Free Last Days by Adam Nevill

further down the hall. He tried the lights in one of the front rooms. No light.
    ‘Fuses for the lights must have gone. How many batteries you have?’
    ‘Three. It’ll be OK, if you want to get arty. Be a lot of shadows. Or . . .’
    Kyle walked back into the hall where the large silhouette of Dan’s body blocked out most of the light that dropped from the window above the front door. ‘Or?’
    ‘Night shoot. Slow the shutter speed right down. And I can get all Blair Witch on your ass?’
    Kyle rested against the hall wall, hands on top of the radi-ator, as if warming himself. ‘Not a bad idea. The stuff with Susan is in daylight. So my lines could go over some darker interiors. I was going to suggest we do some footage at night anyway, because it’s all a bit samey.’
    ‘Cool. Where you wanna start?’
    ‘Basement. We can use the stuff down there as props. You know, make it look vacant, but full of history. Bit spooky too with a couple of lamps, then a bit in night mode. One camera on the tripod. Maybe some Steadicam too.’
    ‘You got it. Help me with the gear.’
    They left the ground-floor flat and made their way up to the penthouse to collect the gear. As they moved deeper and up into the building, the ambient street light lessened until they were forced to feel their way back into the room containing their bags.
    Dan fitted a new battery into each camera and checked the spotlight on top of the first camera, the light from which Kyle found himself ashamedly grateful for. A small round 65
    ADAM NEVILL
    moon was thrown forward from above the camera lens, and beyond it an umbra of thin whitish light formed a wider, fainter circle. As the radiance neared objects, they glinted: brass door handles, gloss-finish paint on the long wooden door panels. Beyond this light there was either a vagueness to the walls and floor, or total darkness.
    On their way back down the staircase to the ground-floor reception, Dan suddenly stopped. Kyle bumped his back and Dan slipped down two steps. ‘Dufus!’
    ‘Why’d you stop?’
    ‘Shush.’ Dan turned his head and looked to the bottom of the stairs. ‘You shut the front door when we came back in?’
    ‘Yes. Locked it.’
    ‘Listen.’ Dan held up one hand.
    Kyle strained his ears. The deep spaces of the lightless building hummed quietly. ‘What?’ he whispered.
    ‘Thought I heard someone. Downstairs.’
    Kyle grinned. ‘Don’t start with that shit.’
    ‘No, seriously. I heard footsteps.’
    ‘Next door?’
    Dan lowered his hand. ‘Maybe. No, you’re right. Was just worried some bum had followed us in.’
    ‘Come on.’
    Back on the ground, Kyle unlocked the basement door.
    ‘You go first,’ he said to Dan.
    ‘Why?’
    ‘’Coz you have the frigging light on the camera. I don’t want to go arse-over-tit down these stairs.’
    ‘Chicken shit.’
    As he went down, gingerly, behind Dan’s bulk, Kyle wished 66
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    he hadn’t drunk so much Franziskaner Weissbier. But then it was his turn to pause on the bottom stair. ‘Dan?’
    ‘What?’
    Kyle raised his face, sniffed at the air. ‘You smelling that?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Move over.’ Kyle walked further into the basement. Dan wheezed under the weight of the camera and gear as he followed.
    Dan sniffed. Shrugged.
    The dusty light, which had fallen through the barred window of the basement during the day, was now gone.
    But the window still shone with vestiges of street light from outside. It barely distinguished the cardboard boxes, and oddments of discarded furniture from previous tenants, as anything but silhouettes. The spotlight on Dan’s camera contributed another layer of silvery luminance, which almost returned Kyle’s confidence to a normal level.
    ‘I don’t remember that before,’ Kyle said, and turned about, looking for the source of the smell. It reminded him of sewage: old-egg sulphurous, gassy-pungent. And damp.
    There was a harder smell of rank water clothed by something musty,