Danuta Reah - Only Darkness

The story that Les was telling was about a caretaker who had gone down the staircase one night to check that the outside door was locked. He went down the stairs and checked the door. He didn’t check anything else, because there was nothing else to check. As he was climbing back up the staircase, slowly, because it was late and he wasn’t a young man, there was a sudden draught, the door above him slammed shut and the light went out. He stopped, because it gave him a shock to be suddenly in the dark, then went on, a bit more quickly now. It was cold and somehow unpleasant, at night, on the stairs, in the dark. Then he stopped again. Down below him, on the stairs he’d just climbed, he could hear something, something that sounded like footsteps coming lightly and quickly up the stairs behind him, from where there had been nothing but an empty staircase and a locked door. He didn’t wait. He ran as quickly as he could in the dark, up the last two flights to the door that was hard to open from the inside. As he struggled with it, he could hear the footsteps getting closer and moving more quickly as they came towards his landing. He managed to get the door open, was through it and had it shut and bolted behind him more quickly than he thought was possible. He was leaning against the door getting his breath when something struck it with such force he was knocked to the ground. But nothing was ever found on the staircase to account for it.

When Debbie had first heard the story of the footsteps that came from nowhere, pursuing their victim in the dark, the hairs had stood up on her arms. That would be an excellent story to tell the students. She could take them on to the stairs, show them.

The double doors were pushed open, making them both jump, and Les fumbled with his key ring as Rob Neave came into view. ‘On the warpath today,’ he muttered.

Neave saw Debbie, and made some attempt to hide his irritation. ‘I want you down with the delivery van,’ he said to Les. ‘Get Dave or someone to open these rooms and for Christ’s sake don’t take all day.’ His face was white and he looked ill, as if he had a serious hangover. Debbie remembered what Louise had told her the other evening.

‘That was my fault,’ she apologized for Les. ‘I was getting him to tell me his ghost story.’

Neave looked at her with a faint smile and shook his head when she asked him if he knew it, so she told him the story she’d just heard from Les. He didn’t seem too impressed. ‘You don’t believe all that, do you?’

‘Of course not, but it’s a good story. Don’t you think so?’

He smiled properly this time, and she felt a small sense of triumph. ‘No, I just see Les coming up the stairs with his head tucked under his arm.’ She laughed, and then he said, ‘I need a word with you. Will you be in your room around five?’

The ghost tour of the Broome building went down very well. Debbie wondered, only half facetiously, if she should suggest it to the college marketing forum as a money spinner. Despite the success of her class, she felt uneasy. That feeling of foreboding was back, and she was glad that the college was bustling with pre-Christmas activity. She felt better in the crowded corridors. As soon as she was on her own she had that feeling of eyes on her, a sense of cold and menace. She cursed Tim, and she cursed herself for thinking about ghost stories – especially college ones.

It didn’t help when, at coffee break, her head of department summoned her to his office to discuss the newspaper article. Peter Davis listened to her explanation, but his concluding, ‘Well, we’ll let it go this time but don’t let it happen again,’ served to fire up her anger. It was hard to pull her mind away from it and concentrate on her class. Anyway, she missed coffee.

At lunchtime there was a union meeting. City College was in trouble. Falling student numbers and financial constraints meant that the college was losing money, and the college management were planning cuts. The union was fighting for its members’ jobs, but the staff were divided and undecided. The meetings were usually acrimonious or inconclusive.

The room was filling up as Debbie arrived. She’d meant to give herself time to buy a sandwich before the meeting started, but she’d stayed behind to talk to two of the students, and had had to come straight along. She saw Tim Godber indicating an empty seat next to him, but ignored him – Why is Tim trying to be friendly again? – and found a seat at the other side of the room. The news was all bad. City College was running more deeply into debt, and the management were looking for savings in the staffing budget. Nervously, Debbie thought about her overdraft and the money she needed each month just to pay the mortgage.

She had to leave before the meeting was over, and go straight to the classroom for her afternoon session with another GCSE group. They were a particularly lively group – standard euphemism, Debbie thought, for difficult and obnoxious – and she didn’t feel up to controlling them through a trip round the building. No ghost tour, then. She decided to read them some ghost stories instead, and try to get them writing that way. They enjoyed the stories and contributed some of their own – mostly plots from videos, but there were one or two local stories that were interesting, and Debbie got them to record those on to audio tape, after they’d giggled and messed about. The students stopped cooperating when it came to writing, though, and dealing with the disruption, the constant demands for attention, requests for pens and paper tried her patience almost to breaking. By the end of the afternoon she had a headache and was too exhausted to feel hungry, even though she hadn’t eaten since she left the house that morning.

When Rob Neave got to the staff room it was gone quarter past five. Debbie was sitting in her chair drinking coffee and eating chocolate. She offered a piece to him. ‘What is it about teachers and chocolate?’ he said, turning her offer down.

‘This’ – she waved the chocolate bar – ‘is because I haven’t had anything since breakfast.’ He still looked tired, she noticed, as if he’d had as little sleep as she’d had these past few nights, but he looked better than he had in the morning, more like himself. She wanted to say something about this, but she couldn’t think of any way to say it that didn’t sound like an intrusion. ‘Have you heard about the cuts?’ she asked instead.

He had but didn’t seem too concerned. ‘I’m not planning a long stay here, anyway.’

Debbie wondered when he planned to leave. The place would be duller without him. ‘You said you wanted to see me about something, didn’t you?’

He seemed unsure of himself, which was unusual. ‘That thing at the station. I’ve been talking to some people,’ he said, choosing his words carefully, ‘and it’s possible you did see something important that night …’ He was watching her closely now. Debbie put down her chocolate bar. She wasn’t hungry any more. ‘It’s a long shot,’ he said. ‘They’ll want to talk to you again, I think. Just – be a bit careful. Don’t use the train on your late nights.’

‘Is this official?’ Debbie tried hard to keep her voice calm.

‘No, it’s just advice. From me, not them.’

‘I need a drink.’ Debbie plucked up her courage. ‘Come and have a beer or something – if you’re free.’

He looked at his watch and hesitated. She thought he was going to refuse, but he said, ‘I’ve just got some stuff to see to in the office. Where are you going? Across the road? I’ll see you in half an hour.’

Suddenly elated, Debbie packed her work into her briefcase and sorted her mail into the out tray. As she was leaving the room, the phone rang, and it was a bit more than half an hour before she was walking through the door of the Grindstone into the smell of beer and old smoke, and saw Neave leaning on the bar, talking to the landlord.