Dangerous Games

Chapter 7 part 1

Jim Murray jabbed at the button for the tenth floor furiously, making no effort to hide his thoroughly foul mood. Ever since his editor had sold that story to the nationals, for which he had received no extra payment incidentally, the wretched man had been on Jim's back for a follow-up. Charlotte, for some reason, was no longer talking to the press, so Mister High-and-Mighty Editor had come up with the bright idea of someone – and here his eyes had swivelled to point at Jim – repeating the girl's journey into the unknown. "Do it properly this time, and maybe we can get an exclusive" had been his exact words.

Jim pressed the button on his hand-held tape recorder again. "It's now" – he squinted at his watch, barely visible in the dim strip lighting – "twenty-seven minutes past two, and I've just pressed the button for floor ten. So far nothing has happened. Strange that! Half past two in the morning in a lift in a tower block and nothing has happened yet!" He felt like adding And I should be at home, tucked up in bed next to my loving wife! but resisted the urge.

Come on, come on, he thought. It was as if the lift was deliberately taking its time, the damn thing. He could imagine the resentment that machine must have felt at being rudely disturbed from its well-earned slumber in the early hours of the morning to service the needs of a newspaper hack sent on some fool's errand. Finally the doors closed and the petulant whine of the lift started.

"Okay, the lift is on its way to ten. Soon this will all be over one way or another," Jim reported, holding his tape recorder near his mouth as his voice was competing with the sound of the motor. Not soon enough for my liking, he thought. Sluggishly the door opened, with a irritated ping! Jim pressed the button on his recorder again.

"Right, I'm on the tenth floor. As expected, I can't see anything out of the ordinary out through the door." He briefly poked his head out and cast quick glances both left and right. "Nope, nothing! Now I travel back down to the fifth, hang around for a bit and then press the button for floor one if I remember rightly." Looking down at the small grey box in his hand he was annoyed to notice that the red light indicating that the recorder was taping was not on. It was difficult to tell in the dim lighting, but it didn't appear that the wheels on the tape were going round either. Oh, good Heavens! Don't tell me that this wretched thing is on the Fritz as well! he thought.

Having borrowed the device from a colleague at the paper, who'd promised him that it would be up to the job, it was with some care that he pressed the record button a few more times. Perhaps banging it against the lift wall might do the trick, but he didn't want to scratch it. Oh well, never mind. It might have recorded something. Then he pressed the button on the wall for the fifth floor.

As the lift made its slow descent, he looked down at the recorder again. No, the light still wasn't on. Damn rubbish, he thought. If this thing hasn't recorded a single thing and all this effort is for nothing, I'll be bloody furious.

So pre-occupied with his recalcitrant equipment was he that he didn't notice the door opening on the fifth floor. In fact, it wasn't until he became aware of someone talking to him that he looked up in annoyance. The whole point of trying this in the early hours of the morning was that no-one else would be travelling up and down in the lifts!

"Where are you going?" the woman asked, her voice echoing around the lift in a most unnatural way.

"Well, not that's it's any of your business..." Then Jim caught sight of her face and the words died on his lips. They were the last words he ever spoke. Too late he called to mind the dire warning at the bottom of the web page he'd read.

...

The next time that lift door opened, just after six o'clock the same morning, it was Dolores who entered, pushing her cleaner's bucket with its bedraggled mop submerged in few inches of already murky grey water in front of her. She always hated having to clean the lifts. Well, no part of the job was particularly pleasant, but the lifts were always the worst bit. The close confinement, the harsh, flickering strip lighting in the ceiling which nevertheless didn't cast that much light, not to mention the smell of stale urine which she just could not eradicate however hard she scrubbed. It was a horrible way to make a living, but the only job an poorly educated person like her could get.

So it was with a heart-felt sigh that she struggled down on to her knees and reached for the spray container of disinfectant and ragged cloth tucked into the pocket of her overalls. She flicked the cloth at random spots of dirt down at floor level in a half-hearted attempt to remove them. No longer did she try to do a good job. What would be the point? She knew very well that during the day the residents of the block would simply use the place as a toilet again, undoing all her work. No, a few peremptory swipes with the cloth, that would be enough!

Hang on, what was this? She'd come across a small metal box in one corner of the lift. It had a few buttons on it and a red light at the top. Oh, and there was a small transparent plastic window on this side. Looking through the window, Dolores could see a miniature tape cassette. She may have been poor – in fact, she could barely afford the second-hand television that her children seemed to spend most of their time watching – but she did have enough gumption to recognise a tape recorder when she held one.

She pressed the button marked Play, and immediately dropped the thing in surprise, startled at the extremely loud noise that assaulted her ears. Half way between the loudest scream you've ever heard and a metal glove dragged down a blackboard, the sound put her teeth on edge on edge and made her eyes water. Madre di Dios! What the Hell was that? she thought. A buzz saw, maybe? A dentist's drill? Some unholy combination of the two? God alone knows.

Hurriedly she reached down to the floor pressed the Stop button, withdrawing her hand immediately as if she'd touched something red hot. Immediately the hellish screeching ceased. Now thoroughly shaken and wide awake for the first time that morning, she leaned back in shock against the wall of the lift and desperately tried to pull herself together. After a few minutes, she'd managed to summon the courage to glance down at the infernal device, now lying there in all innocence.

Before pressing that button the thought had crossed her mind that her lucky find would have made a nice present for her eldest boy. He loved gadgets, and would have found hours of endless fun recording and re-recording his own voice, but that was no longer an option. Her parents in the Philippines had brought her up in the belief that malicious spirits could inhabit inanimate objects like trees and rocks, but she'd never seen it right in front of her before. Until now, that is. No, whatever that thing was, it was harbouring something evil, and she wanted it as far away from her family as possible.

Keen for the wicked thing not to touch her exposed flesh a second time, Dolores put on her left marigold glove and tentatively picked the metal box up. As quickly as she could, she dropped the thing in her bucket of water, listening as it disappeared below the surface with a satisfying plop. Whatever evil spirit it contained deserved to drown in that bucket. At the first opportunity, she'd find some sort of public waste bin and then she'd be free of the evil thing. And not a moment too soon, either!