+++

By the time Trig made it to the bus stop, Salvo had already dropped and gone, calling him to say he was ‘fucking koala speed’ and she’d meet him at the maintenance door.

‘What? You can’t go there on your own, it’s-’

‘Already going. Anyway, it’s fine, there’s people around. Geriatrics, but they’ve still got eyes, can still be called up as witnesses if anything happens to me.’

‘Just stay where you are now, I’m jogging over.’

‘Don’t bother, traffic lights take an age to change. Just walk slightly faster than you normally would. And try calling Cav again. Maybe he’ll talk to you.’

Trig waited for Salvo to hang up, then did as she said. After four rings, he got a brief moment of hope as the tone stopped and Cav’s voice came up. ‘Hey, this is Cav, I’m either busy working or busy sulking, leave a message and I may get back to you.’

He waited for the beep then coughed. ‘Hey Cav, it’s Trig…haven’t heard from you all day. You okay? Me and Salvo are worried about you, call us back when you get this.’

On the second beep, he hung up and almost instantly got another call.

‘Did you get through?’ asked Salvo, giving him zero time to breathe.

‘Voicemail.’

‘Fuck, really? I never got that. What does it mean?’

‘That’s he’s probably using his phone and…’

‘…doesn’t wanna speak to us?’

‘Err…yeah. Basically.’

Voices in the background, possible geriatrics. Salvo waited them out a few seconds then slid back in. ‘I’m almost at the green stain door place. Two more minutes. That’s definitely what voicemail means?’

‘Not sure, but I think so.’

‘Okay, start walking faster. Sooner we rule out the door, sooner we can get back to his place and trash him.’

‘What about his mum?’

‘She’s third on the list. Hurry.’

‘Okay.’

Trig again waited for Salvo to hang up first then focused on the road to his left. The quickest way over to the river was to take the subway tunnel, but he’d already gone past it while talking on the phone, so now he was stuck at the infinite traffics lights. Usually, he’d wait, but there were no cars and the mum with two kids standing next to him wouldn’t really care that much if he gave a bad example – they probably wanted him to do it so they could do it too – so he ran across, and kept running across the bigger road next to it, and, twenty seconds later, he was heading slightly out of breath down the path to the river promenade.

Salvo was right, there were people around, mostly graveyard-adjacent types, but as he got closer to the first highway overpass – the well-lit one – he noticed that the numbers were drying up a bit.

At the second overpass – the thicker one forming the protective concrete canopy over the green stain area – there was no one except a flustered-looking Salvo, right hand tapping against the maintenance door. She didn’t seem at all bothered that the path lamp was broken again.

‘Wah, it’s still open?’ Trig asked, seeing with his own eyes that it was.

‘I was gonna go inside, but I knew you’d go nuts if I did, so-’

‘Forget inside, you shouldn’t have come over here at all. Not by yourself.’

‘It’s fine.’

‘There’s no one here, Salv, the lights are fucking creepy…it’s not fine at all. What if that bin bag lunatic came out from the door again? What if he’s living in there somewhere, eating rats?’

‘Wah, you’ve escalated.’

‘I’m just saying…it might not be safe here.’

‘You didn’t seem that worried when it was Cav.’

Trig went to fold his arms, then stopped abruptly and rubbed the side of his jacket instead.

‘Well?’

‘Cav’s not here, clearly. And you’re not a guy.’

‘The runner was.’

‘Exactly, that’s my point. It’s dangerous.’

Salvo halted the hand-tapping and flicked imaginary dust at Trig’s face instead, laughing as she did so. ‘Sorry, Treegun, but your point’s all over the place. Bottom line is I’m fine. And we don’t know that Cav isn’t here, I haven’t been inside yet. We don’t even know how big it is in there.’

‘Cav said last night…it’s just a corridor going over to the other side.’

‘That was from one quick check.’

‘What, you think it’s more than that?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What else could it be though? It’s a maintenance door.’

‘Yup, with a bin bag guy coming out, and that delirious runner.’

Trig stopped, looking back at the railings and the dried-out riverbed beyond it. His friend since kindergarten was right, he was basically arguing against himself. Cav could be in there, and so could the bin bag guy. He turned back and moved closer to the door, putting his hand over a graffiti dick dressed as a Viking.

‘Okay, we go in quickly and have a look. Use our phones as lights.’

‘Good plan.’

‘But if we see that guy…’

‘We hit him.’

‘…we run like the-…what?’

Salvo fake jabbed at the wall, almost clipping it. ‘We hit him and keep hitting him until he’s on the ground.’

‘With what? Our fists?’

‘Nope.’

‘Then why are you punching the air?’

‘Habit.’

Bringing her little shadow boxing demo to an abrupt close, she looked around the concrete nothingness nearby and then over at the jungle-like shrubbery to the left. There was a lot of trash there, a couple of abandoned cars, and one broken up construction sign. She walked over and pulled the metal leg off it, holding it up and swinging it to dramatically symbolise weapon.

‘Anything there for me?’ asked Trig.

‘Doesn’t look like it. Unless you want to dismantle one of those car doors, use it as a shield?’

‘Not really.’

‘Yeah, probably not viable. Hmm. How did they even get them in there though? There’s no path, no access point.’

‘No idea.’

‘Unless they were drunk and just-…ah, what am I even on about? The fucking maintenance door. Come on.’ Salvo came back over, doing a few more practice swings of her metal leg. ‘Okay, you go in first, and I’ll swing this if anything attacks you.’

‘Seems fair,’ answered Trig, caustic.

‘Fine. Then I’ll go first and get attacked. You can stay at the back and whine about it. Better?’

‘First is fine.’ He looked over at the abandoned cars and, even though he was about five metres away, tried to peer in through the windows. ‘Long as I’ve got something to defend myself with.’

‘You’re not getting my metal leg.’

Trig walked closer to the cars and yanked open one of the doors. It flew off the hinges as if it were plastic.

‘Wah, calm down, Hulk.’

‘It was rusted off, not my fault.

‘You see anything inside?’

Trig bent down and jabbed the seat upholstery with his knuckles. It didn’t feel too bad, texture-wise, but looked like wasteland shit visually so he pulled his jacket sleeves down over his hands and crawled inside.

After watching her friend’s jungle-mode hair hover aimlessly for nearly a full minute, Salvo got bored and asked if he was trying to hotwire the thing.

‘Got it,’ he shouted.

‘A weapon?’

‘Kinda.’

He emerged feet first from the car and stood up, swinging a cable and plug in small circles with his right hand.

‘You can’t use that.’

‘I can.’

‘It’s too dark in there, you’ll whack me on the head.’

‘You wanna trade?’

‘No way.’

‘Then let’s just get in there.’

Salvo gave another swing of her makeshift metal leg as an affirmative then pulled the maintenance door back.

‘Still me going in first?’

‘Of course, hero.’

‘Thought so…sidekick.’ Trig loosened his grip on the cable and bobbed the plug forward into the void. ‘I’ll keep throwing it like this, that way it won’t swing back and hit you.’

‘Should we call Cav’s name?’

‘Have a look first, then call him.’

Salvo nodded and gestured with her metal leg for Trig to proceed. Pulling in the plug close to his body, he moved past the door and into the unknown.

As expected, it was black hole dark. A paradise for rats and cockroaches and god knows what else. Giant rats and giant cockroaches maybe. Eating human remains. Waiting for new victims.

Keeping this image stuck to his brain wall, Trig moved slowly, using the plug to poke the walls on both sides and kicking forward with his feet.

‘This is insane,’ would soon be coming out of Salvo’s mouth as she got in and saw this nightmare, and he pre-emptively agreed.

It was insane.

No serial killing wizard could function in a place like this.

Not even for five minutes.

Then he remembered what Cav had said the night before, that it was a lit corridor, and as soon as he remembered it, the lights activated around them.

The black hole became a movie-style underground passage.

‘Must be on some kind of sensor,’ said Salvo, coming up alongside him, touching one of the green bulbs with the tip of her metal leg.

‘That’s my guess.’

‘Not a very long corridor though…and poorly decorated. Just pipes and concrete. Not even sure what the pipes are for.’

‘I think it just goes to the other side of the highway.’

‘There might be a turn at the end.’

‘Hmm, with a giant rat king.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Did you say rat?’

‘Come on, let’s move forward a bit.’

Reeling in his plug a bit, Trig continued down the passage, a little faster than before but not much.

Despite the surprisingly luminescent lighting, and the seeming lack of activity in the passage, there was still a sense of foreboding oh fuck, as if someone was about to jump out wearing a concrete wall costume and murder them both.

Actually, for Trig, it was more about the rats. He’d seen them in Shek Mun before, scurrying across from one gutter to another, and the thought…no, the possibility…that they’d found this passage and set up a little rat metropolis was gaining more and more traction in his head. Specifically, the paranoia department, which looked something like an old Ottoman castle with rats streaming over the ramparts. In fact, there was probably a manhole cover that led down to the sewers, and this was just a transit area for them. It was possible…they had to live somewhere. Why not there?

‘Wah, what’s that?’

Trig cut the image of the dog-sized rat nibbling on his stomach and followed Salvo’s voice down to the ground. She was crouching in a gap between a set of pipes on the wall, looking at something.

‘What is it?’

‘I knew it.’

‘Salvo…’

She turned around, holding up a second phone. Trig could see Cav on the lit screen, posing next to a picture of the bride waterfall near Tai Po.

‘Cav’s?’ he asked, pointlessly.

‘Idiot doesn’t even have a password. I can see his messages…wah, he sent more last night…did you get these?’

‘Which ones?’

‘No, you couldn’t have, there’s only one tick. Fuck. That means he left it here and…did what?’

‘This is weird.’

She looked at both ends of the passageway, gripping the metal leg tight. ‘Fuck, I don’t like this, Trig. His phone…it’s just lying here.’

‘What do the messages say?’

‘Something’s happened to him.’

‘The messages, Salv.’

‘What? I don’t know. Nothing.’ She looked at the phone screen again. ‘I’m inside the passage. Come down and check it out. Not mad, just come. Are you mad? Wait, there’s a video too. Is that the one he sent us? No, hang on…only one tick again. It’s new.’

‘Play it.’

Salvo pressed play before Trig had finished saying the words, standing up and holding the phone up so both of them could watch. There wasn’t much to see. Just the passage wall, some cracks, a shadow that was probably Cav’s arm…

‘Are we supposed to be seeing something?’ asked Salvo, tilting the phone a bit.

‘Not sure…’ replied Trig, guiding it back to a straighter position.

‘Wait, it’s moving.’

The wall in the video suddenly became the pipes, accompanied by the sound of short, stifled breaths. Then another bit of adjustment, and another, taking in the concrete ground, and finally a fixed shot of both the pipes and the remainder of the passage.

Both Trig and Salvo gasped at the same time.

On the screen, standing in front of the wall a few metres farther along from their current position, was what looked like a man with a bin bag wrapped around his neck.

‘That’s him,’ burst out Trig, almost knocking the phone out of Salvo’s hand.

‘Stop it.’

‘The bin bag guy, it’s-’

‘It’s still playing. Shut up.’

Trig mouthed it’s him again then checked the wall ahead to make sure it was still empty. It seemed to be. Meanwhile, the video continued, the screen alternating between the whole passage and then a half slice of it combined with the pipes as Cav tried to keep himself hidden from the bin bag figure.

From what they could see, the figure was rubbing something on his or their or its arm…it was impossible to discern what exactly…and when the ritual was done, the figure stood pervert-still and stared at the wall for a moment, held their hand against the wall at shoulder height and started muttering inanities.

‘What…’ said Cav a little too loud on the video recording.

The bin bag figure didn’t appear to hear it, probably because he was still muttering. Or perhaps it was due to the fact that part of his arm seemed to be stuck inside the wall. It really wasn’t easy to make out, but that’s exactly what it looked like.

‘Kai geh,’ came out of Cav, loud enough this time for the figure to hear.

The video spun back to the wall at the same time as the figure glanced over, and all Trig and Salvo could hear was the sound of Cav’s rapid breathing.

Then footsteps.

Then silence.

Then more footsteps.

Then silence again.

Salvo’s hand was shaking now, so Trig reached over and took control of the phone, keeping it at a decent angle.

‘What the fuck is this, Trig?’ she asked, not really expecting an answer.

For some reason, the video kept playing. The cracks in the wall remained visible and Cav’s breath circulation became a little more rationed. After what felt like an hour but was more likely only a minute, the video rotated back past the pipes and over to an empty passage.

‘He’s gone,’ said Salvo, grabbing the phone back.

‘Steady…’

‘Where did he go?’

‘You’re gonna drop it,’ said Trig, managing to win back control.

‘Fuck, Trig. How long’s this stupid thing? I can’t watch.’

Trig touched the screen and read the runtime out loud. One minute and forty-seven seconds left. Could something bad happen in that time? He didn’t want to think about it. So he didn’t. Instead, he kept watching, gripping the cable tight in his spare hand.

The footage continued.

On screen, Cav moved forward with his phone, cautiously at first, and then with a little more boldness as it became clear that the bin bag figure really was gone.

‘Fuck, there’s no way out,’ said Cav, showing his face on screen for the first time. ‘End of the passage, nothing, definitely didn’t go back past me either. Guys, you gotta get down here now. This is fucking huge.’ He stopped and pointed his phone at the wall, the same spot the bin bag figure had been hitting, and…as Trig and Salvo both realised as they looked ahead of themselves…the same spot they were standing in now.

‘Get out, you idiot,’ mumbled Salvo to the screen. ‘Before that fucking weirdo comes back.’

‘This bit here, must be a switch or button,’ continued Cav, his hand with the BAK tattoo appearing next to the wall and prodding it. Nothing happened. ‘Okay, he a hundred per cent put his hand on this section… and kept it there too. But where? Which part?’

Trig scanned the wall with his virtual friend, noticing the green stain about half a second before Cav did.

‘Ah, more green shit.’ He put out his finger, touching the stain. ‘Doesn’t feel too grungy. Not that wet. This has to be it.’

He turned the camera on his face again.

‘Guys, I’m gonna try and copy what he did. See if it does anything. If not, I’ll go back outside and wait for you. If yes, I’ll go through and-…yeah, don’t say it, Salvo, I can see your aneurism from here. Just a quick look then back out. I’m not suicidal.’

The camera went back to the stain on the wall, Cav’s hand covering it a few moments later.

‘Okay, here we go. That guy held it there for…what? Thirty seconds, forty. I’ll try doing the same.’

‘Don’t,’ whispered Salvo, touching the screen again to check the remaining runtime.

‘Get out of there, Cav,’ added Trig, equally soft.

Ignoring both future ghosts, Cav’s hand stayed firm on the stain. The camera shifted slightly to the right, as if he expected a door to open up on the surface of the wall, but nothing happened.

‘Doesn’t seem to be working,’ Cav said, his voice a bit louder and much more assured. ‘Give it another twenty seconds.’

‘Cav,’ muttered Salvo again, watching the runtime drop past twenty seconds.

‘Okay, another half minute then I’ll definitely…stop.’

The camera panned left, focusing on the planted hand. Only it wasn’t a hand anymore, it was the stump of Cav’s forearm. And around it was a lilac outline, glowing.

‘What the,’ Cav whispered, half his words not much more than air. ‘My hand, it’s-…I’m inside the wall. I can feel it. Fuck. It’s like a-…’

The screen flashed purple, then Chukotka-white then black, the transition so abrupt it made Trig jump back a bit and knock his head against the pipe. Salvo would’ve jumped too, if she hadn’t had her eyes laser-focused on the runtime.

‘Fuck,’ she said, collapsing against the wall behind them, putting a sweaty palm against her forehead. ‘I thought he was…’

‘Me too,’ said Trig, taking the phone out of her hand.

Salvo stayed where she was for a while, staring dead ahead at the wall that had eaten half of Cav’s arm, using the back of her hand to rub the sweat off her forehead.

‘What the hell happened?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘It looked almost like…’

‘…he went inside the wall. Yeah. Right into it.’

Salvo wiped her forehead again, then bent down to pick up the metal leg she couldn’t remember dropping.

Trig played back the last minute of the video, matching the green stain to the one on the wall in front of him.

Both of them were thinking the same thing but didn’t want to say it. It was too weird. Yet they’d seen the evidence with their own eyes and one of them had to bring it up. Putting the phone in his jacket pocket, Trig switched the cable/plug weapon to his right hand and lifted the other one, surprisingly not trembling, up towards the stain.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Salvo, without the slightest trace of inquiry in her tone.

‘Trial and error.’

‘You think it’ll work?’

Trig placed his palm flat against the stain and pushed forward. As he suspected, it didn’t go in, which meant longevity truly was the answer. He kept his hand steady and started counting out the seconds.

‘Wait,’ said Salvo, putting a hand on his arm and squeezing.

‘You think we shouldn’t?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You wanna call the cops first?’

‘No. Cops? No. Maybe.’

‘If you do, better tell me fast.’

She looked at him then at the wall. Her skull wasn’t transparent, but it was pretty obvious the circuits of her brain were running a prediction line. What would the cops do if they turned up? What would they say to them? Our friend disappeared through a wall. We think. Finally, she switched back on and was about to reveal her findings when the stain started to glow lilac.

‘Wah,’ Trig half yelled, half growled as his whole body got yanked forward.

It was quite an experience to see your arm disappear through solid matter, not to mention the relief that it wasn’t being ripped off by something on the other side. Though there was some type of force pulling at him. Gravitons maybe. If all those old Wai Si Lei books were correct about this.

‘You’re through,’ said Salvo, running her finger down the length of the still visible part of his arm. Somehow, perhaps because she was in contact with Trig, her hand could go through too.

‘Weird texture,’ said Trig, taking long, yoga-like breaths. ‘On the other side. Feels like…cloud.’

‘What do we do?’

‘Insanely soft cloud…or candyfloss.’

‘Trig, talk to me, what do we do? Walk forward?’

‘I don’t know.’

They both stood there, marvelling at their arms, marginally terrified at where exactly the other parts were but not so much that it developed into a coherent thought. In fact, based on what they were currently feeling, the cloud-like sensation, they were sure it was somewhere nice, somewhere full of-

There was an electronic beep followed by a rush of air, and suddenly no time to say anything whatsoever as, first the rest of the arms, and then their bodies were dragged forward, deeper into whatever soft madness lay beyond the wall.

A second later and the tunnel was empty.

Almost empty.

At the end of the passage, a large rat appeared, scurrying over to the scene of the vanishing and poking its nose around the three phones that had been left on the ground.

Human food, it thought, mentally spitting at the strange technology. Rubbish.