Wednesday
Annette stood in the cool air of the depot, watching as the last of the boxes was carefully unloaded. She politely thanked the delivery man then, as the door shut behind him and his hand truck, approached the pile and regarded them reverently. The boxes did not look very prepossessing, mostly brown cardboard bearing the logos of long-forgotten brands, with the remnants of torn-off labels and dried-out stains. Many people would have discarded the whole lot without a backwards glance, and she shuddered at the thought of how many treasures met their end on a back-garden bonfire. This collection had at least never run that risk. When Gerald Kempston, a famous actor and director, had died suddenly, it had been immediately obvious from the massive media interest that even the most trivial of his possessions would be extremely valuable.
No doubt the heirs would make plenty of money selling off memorabilia, thought Annette with distaste, mourning at the thought of important cultural artefacts sitting on shelves in rich people’s homes like tacky holiday souvenirs, to gather dust and occasionally be passed round for inspection at parties, pawed at by hands greasy from crisps and olives or sticky with beer. But at least they had had enough decency and respect for cultural heritage to arrange for the contents of his old shed, where he had jealously guarded everything that he had kept from his long career in television, to be transferred to the archive where Annette worked. Most likely there had been fierce negotiations regarding rights and compensation, but fortunately Annette didn’t have to concern herself with such things. To her as archivist fell the task to sift through the boxes, carefully describing and recording the items she found, so that they could be entered in the vast archive catalogue, before being transported to climate-controlled rooms, where they would be lovingly preserved for posterity.
It was a painstaking procedure, ensuring that she correctly identified each item and could place it in context. A green jacket meant nothing, the green jacket worn by a famous star in the final episode of their cult show was iconic. It required patience, a meticulous attention to detail and an encyclopaedic knowledge of media history, all qualities that Annette possessed in abundance. She was a small woman with chin-length grey hair, sharp features and hazel eyes that could shift between intense concentration when she was working, and a dreamy absentmindedness the rest of the time. She was passionate about preserving items from the past, and never happier than when sorting through a new collection.
Unique on this occasion was that she had no idea what the boxes contained. Usually such donations were inventoried in situ, and only the parts that were of interest to the archive were transported there. For some reason however, in this case the family had been very insistent that the archive took the boxes immediately, as they were. It meant that what awaited her was an adventure into the unknown, with untold discoveries awaiting. Lifting down the first box, she was just about to open the flaps when there was a gentle tap at the door, and it opened to reveal Colin’s round, pleasant face. ‘Stairtime!’, he exclaimed. Annette suppressed the urge to sigh and, with one longing look behind her, dutifully followed him out of the door.
Grouped around the door to the stairwell, the rest of the ‘stair crew’ were waiting. A motley mix, there was the organizer, a sports enthusiast training for the marathon, a lanky programmer with long hair, dressed entirely in black, and his colleague, chubby and – as usual – sporting a t-shirt with a satirical cartoon on it. A plump, sociable receptionist, the usual few anonymous interns, and a PR manager in fashionable clothes, with an equally fashionable haircut that always made Annette wonder if the hairdresser in question had actually had any training. Cutting in a straight line seemed in any case to be a skill that had escaped them. The only thing the stair crew had in common was a wish to get some exercise, rather than sitting the whole day long at their desks.
Filing through the door they collected, like bewildered sheep, in the dark corner next to the stairs. The organizer started off upwards, with a sprint that only first-timers were foolish enough to emulate. Annette tacked herself onto the end of the line. Starting up the first staircase, she thought with a sigh of the climb ahead. To please the planning committee, the archive building was half below ground, half above. Her depot was on the lowest level, so they would have to climb five levels to the ground floor, then another five to the top. She wished she had never made the mistake of lamenting her gradually increasing waistline to Colin. He had recently joined the stair crew himself, and had immediately insisted she join too. An expanding waistline isn’t a problem for a woman over 60, she thought, it’s just par for the course. Surely by now she should be allowed to settle into old age without having to bother with self-improvement. But Colin had been so enthusiastic that she hadn’t had the heart to say no.
Above her, she could hear the others chatting away, but after two staircases she never had the breath to talk herself. Colin kept her silently company, for which she was grateful. After the fourth staircase, her knees were throbbing, and she thankfully hauled herself up the final steps to the ground floor. The stairs down to the underground levels were, for security reasons, only accessible with an ID card, so they were sealed off from the upper staircases by a metal grille, through which she could see the other stair climbers continuing their ascent. She exited the stairs to the ground floor, grateful to be on flat ground for a moment, before making a U-turn and entering the door to the upper staircase, held open for her by Colin. Groaning, Annette set off upwards once more. First floor, second floor… The stairwell and the stairs themselves were all painted a uniform shade of yellow, the numbers on the doors were the only thing that gave her a sense of progress. Otherwise, she would have felt herself trapped in an eternal hell, eight steps up, turn, eight steps up, door, eight steps up… She passed door number 4, then finally, with a sense of relief, she saw door number 5 looming up in front of her. To her right, the staircase continued for one more short flight, ending at the locked door out onto the roof. But she gladly exited through the fifth-floor door, sweat trickling down her back and forehead, stinging her eyes and wetting her hair on her temples and neck.
Their habit was to walk along the fifth-floor corridor to the stairwell on the other side of the building, to make their route a circuit rather than a straight up-and-down. As she walked, Annette took short, gasping breaths, and hoped she wasn’t too red in the face. On her first ever stairwalk, she had turned so deep crimson that her alarmed colleagues had ushered her to a seat and fetched water for her, causing her to turn an even deeper puce in humiliation. Luckily the trip down was easy, her breathing gradually slowing as her vision cleared. By the third floor, she was sufficiently restored that she was able to greet Bea, the PR manager, as she fell back into line with her, clearly wanting to chat. “Busy with the Kempston collection?”. “I will be”, she answered, “it just arrived before we started the walk”. “Excellent”, enthused Bea, as she waved her arms around, bracelets rattling. “We were tossing some ideas around in the brainstorm yesterday. This is a wonderful marketing opportunity, we can really connect with a whole new audience…”. Inwardly, Annette sighed. Brainstorming, marketing, audiences. She had got a job at an archive, a tranquil place with quiet corridors and silent rooms filled with ordered objects. Back then, it was a world of acquisition policies, methodical inventories, regular maintenance and the occasional departmental meeting with a strict agenda, circulated a week in advance. Then someone had decided that the archive must prove its relevance to society. The modest rooms that did service as a museum, containing selected items in display cabinets, each with a small typewritten card listing a dry academic description, had been converted to office space and a huge new visitors hall had been built, filled with interactive exhibits and multimedia experiences. And a whole new wave of people had joined the organization, with loud voices, haphazard, ‘creative’ ways of approaching things, and their own vocabulary full of jargon that made Annette feel suddenly very much her age. She was glad when Bea left the stairs on her own floor, allowing her to continue on downwards in thoughtful silence, more people drifting out at each level until, at the bottom, only Colin and she were left. “See you again tomorrow!”, he called. She nodded and smiled, then returned to her own depot, feeling a sense of deep relief as the door shut behind her, leaving her in her own familiar sanctum.
Only something was different. An unpleasant smell permeated the air, pricking in her nostrils and leaving her feeling slightly nauseous. Hopefully there was nothing rotting or mouldy in the boxes. Rot and mould were deadly invaders to an archive, she would have to keep an eagle eye out for any warning signs. She glanced over at the large container awaiting discarded material. It was a new sight in her depot, as usually unwanted material never got this far. Now for each item she would have to first decide whether to keep it or not, before she could even start the work of documenting it. But she had plenty of time to do a thorough job. Pulling on a pair of gloves, she got down to work. Each item was given a thorough inspection. The items she chose to keep – which were most – she neatly tagged with a unique barcode, typing her description into the database. Almost everything that passed through her hands she found fascinating. Old photographs, props, costumes. Piles of documents – scripts, proposals, letters from fans – which she lovingly placed in blue acid-free folders to stop them degrading. She relaxed into the familiar routine, and time ceased to have meaning.
Thursday
Second floor, third floor… Annette’s heart was pounding and legs wobbling, but the sheer rage and indignation pulsing through her drove her up the stairs at a – for her – previously unknown speed. Instead of straggling along at the back, she was a third of the way up the line, oblivious to the surprised looks of her colleagues. She still couldn’t believe it. That morning, she had been quietly occupied with checking the pockets of a long raincoat that she had unearthed from the bottom of a box, and had just retrieved a sticky paper bag of ancient sweets when the head of special exhibitions bounced in through the door, thrusting out his hand. Quickly, she put down the sweets, stripped off her gloves and shook it. “Well!”, he exclaimed. “Here it is, the heart of the operation, the magical treasure trove!”. Annette’s smile became forced. While the objects in the archive were all treasures to her, somehow it sounded so trite coming from his mouth. “How is it going?”, he inquired, poking his nose towards the boxes, and Annette steeled herself to intervene if he attempted to touch anything. “Perfectly fine”, she replied. “I have catalogued the contents of the first two boxes and completed the metadata entries. Regarding the heritage value – “. “Good, good, good”, he interrupted her, not listening. “Excellent progress. But we need to speed things up here a little. This is a unique opportunity to catch the crest of the wave. We want to have a pop-up exhibition in place at the start of next week. You can do that, can’t you?”. “Pop-up?”, she replied faintly, a ludicrous image of a child’s pop-up book in her mind. Then, discarding that as irrelevant, she said, “The collection will not be ready for public exhibition for at least a month yet. Each piece must be carefully documented and properly stored in the depots, then from there we can make a curated selection…“. “Naturally, naturally”, he interrupted her again. “In the normal course of things. And we will do everything properly later. But surely you can just, you know, skim through the boxes now and pick out a few of the best pieces. The crown jewels, as it were. Stick them on one side and Maya will do the rest!”. Annette was speechless, and he took that as agreement. “Good girl!”, he exclaimed, patronizingly patting her shoulder. Then, seeing the bag of sweets on the desk where she had left it, he stuck his hand in and, before she could say anything, popped one in his mouth. A slightly dubious expression on his face as he chewed, he mumbled once more, “good, good”, and vanished as quickly as he had appeared. Infuriated, Annette snatched up the bag of sweets and flung them into the bin, wrinkling her nose at the gooey residue that clung to her fingers.
Now, at every turn as she placed her hand on the bannister, she felt the gummy layer, and she wished she’d had time to wash her hands, instead of leaving a trail of sticky handprints up the whole staircase. Fortunately, no one seemed to notice, all of them occupied with doggedly trudging upwards. At the top floor, Annette was gasping from the extra exertion, and she blindly followed the rest downwards again. As the others chatted, her mind churned with thoughts, and it took a while before she realized that they were talking to her. “…don’t you think so, Annette. Annette?”. “She’s miles away”, joked someone else. “Dreaming of drinking champagne and hobnobbing with the stars at the grand opening”. “Nah”, said a third. “Annette’s dream evening is a cup of cocoa and a copy of the latest preservation guidelines”. They chuckled amongst themselves. Annette’s lips tightened in hurt annoyance. She was well aware that she was seen as pedantic and dull, an atavism occupying herself with cataloguing and preservation instead of ‘valorisation’ – a word she hated (and suspected had been made up by someone writing grant applications). Obsolete and ripe for retirement, soon to be shipped off with a few presents and farewell drinks, to be replaced by someone young and dynamic. Then Bea frowned at the others and placed a motherly hand on her shoulder. “Surely you must be pleased, Annette? To see your work so much appreciated?”. Annette didn’t exactly shake her hand off, but she hopped round the turn of the stairs a little faster, which had the same effect. “Of course I am”, she replied, in a mechanical tone, a forced smile on her face. To herself, she thought, I would be delighted if my work were actually appreciated. But I am not being permitted to even do my work. My work is to preserve the past, so it is kept for generations to come. These objects should be catalogued and properly treated so that they will remain in their current condition. Instead, I am supposed to rifle through the boxes as if I’m playing lucky dip, then toss a few treasures aside so they can be gawped at in a pop-up. Never mind if they get damaged or lost forever. As long as the visitor figures this month are nice and high.
Back down on her level, she went to the toilets and washed her hands three times to get rid of the lingering stickiness, then returned to her depot. She discovered several trolleys had been rolled in and parked at one end, presumably to hold the objects she would select for the exhibition. And where am I supposed to put the other objects in the meantime? Dump them on the floor? Put them back in those old dirty boxes? Grumbling to herself, she left the room to go and collect some decent packing cases, so they would at least be stored securely. Coming back in, she again noticed the unpleasant smell. Now it seemed to resemble some overpowering old-fashioned aftershave, of the sort that a bachelor uncle gone to seed might wear to conceal his dubious personal hygiene. Underneath it there was indeed a rank undertone, like sweaty clothes left for too long. Caught by the thought, she picked up the raincoat and gingerly sniffed it. It hadn’t seemed to smell of anything particular when she checked it, but now it stank as if its owner had only just taken it off after working up quite a sweat in it. Curling her lip in distaste, she tossed it into the discards container. Her colleagues often teased her about her reluctance to reject items for the archive, yet on this occasion she was glad to do it.
Turning to the next box, she discovered it was filled with framed photographs. Kempston with various children, some clearly taken on the set of “The Mystical Cave-dwellers”, an early evening children’s series that had become a national family hit and still held a nostalgic place in most people’s hearts. Some of those pictures would be ideal in the exhibition. Annette laid them all out on the floor in a grid to choose the best ones. Somehow, the sight of all those cheery children’s smiles, Kempston in the middle of each shot, grinning wolfishly, was discomfiting. It was almost like a hunter’s wall of trophy heads, thought Annette involuntarily. Swiftly she chose the best three and tagged them before neatly stacking the rest and placing them in a packing case for later. She propped the chosen three up on one of the trolleys, then, on an impulse, placed them in a flat pile so that she wouldn’t have them looking at her. Quickly turning away, she moved on to the next box.
Friday
Annette arrived early, an anxious feeling in the pit of her stomach. The exhibition would open on Monday, and she hadn’t yet completed half of the boxes. Accustomed to working to a rhythm and pace dictated by her own sense of thoroughness, it was extremely unpleasant to be put under so much pressure. Walking into the depot, the foul smell was almost overpowering. Bewildered, she wondered if she needed to empty the discards container. Then she saw that a coat stand had appeared next to the trolleys, and the old raincoat was hung up neatly on it. She bit her lip, trying to quell a fiery wave of fury. The depot was her terrain. She had expected Maya to come by at some point to discuss the objects she had selected. But that she had come in while Annette was absent, even dug through the discards container to make her own choices for the exhibition… Annette would have liked to slam the door behind her, but the closing mechanism meant it drifted shut behind her at its usual stately pace. Taking a few deep breaths, she calmed herself. She was still the archivist in charge here. Maya might have decided to overrule her judgement and keep the coat, but she would make sure that it was at least properly entered in the archive. Taking it down from the stand, she attached a tag, scanned it and then typed in a brief description, fingers still shaking in rage. Once complete, she hit Enter, and then hung the coat back up on the stand. Her hands felt soiled again, so she went out to the toilets and washed them thoroughly. The warm water and soft coloured lighting in the toilets calmed her, and she was able to return to her work.
Still the smell hung around her, and the depot, usually her haven, felt somehow violated. When Colin came to call her for the stairs, she was almost glad to go. Deep in her thoughts, she mechanically climbed the stairs and crossed the top corridor. They were almost halfway down again when she finally became aware that the others were involved in an animated, even heated discussion. ‘I just think it’s appalling. Disgusting. I don’t want to even see any pictures of him. Grinning that way, when you think of what he – . And all the time we were watching him on television!’ ‘I used to watch his programme with my grandma!’, interjected someone else. ‘Then I bought the DVDs to watch with my own kids. It makes me feel sick. There’s no way we should go ahead with the exhibition’. ‘Now, now’, cautioned Bea. ‘They’re only rumours. Nothing’s been confirmed. And even if he did – I mean, he’s still a very influential director. You can’t just wipe out his career because of some, well, indiscretion. That’s just cancel culture to the third -’. ‘Indiscretion! Is that what you call it? Go ahead with the exhibition and we’re as good as accessories to a crime’. ‘That’s not the case’, the lanky IT expert put in, his tone pedantic. ‘To be an accessory to a crime, you have to actually assist in the crime -’. ‘That’s not true’, his colleague responded with vigor, ‘If you learn of a crime after the fact and you assist in concealing it – ‘. ‘But we’re not concealing it-‘. ‘No, we’re glorifying it, and that’s even worse…’. The voices were swelling into a mass of twittering noise, and Annette closed her eyes wearily. She was starting to get a headache. She tried to ignore them, but then a sudden exclamation thrust itself into her consciousness. ‘We should just take all those boxes of his and burn the lot, be done with it!’.
A few voices broke in at once to disagree, but no one was more surprised than Annette herself to hear her voice riding over them all, her tone icy and commanding. ‘Burn them? What sort of archive is this? Our job – our calling – is to preserve the past. It doesn’t matter what someone has or hasn’t done – or what they are said to have done. That’s what the courts are for. Destroy the objects and you destroy our past. We might just as well become like those Russian censors, mutilating pictures with scissors and sticking them together to make our own preferred version of history like some sanitized fairytales for children in a playgroup!’. She stopped still, one foot on the next step, breathing heavily with much more than physical exertion. They were all staring at her, stunned, looking once more like nothing so much as a row of sheep. Then one of the interns, a shy-looking, gangly youth who had never spoken before, said, ‘I, I think you’re right. I mean, like, you have to remember the bad stuff as well as the good. Like they say, if you forget history you repeat it, or something… And what’s good or bad – it’s all about a point of view, isn’t it? And it’s shifting all the time. Like Saddam Hussein who was our friend but then suddenly not. Or, or – think of it – Alan Turing being hounded for being gay and now he’s a hero. If you keep the stuff, you can decide what you make of it. Once it’s gone it’s – well – gone.’ He blushed furiously and set off down the stairs again. The rest followed him, and after an awkward silence, began to talk of their weekend plans. Annette was just reflecting that she was gratified to see that at least some of the youth of today still had reverence for the past, if not so much eloquence to express it, when Bea turned to her and, in an especially nice voice, asked, ‘And what are you planning?’. ‘Nothing’, said Annette, roughly, her bad temper barely in check. ‘I’m going to be here, working through the weekend for some pop-up exhibition that probably everyone will shun now that Gerald Kempston has been ‘cancelled’’. Bea stepped back, startled. Now that she had started, Annette couldn’t stop. ‘And while you’re about it, you might tell Maya to have the decency to ask before she comes down and starts rooting around in my depot. I am the archivist and the collection is my responsibility!’. Not waiting for a reply, she marched off down the stairs to the lowest level.
The next large box looked damp and mouldy, although it was dry to the touch. It was covered in layer upon layer of thick packing tape, almost as if someone had intended to seal it up permanently. Annette found it quite satisfying to work out her bad mood against the tape, attacking it with scissors. Even so, she was careful to see that the points didn’t penetrate the box. Finally wrestling it open, she saw a dark mass of grey and brown material. As she pushed aside the curls of paper packed around it, her gloved fingers caught on a loose trail of fur, and she pulled them back in sudden loathing as she backed away from the box. A rat? Nothing moved, and she summoned up her courage and approached the box again. It was just fur, no sign of claws or tail. Gingerly brushing aside more scraps of paper, she saw more scraps of fur, hanging limply. Then – she jumped back as if she had received an electric shock – an empty eye-socket, half-lidded. Her reaction was visceral, totally out of her control, but, at the same time, her brain was working away, and she realized what was in the box. With a shaky laugh, she reached in with both hands and lifted out Ghargel, a puppet that had inspired equal levels of adoration and terror in the children watching “The Mystical Cave-dwellers”. It was an odd troll-like figure, dumpy and squat, with short arms and legs ending in big hairy feet and hands, wearing a rough shapeless brown tunic decorated with tails of fur. The face was a caricature with huge warty nose and ears, topped in straggly hair. It was in good condition, except that the eyes that had previously rolled back and forth while it ‘spoke’ seemed to have been pulled out. What a wonderful find! An iconic piece of television history – of social history, given how it had rooted itself so deeply in the national consciousness.
But while the archivist in her was ecstatic, Annette couldn’t shake off her initial feeling of revulsion. The puppet was – creepy. The material felt unpleasantly oily and clammy under her fingers, and the weight of it was somehow disturbing. Quickly but gently, she lowered it onto her worktop. ‘Ghargel!’, exclaimed a voice behind her, filled with delight. Annette turned to see Maya, chic in her tight-fitting jeans and top, leather jacket and designer glasses. ‘Oh, Annette! This is wonderful!’. She beamed at Annette, then, bending closely, scrutinized the puppet. ‘May I touch him?’, she held out her hands and looked inquiringly at Annette. She quickly handed Maya a pair of gloves, which she pulled on without demur, and then cautiously reached for the puppet, handling it reverentially. ‘I remember watching him as a kid… Used to give me nightmares, but if my parents tried to switch it off then I threw a mega tantrum’. Spotting a spare office chair, she placed the puppet in it as if she were seating a small baby in its highchair, and rolled it over next to the trolleys. ‘He should have pride of place in the exhibition – a real star!’. ‘One moment!’, called Annette. She picked up a tag from her pile, scanned it and then fastened it around the puppet’s wrist. She could fill the record in once Maya had gone, but at least now there was no risk of the puppet going into the archive without an identifier. Maya was now looking over the rest of the items Annette had selected. ‘Great, wonderful,…yes…yes…lovely…hmm-’. She had reached the coat, and was looking at it with a doubtful expression. ‘What’s your angle with the coat? Was it one of his famous costumes, I don’t remember…?’. ‘I didn’t choose it at all’, replied Annette. ‘I though you did’. Maya looked sideways at Annette in a friendly but wary manner, that made her suspect that her outburst on the stairs had been passed on by Bea. ‘Not me’, she said. ‘I haven’t been down at all, I haven’t had the time. I meant to apologise. It’s just been so busy with preparing this exhibition, the publicity, talking with the heirs, arranging the space and the guests. To be honest, I’ve scarcely spared a thought to the content itself’. She looked directly at Annette, her face open and disarming. ‘I knew that was in safe hands, that I could trust you’. Annette felt embarrassed, but also touched by Maya’s words. Yet the coat still troubled her. ‘So who put the coat here?’. ‘I have no idea’, replied Maya. ‘It just turned up?’. Annette nodded. ‘I’d thrown it away’, she indicated the container – ‘and then I came in and it was hung up here’. Maya frowned. ‘That’s not right. I’ll ask around and see who might have done that. No one had any business coming in here without your permission. Bin it?’. Annette nodded again, and Maya picked up the coat and dropped it in the container. Annette was glad to see that she also seemed to dislike touching it. Maya dusted her gloved hands off and turned back to Annette. ‘Now, about the storyline…’.
They talked for a long time. Maya clearly knew little about Gerald Kempston, but she asked intelligent questions, and her enthusiasm was infectious. Annette was impressed by how she wove the selected objects and Annette’s facts about them into a story that was both entertaining and informative. She could almost see the whole thing taking shape in front of her, and she had to admit that, even given the short notice, Maya’s ideas of how to present the items were far more evocative than a display cabinet with a typed description. By the end of their discussion she was actually looking forward to the exhibition. She hoped that, whatever the truth of the accusations turned out to be, people would still come to visit it. She bid Maya a warm farewell as the younger woman left, and surveyed the depot with satisfaction. The respect with which Maya had treated her, and her apparently sincere reliance on her expertise, had gone a long way to dispel her bitter feelings. Together they had identified a few gaps in the narrative, and hopefully she could find something suitable in the final boxes. But that was a job for tomorrow. Collecting her coat and bag, she opened the door, turning back to switch off the light. As it clicked off, her gaze fell on Ghargel, his eyes gleaming in the light from the corridor. Eyes? She fumbled for the light switch, heart pounding. But when the lights blinked back on, the puppet’s eye sockets were as empty as ever. I’m just overtired, she told herself. Time for a good night’s rest, it would be a busy day tomorrow. Caught up in thoughts of what she might find and how it could be used in the exhibition, she was no longer thinking of herself as ripe for retirement.
Saturday
The building was empty. No museum visitors, no offices humming with activity, just one bored receptionist chatting laconically with an equally bored security guard. Annette greeted them and descended to the lowest level. Walking into the depot, she headed towards her desk – then pulled up short. All the tags she had painstakingly placed on the objects selected for the exhibition lay contemptuously tossed in a pile in the middle of the room. Annette stood over them, her fists clenched in fury, tears pricking at her eyes. Who could have done this? And why? Then she pulled herself together. The priority was to sort out the exhibition; finding the perpetrator of this vandalism could wait. She would ask the security guard to keep an extra eye on the depot this evening, then put in an official complaint to her manager on Monday morning. Planning her course of action calmed her, and she was able to turn herself to the tedious task of scanning all the tags, looking up what they belonged to, and re-attaching them.
The morning was far advanced by the time she could turn her attention to the remainder of the collection. At least whoever was responsible for removing the tags had left the objects themselves untouched, she comforted herself, as she opened the next box. But all the same, the thought that someone had been in there, not a relatively innocent busybody interfering with the choice for the exhibition but someone bent on wrecking her work, left her feeling jumpy and unsettled. The depot was always quiet, with a serene peace that she usually enjoyed, yet somehow today the silence seemed charged, watchful. The back of her neck prickled, and every tiny noise from the air-conditioning made her jump. After a while, the silence itself seemed to start to reverberate in her head, multiplying into countless new echoes, building up until she seemed to hear voices, whispers – or was it crying? Children crying?
She shook her head and stood up, stretching. Her eye fell on the trolleys, and she frowned. Walking closer, she saw the photos of the children. She had left them in a pile. But now they were propped up in rows, and there were far more than the three she had chosen. All the gazes were directed at her, watching, waiting, like an audience – or like witnesses. As she stood looking at them in puzzlement, she heard a breathing sound. It got closer and closer, until it seemed someone was standing right behind her. The air filled with the stench of aftershave and old sweat. The breathing grew heavier, faster, then culminated in a deep groan of pain – or pleasure. Annette jumped as something touched her leg. She whirled around – to see nothing. Looking back, she saw that she had brushed up against Ghargel’s foot. The misshapen head seemed to tilt ever so slightly, sightless eyes turning in her direction. Stumbling backwards, she caught herself against her desk. Pressing her hands to her face, she took several deep breaths. This was ridiculous. She had been in here working for too long. She would go for a walk up the stairs, clear her head, get her blood moving.
Stepping out into the cool air of the corridor, she already felt better. She pushed open the door to the stairs, set her foot on the first step, and took a deep breath in preparation. Then, a sudden thump against the slowly closing door startled her, as if someone else had come through behind her. In the corner of her eye, in the shadowy niche next to the stairs, she seemed to see movement, eyes gleaming where no eyes should be. What a crazy thought, her mind was playing tricks on her. Quickening her step, she trotted up the stairs, deciding to go to the reception and chat with the receptionist – talk about hobbies, pet dogs, anything mundane to get her back to normal. But, conditioned to the stair walk, on the ground floor she automatically turned and went straight through the door up the next staircase. She stopped, realizing her mistake. Then, through the grille, she saw what was coming up the stairs from the lower levels. For a moment she froze in terror. Then, it blundered against the doorframe, and in blind panic she ran upwards. The sound of her feet pounding on the steps, the gulping gasp of her breath couldn’t block out the sounds of something following, floundering – almost slithering – up the stairs behind her. The now-familiar stench and the sound of heavy breathing – not hers – was all around her. The door for the first floor loomed in front of her, but the thing behind her was too close, no time, no time to reach the handle and pull the slow-moving door open. She kept on going, stair after stair, vision blurred by sweat, her muscles screaming, her heart pounding painfully against her ribs. The distance between her and her pursuer seemed to increase ever so slightly, and a spark of hope penetrated her dread. If she could keep this up, she could extend her lead enough to get a door open and get through. The final level, level 5, then she would have the biggest lead and so the best chance. Summoning all her courage and determination she drove herself forwards, willing her legs to move faster. Behind her, the sounds grew fainter. Rounding the final turn, she flung herself up in desperation, finally thudding against the door in triumph, reaching for the handle… But her groping hand met a blank lock, and, vision clearing slightly, she saw that she was fumbling against the locked door to the roof. In her panic she had gone too far, passing the fifth-floor door to run up the final staircase to a dead end.
Then something collided against her from behind, and she fell to the floor. Rolling over, a loathsome, odorous mass descended on top of her, the weight pinning her to the ground. Opening her mouth to scream for help, she choked as it was filled with a dank bulge of stinking material, wisps of fur clinging to it. As a darkness filled with whirling sparks fogged her vision, and she felt her thundering heart falter, her mind was filled with a single thought, completely alien to her. The wish, the burning desire, that someone had thrown all those old boxes into a fire, for the evil within them to be consumed by the flames and destroyed utterly.