Apartment 16 by Adam Nevill Read Free Book Online Page A

left the lift and stood on the landing, he could smell it too: burned meat, singed clothing and something like sulphur. But there was no smoke, the doors were cold, and the rubbish stores were empty. It was a dead scent, but a deeply unpleasant miasma like the residue that lingered in a place where there had been an accident with fire. It was strongest near the door of number nineteen. Old Mrs Roth’s place.
    He looked about him and was reminded why he’d never liked the building upstairs. Any of it, if he were honest. Even during the lighter evenings of the summer, when the fading sun reinforced the electric light in the communal areas, he found it gloomy. The old brown wood, the dull brasses and the thick green carpet seemed to absorb any illumination, particularly on the stairwells. They reminded him of those parts of old houses that remained forever in shadow. But despite the absence of human traffic in the stairwells and corridors, the place had an active energy. A kind of swarming, bustling sensation in the air, as if the presence of former activity was locked in place and unable to escape.
    He descended to the eighth floor in a feverish, breathless daze. He decided to proceed swiftly across the landing and not stop, regardless of what he smelled or heard bumping and scraping about inside apartment sixteen. But it was not to be.
    As he took the stairs two at a time and swung onto the landing he almost collided with a figure. A figure dressed in white and hunched over. It was standing a few feet before the door of apartment sixteen.
    ‘Jesus Christ,’ he whimpered in a breathless voice and felt every hair stand up on his scalp.
    The figure turned to stare at him. For a second he failed to identify the crumpled face and the curved bonnet of thin silvery hair. But then recognition struck. His shock passed and an immediate sense of relief washed through him. It was Mrs Roth. But in her nightgown, alone, and clearly distressed.
    ‘He’s come back,’ she said, on the verge of tears. Her needle-thin arms and arthritic hands trembled. Through the thin, silky material of her gown he could see the sharp bones of her shoulders and pelvis sticking out. Absurdly scrawny legs, knotted with veins, jutted from beneath the hem. Her clawed feet were bare.
    ‘He’s come back for me.’
    She was ninety-two. He could do nothing but wonder how she had managed to walk down a flight of stairs on those legs. Mrs Roth was largely confined to her bed, being taken out for lunch just twice a week, with the help of two walking sticks and her Filipino maid, Imee.
    Seth stood still and stared at her. He tried to swallow but it was too painful.
    She pointed a disfigured hand at the door of flat sixteen. ‘Open the door. I want to see for myself.’
    He shook his head. ‘I can’t, Mrs Roth. Let’s get you back into bed.’
    Angrily, she swatted the contortion of bone and thin skin that serviced as a hand. ‘I don’t want to be in bed!’
    She wasn’t sleepwalking. And, despite her age, Mrs Roth had never seemed prone to even the vaguest confusion. In fact, she remained unfailingly rude and unpleasant at all times. Though she rarely bothered Seth at night, her maltreatment of the day staff was legendary. Even the head porter was terrified of her.
    ‘Please, ma’am. You shouldn’t be down here.’
    He realized his mistake as he was speaking. Her face purpled with rage. She turned on him; pointed a finger, bent like a hook, at his face, so only the knuckle of the second joint was directed at his eyes. ‘How dare you!’ The normally perfect halo of transparent wisps on her head, fashioned into a bouffant, became disturbed. A few strands hung about her ears. Through what remained in place, he could see her pale scalp and the liver spots discolouring it. Her neck was thin and the flesh hung from her collarbones like loose leather. She reminded him of a bird. A beaky, fierce-eyed bird with a few feathers remaining on its plucked