Chapter 3: Mrs. Hemmings..

I didn’t get much sleep last night either. The lack of sleep is making me wonder whether all these things happening are in my mind or not. But I’m reminded every time I see that damn note that it’s all real.

I spent hours last night searching for anything I could about Prudence Hemmings. If she had lived in a big creepy mansion I imagine she would have been easy to find. But us folk who live in tower blocks aren’t so well documented. No one cares about our lives, no matter how extraordinary.

I found an article about missing person Lyla Hemmings. It suggested that she went missing under the care of her grandmother while playing in the park opposite the flats early in the morning. Interviews with her parents stated that they had both disowned Prudence.

Despite the many years that had passed since Lyla’s death/disappearance her parents appeared to have remained unforgiving of Prue. There was no mention of her on either of their social media accounts and she appeared to have no involvement with the children they had acquired since.

Searches for the Hemmings family in the local area were equally dead ends, I looked at link after link, desperate to find something but they all started to blur into one. Until finally I saw something.

An obituary for Bernard “Bernie” Hemmings, who had fallen from the tower block in unexplained circumstances after being diagnosed with dementia months before his death. I was surprised it hadn’t made bigger news. It had only been about a year. There were no details of where to find them, but his wife Prudence and her sister Bridget were listed as contacts to get find out details of the funeral.

It’s scary what you can do with the internet these days, but just with those phone numbers I was able to put them into a reverse directory and find an address for Bridget and Tony Bishop, the sister and brother in law that Prudence was supposedly living with.

About 4am I managed to get some sleep, not much though, I was back up and wide awake at around 7am, planning my route and working out my day. I saw a post on social media from one of her relatives that Georgia was identified and is stable. This loosened the knot in my stomach that has been present since I found the note somewhat.

At 8.50, I opened the door to my flat hoping to see postman Ian. 4 minutes passed and instead of the postman an elderly gentleman made his way down the corridor. He had a walking stick and kind eyes. In his free arm he carried a small plastic bag containing a newspaper and milk, he smiled and said “good morning” as he passed.

I smiled back. He reminded me of my grandad. I imagined him pulling cola cubes from his pocket for his grandkids and shushing them when their parents weren’t looking. A little further down the corridor the old man stopped and turned. He looked me dead in the eyes with a sympathetic expression and spoke.

“No post on a Sunday, if that’s what you were waiting for.” He smiled knowingly and turned to unlock a front door that until shut I couldn’t see the number of. When I saw the door close and the number 48 boldly displayed above the peephole I understood what Prudence had meant. Mr Prentice did seem to be a lovely chap.

I sat back in my flat and sighed, staring at the various tabs open on my laptop. At about 9.15 the knocking on the balcony door started.

The window cleaner was back.

I didn’t feel half as terrified as I had the first time, if anything, I was just angry. It took every ounce of restraint I had in my tired body not to engage with him, if only to tell him to fuck off. His genuine seeming requests just irritated me. After about 20 minutes of being watched the knocking started to give me a headache, so I grabbed a bag and left the flat.

I decided there was no time like the present. If I was going to turn up on the Bishops’ doorstep looking for her sister because of the freaky flat she’s left behind then I had to get it over with. If the address was old, or the bishops weren’t the people I was looking for then I was going to look stupid whatever time of day I went.

And I couldn’t take the window cleaners eyes anymore. There was something about them, they really do make you want to open that door.

I looked at the lift as I entered the communal hallway and decided today I would take the stairs. I couldn’t stand to be in a small box that my partner probably died very painfully in. My heart dropped into my stomach just at the sight of it.

The stairs were as grotty as the lift. We’d taken them multiple times on move in day but I hadn’t really taken it in the same way I could now. I thought about the rules and all the strange things happening in this building. I looked at the badly painted numbers on the walls as I reached each landing.

Nothing in this building is simple.

I looked at the numbers. 7, 6, 5 ... 5, 4, 3, 4, 2, G. Maybe it was the sleep deprivation but my legs were in agreement with my mind that I had definitely just descended more than 6 flights of stairs. They’d glitched.

I looked at the dusty and poorly lit stairwell from the bottom. It seemed dark despite the sun pouring in from the glass panel in the main building doors. The note never mentioned glitchy stairs, maybe I really was losing my mind.

As I turned to exit the building a woman walked in. She was in her late thirties to early forties and had 2 small children in tow. One boy and one girl. I guessed that they were twins, they were both incredibly blonde, with deep brown puppy dog looking eyes and couldn’t have been any older than 6-7. They were as close to identical as it gets in twins of different genders. I’m not a fan of kids, but they were super cute.

The lady had a short bob haircut that got longer at the front, it was uniform and dyed a perfectly even auburn colour. I knew it was dyed because her roots were blonde like her kids. She looked as tired as I felt, but she pulled herself together when she saw me, running fingers through s part of her hair that she must have missed how ever early she left this morning.

“Hi, are you here visiting?” Who opened with, trying to make small talk.

“No, I just moved in to flat 42, on the 7th floor, I was just leaving actually. Whereabouts are you?” I was desperate to go, I had feared myself up to see Prue but I didn’t want to be rude.

“I’m flat 26, my name’s Terri. This is Eddie and Ellie.” She gestured to the two small children hiding shyly behind her skirt. “Welcome to the block. If you ever need anything please feel free to give me a shout.”

“My name is Katie but people call me Kat too. That’s really kind of you, thank you. I will.... hey, is there something wrong with the stairs?” I stopped myself before going into detail.

“Nothing wrong, they just skip sometimes.” She answered, shrugging.

“Well I’d love to stop and chat but I actually really need to get going. It was nice to meet you Terri.” I tried to work out what was wrong with the children as I stepped forward to walk away. Still baffled by the stairs.

“By the way, we have a residents committee, you should come to one of our meetings, they’re every Tuesday in alternating flats. This Tuesday is at Molly Jefferson’s place in flat 31, come along. We’d love to have you!” Terri suggested, waving me off.

I walked out the doors after my encounter with Terri feeling sick. Every minute in this place made the note more real. Every word jumped off the page and into my life. Made it more likely that Jamie was really gone.

I rode the bus from a stop not far from the flats. It felt like it took and eternity to reach the little suburban area I was looking for. A five minute walk away from the bus stop I got off at and I was staring at a quaint little bungalow, belonging to Bridget and Tony Bishop.

I knocked on the door. The lady who opened it was unsteady on her feet, she was probably in her 70s, with wispy white hair neatly scraped back into a bun, two strands left hanging that just softened her wrinkled face. She wore a dusty rose coloured dress that hung just below her knees and smelled of stale cigarette smoke.

“Can I help you?” She asked bluntly.

“My name is Kat. I’m looking for Prudence Hemmings.” I answered, stuttering slightly.

Her eyes widened slightly.

“Why?” She asked, bizarrely.

“Is she here? It’s private.”

The lady ushered me into the house, and sat me down on a sofa, within minutes there was a cup of tea in front of me. She didn’t say anything to me for a while, we just looked at each other. Then she finally broke the silence.

“I wondered if you’d try and find me. It took me a long time to decide whether to leave that note or not but I decided that you deserved a head start. That’s more than I ever got.”

The woman was Prudence, she was nothing like I had imagined. She seemed tough and hardened and spoke with a mostly blunt tone, she contributed before I could answer.

“Terri called me not long ago. Told me that she had met the new tenant. She said you looked shaken up, and said that my note may not have been enough. I did say I couldn’t fit everything on there. And the stairs didn’t seem too important. The committee wanted to organize a meeting with you on your moving in day but I told them that was intrusive. The whole committee thing always seemed a bit excessive to me anyway.” She spoke flippantly, like it was nothing.

“It may have been intrusive, but we needed a warning, we spent a night in the place before I found your note! My boyfriend had already left for work at 3.15 and taken the lift.... he didn’t know.” I broke as I told her what had happened. Her face dropped. And so did my hope for Jamie.

“I’m so sorry... I really don’t know what to say. I thought my note would reach you in time.” She mumbled, her face to the floor, refusing to look at me as tears streamed down my face.

“He’s gone isn’t he. I didn’t want to accept it but I spoke to the postman and your face says all it needs to. The postman said there might be a way I can have him back.” I bit at her, devastated and angry.

“He’s gone. You can’t have him back. What Ian is referring to isn’t what you think. There’s a way to get people back from the lift. But not as themselves. Trust me, I learned the hard way. Once they’re back you can’t reverse it. I’m sorry about your man. But he’s gone forever. Don’t dig into the other way, to be gone forever is luckier than that alternative.” She still wouldn’t look up from the floor.

“What do you mean...”

“I don’t want to talk about it. I said in the note that there are things I’d rather not discuss and I need you to respect that or I won’t be speaking to you at all. Now move on and ask what you need to ask.” Prudence cut me off, I decided not to push the topic further, and moved on to some other things I needed to know.

“What’s the deal with Terri’s kids? They seem sweet and normal.”

“Those little demon creatures are anything but normal.” She answered, wincing slightly at the though of them. “When she went into labor Terri never made it to a hospital. They were the first children ever to be born inside the building and with everything that goes on it’s like something’s rubbed off on them. They’re average children in the daytime, but they never sleep, ever. Poor Terri hasn’t had a days rest since they were born. They also really love to steal birds and rats they find the cats playing with and torment them. Really annoys the cats.”

As she finished speaking a small hairless cat strutted out from behind an armchair across the room, meowing softly. It brushed its head up against Prue’s exposed legs, leaving scorch marks where it touched. She didn’t react, she reached down and stroked the top of its head, smiling as it purred.

“And those?” I asked, eyes stuck to her now badly burned legs.

She chuckled, pulled out a box and lit a cigarette, tapping the top layer of ash into a small silver dish in front of her. She offered me one and I took it gladly.

“They’ve always been my good friends. I couldn’t leave the building without bringing a part of home with me. This little guy is Damon. He’s seen some things.” She gushed, not taking her eyes off the cat.

“But where did they come from, why are they everywhere?” I asked, watching in disbelief as her burns subsided. It seemed impossible, but I looked at my arms where I had picked up the cat the night before and there was no evidence it had ever happened. They didn’t even appear sunburned.

“No one really knows. They started to appear after the fire, a few years after I’d moved in. It was rumored that they were the pets of the residents that burned, and that was why they had no fur. But I don’t think that’s true.”

I interrupted.

“I met one of those neighbors last night. She said her name was Natalia. She almost killed my best friend. You’re crazy if you think your note was enough of a warning!” I ranted emotionally.

“Look, girl. If I had made a song and dance about warning you, then you’d have thought me crazy and challenged the rules. You’d have been dead already. Be grateful you got anything. I didn’t. I had to work it all out. Your generation are so spoiled.” She tutted in frustration at me. I was angry, but she was probably right. An elderly lady telling me rat like creatures would kill my boyfriend in a lift would probably have got some laughs from me a few days ago. I stayed quiet and waited for her to calm down, after a while she sighed and started again.

“I think the cats are the neighbors that burned. They’ve never meant any harm and they hiss and run from the impostors that roam the building. Besides, there’s no way there were that many cats living on one floor.

The impostor people don’t even match up with the residents that died in the fire, none of them look like, or claim to have the same name as the dead. They just claim to live in their flats. I’ve met Natalia before, she left a bad scar on Bernie’s leg from an incident we had, nasty girl.

Before the fire there was CCTV and there was a recording saved of about 15 people marching into the flats and up to that floor about half an hour before the fire started. It was the only evidence found. CCTV wasn’t great in the eighties so they were never identified. And the flames melted the relevant cameras so nothing ever came of it.

I think the people that entered that night are the ones that ask for sugar. I don’t know any more than that but if you avoid them like I said you don’t need to know more. They hate the cats. I hope your friend survives, but I’ve seen what those people can do so maybe she was better off dead.” Prue carried on stroking Damon. I watched the skin of her fingers melt and twist as they made contact with him.

“What happened to your husband?”

I asked the question so fast I didn’t have time to consider that this was a topic she had explicitly said she didn’t want to discuss in the note. But I had to know.

She scowled at me. “I said I didn’t want to talk about that.” She hissed.

“I just lost the love of my life. I need some answers.” I begged.

“What happened to Bernie won’t help you. I know you’d think any deaths in that building would be down to the quirks but this wasn’t. For the most part anyway.

Don’t forget that we had lived there for 35 years, Bernie knew the rules, we knew how to take care of ourselves and have a happy life there. It was our home.”

“I don’t doubt that’s Mrs Hemmings, I’m sorry” I interjected.

“Bernie had dementia. It started about 6 months before he died and he deteriorated very rapidly. Towards the end he started wandering, the doctors said it was common, but in our position it was incredibly dangerous. More times than I can count I pulled him away from the lift just in time.

Along with wandering he was forgetting the rules. He let that smug awful window cleaner in 3 times, thank lord for the big metal pipe I kept by the balcony door, chased him out a treat. Not that anything stops him from coming back. I’m sure you’re already acquainted.

After all the dangerous situations Bernie was in, by the end he made the smallest and most fatal of errors.

He left a bowl of food out for Damon at 10am. I was out shopping with Terri and a few of the girls from the committee and when I came back I found one of those awful creatures...”

Prudence started to cry. I put my hand on her shoulder in an attempt to comfort her, after all, I truly knew how she felt.

“It was eating him.” She sniffed and steadied herself to continue, moving my hand. “I chased the creature away with the same metal pipe I had the window cleaner and pushed Bernie off the balcony. He was heavy but I didn’t want anyone to know what really killed him. It’s teeth..” she shivered “...they made such an awful noise. It reminded me of -“

“Lyla.” I finished her sentence. I hadn’t meant to. I was so invested in her story I couldn’t help it.

“I gather you spoke with Ian then.” She said sounding resigned. “I never meant to hurt that little girl. I loved her so much.” Tears rolled down her wrinkled cheeks. Damon, who was now sat next to her on the sofa, shuffled closer as if to cuddle her.

“Haven’t you ever been curious about getting her back?” I asked, my mind turning back to the methods hinted at by both Prue and the postman. “I miss Jamie so much. I’d do anything to get him back.”

Her face filled with a look of horror and shame. “Of course I have.” She answered, “which is exactly why I’m telling you not to.”

But I couldn’t let it go.

“Surely anything must be better than gone forever?” I pestered. I wish I hadn’t.

Prudence, frustrated, stood up and gestured for me to follow, she lead me outside to the back garden of the bungalow. At the back was a large shed, the kind people used for a man cave or a summer house. It was pretty, the sun shone down on it lighting up the few cobwebs in the corners and making them twinkle.

Mrs Hemmings was careful to look into both neighboring gardens to ensure there was no one around before she unlocked the door to the shed. We stepped inside and the first thing to hit me was the smell, it was putrid, like rotting meat. I looked at the floor and covered my nose with my hands, staring back at me was a pool of blood.

I followed the blood with my eyes as Prudence locked us in the shed. Then after I made it past the animal bones I finally saw it.

Just like postman Ian had described.

One of the creatures was watching me, from a heavy duty metal dog cage in the corner of the shed. It looked reinforced but still the metal had chew marks. Their jaws had to be strong to cause that.

That didn’t surprise me looking at it, it’s rodent like nose and beady, yet somehow human like eyes were nothing compared to the two very visible rows of jagged sharp teeth that lined each gum. Despite its small stature, it was terrifying.

Prudence opened a drawer in a dusty cupboard across the room and pulled out a can of dog food, she poured the contents into the bowl and passed the bowl through the feeding hatch. The cage had a safety feature meaning the animal couldn’t access the food until the hatch was locked from the outside. I was grateful for this.

Prue turned to me and spoke. She brushed one of the two strands of hair framing her face behind her ear. Gesturing to the hideous creature she said;

“Kat, I would like to introduce you to my granddaughter, Lyla.”