It would have to be shift changeover when the lady came in; but then again Silas expected nothing less. One didn’t rise far in the force without a healthy degree of pessimism.
He supposed she was comely enough as squirrels go—reddish fur, purse (which Silas did not doubt came well equipped with all the arcane paraphernalia women felt necessary for a trip to town) and bonnet which had come dangerously askew on the way to the station. It was not the squirrel’s garb, however, but rather her demeanour that had caught their attention. The way her restless forepaws never stopped fidgeting stirred butterflies in his stomach, and for a brief uncharitable moment Silas found himself fully in agreement with Officer O’Reilly’s colourful sentiments:
“Ah, shite,”
Crass as O’Reily’s vocabulary may be, Silas had to admit that the young hare’s assessment summed up the situation quite nicely. The squirrel’s clothing was dishevelled and she was dragging her purse by its strap. Her eyes were wide and she clutched at the Styrofoam cup of coffee Rose handed her like a drowning sailor to a raft. “Please help me find Timmy,”
“Have you tried—”
“YES I’VE DAMNED WELL TRIED INFORMATION!” had it not been for his thirty-odd years as a security jockey, Silas would’ve crumpled under the force of that shriek. “They can’t help. Nobody can,”
“Well, we’ll certainly do our best,” Silas waved Officer Keller forward and O’Reilly back. Fergus O’Reilly; well known for his single-minded crusade against vandals and trespassers, was not an ideal confidante for distraught women. “Let’s start with Timmy, shall we?”
And so the story had unfolded by degrees; dutifully recorded in Aiden Keller’s neat orderly penmanship: Eleanor Frisby had brought her youngest son to update photo records for various identity documents. On the way out they had been separated by the evening rush, chivvied to occupy separate elevators in the confusion. Upon exiting, Timmy was nowhere to be seen; despite several intercom announcements to Samaritans on the lookout.
“This one’ll look right queer in your in-tray then, won’t it?”
“Och, aye!” Fergus made a reappearance with his officer’s cap at a jaunty angle between his ears, balled up the carefully penned report and tossed it towards the wastebasket with casual indifference. “If it were actually going INTO me in-tray, ye numpty,”
“Hey what’s the big idea, you--”
Silas interposed himself between the fox and hare before either could come to blows. “You’re on shift, Gus. Rookie, a word?”
And that was the manner in which Aiden Keller; newest addition to the municipal auxiliary police, learnt of the infamous Necking Elevator.
As one of the oldest buildings in Springwood; the town hall has certainly seen better days. The first floor is set aside as a public space hosting a visitor’s lobby and 24h café catering to civil servants working unnatural hours. The topmost floor is merely an extension to the neighbouring multi-storey carpark added as a modern convenience for those who preferred to drive. A pair of rickety elevators ply the route from top floor to first. During office hours they facilitate access to the government offices in between, but switch to key-card verification once the work day is over. From six to six, civilian access is restricted solely to the public lobby space and the top floor linkway annex. A shady stairwell presents an alternate means of travel between top floor and first, but stale air and lack of adequate lighting account for why it’s not regularly used.
“Protocol has us patrol those stairs several times per shift to evict hobos and so on,” Keller’s muzzle wrinkled in distaste. “Found a badger in there once. Bloke threw up on me,”
Not that the lifts were much better, at least in Silas Walker’s opinion. Regular patrols of the stairwell had not solved the loitering issue, merely relocating it. Where once it had been a regular hideout for randy teenagers and pushers, town hall’s new patrol policy necessitated a sudden change of territory, which just so happened to be—
“The elevators themselves,” Silas confirmed wearily. “They came with the building when it was newly built, so aren’t terribly modern by today’s standards.” Truth be told, ‘modern’ might be a gross understatement. “They’re slow, creaky and don’t have cameras inside them. Takes about three to five minutes in a straight line from ground floor to top,” still a better alternative to climbing a couple hundred flights of stairs anyhow. “Coincidentally, just about enough time for certain…trysts to be had before you arrive at your destination if you take my meaning. If you and your partner were minded to be discreet,”
“You mean…”
“Yep. What goes on in those lifts aren’t our jurisdiction, so they don’t concern us. Wouldn’t want to be responsible anyhow. Housekeeping says they find dozens of loose rubbers and suspicious stains each time they’ve to clean the place up. And if that’s not bad enough, there’ve also been…disappearances,”
Ferreting about in a drawer, Silas retrieved a sizeable file which he let fall with a satisfying thump on the table. “I swear, this thing gets heavier every year. Don’t just stand there gawking, rookie. Hand over the report. We’re adding it to the pile,”
“The…pile?”
“It’s not something you need be troubling yourself with,” reading something in Aiden’s eyes, Silas modulated his tone. “In any given year, we’ve had ten or more alleged disappearances taking place in either of these elevators—and those are just the ones that’ve been brought to our attention. None of them have ever been solved. Gus wouldn’t know tact if it bit him on the cottontail, but he does speak sense from time to time,”
“You’re saying that the top brass knows about it and we should…what—just sweep all this under the rug?”
“I’m saying,” the elderly antelope fixed his understudy with a gimlet eye. “That as security personnel we ALL have after-hours clearance to every single one of this building’s floors. Yet in all my years I’ve never so much as ridden that damned elevator and neither will Rose—not if I’ve anything to say about it. Humour an old clopper and see her up the stairs to the carpark, won’t you?”
Silas Walker spent the next fifteen minutes at his desk, glued to the bank of screens. Not until the attractive antelope was helped into her vehicle by her vulpine escort would he release the breath he was holding in a sigh of relief. For all of its inconvenience, the stairs did come with surveillance cameras.
Only then did he smooth out Aiden’s crumpled report and slip it together with the others of its ilk in the cold case folder, idly flipping through the contents from time to time. Each told a disturbingly familiar tale: a crowd, an elevator, an unexplained disappearance. The classic locked room mystery.
…or was it?
Against his better judgment Silas replayed the closed-circuit footage from earlier that evening. The time coded stamp read 1803, minutes after public access had been shut down. Nonetheless, there was a steady stream of commuters heading to grab a quick bite or takeout at the lobby café before leaving by way of the top-floor carpark.
He identified Eleanor Frisby and her son Tim, the latter awkwardly balancing a sack of takeout in both paws. Evidently part of it was liquid and he hadn’t wanted it to spill, opting instead to carry it in front of him in a manner that obstructed his view of the immediate surroundings. It certainly explained the wobbly nature of his gait, and the way he had been separated from his mother in the crowds. Silas watched both squirrels enter their elevators as they arrived at the same time, each facing the other. The doors shut, then opened once more approximately five minutes later at the top floor to discharge their loads of passengers. Neither lift had stopped at any other floor to let people in or out. And yet…
No Timmy. Here was Eleanor Frisby searching for her son with rising anxiety amidst the crowds. Here she was again riding the elevators up and down to sweep the top and ground floors. Then at the information counter, where she would bequest a loudspeaker announcement. It happened exactly as Aiden had recorded in his report.
Silas paused the tape just before the doors opened for the second time, then ran it again—this time in slow motion. A stream of people issued from both elevators: A tigress enthusiastically chewing bubblegum, a weasel with mumps, an aristocratic wolf wiping his paws on a handkerchief…
He rewound the footage, hoping against hope but already knowing what he was about to see. Once again both elevators discharged their passengers. Nothing the slightest bit out of place, nothing that would give any observer an excuse to sit up and take notice, except…
As much as Silas wanted to discount it, every single person in Timmy’s elevator had been carnivorous in nature. Just as it had been in all the other disappearances. Did that weasel he saw really have mumps, or were his cheeks stuffed full? Was that a trace of red on the handkerchief the wolf was using to wipe his paws? As for the surprising number of passengers chewing…the less said about that, the better.
Nothing that would stand up in court of course. Already he could see the headlines: Paranoid Officer Accuses Members Of Community, Incites Race Riots. Without a camera in the lift itself there would be no way to force a conviction. Not to mention that the idea itself bordered frankly on the ludicrous. The defence and the press would have a field day over the implications that would arise; the mere suggestion that some of their number still craved for the flavours of flesh…
For all his wanting to live and let lie, the spectre of the Necking Elevator still lingered in the back of his mind. It plagued him in his dreams; which took the form of scarlet rivers trickling forth from rusty metal doors, doors that took on an uncanny resemblance to a maw of gnashing teeth. His daughter Rose Walker featured prominently in some of those dreams, often as an out-of-reach figure stepping unknowingly into the lure of that open mouth beyond his efforts to detain or dissuade.
To make matters worse, relations between Fergus and Aiden were rising to a head. Not exactly a development that took Silas by surprise given the bad blood that usually lay between herbivores and carnivores; one that the highlander hare’s explosive temper easily brought to the fore. That most of these confrontations could be traced back to Rose didn’t do much to ease his fears as a father either.
“Take the stairs on your rounds,” he’d impressed on both his subordinates. “I don’t care if our cards give us access to the elevators. I don’t want to see either of you using them, ever.” On this point Silas was resolute. Let them think he was losing his marbles, or else getting superstitious in his old age. Better that than give voice to his true concerns: that the very nature of the elevators made them convenient locations for murder and homicide.
And so it had been…up to the point of Fergus O’Reilly’s inexplicable disappearance.
Silas himself had been off duty on the day in question, and so it fell upon his daughter Rose to provide halting testimony. She and Aiden had arrived at the municipal building at the same time, Aiden giving her a ride. Rose would’ve left together with Gus as well, had not the latter persuaded them to partake of a few brews in the meantime. ‘A few’ predictably translated to several, and by the time the pair resurfaced Fergus had been drunk as a skunk. Yet for all that the hare insisted he was able to drive, and it was over this point that he and Aiden apparently came to blows in a tussle that earned the unlucky fox a black eye and a nosebleed. In the end it was decided that Rose should man the desk whilst Aiden shoulder Fergus up to hail a cab—a manoeuvre that would be tricky on its own even if Gus hadn’t been belligerent and uncooperative.
Of course, they had taken the elevator. There was no other alternative. The hare was easily two heads taller than both of them and built like a quarterback, there was no conceivable way Aiden could have supported his bulk up the winding flight of stairs. Footage showed them both staggering with difficulty into one elevator, then Officer Keller exiting alone five minutes later. In accordance to protocol Keller had ridden the elevator back down (doing a sweep presumably in the meantime) and relieved Rose at the desk. Rose had been in hysterics; insisting on riding the elevator alone for a few trips before calling it in despite Keller’s efforts to convince her otherwise—unsurprising, given the knowledge that she and Fergus had been dating at the time. Silas was relieved to see Keller follow protocol and remain at his desk rather than accompany her; a few things about that most recent disappearance troubled him, the bloodstains in the lift allegedly from Keller’s unlucky injury in particular. Could that much blood be had from a single nosebleed? Then again, footage had shown poor Aiden being clocked with a particularly vicious blow…
All the same, there were hints that didn’t add up. No inquests ran for Officer O’Reilly; just one more nameless statistic claimed by the phenomenon of the elevators. By mutual unspoken consent none of them mentioned Fergus, not even in passing. It was as though the hot-tempered hare had never existed.
The dreams continued uninterrupted, however—visions of blood and pointed teeth. They troubled his sleep and made Silas irritable at the office; a fact that colleagues noticed with concern. Rose in particular chided her father for the aloof attitude Silas adopted whenever Aiden Keller was in the vicinity, speaking at times of staging an intervention. He only wished that he could trust her with his suspicions.
Then came the night he’d twisted his ankle on patrol slipping on a wet spot on those dratted stairs. Had to call it in, of course. Dispatch said they’d be sending a replacement in a jiffy. Then Rose was there, making all the appropriate noises and supporting him step by arduous step towards…
“Not the lift!”
“Dad, you’re being ridiculous,” his daughter’s snout pursed in the way her mother’s always had when trouble was brewing. “You can’t possibly walk up those stairs with a swollen ankle. If it makes you feel any better, I’ll ride with you, it’ll be fine—your replacement’s on the way in,”
It’ll be fine. No carnivores. Relax.
Silas let out the breath he was holding and let himself be steered into the lift, only half paying attention to what Rose was saying in the meantime. “You really owe poor Aiden an apology you know. Don’t think I haven’t seen the way you’ve been treating him. And he’s been so nice to me after…after what happened to Gus. Helping me move on,”
“I forbid you to see him. You don’t know…” he wished Rose had picked a different brand of perfume, the current scent she wore was cloying and metallic, almost overpowering in its intensity.
“I’m twenty-two, you can’t ‘forbid’ me anything,” she tossed her hair in that infuriating manner she had that never failed to irritate him. “And I know more than you think, Dad. We’ve read the same reports, after all. There’s really not much to do when waiting for Gus to come off shift. You really should lock your file cabinets if you didn’t want people looking through them,”
“You…you know?” his throat was sandpaper, barely able to form the words.
“I know. What happened to Gus was my idea, after all. You didn’t expect me to put up with his boozing and shouting, did you? Aiden saw things my way in the end; and I his…if you get my meaning,”
“I…you—”
“We’ve been a support to each other you know, over the way Gus had been treating me. What happened that day was unplanned, but couldn’t have gone any better. You didn’t seriously think little Aiden could’ve pulled it off entirely on his own, did you? Not without me running interference, making multiple trips out and in to remove the evidence…”
The surrounding smell grew ever stronger, and what little remained of his consciousness told him it wasn’t perfume at all, but breath. Walrus Almighty, he could smell the blood on her breath!
“And he’s shown me how to appreciate Gus in ways Gus himself never could,”
The lift was slowing; surely they had to be nearly there by now? Surely this madcap nightmare was approaching its end? But no, they were only halfway to the roof—yet they were stopping; something that wouldn’t be possible at this hour of night unless…
--unless someone with a key-card had summoned the elevator midway from its destination
The cheery ‘ding’ of the elevator as it opened its doors chilled his blood to the bone.
“Hey, Chief! Heard you had a fall tonight? I’m your replacement!” the glint of fangs bared in a grin; a grin disturbingly mimicked on Rose’s own antelope features. Positioning themselves to block the elevator doors entirely, it was ease itself for Rose to hit door-close and then the numeral button for 1 that would take them all the way back to the lobby. Five minutes—time enough for several loops of Muzak, a quick cigarette, an even quicker stand-up fling…
…or a candlelit dinner for two.
He screamed all the way down.
