The ding.
He fell out into a shadow place, the brightness behind him swallowed up by the closing of the elevator doors. Out of the black came the theatre, his entrance just like the first time, when he’d stepped in from out of the stairwell.
He staggered about a bit, his bearings making themselves known reluctantly. The stage drew his gaze instantly. Decorated in mockup, it had been fitted out in faithful replica of the dark hallway of the lower floor, where the suited man had held his arm and demanded his reciprocal stare and Kattar had given his word. Here, the hallway appeared sideways on, with one wall vanished to enable its length to be viewed. The vibrant colour of the old bobbling carpet streaked from one side of the stage floor to the other, contrasting with the stagnating and diffuse light, constituting mostly slowly wandering dust particles. Stage lights created an insular and gloomy sheen along the corridor, the atmosphere within thick and grungy. The door by which he’d entered the hallway the first time sat at the right end of the scene: the door the suited man had told him to return through if he didn’t want to meet Mr Wayfarer, the door that would lead to the theatre and the dark. Kattar glanced across the theatre to where he’d found that door the first time—the wall opposite to the original entrance to the theatre, the one he’d rushed through to escape the fight. Back on the stage, the door at the other end of the hallway, to the left, was closed. That hulking wooden door that had led him to the office floor and the woman who wouldn’t die. It scared and angered him now, all because it had opened to the place where he’d found that poor woman, and because of her Anna hadn’t come with him. Also true that he would never have known to ask for Anna if he’d not spoken to the woman who wouldn’t die.
The door on the stage, the right door, was open, a dark void within. A small hand emerged from shadow at its bottom, fingers reaching along the floor at the entrance to the hallway. Another hand joined it, pulling ahead a short way further, struggling to grip at the gaudy carpet, fingers straining. The hands moved over one another until a head followed them, twisted with the efforts of dragging the body behind into the hallway. It was the suited man coming out of the black, the black he’d advised Kattar to head to, that may save him, or perhaps them both, from Wayfarer and doom. The suited man pulled his withered body along the burned orange and blood scarlet pathway, pain contorting his features, his face and neck pale, bulging with blue veins. The sound of his breaths reverberated around the auditorium, flue with tongue and spittle tacked drying mouth with wheeze. His frailty was repellant.
With a final spurt of effort he heaved his stomach to the centre of the carpet on the stage. His face fell flat into the weaves, paralysed with exhaustion, not even the energy to tilt to allow easier breaths. Instead he inhaled the repugnant fibres, flattening his body over the location of where the trapdoor had been, where the Queen of Worms had made her entrance. Her spirit effigy hung invisibly over the scene. The suit draped over him like a mourning blanket. It hadn’t fit him for a long time.
The suited man went quiet. Impossible to tell if he was breathing or not, if he’d died right there or was building the strength for his next move.
He lifted his face, shaky neck, his eyes searching the empty seats. Kattar intuited that the suited man couldn’t see well, until the suited man reached down to his side and into his jacket pocket. Then he pulled a silver pistol, the shiny barrel glowing under the murky stage lights.
“Silly of you to come back here,” the suited man said, and pointed the pistol at Kattar. “Especially when you’ve no intention of keeping your word. Don’t deny it, we’re both too ugly to lie to each other like that.”
“Don’t be hasty.” Kattar froze, his posture like an anti-hero caught in the headlights. “I’ve not had the chance to get you any help. I said I’d try—no promises remember?”
“Your word is for shit.” The suited man squeezed a shot loose that missed Kattar wildly, the weakness in the man meaning his aim was guesswork.
The suited man paused and looked at the trembling pistol, laughing bitterly. “Jesus, I’m really messed up.”
Kattar glanced again at the wall where he’d discovered the door to the hallway the first time, this time the shady outline of a door visible in the murk. The suited man cottoned on to Kattar’s intentions. “Don’t you move,” he said, “Do you think I’ve got no fight left in me? I still want out of this place. Where’s my exit, huh?” He waved the pistol around, limply. “Give me your word again, so you can break it double.”
“It’s like you want me to break my word. The situation hasn’t changed sir. If you’ve been thinking otherwise then that’s on you. I’ll send someone back for you, you have my word.”
“There it is!” He let off another shot, this one closer to the mark, the blaring whine of it shaking Kattar’s innards. Kattar dropped to the ground, crawling along behind the backs of the audience seats, edging towards the shadow door.
“Where’d you go? Come on, out you come. Don’t hide from me, you gave me your word. Help me out. How am I meant to shoot you when you are hiding from me? You want an exit? I’ll give you one.” Boom, boom, over Kattar’s head. Boom through the back of the seat just behind him, fluff and stuffing shot out in a puff.
Kattar crouched further down, almost on his belly, using his elbows and knees to propel himself towards the door. He’d have to be quick, use the cover of dark to reach up to find the handle and get out. Before the suited man would clock his figure in the shadows. If he could, if the door was real.
“This is no fun. You traitor. You’ll get yours even if I’m not the one to give it to you.”
Kattar rolled onto his back, struck motionless by a howling sound, so close he shrunk away from it, expecting someone to be the breath in his ear.
The sound of the suited man dropping his pistol echoed, as if shocked, responding to the appearance of the howling also. “He’s coming!” he cried. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no.”
Kattar fought the howl, ringing in a shriek, disabling in its decibels, and returned to his crawl, blindly heading for the shadows. Cries of frustration interrupted the noise as the volume lessened, the suited man’s scrabblings intermingling with the frequencies. Mr Wayfarer on his way, no mistaking.
The howl’s volume descended sequentially, at pace with a plod. He’d returned to his walk, apropos to his nature.
Kattar lost his place in the dark, flailing around for an anchor, his hand hitting a chair. Unthinking, he dragged himself up, the pain of the sound overriding his fear for his life. The scene moved on, he’d stepped outside, now it was the suited man centre stage. He peeped over the back of the chair.
The suited man hadn’t got very far, his sinews straining to heave his wasted frame away, towards the left door, the way to the office, where there would be the woman who wouldn’t die, and perhaps Anna too, if this was now, and not just a rerun. Where are your nooks and crannies now? Your crawlspace and underbelly?
Mr Wayfarer pushed out of the black of the right door, the stage theatre door, this theatre, where the suited man had said to run to, where Mr Wayfarer wouldn’t go, and yet he’d been here, come out of the theatre, the dark receding from him, like a bacteria withering from a toxin. The face couldn’t be registered fully, never pinned down by sight, the closest estimation obtained by glancing slightly away from it. Pale flesh, post-op shiny, swollen with lifeless gases, eyeless, features a skin smudge, a scar, all mouth, foetus posture, treading, kneading the air with his wail.