Desolation Read Free

echo.
    â€œCome on!” Peter said, pausing on the sixth stair, looking down at Cain and smiling. “And don’t mind me. I’m a bit morbid at times. Watch too much shit on TV.” He laughed as he started up again.
    Cain hefted his suitcase and carrier bags and followed his new landlord. “So who else lives here?” he asked.
    â€œAh yes,” Peter said, paused on the first floor landing. “I should have given you the tour. Oh well, maybe later. There are a few things I need to show you—laundry room in the basement, fire escape, alarm board, postboxes, that sort of stuff. But for now . . . well, who else lives here.” He looked at Cain and smiled again. Then he giggled.
    â€œWhat is it?”
    â€œWell, mate, you’re sharing a house with some odd folk, that’s for sure.”
    Another fuckin’ weirdo
, the kid had said. “Odd? How so?”
    â€œWhere to begin?” Peter said. “Follow me up and I’ll talk you through your new neighbors.”
    Cain felt uncomfortable at the thought of Peter describing his neighbors out here on the stairs and landings. Any of them could be listening, and he did not want their opinions of him to be tainted by what their mutual landlord had to say. But no doors cracked open, no shadows revealed lurking residents, and he thought that maybe they were all out. At work, perhaps. Or wherever it was they went during the day. Freedom was not something Cain was used to, and he could not imagine anyone not taking full advantage of it.
    â€œGround floor,” Peter said, “Flat One. Sister Josephine. Don’t ask me if that’s her real name. Bit of all right beneath her habit, I reckon, but as I’ve never seen her not wearing it—
never
—I wouldn’t know. She thinks she’s a bit special.”
    â€œWhat’s a nun doing living here?”
    â€œWho said she’s a nun?”
    â€œWell, her name . . .”
    â€œYeah, but I just said don’t ask.”
    They walked along the first-floor landing, past two doors, heading for the flight of stairs to the second floor. The idea of inhabiting a dead man’s flat did not disturb Cain as much as it should.
At least I’m out
, he thought. Peter dropped the chest, glanced at his hand as if in pain, folded his arms and nodded at the closed doors.
    â€œAll strange,” he whispered. “It’s the number of the house attracts them. Number 13. Some streetsdon’t have it at all, you ever noticed that? Evens on one side, they’re fine, but odd numbers . . . seven, nine, eleven, fifteen . . . mad, eh? Surely number fifteen would really be thirteen, so it’d be just as fucked up?”
    â€œI’ve heard some buildings miss out their thirteenth floor,” Cain said.
    â€œAh yes, but do they? Maybe the floors are all there, home to government agencies or alien corporations. Ever thought of that?”
    â€œNot really,” Cain said, although he had read books containing that theory many times. He had no idea whether Peter was serious with any of this, or just testing him, dangling bait of various tastes and textures to see what he bit. Odd folk, thirteenth floor, a nun who may or may not be. The landlord seemed just as strange. His face was old before its time—he looked fifty, whereas Cain was certain he was no older than thirty-five—and the lines and crags in his skin hid true meaning like an abstract poem. It would need deciphering, concentration. Cain would need to
know
it.
    â€œWell, don’t forget it,” Peter said. He laughed again. He seemed to do that a lot, although Cain had yet to hear true humor there. Perhaps after so long in the Home he had become inured against wit.
    â€œSo who’s here?” Cain asked. The door he had just passed held a number 4, while the one next to him held a vertical word
Three
, the
T
hanging askew from where a screw had popped free.
    â€œWell, maybe we