[Original Novella] Whittier Alaska, Part 4

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It’s not her. Of course not, it never was. I knew since the elevator, I just didn’t want to believe it. Two steps at a time, then three, I hurled myself up flight after flight. I couldn’t hear it behind me, but I felt it getting closer. Pressing more and more sharply on my chest, my eardrums burning.

After the sixth flight of stairs, I stopped to catch my breath, never taking my eyes off the bottom of the steps where I knew she’d appear sooner or later. After the seventh set of stairs, I started to wonder if maybe I’ve miscounted. This building only has six floors, above ground level anyway.

After the ninth set of stairs, I was sure of it. Something’s gone wrong. I rest a little bit more, then ascend another three flights. Useless. So instead I set off down the hallway, but soon realize that won’t help me either.

After several minutes of running straight down the same corridor, it dawns on me that I should’ve reached the far end of the building by now. Shining my light down the corridor reveals only the next ten or so feet in front of me. Just a thick, soupy darkness beyond that point.

I slow to a jog. Then simply walk, wondering if there’s any point. When I turn around, I haven’t gone but twenty feet from the top of the stairwell. My phone rings. I hurriedly put my finger over where the sound comes out hoping to muffle it, and answer the call.

“Who is this?” I demand. “What is this place? Where is everybody?” A few seconds of faint, scratchy breathing follow. “No others. She got them all, but she won’t get me. I’m good at hiding, and I know her weakness.” My ears perk up. “C-control...the tone?” I ventured.

I heard muffled laughter on the other end. “Running won’t work, not where you are now. Any place with repeating features, she...she extends it. Warps it. So that it goes on forever in the direction she wants. You’re like a mouse in a wheel. But I will open a way. Don’t let fear take you, or you are lost. I will open a way. She’s close now. She’s close!”

Once again, she hung up on me. When I looked up, Mrs. Saganawa stood quietly at the top of the stairs. Just standing, waiting. Listening. My heartbeat quickened as the familiar pressure threatened to puncture it. “What do you want from me?”

Slowly, she extended one arm. Weakly, as if exhausted. At the same time, her mouth opened, but no sound came out. I turned to run, but after a few seconds I looked back. Like before, I hadn’t actually moved at all relative to the stairwell. But Mrs. Saganawa had gotten closer. Arm outstretched, jaw hanging open, head just barely tilted to one side.

I backed away, step by step. In the process I realized I was now actually moving relative to her, so long as I didn’t look away. So I backed away quicker. Her head snapped upright. Startled that I’ve discovered a way to flee? I now jogged backwards as fast as I could without tripping, never taking my eyes off her.

She screeched. It sounded like a mixture of whale calls and an angle grinder. At once, she lifted up off her feet and drifted towards me. Faster and faster she came, gaining on me as I backed away at full tilt. Then suddenly, a window came up behind me on my right.

Jacked up out of my mind on adrenaline, I threw myself out the window. A six story fall is nothing to sneeze at, but the thick snow drifts around the base of the building were cushion enough. When I picked myself up, wiped the snow out of my eyes and looked back up at the window...there she stood.

Staring. Face contorted into an angry scowl, mouth hanging open further than it should be able to, arm still outstretched. I hoofed it back towards the main building. Heart now racing such that I felt sure it would burst.

But I couldn’t stop, nor even slow down. What I knew was behind me in close pursuit would not have to trudge through the snow, as I did. She could simply glide over it. I didn’t even need to peer over my shoulder. I could feel her getting closer.

When at last I reached the entrance to the main building I was drenched in sweat, heart thumping raucously in my chest. I threw off the layers the moment I was inside, then spun around and locked the door. As I did so, I scanned the snow covered landscape outside, but saw no black figure. No trace at all of Mrs. Saganawa, or whatever it is that pursued me from the Buckner building.

Control the tone. The phrase pulsated in my mind. I raced down the stairs to the storage level, an austere concrete chamber lined to either side with chain link cages. This is where residents store belongings that won’t fit in the cramped little apartments.

I never bothered learning David’s last name, but I know his apartment number. After some searching, I find the storage cage with the same number printed onto a thin metal plate just above the lock. But if there’s guns inside, I can’t see them. It’s just all of David’s old baby stuff like a crib, a walker with little colorful dangly plastic shapes, that sort of thing. Why did they bring this?

I know Dad keeps his moose hunting rifle in storage, but it’s not my first choice. A breech loader with just one barrel, if the bullet either missed or didn’t have the desired effect, I wouldn’t get another chance. The fuckin’ thing is also as long as I am tall, and burdensomely heavy.

A gun is a gun. With no better plan jumping out at me, I ran up the stairs to the apartment and set about rummaging through Mom and Dad’s room in search of the key to their storage cage. I found it in the drawer where Mom keeps that “shoulder massager” she told me never to ask about again.

There’s also a pack of full sized candles in there with it. I shudder to think of what Mom and Dad do with these. Before I turned away, it struck me that candles should still work here. A non-electrical source of light, one which is commonly used to create a certain mood.

Not that I wanted to do that. Just any mood other than dark and barren. So I set up the candles all around the apartment, then lit them one by one with David’s lighter. After wandering these shadowy halls for hours, to suddenly illuminate one small portion of this place felt utterly strange. Like a precious little island of reality, surrounded by a waking nightmare.

With the storage key in hand, I returned to the cages. It was in the process of unfastening the lock that I heard a faint whimper from the far corner of the storage room. I spun around, sweeping the light from my phone over every inch of the room until I spotted a curled up little mass, huddled just behind the last row of cages.

“...Patrick?” But when the small, frail form stood up, I was in for a surprise. “David! What are you doing here?” He shivered violently, having come in just a t-shirt. I took off my jacket and wrapped it around him. “Patrick told me about the elevator thing. I didn’t believe him. After he went to tell your parents, I tried it myself. Is she...is she gone yet?”

Intuiting that he meant Mrs. Saganawa, I told him about the Buckner building, and how to control the tone. He registered brief shock at the last bit. “Who told you that?” he asked, his voice now more stern than frightened. I asked why it mattered.

“Did she say where she is? To meet her somewhere?” he pried. I then briefly wondered how he knew the voice on the phone was a girl, until a new possibility occurred to me. Warily, I started backing away. When he took a step towards me, I dashed into the storage cage and slammed it shut behind me.

Before he could pull it back open, I slipped the lock on from the inside and clicked it shut. He grabbed at my hands just a split second too late. “Come out of there. What’s gotten into you? I’m cold and scared. I need your help!” Acting his little ass off, but I remained unmoved.

“How do you launch a fart, David?” I loaded a round into the rifle while awaiting his answer. “Launch?...A what?” I shuddered. Then leveled the rifle at his forehead, held my breath, and squeezed the trigger. Having never shot any sort of gun before it knocked the wind out of me.

David vanished. Only ever an illusion, replaced by the black figure I saw out in the snow. What it looks like, when it doesn’t realize someone’s watching. Mottled and smeared, like a mannequin coated in dried oil, with thick black bristles poking out of it here and there.

No genitals, though it’s naked. No mouth or eyes either. If it were someone in a costume, they would suffocate inside a minute. The sizable hole I’d blasted in its chest did not heal, but nor did it kill the impossible creature before me. Instead, it approached the fence.

I whispered “no” over and over as if to stop it. But it continued coming, pressing itself bit by bit through the aluminum mesh. I turned and set about frantically searching for anything else that might be useful as weapon. Only cheap junk bought as birthday gifts in Anchorage years ago, then stashed down here to rot.

Control the tone. Again, that phrase leapt to the forefront of my mind. Inside of a trash bag, along with busted up crayons and a variety of my old dolls that Patrick beheaded, I found the musical projection night light Dad bought me. I don’t know why he thought a fourteen year old needed a night light, but right now, it’s exactly what I want most.

No outlets in here, but it runs on batteries. The power outlets didn’t work. Is it just the outlets, or electricity in general? As the mass of greasy black shit continued forcing itself through the door of the cage, I flipped the switch...only for nothing to happen.

I nearly gave up before I noticed the little cloth tab. I never even used the damn thing once. It still has the tab in there to prevent the batteries from making contact. I yank it out, flip the switch, and suddenly the whole room is bathed in colored light.

The oily thing recoils from it. Stiffening up immediately both in posture and consistency, then slinking away with a limp as if in pain. “Rock a Bye Baby” blared from the gadget’s tinny little speakers as multicolored stars, unicorns, crescent moons and clouds slowly circled the walls and ceiling.

I cried. Too tense until then, the sudden respite set loose my tears. On my hands and knees amid dusty old junk, I bawled with relief. Everything I did between the Buckner building and the storage room was down to fear. Like a robot, forcing me to do whatever it takes to protect myself, step by step. Never any time to process it all.

Snot frozen under my nose during the trek through the snow finally thawed, and began to drip. I wiped it away with the sleeve of my jacket, reloaded the rifle, and picked up the night light. Holding it out in front of me like a lantern, I cautiously unfastened the lock with one hand and swung the cage door open.

I leaned into the hallway and peered as far as I could see down its length in either direction. No sign of the black figure. Inch by inch, hands shaking, I made my way towards the stairwell. The repetitive tune coming from the night light, only irritating before, is now the sweetest music I’ve ever heard.

As soon as I reach the elevator, I jam the button over and over until the door opens. So warm and inviting inside, the only electrical light besides the one on my phone. My...phone? When I look down at it, the light is off. I press the power button, but the only thing on the screen is a blinking battery icon.

No. No, it can’t. Not now! I shake it. I slam it against the side of the elevator and scream. After a minute of doing that I calm down, check the phone for damage, then stash it in my pocket. If the night light batteries work, there could still be some way to charge the phone stashed in one of those cages.

If only I’d believed sooner. If only my dumb ass had come straight back to the elevator. I bash my forehead with one hand and resume screaming for a bit, before regaining composure. Nothing else to do but look for a way to charge the phone.

I’ve seen those things you put batteries into, which then plug into your phone. I just don’t have one and I don’t know if anybody in the building does. There’s never any need. We’re indoors all the time, there’s always an outlet handy.

It was something to latch onto, though. Something to hope for. So I set off for the cages again, dreading the prospect of being cornered by that...whatever it is...a second time. I couldn’t have anticipated that I wouldn’t even make it far enough for that, or I would’ve stayed in the elevator.

Halfway there, the night light tune started to slow down and distort. The thing about disposable batteries is that they don’t just up and quit on you. They get weaker and weaker before they give out. What I never took into account is that a slowed down, distorted, low pitched rendition of “Rock a Bye Baby” creates a very different mood than it does when properly played.

Especially when the colored lights died. Just like that, the sharpness in my chest returned. Just a hint, but I knew it so well by now that it didn’t escape my notice. I ripped the batteries out of the cheap plastic globe, but kept it with me in case I could find a fresh set of batteries for it down in the cages.

“Oh thank God.” When I turned towards the voice, it was my Dad. Dirty, disheveled, with bags under his eyes. The expression on his face was one of profound relief. “D-dad? Is that...you?” He held out his arms, soliciting a hug. “What do you mean, is it me? Do you have any idea how worried your mother and I were when Patrick told us you were gone?”

I carefully loaded another round into the rifle. His gaze shifted to it, and at once his relief gave way to concern. “You’re never to handle that rifle, young lady. Put that right back where you found it. Then you and I are going home.”

I asked him what he said after he whistled at the bundled up woman, that day he took me down to the “beach”. He raised an eyebrow. “Is this really the time? Listen, I’m not exactly sure what this place is. I just did the steps on the list Patrick gave me. I think if we do them again, we-”

I sent a round straight through its head this time. One in the chest didn’t kill it, but surely it must have a brain. The sticky black creature did stumble backwards as if in pain, or at least disoriented. I seized the opportunity to run straight past it and up the stairs.

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^{Stay Tuned for Part 5!}