The Company Runs Itself

Since the Lockdown started, what was it, four, maybe five weeks ago, Alan had lost all track of time, each day seemed to merge into the next. Like all of the working population , he had always looked forward to Friday, the start of  the weekend, when people went on nights out to pubs and clubs, met friends for coffee ,that sort of thing,  in it what seemed like another life , in another time that had receded into history, because of the Coronavirus.

He now looked forward to his daily Exercise Time of 3.30pm, and today it was even bright and sunny which was a bonus in late April in the North-East of Scotland.

This was when he escaped the claustrophobia of his flat and walked as far as he could within an hour or so.

After being cooped up in the place most of the day, it was an absolute delight to be out in the open, in the fresh air, and to gaze up at the wide expanse of pale blue sky high above him.

It really made him feel glad to be alive, to appreciate things that he had previously taken for granted, like bird song, the smells of flowers, the heat of the sun’s rays.

This, he thought was also a great chance to reignite memories and mull over ideas for stories, poems, and articles which he would publish on his website, which was slowly becoming more popular since the advent of the Lockdown.

An amateur writer, he had been writing daily since being furloughed from his job, with no real end to this on the horizon. He was working on a novella, a piece of autobiographical fiction describing his life in the 1980s, he had written 8900 words, and was almost there, 10, 000 words being the novella’s length.

It was going well, it was a question of getting it right and editing out the stuff he did not need, separating the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.

His next project, if you could call it that, was going to be a supernatural horror story, he had done this successfully before a few years ago, but wondered if the public, i.e. The faithful 499 followers who visited his website would want anything of this nature now, given that the Virus which was upon the world really embodied the ultimate horror.

Which begged the question, where did a writer of this genre go to now, did they return to the ghost story style of the late 19^thcentury, ghost stories of an antiquity, like M.R. James  or to the weird and elemental , what had become known as ‘folk horror’ style of Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood, those guys from years ago?

 Alan was not at all sure, but was willing to give either option a try, after all he had the time, lots of time on his hands.

He preferred the understated weird stories of Ramsey Campbell and Thomas Ligotti to those authors who seemed to deal in vivid description of gratuitous bloodletting, and gushing gore which were not his scene at all.

Anyway, on his afternoon walk, he would let his mind wander and the ideas for writing would come to him, rushing headlong at him like idiots flouting the prescribed social distancing laws.

Every day for the last two weeks, he had walked past the empty office blocks of the oil industry which had once made Aberdeen a proud city, the oil capital of Scotland, if not the UK, back in the halcyon days of the 80s.

These vacant husks of concrete, steel and glass which once been hubs of the industry, now lay empty, serving as mausoleums in memoriam to an industry in decline, which like everything else was currently on hold.

There were no longer any vehicles in the car park, only a congregation of corvids holding court in their place.

He walked up towards the office blocks and could see that one of the fire escapes was open.

What the hell, there were not going to be any security staff in the place, so he would go in and have a look around, he was not a housebreaker or anything, he was simply curious, as a child might be.

What could possibly happen?

What got him first was the eerie silence in the place, and how cold it was.

How old was this building, maybe late 1960s, so it was a fair age, given that this was 2020?

It was not just old buildings that could be haunted, he had read about this, he thought, maybe this could be his story idea.

He was surprised at how light it was inside the building, there were lots of windows, and skylights.

A smell of disinfectant permeated the corridor, as it had Alan’s own workplace, the cleaning staff had been working overtime, and effectively all the time,  to sanitize the buildings once the onset of the Virus was confirmed , just prior to the Lockdown .

 He walked along a corridor festooned with signs relating to safety during Coronavirus, the carpet was gaudily patterned and gave rise to images in his mind from some old horror movie.

He opened a door with a start, as it squealed in protest at being opened after weeks of disuse.

He walked up a flight of stairs, the stone steps and bannisters reminded of school back in the 70s, his footsteps echoing in the void of the stairwell.

He opened another creaking door and walked into the offices, a nice open plan office suite, which looked like the staff had left in a hurry , as if the fire alarm had gone off ; one of the computers was still on , pens and pencils and other office stationery lay out as if their owners were to be returning.

There was a rustling from behind him, just the wind, he said to himself.

Sure enough, someone had left a window open and the blinds were blowing slightly.

There was nobody in here, was there?

At the end of the corridor he had entered from, he could have sworn that the door moved, as if someone had gone through it , or opened it to see who was in the building, maybe a security guard still patrolling the place?

But then, why would there be anyone in the building if it were closed due to the contagion?

He walked back into the office , looking at the office paraphernalia on the desks, a book caught his eye, by Edgar Allan Poe, the book was opened at the ‘Masque of the Red Death’ , wasn’t that a story about a contagion? It was accompanied by a couple of others, 'Lost Girl' by Adam Nevill, and the Journal of the Plague Year, by Daniel Defoe, someone in this place had being reading about contagions, would Google not have been an easier option?

Alan wondered momentarily about the owner of these books, but they were not around he would swipe them for himself, he liked horror, so Poe and Nevill would be great, Defoe he would keep anyway, what the hell.

He fumbled them into his side pockets of his jacket and heard the rustling sound behind him again.

‘Hello?’ he said to the silence.

He left the office and walked along the corridor he had entered by, the door was moving again, there was a swishing sound as if someone had just gone through it.

He ran up to the door and opened it, no evidence of anyone there.

Hello? he said once again to the silence.

There was no reply from the silence.

Satisfied that he was imagining things, he had been on his own too long during the Lockdown, living on your own was a good thing most of the time, but sometimes it  made you doubt yourself , imagine and escalate things in your mind.

For a moment Alan had been doing just that.

What the hell, he would have another look in the office, what harm would it do?

He returned to the desk where the computer was still on. He tapped the keyboard, and clicked the mouse of the computer at the desk where the books had been ; there was a story here, the person with all the books about contagions, plagues and things was writing a story about it also, a fellow writer.

Wow, there was a coincidence, the character in the story was called Alan, and he had just entered an empty office in a city during Lockdown.

Hearing the sound again, hearing the sound again,  there was someone in the room with  him, wasn’t there?

Maybe it was just a security guard coming to eject him from the room, maybe , just maybe.