wooden trap door, inset with an iron ring he could have fitted his clenched fist through.
It was obviously ancient; over the years the roughly-hewn block of wood had been worn so smooth that it now more resembled stone.
The ring was knobbly with rust, and Adam was stretching his hand towards it when a voice behind him said, “Found something?”
Adam jerked forward, cracking his head on the sharp edge of the metal shelf.
The cold sheet of pain that spread across his skull made him think for a moment that his scalp was cut and flowing with blood, but a quick examination proved otherwise.
Even so, he felt dizzy enough, when he looked round, to think for a moment that he was being confronted by a snake in human form shedding its skin.
Then he realised it was Nigel, whose peeling head seemed to bulge as he loomed forward.
“Sorry, Adam, I didn’t mean to make you jump. Are you all right?”
“I didn’t hear you come in,” Adam said, then wondered whether he had. He imagined Nigel’s dry skin scraping against his clothes, flakes of it drifting from his shirt and trouser cuffs, leaving a trail. He shuddered and closed his eyes briefly.
“Can you stand?”
“I think so.”
“Up you come then.”
Adam scrambled to his feet before Nigel’s hand could clamp tight as jaws around his arm.
“Been exploring?” Nigel said. Adam was not sure whether he detected a hint of disapproval in the manager’s voice.
“I heard a noise. I thought I’d better check in case it was rats.”
“I’m not sure how wise that was to do alone. I take it you didn’t find any?”
“No. This is interesting, though.”
Nigel barely gave the trap door a glance. “I understand this building used to be a theatre. Perhaps this was the stage.”
“And this was the trap door that magician’s assistants and whatnot used to disappear down, you mean? Shall we have a look?”
“Absolutely not. There’ll be nothing down there now except rubble and dirt and God knows what.”
“Maybe whatever I heard moving is down there.”
“Then it’ll stay there. Give me a hand pushing this box back and then you can go for your break.”
He’s the only man I’ve ever known who has more dandruff than hair.
Adam sat in the break room, trying the line out in his head.
It was lunch-time and he was hoping that Jacinta would come in.
Perhaps it was the bang on the head, but he’d decided to try to be more outgoing, and to start by asking Jacinta to have lunch with him.
Oliver sauntered into the break room, wearing a white shirt, waistcoat and tight black breeches.
“Hi, Oliver,” said Adam cheerfully. “You haven’t seen Jacinta, have you?”
Oliver had barely acknowledged him before he turned languidly away and busied himself with the contents of his locker. “Within what time span do you mean?”
“Now. I mean, do you know where she is now?”
“Out to lunch, I expect.”
“Whereabouts? Would you know?”
Oliver banged his locker shut and fixed Adam with a pitiless stare. “Why the desperation? Do you need someone to hold your lead?”
“Fuck off,” Adam said, laughing to show he intended taking the comment as a joke. “I need to see her about something, that’s all.”
Oliver raised his eyebrows. “I can’t say for certain, but she usually goes to the bagel shop.”
“The one down the side-street by the theatre?”
“I know of no other.”
“Thanks, Olly, you’re a pal.”
“I sincerely hope not.”