Diary of the Displaced (13 page)

I asked Rudy what Adler meant by “The Corridor”.

“That’s what he called this place. He said he found it in one of the few remaining books in the library, said the building was somewhere in The City, but it was burnt out. There was half of a book left, a history book or something like it, detailing the past of The City.”

“Strange thing to call it.”

“Yes, though that was just what Adler called it, he said the name was obscured in the writing, The Something Corridor. Actually, I remember it now, he said the same went for The City, it was called something else. The ‘The’ was only part of the name.”

“Adler was convinced that the both the building and even most of The Corridor didn’t exist here once, he thought that somehow it all just ended up here, like all of us, I suppose. I don’t know if I believe all that, but I envied him that he even had some ideas. He was clever, the professor, and I’m a much simpler man than he was.”

It’s hard to imagine isn’t it. Not only does it seem that I have ended up somewhere that I don’t belong, but according to our mad professor friend, Adler, the place where I ended up shouldn’t be here either.

I wonder if we are all in some kind of limbo, like purgatory, but that wouldn’t make sense either.

Am I dead? I don’t think so.

Not yet.

Day 30

There were diaries everywhere, stacked up on shelves, piled high in corners, and left lying around in seemingly random locations. Neither of us knew where to begin. In a strange way, it was fortunate that most of them were completely illegible. I think that at some point the majority of them must have been soaked in water. Maybe the building wasn’t watertight. There were some entries that I could still read, but a lot of that was meaningless garbage.

The light in the upstairs room was handy as hell. I didn’t have to run down any of my own supplies. It was set up the same as the lamp had been in the shop, attached to a battery. It wasn’t bright, but it was light enough to read by. The same battery powered the small tape player that was blasting out the same few songs over and over again, until I switched it off. How the battery had lasted so long I have no idea.

Dotted all around the house were the strange objects that Adler had collected. In the middle of one of the downstairs rooms there was a six foot tall statue made entirely of scrap metal. I wasn’t sure what it was supposed to be. It looked like a kind of grotesque winged angel, and it was so intricate in design that it must have taken him weeks to build it. That is if he even made it himself. I suppose he could have found it somewhere. It didn’t even need propping up. It stood there, balanced on its own accord.

Plates! Hundreds and hundreds of the damn things, all stacked on shelves or hanging on the walls. Some were actually real plates, either plastic or metal or crockery. Is that what they are called? Crockery? What the hell is a crock anyway? I don’t know. Most of them were those display things you see in pubs and old houses. Who needs that many plates anyway? The cooker doesn’t even work without any electricity.

The best find for me was the wardrobe full of clothes. It seemed that Adler had made quite a collection of clothing over the years, and most of it looked about my size. After close to a month in the same rags, I was glad to dump them in exchange for something that was at least clean. I found a couple of pairs of reasonably undamaged jeans and put a pair on. A full change of clothing later I felt a lot more comfortable, and glad to be rid of those oversized, ripped up, and dirty office trousers.

There was more in the wardrobe. Stuffed into the bottom were three pairs of boots. Proper walking ones. Again they were a bit tatty, with worn treads, but they were so much more comfortable than the nearly worn through shoes that I’d been wearing for a month. There was also a belt with some small carry pouches on it, like the ones hikers wear. I stuffed some of my more important things into each of the pouches. My lighter, keys, wallet, a bottle of water, the journal fitted in there with some room still left. There were even little knife holders and a strap that held the battery torch. Don’t know why I put the harmonica in.

Strewn all around the house, either in boxes or stuffed onto shelves, was every type of tool imaginable. Dozens of hammers and saws, boxes of screws and nails. There was even one of those electric bench cutters plugged into a wall socket. Completely useless, at least that is what we thought. How the hell had Adler got that thing into the house? Maybe it was already here when he got here.

Then Rudy called me. He was in the back room on the ground floor. All the windows were blocked up and the back door out into the garden was boarded over double thick with wooden planks. Set up in the middle of the room was something I hadn’t expected.

The front half of a car.

The wheels had been removed and the whole frame was propped up on rows of bricks. All of the metal panelling had been removed to reveal the engine, the dashboard and the ignition. He’d even removed the steering wheel.

Where the exhaust should have poked out there was a long bendy plastic pipe attached. It was hanging on bits of string that were nailed to the ceiling. The pipe ran across the room and up the chimney, where it was nailed to the wall about three feet up, just below a metal grid that blocked the chimney, but let the air in.

The key was still in the ignition, so I turned it, not expecting a damn thing to happen, but it did. The engine coughed a little, and spluttered, and then gave a roar that made me nearly jump out of my skin. It juddered and hummed away happily.

It was noisy, but I thought screw it, it’s not like I’ve been that effective at staying hidden anyway.

All the lights in the house came on.

Rudy was pointing at something, something lying on a chair in the corner of the room. It was another journal. One that looked more recent than the others. The ink was much clearer than the other books. Of course it could still have been written years ago.

There was only one entry.

“I found the fourth key and I’m going to collect the others now. Hopefully I can make it all the way to the device and activate it. Maybe, just maybe, it will take me home. During CutterJack’s curses and taunts, whilst he was outside the house, he let slip about some of his deeds on earth, the things he took, the horrific and brutal things he did to people. So overcome with his own pride, that terrible creature. He didn’t even realise that the threats of what he had done to his past victims were giving away clues as to how to resolve my own predicament.

Even if it takes me somewhere completely different, it has to be better than here. I could cope reasonably with another world, or even another universe, but to be stranded in this dark and claustrophobic place for the rest of my days, forever hunted by a creature of such evil intent. That is a thought that makes me cold to my heart. I cannot even bear to contemplate the possibility of becoming one of his abominations.

Of all the places the key could have been. I would never have guessed. Why would someone have poked it under the door? How did I not see it there before? I spent hours gazing at that white flower. Maybe someone pushed the key under there because they didn’t want CutterJack to find it.

I thought I would never know, until that damnedest of creatures came to taunt me once more, a few nights ago.

It was something he said, about chasing one of my predecessors up to door that ‘Those ones has locked in on me’. His English is thoroughly common, no, that would be an insult to common folk, a barbaric half wit at best. Regardless of that, he murdered the man right there, right where we had camped for all those days whilst Rudy and I tried to get the door open. I’d never even thought to look there, and I wasn’t looking for a key when I went there. Something knotted up inside me. I had to go and look up there, to see if there was any evidence of CutterJack’s victim. There was. That pile of rocks hid more than other bits of rubble.

I covered the poor man back up again after I said a few words. It was the least I could do. In a way I feel that his life was extinguished to my benefit, as self-centred as that may sound. If he had not died there then CutterJack would never have mentioned it, and in turn I would never have been led to find the final piece of the puzzle. I swore I would place a memorial of some kind to my anonymous benefactor one day. I only regret that there was no form of identification upon the remains. I will never know who he was.

I’m leaving my diaries here, in case someone else happens to end up here. CutterJack can’t read. If he could, he would have been able to understand the note that I left for him, but I could see from my hiding place, peering out of the top window of the house, that he couldn’t. He looked too puzzled. He also can’t get into the house if it’s secured properly. He tried often enough. I don’t think he is the cleverest of creatures. How he gained the knowledge to do such things as he does, I have no clue.

My journey will have to take me across the swamp, even though I dread the mere thought of it. Every other way is crawling with his creatures.

If you are reading this now then I hope that you will find the place that I travel to now, and I hope you find the device intact. Know now that it is the same device that CutterJack has used for centuries to travel to other places and perform his butchery, so beware of him on your journey. The device is located near to the wall, past the junkyard. The wall somehow marks the boundary of this place, how I cannot tell you, I have not yet discovered why, only that a scrawled note in a book that I found in the library suggests that it is dangerous to go beyond the Wall.

‘Do not, ever, ever, cross to the other side of the wall from the ground.’ it said, and ‘Seek the house that was never built.’

I didn’t know what that meant when I first read it, but it’s obvious when you are there. You’ll know it when you see it.”

Rudy and I stood quietly for what seemed a long time. It was he who spoke first, but we both knew what this last note meant.

“He never made it did he?”

“Doesn’t look like it. He never got the key from the bus, otherwise I never would have found it, and he never came back to where you died to find the other one.”

“He went through the swamp. Why? That’s just suicidal.”

“I don’t think he had much choice.”

“No, I suppose not, but I’d rather face those, what do you call them?”

“Zombies.”

“Yes, them. I’d rather have to fight my way through them than try and get through the gargants.”

That reminded me of something I had never asked Rudy, since the dreams that led me to him.

“Do you remember that you said they weren’t zombies, during my dreams, before I came to the shack?”

“Yes, of course.”

“What did you mean?”

Rudy shrugged.

“I didn’t know what a zombie was.”

It took me five minutes to stop laughing.

Then I remembered something and stopped damn quickly.

“Damn.”

“What?”

“I’ve already crossed the wall.”

Rudy looked puzzled.

“In the professor’s notes.”

I took the book and showed him that last page.

“He says right there, don’t cross over the wall from the ground. I’ve already done that. Well, once anyway. It was back when I first got here, I had a camp right against the wall. I had to leave it because it got overrun with zombies. It was when I met DogThing. I was running from the zombies and there was this one that was in the way, it had a head that it was swinging.”

“It was swinging its head?”

“No. it was swinging another head. It had hold of it by the hair. Well, I set fire to it and I had to jump over the end of the wall to escape it.”

“Oh. I see.”

We both stood quietly for a while.

“Do you think I’m screwed?”

“No. No. Look, Adler doesn’t say why, does he?”

“No, I suppose he doesn’t.”

“Well it may only be some kind of warning. You know, don’t go over the wall, there is all manner of nasty things over there. He doesn’t actually say that crossing it is the bad thing.”

“Yes he does. It says right there. Do not ever, ever cross from the ground.”

“Well, you’re still here, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Right.”

“I miss DogThing.”

“Yes. Me too.”

Day 31

The nausea and headaches seemed to have stopped, so I packed up my stuff. There was a proper hiker’s backpack stuffed in amongst a lot of junk that the professor had collected. It was quite tatty, with a few holes in it, but fixable. From what I found in it, and threw away, he had probably used it a few times and then left it. It was huge.  I couldn’t imagine anyone going for any length of time on a bicycle with that monstrosity on their back. For me, it was a Godsend. If we were to head into the swamp then I couldn’t take my cart any more. I filled the pack with as many supplies and kit as I could, but left a lot of heavier stuff. I had to leave most of the petrol, and some of the water behind, just because of the weight. I kept two bottles of petrol though. Fortunately seeing in the dark was no longer an issue. My eyes adjusted alarmingly fast to the darkness now.

I even managed to attach the two long blades that CutterJack had left behind to the back of the pack, after I had wrapped them in a tatty grey shirt that looked too small for me anyway. I wasn’t having those two sharp blades hanging loose, one accidental fall and they would dice me. I’d like to say I made a holder for them. What were they called? A scabbard? But that wasn’t the case. I’d have to untie them if I needed them. It was kind of handy and reassuring. I had this horrible image of CutterJack sneaking up on me and pulling his blades off my pack. The same image was less worrying when it involved him standing there for five minutes untying them. I locked up the house again and stuffed the rope into the pipe.

We set out a few hours after I’d woken up, moving as quickly as we could out of The City and making a direct route to the swamp. There were no maw around now, so I was uneasy for the first hour or so. The ground was hard, mostly rock, so signs of us passing were few, at least as far as I could see.