Necromance in the Air - Chapter XI (Fiction)
Lockdown
We last left our band of unlikely acquaintances fighting to get in, and out, of the office building. Tony and some kind of spider monster were trying to get in, and everything was getting a little fraught. So Debs hit a big button and a siren went off… Yeah. So here we go…
Oh, if you don’t know what’s going on you can start at the beginning of this series of very short chapters here -
A little insight at the bottom into what I’m doing with this whole thing if you want to know…
Lockdown
Lucy flinched at the metal screech and let go of the glass doors, watching as a barrier clanged down on the other side. The blaring siren reverberated through the reception area of the offices as the glass fronted entrance way was blocked off by a security shutter.
Tony’s face, a picture of rage, disappeared as the door lowered. A leg from the arachnid monstrosity slipped through the gap, pinned momentarily before retreating. With a heavy bang, the shutters hit the ground, and the sirens fell silent. The corridor plunged into darkness as the light from the street outside was cut off. Green LED lights on the floors and the ceiling blinked on, casting the space in a dim eerie light.
“What the hell was that?” Daniel asked.
“Are you asking about the spider monster, the weird guy trying to kill you, or the security door?” Debs said. She’d pulled herself up onto the reception counter, her untied trainers perilously close to falling off her feet as she swung her legs above the floor.
“Oh, hm, let me see. I’ve seen roller shutters before, so I’ll go with one of the others.” Daniel said as he took a step away from the door.
“That was Tony,” Lucy said. “He was probably just trying to get me out of here. The man, I mean, I don’t think the spider was called Tony.”
“No, that freaky thing was called Esmerelda and you know that guy?” Daniel said.
“He, uh, dropped me off here?” Lucy tucked her hair behind her ears and turned to face the room. “Okay, this is going to sound bad, but I’m not actually a temp.”
Debs let out a snort. “Oh my. I am so terribly shocked,” she said, clutching at imaginary pearls. “Rocked to the core. The woman dressed like an amateur cat burglar isn’t who she says she is? No, not our temp.”
“There’s no need to be rude.”
“I don’t care who you are. Why aren’t we calling the police?” Daniel said.
Felix, lying on the floor, made a moaning sound and Debs slid off the counter towards him. Her untied trainers flip-flopping with each step. The tentacle thing around her ankle slithered its way up into her hand as she pulled an office chair over to herself. She moved the chair into position next to Felix and took a seat, stroking the creature. “Don’t worry, Felix, I’m right here holding your hand,” she said.
“That’s not funny,” Lucy said, shaking her head. “Maybe a little, but that thing—”
“What the fuck is that thing in your hand? Is it a cuttlefish?” Daniel said.
Debs glanced down at it and back towards the doors. “Most people would have gone octopus or squid. Cuttlefish is weirdly specific, don’t you think?”
Lucy moved towards Debs and Felix with Daniel on her heels. The occasional rattle came from beyond the glass doors behind them as someone, or something, hit the roller shutters.
“What now?” Lucy asked Debs, and the lab coat wearing technician rolled her eyes.
“Now, whoever you are, we wait.”
“For what?” Daniel asked.
“Someone from management. I mean, someone will be notified about this,” Debs said, before waving a finger to indicate everything, ”situation.”
Daniel shoved by Lucy and addressed Debs. “Look, this isn’t my fault. I was on my own tonight. Technically, and the staff handbook is quite clear about this, there should be two people on night security. So really, you should be worried about me suing or something.”
“Don’t even get me started on the staff handbook, Mr Security Man—”
“Daniel.”
“Mm, honestly, I don’t think I’m going to bother learning your name. I’m not trying to be rude, it’s just like pets, you know? Give them a name and it’s much harder when you have to say goodbye.”
“So I am getting fired?”
“I think that’s the least of our worries,” Lucy interrupted, ending the conversation.
The silence after the siren died down was thick, broken only by the occasional thud from the other side of the roller shutter. Lucy and Daniel hovered over Felix, shadows stretching under the green emergency lights.
Debs leaned back in her chair, her hand idly stroking the tentacle creature as if it were a household pet. “Look,” she said, as though they were about to discuss routine office complaints. “This is far from ideal. You two are not supposed to be in here, but as we’ve clearly got a situation on our hands, I’m going to take an executive decision and bring you into the tent.”
“There’s a tent?” Lucy asked.
“I mean welcome you into the inner circle—”
“Oh god, there’s going to sacrifice us in some kind of ceremony,” Lucy hissed, grabbing Daniel’s sleeve with one hand, and crossing herself with the other.
Daniel shrugged Lucy’s grip off his arm and took a step away from her before raising his voice. “There is a monster outside. Can we stop with the business babble—”
“You’re right Security man,” Debs said with a nod. “We need to cut through the meaningless performative strategy, synergy of spidery monsters, and all-around low-hanging infernal fruit. We’ll sort the wheat from the chaff and really dig down into our KPIs. Shall we start by reviewing our connections to the demonic forces beyond the void, Security man, how are you doing with reducing the rate of corpse degradation, I mean, we’d all love not to have to keep the temperature quite so cold in here.”
“Stop her, Daniel Turbitt. She’s casting a spell or something,” Lucy said, clutching at Daniel’s arm.
“Daniel. Just call me Daniel, both of you. Why are we not, I don’t know, calling the police?”
“Let’s not let things get out of hand,” Felix said with a groan as he pulled himself into a sitting position. “Get it because—”
“Out of hand?” Daniel’s voice cracked. “I’m trapped in here, she’s—” he stared at Debs “—petting a demon squid thing, that madman Tony’s out there with a killer spider, and you’ve just woken up, but everyone’s talking like this is standard procedure!”
Debs rolled her eyes and fixed him with a blank stare. “It’s only a locked building. We do this all the time. Though usually it’s just to keep out auditors or avoid... incidents.”
“Incidents?” Lucy echoed, a look of dawning horror on her face. “You mean, you’re saying stuff …like this happens often?”
“As you well know, don’t you?” Debs said, standing up. She threw the tentacle creature at Felix, who didn’t even attempt to catch it as it wrapped around his face, then slithered into his lap. “Felix, keep your hands to yourself. Now you,” she said, turning back to Lucy, “whoever you are, are in cahoots with that man outside and his creature. You’ve clearly broken in here for some nefarious reason, and look at what you did to poor Felix.”
Felix frowned. “Pretty sure this is all on me, but I’m willing to be convinced.”
“Okay, I’ve reconsidered. Let’s talk about this tent,” Lucy said, trying to fix a smile on her tear-stained smudged face.
“Wait,” Felix said. “How long did I pass out for?”
“Barely a few minutes,” Debs said, shrugging. “Unfortunately for us.”
“Okay, but if you shut down the facility, did you put the centre on lockdown too? Only—”
“Only what?” Debs asked.
“Well… I only got into work like an hour ago and last week we had a leak and I bunged it up and sent a notice down to head repairs and to the technical office and there’s no chance that anyone on dayshift chased it up.”
“Do you have a ticket number?”
“What?”
“A ticket, Felix. Did the job have a ticket from whoever took the note?”
“I don’t understand—”
“Come on mate,” Daniel said. “Everyone knows you send something to a support desk and they send you a ticket. It’s not a special system for this place.”
“I don’t know. I don’t…what’s the deal with everyone being an expert on my job all of a sudden?”
“They have a point. You ask for support, you get a ticket. I mean, we all know it’s just supposed to appease you, to make you think that something’s happening, but you might as well just be in a queue—”
Felix stood up and raised his good hand. “If we’re in lockdown, then the office shutter dropped too… and it will be blocking the temporary artery I put in place.”
“Oh shit,” Debs said.
“Okay, I really want to be in the tent now. Let me in the tent, please,” Lucy said. “I don’t mind sharing a sleeping bag. Just tell me what is happening?”
“This might be a good time for some expedited onboarding to our newest surprise team members,” Debs said.
Felix nodded. “We might be about to have a lot of headaches.”
“And a massive coronary event,” Debs said, turning to look back at his office door.
Daniel put a hand on Felix’s shoulder and leant in. “We’d call the emergency services for that, though, right? Right?”
The sound of multiple excited voices cut through the tension in the room. Babbling voices, growing in volume, drifted out from the direction of Felix’s office.
“I don’t think they’d be much help,” Lucy said in a whisper.
Thanks for reading!
Or thanks for skipping down to this bit, if that’s what you did… I saw you. Necromance in the Air is a weird experiment, at least it is for me. I am not a traditional plotter, but I do spend a lot of time going back over things and adding things in, moving things around, editing plot lines - so this is tough, because I am not writing ahead. I have plot lines I want to cover, there are already things in here which you have noticed me calling back to from the first few chapters…but it’s an interesting experiment. It’s also a much more ‘stark’ writing style - I’m intentionally going for a very fast pace, lots of action and dialogue, less cynical segues or narrator monologues… Or you know, this could just be me making excuses for putting out something this raw, who knows? (I know.)
ANYWAY…. if you are reading this consider picking up some of my other published works, or pressing the like button, maybe even commenting? It would supply me with a tiny invisible dose of self worth and burgeon my limited self-esteem so I might continue to battle…Nah, bollocks to that, it would just be nice, okay? Be nice.
LOOK! I took words and assembled them into new shapes, like lego!
Gloomwood -
Augustan Blunt is having a bad day, and dying isn’t even the worst of it. Welcome to the Grim Reaper’s personal slice of the afterlife…
Malarkey’s ImaginOmnibus -
A weird twisted collection of anthologies - Number 4, Ominous Orbs just came out!
That comment about holding Felix’s hand was GOLD!!!!! WELL DONE!
LOL about the support tickets—so true 🤣🤣🤣
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏