Abandoned

Vanessa Finaughty

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Vanessa
Finaughty

Cover: Alic
Finaughty

Smashwords Edition,
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Vanessa Finaughty

The evening was dismal,
much like my mood. Cold, windy, and the sky threatening rain. I
stumbled along streets in areas I didn’t know well. Eyes focussed
on the passing pavement,
I scratched the itching
stubble on my chin, and then stuffed my
hands deep into my
coat pockets again. I snapped out of my thoughts as I approached a
dilapidated building. I’m not sure what exactly forced me to pay
attention to this particular construction; I had passed many that
evening without so much as a glance. Maybe
it
was
because it looked the same way I felt. Abandoned.

Pausing, I looked up at
a young child staring down at me from a third-
storey
window. Eyes covered by a mop of dark hair
hanging over a thin face, the child smiled at me. A feeling of
intense sadness washed over me then, and I was irrationally
convinced that this little person and the foetus that I had
possibly murdered earlier that day were one and the same.

My heart beat a little
faster, and I reminded myself that Claire deserved to lose the
child, if, in fact, she
had
lost it. All I had done was
drain the brake fluid in her car. She’d been feeling ill when I
left, though, so she’d probably not even gone to work. I admit that
I gained a small amount of perverse pleasure from her being ill. My
girlfriend, but not my baby… So what did I care either way?

I blinked and the small
face was gone
.
My eyes wandered over the
building again, confirming that it had to be abandoned. Peeling
paint, marred further by graffiti, some broken windows on the two
upper levels, and a surprisingly unbroken, although dirty, glass
entrance door. A faded and rusting sign above the entrance told me
that this had once been a hotel.

My mind filled with
thoughts of exploring the building, although I didn’t
want
to enter the building. I was depressed and irritable. I recalled a
song about having someone else’s soul and face, and wanted nothing
other than to climb out of my body and into someone else’s. I
wanted out of my life.

A few hours ago, Claire
had told me that she had been having an affair… and was pregnant. I
should probably point out that she hadn’t let me touch her in over
a year. To add insult to injury, she was leaving me for the other
guy. Now I had nothing left to live for. She had also told me that
the stupid cat she had recently acquired had been a gift from ‘the
other man’ and not something she had rescued from the animal
hospital. One last slap in the face. As if having another man’s
baby wasn’t bad enough.

Thunder rumbled
ominously above and I found myself standing right outside the
entrance to the building, with no recollection of actually walking
there. Was I acting on a subconscious desire to explore the
building and find the child? I was drawn to the building in a way I
could not explain. I was the negative and the building the
positive… Magnetised, I was compelled to enter, albeit
unwillingly.

A strong gust of wind
caused me to lose my balance for a second. The sky seemed darker,
and I glanced around to find myself still alone in the street.
Alone and far from home. Home? I scoffed at the thought. It wasn’t
home anymore. I blinked my tears away before I lost control of my
emotions – I preferred numbness to pain. I hated her for her
betrayal, but I still loved her. I wanted her back. I might forgive
the past if only I could hold her in my arms just one more time….
Wiping my nose on my coat sleeve, I sniffed and sighed, wondering
if she had used the car yet.

Without warning, the
sky rained her tears down on me. I now had a choice between getting
soaked to the skin and possibly contracting pneumonia, or taking
shelter in the abandoned building. Sighing again, I entered the
grimy front doors, which swung open a little too easily, I thought.
Shouldn’t they have been stuck shut with dirt or something? The
lack of a lock and the ease with which I had gained access to the
building put me somewhat on edge.

The dust inside
immediately invaded my nostrils and I sneezed. Sniffing, I turned
to gaze out at the rain; it didn’t show any sign of stopping soon.
I really didn’t want to be stuck inside an old,
musty
building all night. I decided to wait it out for
no more than ten minutes, and then just risk
getting ill
if the rain had not stopped.

Turning my back to the
entrance, I examined the interior. The reception desk stood empty,
which depressed me even more for some reason. Behind me, the doors
blew shut, the grime coating effectively shutting out what little
light there had been. I had always been nervous of the dark, and
the darkness in this place awakened my paranoia and made me feel as
if I should run without looking back.

I contemplated going in
search of the child I had seen from outside. I was in even less of
a mood to stand around doing nothing than I was to go exploring.
Especially not on the dirty grey carpet, worn almost to the cement.
My feet felt filthy just standing on it, even with shoes on. I
would go mad if I stood still; I was sure of it. Despite what
Claire had done to me, I felt guilty about my murderous
reaction.

I wiped away the dirt
on the doors with the sleeve of my coat, allowing a small amount of
light inside. With one last look outside to make sure that the rain
hadn’t stopped yet, I fumbled for my cigarette lighter in my coat
pocket and, finding it, flicked it on. I made my way towards the
staircase to the left of the reception desk, trying to ignore my
menacing shadow. The lift doors to the right of the reception desk
stood open, displaying the dark interior of the lift, but I wasn’t
prepared to risk getting stuck in an old lift where nobody would
ever find me – not with skin on my bones, at any rate. Besides, it
probably didn’t work anymore. I thought of Claire’s
soon-to-be-swollen stomach and started up the dark staircase.

I was irrationally
convinced that the rain would hide any furtive movements behind me,
and turned back to hold my light out behind me… just in case. The
shadows were somewhat deeper in the narrow stairwell, and I jumped
as I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. My back against
the wall, I heaved a huge sigh of relief when I realised I had been
scared by my own shadow.

Taking a deep breath, I
said a silent prayer of thanks to nobody in particular that there
were no cobwebs blocking my path. I hated spiders. Claire had
always laughed at me for that, since she thought it was a
ridiculous fear for a man. I cringed at the memories. Although the
stairs were cement, I imagined I heard them creaking under my
weight. Something rumbled, seemingly from within the building, and
I climbed faster, not enjoying the growing sense of creepiness that
rapidly threatened to snap my sanity.

Reaching the third
floor, I stepped into a narrow passageway with doors on either
side. Although gloomy, some light filtered into the passage from
the open doorways. At the other end, the lift doors stood open.
The rumbling I’d heard…
I blinked again. Was that possible?
The lift had been in the foyer downstairs, so how could it possibly
be up here, too, unless someone had used it during my walk
upstairs? A chill crept through me and I decided I didn’t want to
find that child, nor did I want to stay dry. I half ran, half
stumbled back down the stairs.

As I fled, I had a
terrifyingly clear vision of a hand reaching towards the back of my
neck and I thought Claire whispered to me.

Ethan… Oh, Ethan… Come
play with the baby, love…

It was ridiculous.
Claire was not dead. She wasn’t in the building, either. I realised
I needed to regain control of myself, and stopped just before the
second-floor landing. Breathless, I leant against the wall, trying
to calm my ragged breathing. I resisted the urge to vomit, while
listening for an indication that I was not alone. Silence. I could
be such an imbecile sometimes. Of
course
I was alone. I
stood up straight and walked further down the stairs.

As I reached the
second-floor landing, the stairwell door upstairs slammed and the
pitter-patter of little footsteps running down after me echoed
through the stairwell. I swear my blood froze in that instant, and
my feet grew wings as I flew the rest of the way down the stairs.
Finally reaching the downstairs reception area after what seemed
like an eternity of being chased, I ran straight for the outside
door, but was halted by a firm tug at the back of my coat. I
whirled to face my foe, only to discover that my coat had caught on
a rusty nail protruding from the stairwell wall.

I let out a thin,
choked giggle as I unhooked myself. A giggle that was cut short
when I reached the front door: a childish smiley face had been
drawn in the dirt on the glass. The cold sweat covering my face
seemed to seep back into my pores and freeze my blood. I maintain
to this day that a child’s giggles came from behind me, along with
the sound of light footsteps gaining on me.

The outside doors
stuck, and I struggled to pull them open. It had seemed so easy to
open them earlier... Pure adrenaline brought on by frenzied fear
gave me strength to yank the doors open, and I stumbled into the
street. Not daring to look behind me, I ran back the way I had
come, desperately searching for another soul so I would not feel so
devastatingly alone. As I ran, lungs burning, it seemed almost as
if I was no longer
fleeing
from
unknown horrors, but
running
to
Claire… I didn’t
want
her to
die.

I ran three blocks
before I found another pedestrian, and slowed to a brisk walk when
I reached him. Under the pretence of asking him for the time, I
took the opportunity to look behind me for the first time. It
appeared that I had not been followed.

Hurrying home, I could
not rid myself of the fear that seemed to have permeated my very
bones. Although there were no more childish giggles and little
footsteps, I still felt the need to look over my shoulder every few
seconds. By the time I got home, I was nauseated by a feeling of
dread. Stepping into my well-lighted flat and seeing the familiar
comforts of home did nothing to ease the sickening lurching of my
stomach.

Even the damn cat
seemed to look at me ominously, as if it knew something I didn’t. I
went into the open-plan kitchen to grab a beer while the feline sat
in a shaggy heap of ginger fur on the faded leather single-seater
couch, following my every move with its sarcastic green eyes. I
resisted the urge to throw the beer bottle at the mangy
creature.

The phone rang and I
ignored it. It was probably for Claire, anyway. Claire. I realised
that she didn’t seem to be home. The flat was silent. I had
expected her to be home; she’d been ill when I left, and she had
said she was only moving out over the weekend. Panic crept into my
being as I hurriedly searched the small flat. Her clothes and
make-up were still there. I wondered where she’d gone. Then I knew.
To her lover. Angrily, I hurled the still-full beer bottle against
the lounge wall.

The phone had stopped
ringing and someone had left a voice message. It was a man’s voice.
I walked over to the old machine and roughly pushed the replay
button. After listening to the message, I fetched another beer from
the fridge. It was the last. I made a mental note to buy more the
next day. I sauntered over to the cat, grabbed it by the scruff
and, in one vicious movement, flung it to the floor. It yowled and
glared at me with hate-filled eyes.

Claire was dead. An
accident, the message had said. It had been a hit and run. I sank
onto the couch in a sense of numb disbelief –
I
hadn’t been
the cause of her death. At least she wasn’t with her lover… I
wondered how he would feel when he discovered that she had
abandoned him, too.

# # #

My new novel,
Ashes
to Ashes
, can be purchased in print on Amazon.

Other books by Vanessa
Finaughty:

Fiction:

Horrotica