Special Agent GodammitGabby stands at the bottom of the impossible stairs. They look old. Colonial-old. Like a gothic horror prop from some Hollywood slasher set has been moved to New York. There are these tiny holes in the wood, which is grey and fragile with a surface like old bone. The steps have deep cracks in them, and there are little piles of dust in each corner of the risers.
Gabby looks up the stairs to an impossible eighth floor. It shouldn’t be there. Not according to the elevator, and who the hell installs an elevator that stops short of the top floor. And—finally admitting the fact she’s trying to avoid, the stairs weren’t there when she stepped out of the elevator. She had looked both right and left, she knows she did.
There were no stairs.
The fat and grouchy Queen of Sheba had said ….
You don’t see any stairs, he don’t want to see you.
There were no stairs.
Oh come ON, Gabby. Get a grip. And stop talking to yourself, it isn’t professional…
But the lesson doesn’t land because this FBI Special Agent has a hitch in her voice and electricity in her hands and her legs don’t want to move. They are locked in some trembling little dance of their own. A deep breath does not help. It’s as shaky as an old shed.
Come on Gabby. This is your damn job. Are you really going to go back, look Dunbar in the eyes and tell him, Well gee boss, there was no eighth floor, then try to style it out?
She is an FBI agent for god’s sake. She trained for this.
No Gabby, you didn’t, not for this. Quantico didn’t have lectures on the paranormal.
Special Agent Gabrielle Carlos tightens her shaky grip on her legal attaché case and steps the impossible stairs.
Yeah, of course— they creak.
The daylight sloughs away to leave shadows clinging to the walls and ceiling. All in your mind Gabby. And each step creaks loudly in a silence that omits the background hush and rumble of the city. Still all in your mind Gabby. And the stairs stink. It’s difficult to define, something like the smell of a dead bonfire, the charcoal and fine white dust of it lying there on the damp ground, a monochrome bullseye. Or the pages of old books, pages turned yellow. A whole library of old books.
At the end of the decaying corridor that forms the eighth floor a door is open. The light lifts from gloom to grey, as if it’s twilight outside and no one has turned on the lights. That thought sets Gabby looking for lights but all she can see is a wall mounted candelabra thing with — seriously this has got to be a joke— two stubs of candles in the brass holders. And there’s a pool of wax on the floor beneath the candles, the wood stained darker at the edges. And the floorboards creak here as well.
Special Agent Carlos walks towards the open doorway. She takes a deep deliberate breath which does nothing to still her beatbox heart. Her free right hand has strayed to her standard issue Glock 19 and unlatched the holster strap all by itself. What is the technique for entering rooms that shouldn’t exist?
OODA loop Gabby. Observe, orientate, decide, act.
But Hogan’s Alley1 didn’t have a spectral corridor with creaking floorboards announcing your arrival to an early twilight and a powerful reek of dead years.
It’s just a damn office. GettagripGabby.
Yeah I know that Gabby, but it looks just like a set from that Frankenstein movie.
Special Agent Gabrielle Carlos takes up the approved position opposite the door, moves to the creaking of floorboard to extend her field of vision, left and right. Hah! There are books. Shelves and shelves of books. Really old leather bound books, their spines crusted and rusty from age, and— hell that’s a lot of dust on the floor. It’s like a deep grey carpet with a trail cut into it down to the dark wood floorboards. Library? Old unused library. Forgotten library?
Silent library. Kinda like a library should be but even in a library there is some sound. Here any sound is sucked up by the corroding books and the deep pile dust. It’s the silence of the middle of the night out in the dark country miles away from any life. Don’t think crypt. Gabby listens intently to a quiet hiss of background tinnitus, the thud of her motoring heart.
Gun or badge, gun or badge? That is the question. Hands are shaking too much for her gun. Two hand grip or not, her cone of fire will be measured in yards. Collateral damage on your first solo? That’ll go well in the post-op debrief. Gabby gets out her badge, flips it open, creaks across to the open door. She knocks on the door.
Nothing.
She knocks again.
Still nothing.
Special Agent Gabrielle Carlos FBI. I am entering the property.
Which would have been textbook apart from the high pitch and quavering.
Still nothing.
Gabby ducks her head around the door.
Holy Crap!
For those of you new to the Tink universe it all starts here…
Hogan’s Ally is a full-scale mock town used for combat and tactical training located at the FBI Academy on the Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia.
"Hogan's Alley" was also the name of an arcade video game from my youth, an ancient example of the much maligned "first person shooter" project (though you were trying to kill criminals, so apparently that was all right...).
Oh the suspense! Steve, this is written so well.