Excerpt from The Adventures of Edward Brett: Volume One, Chapter One: ‘Grin and Bear it’.
Wanda’s trapped in a pitch-black supply cupboard with the strangest man she’s ever met, a man who claims to be a god – being hunted by gaunt, grinning, ghoulish doppelgangers of her colleagues. What are they? And what do they want with Wanda? Read the full spooktacular story here!
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She held her breath, listening in terror to the footsteps trudging slowly down the corridor outside, a second at least between each tread. No other sound, no sound of breathing or chatter, nothing. Just the footsteps.
Step. Step. Step. Step.
She poked Edward on the shoulder and looked at him with a ‘what do we do now?’ expression.
“I can’t see your face, it’s pitch black,” came the breathy, sardonic reply.
Wanda resisted the urge to whack him about the ear, instead biting her lip in frustration.
Step. Step. Step. Step.
They weren’t getting particularly louder or closer, just continuing, almost as if the crowd were circling the corridor, waiting for them.
Piranhas, Wanda thought. Although she wasn’t completely sure whether piranhas circled or not. What is it in westerns where someone’s stuck out in the desert and birds start circling? Crows? Vultures? Probably vultures.
Suddenly the footsteps stopped. A dead stop, no fading out, no drifting away. Immediate.
Wanda waited a good five seconds before daring to speak as quietly as she could. “What now?”
“Now get ready to hit me.”
“What?” In the dark she sensed movement. He’s going to open the door! “No!” she cried in a long breath. “Don’t!”
“I have to, Wanda. We need to know what they’re doing!”
The next thing she heard was the quiet clunk of the door handle. Then a thin crack of light flooded into the room. She tensed, holding her breath, able to see Edward for the first time since they’d gone into the room. He peered through the crack. Eyes widening, he stared at something for a long moment.
Then, with a suddenness that made her jump, he threw the door wide open. The light blazed in, and Wanda, forgetting they were meant to be quiet, screamed at the top of her lungs: “Oh my God!”
Eyes. All those eyes! Oh my God look at their eyes! The grinners were all there, right in the doorway, pushed up against it like sardines. They were all staring in at her, looking right at her with those horrid vacant eyes and their wide, yellow smiles.
“Mr Brett!” she screamed again. “Mr Brett, shut the door!”
Edward ignored her. He’d taken a step back and was coolly observing them with a finger to his chin.
She dived forward and grabbed the door to slam it shut herself, but he shot out an arm and stopped her.
“No need.”
“But they’re right there!” she shrieked incredulously.
“Yes, yes they are,” he replied in a calm, curious voice. “And they’re not moving.”
Wanda forced herself to look at them. He was right. They were stood in the doorway as if there was some kind of invisible barrier stopping them from coming in. “But they can see me? I mean, look, they’re staring right at me!”
“Oh yeah, they can see you.” Edward stepped forwards, as close as he could to the doorway without crossing the threshold. He was almost nose to nose with the grinner that looked like Matthew. “They know you’re there and I’m willing to bet my boots that they’d very much like to come in and get you.”
Wanda felt a chill go through her. “Lovely.”
“But they can’t.” Edward stared into grinner Matthew’s eyes. “Why? Hmm? Why don’t you come on in and get her if you want her?”
“Oh God, don’t say that!” Wanda warned him. “You don’t know how they work. Maybe all they need is the invite.”
“No, no, it’s not that. We don’t own this cupboard, they don’t need our permission. It’s something – ooh!” He sounded excited now. Inappropriately excited. “Now, I wonder. Wanda, tell me, the colleagues that these malaperts have taken the forms of: did any of them ever come into this room?”
Wanda managed to shake her head, despite the tension in her neck. “I shouldn’t think so. We’ve had photocopiers in the main office now for ages. I only come in here every now and again when I’m –” She stopped herself from finishing the sentence honestly in the heat of the moment. “Busy.”
Edward gave her a look that said he knew she’d just lied, but he didn’t question it. “Right. So that makes me think that these things, whatever they are, they’re using your colleagues’ day-to-day lives in this building as blueprints for existence. They think that because these people never came in this room, it means they couldn’t come into this room. They must think it’s a rule, like gravity or not eating your sweet before your savoury.”
“So what does that mean? For us? What are they?”
Edward stared at the grinners with a kind of horrified wonder. “They’re new. It means they’re brand new.”
With an effort, Wanda met their terrible eyes once again. She still didn’t really get it, but she didn’t dare ask again. I’d only get another riddle-y answer.
“Can you talk?” Edward asked Grinner Matthew, their faces just inches apart. “I know this is all new to you, but try breaking those smiles, try opening the mouth, come on –”
“Why are they smiling anyway?” she asked. “It’s horrid.”
“It’s the face they’ve seen most.”
“Smiling? In this place?” Wanda scoffed, almost laughing.
“Think about it. You might all feel like bashing your heads into the wall but that’s not the face you put on most of the time. All those fake smiles.”
Actually, he had a point. Their deputy manager, Susan, was always grinning like an idiot at anyone she came across, even people Wanda knew she hated with a passion.
“Come on, say something. Whatever’s on your mind. If that happens to be what you are and what you want, then –”
“Good morning, Fellbridge Planning!” Twenty creaking voices spoke in unison as all the mouths of all the grinners opened at once.
Edward took a step back in surprise. “Okay.”
“Are you free for a quick get-together I’ll just be five minutes shall I make a coffee first okay then will you make one for me too?” The mouths opened and closed with a fast-paced, mechanical stiffness, like a ventriloquist’s dummy at triple speed.
Wanda gasped. “Susan and Jean had that conversation just this morning! Only Susan said one bit and Jean said the other, obviously.”
Edward smiled, enjoying this new development. “So it’s not just movements they’re copying, it’s speech, too. Recycling things they’ve heard before.”
“They must not know what they’re saying, though. I mean, it’s all office gobbledegook. They’re just mimicking it like scary parrots.”
“No, no. They’re babies, just babbling. But they’re clever. They’re learning.”
“I need these copies done today please okay I can get those over to you before lunch. To you before lunch. To. To you. Get. Get to you. Get to you. You. Get you”
Wanda shrank as far back into the cupboard as she could, feeling her skin crawl as the grinners continued to stare right at her. “Mr Brett, Mr Brett – I don’t like this.”
“They’re fast learners. Okay, Wanda, I’m bored of this cupboard now. What other places of interest does this stunning example of eighties architecture have?”
“We can’t get out!” she exclaimed. “It’s wall-to-wall things out there!”
He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a mobile phone that even Wanda, with her limited knowledge, judged to be ancient – for a start, it still had buttons. “Yeah, you say that. Except, when duty calls –” He punched a number in and put the phone to his ear. In the distance, she heard a phone start ringing. Without hesitation, the grinners immediately turned and headed back to the main office. “Someone’s got to pick up.”
Wanda burst out with a celebratory laugh and clapped her hands. “They’re going!”
“Just like their human counterparts would have to if the phone rang.” Edward tucked the mobile back into his pocket.
“You’re a genius!”
He shrugged.
“Even with a phone that makes my crappy old one look really whizzy by comparison.”
“Geniuses don’t need smartphones. Just a pay-as-you go sim with enough money on it to occasionally make ‘distract the bad guys’ phone calls.” He stepped boldly out of the photocopy room. “Shall we?”
Wanda couldn’t help but smile at him. She didn’t want to, but she couldn’t help it. He was … she didn’t know what he was. He was something else. “Where to?”
“Well, I’ve bought us two minutes at most. I’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s going on here now, but I need to check it out. And I need to ask you a question.”
Wanda tried to look casual. “Go on.”
“Do you have a headache?”
Wanda opened her mouth to say no, thinking what a jolly weird question to ask. But then she realised that actually yes, she did have a headache, and it was the same one that had come on in the office earlier; it had never gone away, just faded to a spot in the background where it’d somehow got forgotten. It was as though hearing the word had made her remember it, remember the pain. She put a hand to her head. “Yes.”
Edward barely reacted. Instead he marched past her towards the doors that led to the central part of the building. “We need to go to HR.”
“Hang on!” Wanda cried, not wanting to let him get away that easily. “Just a second, sorry, how did you know I had a headache?”
He looked at her, confused. “I didn’t. That’s why I asked.”
She pursed her lips and exhaled loudly through her nose. “Don’t get smart with me. What is it? What’s wrong with me? I’ve been having them more and more, and only here, never anywhere else. And those things, those grinner things – they keep looking at me. What do they want?” Surely, if anyone had answers, it would be this man, this stranger. And a strange stranger he was at that.
Edward’s face softened a little. He ventured a hand forwards, as though he was going to put it on her arm to comfort her, but instead he just left it hanging midway between them. “Let’s get to HR. Come on, before they come back.”
“You’re not telling me everything.”
“I’m working it out. Trust me.”
Again, she couldn’t tell why, but she knew that she did. She did trust him. The man who’d just claimed to be a god. She trusted him. “Okay.”
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