The Empty Chair

I promised a short story as incentive for hitting £1,000 in donations to Azadi. This is that story.

The Empty Chair

I dunno if you ever went to Creggo’s? I mean, R. Cregeen’s Collectibles. It was down by the Ropewalks, off Back Roscoe, until they gutted that whole street after the fire a few years back. A grotty little shop that give off the impression it’d been squeezed like toothpaste between a tyre place and a builder’s merchant; thin shopfront, but it went far back and spilled out into a beautiful sprawling mess of shelves and cubby-holes.

If anybody ever knew what the R was they never told me. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d forgot it himself, except I don’t reckon he ever forgot nothing.

I went down there one day after I knocked off at lunchtime, just prowling about seeing what was new. Mazza was there and we got talking about all kinds; he’d picked up a set of antique programmes and theatrical posters I promised to go and see. Not really my thing, but he wanted my take on the design work. After a bit he asked if I’d heard any more about Lara Al-Yaqoobi.

I never had much to do with her; bit too intense for me, that woman. Brilliant though. I seen her at a poetry night down Bootle way about a year before, and she done a couple of readings that had everyone like rabbits in the headlights, really dug their fingers in your brain. Serious authority on esoterica too, especially Assyrian and Spanish works, which is how I’d come to talk to her a few times.

She kept some pretty screwy company, though, and the fringes she was hanging out on had seedy neighbours, like. There was this old Scottish couple, lived in that white corner house at Parkgate overlooking the marsh. Probably still do. They bought a book off me once; lovely 17th-century folio herbal-and-folklore from Andalucia, cash on delivery. I never had a more uncomfortable cuppa in my life, sat there and the pair of them gloating over the pages, giving me glances and saying the weirdest things, trying to draw me out. It was like having tea with someone’s maiden aunt, if she was also a used car dealer and a part-time witch.

Well, she’d dropped out of sight suddenly a few weeks before, and nobody knew where. Turned up missing at a few engagements, not a word said. Dutton tracked down an address in the end, but the place was pretty much cleaned out, and the landlord said he’d never actually met her.

I’d heard she caused a scene at Leung’s place a while back, and that raised a few eyebrows. Mazza said lately she’d been coming out with the kind of talk that makes you back off, straight-up paranoia. The Masons were watching her, apparently, looking for secrets smuggled out of Spain just ahead of the Inquisition. She’d been mixing with people what take what’s wrote down far too seriously, and a couple of manuscript dealers the likes of us wouldn’t touch. Five-finger imports, if you know what I mean. Maybe she got into trouble and had to light out fast. Or maybe she ended up in a mental ward. Cheerful stuff.

It makes you think a bit, cos in this business the distance between professional zeal and full-on psychotic obsession isn’t so very far. Nobody likes to talk about that. There was an awkward pause, and we moved onto other topics until he had to go and pick up the kids.

I wasn’t meaning to buy nothing, but I found myself a nice little watercolour landscape that I fancied, not too pricey, pre-war, so I wandered over to the till.

“Watercolours today, is it? I see you and Marron there were having a nice chat. Doing well, is he?”

“Not bad. He was just catching me up on that business with Al-Yaqoobi,” says I, passing him the picture. It occurred to me that she’d actually been a regular here, not surprising considering everything. You never knew what you might find at Creggo’s, but it was a treasure-trove. “You knew her, didn’t you?”

“That’ll be thirty quid. I did and all, clever lass that, good eye for unusual pieces. So what’s the news?”

“Nothing you could call news. Nobody’s got a clue. A load of nonsense about Triads mostly.”

Creggo licked his fingers and skinned one paper bag from the tight stack under the counter. The rumour of a knowing smirk slunk over his face and dove out of sight down the neck of his horrible jumper.

“Is that what they’re saying, now?” He made, to his credit, a half-arsed effort to instil the words with genuine curiosity, but it come out like a schoolkid winding up sir by asking questions of carefully-calibrated daftness.

I cocked an indulgent eyebrow at him. “Last I heard, yeah. Why, what d’you reckon?”

“Well, people have all kinds of theories, don’t they. I’m just running the shop here. You can’t go expecting miracles.”

He was maybe going for ‘inscrutable’, but pulling off inscrutability relies on beginning with at least the subtlety of the average bull walrus. The two cans of Hen he generally downs of a lunchtime weren’t exactly doing him no favours neither. If he’d opened the drawer and pulled out a placard with “ask me, ask me!” wrote on it in scarlet board marker, and then proceeded to do a tap routine while using it to sign “I know something you don’t’ know” in semaphore, that would’ve seemed comparatively deadpan, is what I’m saying.

I wasn’t exactly in the mood for playing games, to be honest. Creggo’s got a cryptic way with him at the best of times, like, and I half reckon he only ran the shop so’s he could play at being a knock-off Sphinx. He loves casting out these enigmatic phrases, and then if any poor sod bites he’ll wind them up and leave them hanging until he feels like he’s got his weekly dose of condescension in. Proper does my head in sometimes.

You might wonder why he gets any customers, but he knows his stock, and that goes a long way. To be fair, when he’s feeling helpful he can reel out this unbelievable stream of information. He’s been at six universities as far as I know, and I’ve heard him talking at least eight languages without batting an eyelid. It’s not like he’s not entitled to be a cocky git, which is more than most people can say. Annoying, yeah, but he always seemed a decent bloke otherwise, like.

I give him a broad shrug and said I understood he couldn’t go sharing no confidences. Privacy of the client, and all that, a businessman like him. A bit close to the bone, maybe; he flicked an eye and said as how she had been to see him not too long ago. After a spot more back-and-forth he cracks.

Apparently Al-Yaqoobi was hunting down a particular bit of info and she come to Creggo’s looking for it. There was a set of cellars downstairs where he kept a lot of the stock, and he let her rent one out while she worked on some of his books. Didn’t know what she’d been doing, and didn’t ask, cos he frankly didn’t care. I’m pretty sure he just seen it as another chance to play the big man doing a favour.

“Take a look if you want. You know the way.” He had a knowing look on him, like there’s a big secret joke lurking behind his eyes. “Room nine.”

I sort of weighed it up in my head. Most likely he’s just skitting somehow and there’s nothing to find. On the other, I know he’s been dangling bait at me but that doesn’t mean it’s not making me hungry, like. And who doesn’t love a mystery?

There was no door on the cellars, just a manky wooden bead curtain what was probably quite nice fifty years ago. It had a stylised pattern of an elephant on it – Thai work, I think – but the damp or mould or something got to it, so it looked like the elephant was slowly succumbing to leprosy. I glanced at it, and then back at him. He raised an eyebrow at me.

“Maybe she wrote herself into a corner,” I said, and give him a nod and strolled on through.

******************************************

Like he said, I’d already been down there once, about a year before, when he wanted a hand fetching up some books I’d ordered. The stairs are proper narrow, maybe eighteen inches, and there’s no handrail on the outside even though they go down at least ten foot; plus the ceiling slopes down low overhead, so descending is this calculated exercise in self-control. I’ve no idea how the old devil carted all his stock up and down there.

I flicked on the puny lights before I went down – cheapskate only had a few bare bulbs hanging up there to light the whole place. How Creggo ever found anything in there was another mystery, but if it turned out he was part mole on his mam’s side it wouldn’t especially surprise me, like. It was dead quiet, in both senses of the word, like the darkness just swallowed up any noise along with the light. I had trainers on, so I didn’t make a sound creeping down and holding onto the inside rail for dear life.

The cellar must have been the full length of the shop, and maybe a couple more too. It had red brick walls what I’d call probably late eighteenth century, given the height and brickwork; older than the shop, which meant it was probably left over from an old warehouse, and some enterprising landlord slapped a shop on top to make use of the place when they were redeveloping. There were dock-off heavy wooden shelves everywhere, right up to the ceiling, jam-packed with books and boxes, jutting up to the walls here and there so’s you couldn’t see right down the cellar.

Spaced evenly round the walls there were these arched doorways, although the doors can’t have been period. They had porthole windows in them, and by the look of it they’d been cannibalised off a ship in the late Victorian. Beautiful brasswork, though I didn’t recognise the mark. It might’ve been dark, but everything was clean; you don’t want any dust around, it rots the paper. Must’ve been handy with a brush, that man.

I waited a couple of minutes for my eyes to get used to the murk down here, then I started looking for room nine. As soon as I turned the corner, the shelves cut off sight to the stairs, and I might as well have been a mile underground for all I could tell. Although I’d been practically sent down there, I didn’t feel it was right to go snooping around too much, like. Saying that, I couldn’t help having a sly dekko at some of the stock he kept down here away from the casual punters. That time before, I never went past the first shelf.

Tell you what, there was some lovely items down there: I saw a Bardslay History of Music with all the gilt intact and hand-coloured plates, which I’ve got to admit I took down and spent a minute or two venerating; and a couple of Chinese paintings that must be worth a mint if they aren’t fakes. I took a glance through one of the portholes as I was passing, but it didn’t look like there was anything in there except an empty armchair in the corner. Considering how the rest of the place was stuffed, that was a bit strange, like. Maybe it was his smoking room or something, I thought.

There was a butterfly big as your two hands spread, pinned up in glass, midnight blue and almost glowing. A complete run of Great Houses of England and their Histories you could almost call mint. An absolutely stunning pocket poetry book from somewhere Slavic; I couldn’t read a word, but the binding was this exquisite silver-embossed rose suede, and there was the most delicate leaf tracery spreading from the gild edging to wrap around the verse.

Anyway, I pulled myself together to stop gawping so’s I wouldn’t get Creggo passive-aggressively asking me what I thought of the merchandise. It can’t have took more than a couple of minutes to get to the room, but it felt like about a hundred years. I’ve spent my share of time in library basements and titchy little alley bookshops whose owners are apparently allergic to windows and dusting, but there’s something about dark, quiet, old places what just slows everything down somehow. Like as though all that time what’s pent up in the bricks presses down on your body and on your mind. I never was much cop at physics, but it’s like a cousin of gravity, or you could even say it’s the other kind of gravity in the flesh. Obviously that’s daft, but you know that feeling you get sometimes in cathedrals or proper forests, where it’s like a sense you never knew you had suddenly sweeping in and nailing your tongue down?

Seeing as how Creggo taunted me into going down there, I reckoned he was up to something. He probably knew the atmosphere of the cellar was liable to weigh on people’s minds. So, given how much he likes talking down to people, it seemed like he’d probably rigged up something to make people jump, then he could skit at them for freaking out. I was half inclined to just chuck it in and head back upstairs, but on the other hand – sometimes he did know things, and if there was any clue down there what happened to Al-Yaqoobi I couldn’t stand to pass up the chance. Plus I didn’t want him calling me a wuss.

I walked slowly to the door with IX painted on it in fading white, and paused a minute to think. If Creggo was setting this up as a prank, he’d almost certainly have rigged things up so’s customers would press up against the porthole for a proper look, and then get a jump scare right in their face. So I narrowed my eyes and peered through from a couple of yards back.

Between the miserly lighting, the shelves and the titchy window, there wasn’t much light getting in there. It wasn’t much of a room, from what I could see. There was a desk in there right enough, over in the corner, with your classic cheap wooden chair. I seen a few books on top of the desk, and sheets of paper; someone had been taking notes, or maybe doing inventory, or even binding loose pages back in.

No sign of any mischief this side, so I wasn’t expecting a bucket on my head. Let’s get this over with, I thought, so I leaned forward and basically give the door a jerk like I was opening it.

It didn’t move. Instead, there was a flicker of movement, and something like a mannequin sprung up at the door, rattling around like it was on springs, even banging into the porthole a couple of times.

It’d have give me a shock right enough if I’d been pressing my face up against the glass, but since I was expecting it, it just looked ridiculous, a spindly sort of vague scarecrow thing. It was a clever trick, like; whatever gimmick he had to set it off, I couldn’t make it out. Didn’t really matter, though. Suspicions confirmed. Time to leave.

I was a bit surprised not to see Creggo peering round a corner somewhere gawping at me, but no sign of him. He’d probably be happy enough taking the mick out of anyone what actually went down there. No need to watch, he could imagine it all, way more humiliating that it’d ever be in real life. Although now that I looked, the closest door, room VIII, that was open now – maybe he’d ducked inside?

No sign of him, or anything much in there; just a funny smell, like old rotting metal, maybe. And yet.

There’s nothing inherently sinister, or even weird, about an open door. But now that I looked around, as far as I could see in the tobacco-yellow gloom, all of them doors were open now. They’d opened without a sign of anyone, without a sound. When I shoved that handle I’d been stretching every nerve for a sign of whatever trick Creggo was pulling; I’d have heard a mouse twitch a whisker.

My whole brain stopped, like I’d run into a patch of treacle. I’ve dealt with trouble before, I wasn’t scared exactly, just – none of my instincts had any idea how to react to a simple little inexplicable turn like that. It wasn’t fight-or-flight or anything; it was like how a crowd just stands there staring while something kicks off in front of them.

After probably a minute or two, I shook it off a bit and started back for the stairs, still not really thinking straight. There was that stink what I couldn’t quite put a name to, and that was bugging me like hell. Where did that come from anyway, unless it was out the rooms? And then I stopped for a sec when I seen them Chinese paintings again, not looking exactly, just pointing my eyes at them like when you wake up groggy and spend five minutes staring at a kettle before you remember how it works. Sort of turned my head that way, and I deffo heard something down the far end, like cloth dragging on the floor.

Well of course, I squinted a bit to try and make out what was going on, and I seen something moving, but it wasn’t Creggo.

There was this lumpy shape shuffling along, or waddling maybe, more like a heap than anything. It was slow and awkward, but there was something about it even just from a glimpse. I stopped dead and caught my breath just staring after it, willing it to disappear. Even my shadow tensed up. It took forever just to lumber off behind the next shelf.

When I finally felt safe enough to move, I started creeping forward again, looking for those stairs it felt like I hadn’t seen in a century. Then I saw movement again, up ahead. The first one was well off in the shadows, but this one was just passing under a bulb when I caught sight of it and it made my blood run cold, swear to God.

I don’t really know how to describe it. It was partly like a mass of twisted cloth, all tattered and manky, something you might find mouldering away backstage of a ruined theatre. Or, and I appreciate this sounds hilarious, like some kind of rotting armchair covered in stinking shrouds, heaving itself forward with just this sick damp grating sound where the trailing folds dragged along behind. And they might be lumbering and squat and mouldy, but there was something in there that just set my mind screaming hellfire.

I’d pulled back behind the nearest shelf before I realised. It was one of them moments where your brain locks out everything it doesn’t care about no more, because it knows you’re just a finger away from dead. I knew sure as I ever knew anything, nothing I done ever mattered more than not letting them notice me.

When the sound finally died out, I made myself peek round the corner and there wasn’t nothing there, so I dragged myself out and kept going. I had to walk past where it’d been, and there was these damp marks on the floor, and that rancid coppery stink that sent a shiver right through me. I was stalking along, trying not to tread in the marks, trying not to breathe, trying to look every direction at once, like. You wouldn’t believe some of what Creggo had down there in them back shelves, I couldn’t help running my eyes over it. Most of the stock was boxed up, but if even one of them labels was true… look, there’s people’d literally kill for some of them books. You ever see a first edition Zimmerman? Yeah, that one. And I swear to God one was labelled “Copeland, author’s copy, annotated”.

I was just creeping up past room II, nearly at the stairs. The way the shelves stuck out down there, I had to walk right by the doorway to get out. With the door flung back it felt like I was tiptoeing past a tomb, or a cave, and I could barely bring myself to move a muscle. I could practically feel death spilling out of it. I was stood there for a good while before I could get a hold of myself and start across, and it can’t have took more than three or four seconds but it felt like an hour, and the whole time this terrible sense of exposure and a tingle down my back and left side, just waiting for something unspeakable to touch me. I didn’t dare to look inside. Something might be looking back.

Then I heard a brushing sound from right inside. The only thing that stopped me from screaming out, or breaking for it, was pure instinct. I just had time to slide up between the door and the wall before something come slithering out the doorway like a caterpillar. It was like iron hands grabbed me all round so’s I couldn’t move an inch, not even to breathe, not even to blink or shut my eyes so I wouldn’t have to look at it. I seen it crawling past, and the clothy tatters was flapping gently, pulsing even – like a sea anemone, or maybe gills. It passed about a foot away, and paused for a minute, like it was sniffing around for something. Finally it lurched away, so slowly it hurt, and me still thinking it’d turn round any second and that’d be it.

After about a century, it rounded a corner, and I started breathing again and wished I never. The reek was like fire in my lungs. You can’t imagine it; this oily, salty, metallic stench just laced with that bitter stink of thick white mould – I don’t often see them in dreams now, thank Christ, but I do feel that stink in my throat, and I know they’re close, waiting for me to turn round.

When I could stand straight again, I crept weakly round the corner, towards that sliver of daylight from the top of the stairs, where it filtered through the curtain. I was shivering all over from fright and exhaustion and from fighting down the urge to vom. I seen the shape of the stairs ahead, with the light sharp on the corners of them, and then just before I could get my hopes up I seen something else.

There was someone else moving uncertainly towards the stairs as well; moving like I must’ve been, with knees bent and arms tensed, hunched over a bit, and head up to stare all around. Only they didn’t seem frightened, like. More like a cat somehow. Stalking around quietly so’s it wouldn’t be heard coming. And now it crept a bit closer to the stairs and some light fell on it, and I seen its body was too thin, and its face was the wrong shape. It looked like it might go up, and then it stared up at the curtain for a while and hunched, like a cat raising its tail.

It crouched for a moment down beside the stairs, and I realised it might just stay there and block me out. That moment I hated it more than I ever hated anything. Then it sort of shrugged and started turning back, and I was panicking instead.

Thank God, there was a sort of niche in the wall there, you know, the sort what gives access to a fusebox or some such, a few foot deep. With the shoddy lighting down there it was black as pitch and I slipped in right to the back, pressing up against the wall. There was something rammed up against my back that must’ve been the electrics but I didn’t care, because it was coming. I heard it pacing slowly towards me, and a sort of rasping noise that must’ve been breath, only dry as dust. More like sandpaper. And I seen it step across the front of the niche, with the light behind it, and it stopped and turned towards me.

I couldn’t see nothing but a black shape. It took one step into the shadow, like it wasn’t certain; I got the impression it might even be blind. I couldn’t even move, I was dead on my feet, too tired of it all to do anything by then. There was that kind of inevitability, like when you brake for the lights and in your rear view mirror you see the van behind you wasn’t paying attention and it’s just growing and there’s nothing you can do but wait for the crash. It slowly raised one of them hands towards my face, and I could see it was too long and too thin, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away. The fingers passed maybe two inches from my mouth. The dry crackle of that breath was so close, I could feel it ever so faintly on my skin.

Then it slowly turned away, and slunk back out into the cellar, and I heard the brush of it against one of the shelves growing fainter.

There was no way to know when it was safe to move, if it ever would be. I could always hear movements somewhere nearby. But eventually I needed to move more than I wanted to hide, and slipped out. There was nothing in sight then, and no sign of anything lurking by the stairs. I took my chance and scurried up like a little rat, and I was never gladder of anything than passing back out through that old bead curtain.

Creggo wasn’t at his desk no more. I looked around, and I seen him down one of the rows, holding a couple of books ready to reshelve. He was stood there staring at me with a look I never could place, and we just stood for a minute without saying a word. Then I walked out, with the bell tinkling behind me.

I never went back there. I didn’t go home neither. I got the train out of town and stayed with a couple of old friends, and once I was feeling strong enough I took myself off to Aberystwyth and did a bit of reading. Whatever happened with Al-Yaqoobi, I don’t think anyone’ll be hearing from her – at least I hope not. As for Cregeen, well, who knows whether he picked the shop or it picked him. After the fire they bulldozed the whole street, and I went past and seen for myself they’d dug it out nice and deep to lay foundations for some office blocks.

I never could bring myself to check round the salvage yards, and ask if anyone happened to reclaim them doors.