Read Apartment 16 for Free Online Page A

life hung all around her on the walls, and were packed into those boxes in the hallway, and into whatever else Apryl might find in the three bedrooms and dining room. And hadn’t Stephen said something about a storage cage under the building?
    She’d budgeted to arrange a quick sale of the flat and a hasty disposal of Lillian’s possessions in two weeks. But she didn’t want that any more. She wanted to stay here and learn about her great-aunt and uncle. She wanted to examine and consider and collect and preserve. This wasn’t junk. It meant something to Lillian. All of it.
    There had to be letters. Maybe a diary. She’d have to sift and discard in here like an archaeologist, in between dealing with real-estate agents and all of the legal stuff. Work fast and maybe see a bit of London too. But Lillian had to come first. If it meant cashing the rest of her savings and quitting her job back home, so be it. She would know every single thing there was to know about her great-aunt.

FOUR
    Changed into his uniform, with a cup of tea in his hand, when Seth came up from the staffroom he was hoping Piotr had already made his way down to the basement garage where his rusted shitbox car was parked. Instead, Piotr had merely pulled his red anorak over his sweat-clouded polyester shirt and was waiting for him. Grinning, he held up the duty log. ‘Ah, Seth being seeing the ghosts again! We all laugh so much when we read the log. Maybe he drink the whisky in the night and he see things, eh?’ He rolled his eyes and raised a hand as if to simulate drinking from a glass.
    ‘I didn’t say I saw anything. I reported a disturbance. A noise. Someone’s been in sixteen. I heard them.’
    But Piotr wasn’t listening. ‘You should polish the brass at night. I tell Stephen but he no listen. Then you being doing work and not have the time to see the ghosts.’ The door closed on the swishing anorak and beaming face.
    He wouldn’t make another report, no matter what he heard. Fuck it. He’d done his job; if something was stolen, he’d warned them.
    He collapsed into the chair and thought again about the dream he’d had that afternoon. It left him nostalgic but uneasy. As a kid, he used to visit that chamber in nightmares. Trying to scream, while strangely mute, as he was pushed inside the chamber against his will. It started around the time his dad left. Over and over again, he used to find that weird stone chamber in his dreams. It was an actual mausoleum he’d once seen with his nan, as they walked through an unkempt corner of the cemetery where his grandfather was buried. All the flowers were dead and the names of people were worn off the stone tablets and markers. It terrified him. He could not accept that his mum and dad would die and leave him one day, and then end up inside one of those stone enclosures or the mausoleum. And that he would die too. His nan said, with a smile, ‘Not for a long time, Seth.’ But the cold marble mausoleum with the little light inside, and the locked gate and barred windows, haunted him. He imagined being put in there. Being dead in there. Where he would stand on the wrong side of the little gate crying for his mum and dad who couldn’t see him. Would watch them walk away through the headstones. He used to see them clearly, starting the white Allegro before driving off and leaving him behind the gate, sobbing, hysterical.
    He shook himself. Even now he didn’t like remembering it. As a kid, the fear of the chamber used to tighten his chest so much he couldn’t breathe.
    He should call his mum. His dad. His sister. The dream made him want to. He couldn’t remember the last time he had spoken to any of them. He’d let everything go.
    Seth sighed and glanced over the duty clipboard to force himself to think of something else. Only twenty of the forty apartments were in use. Same situation as during his four shifts the previous week.
    Most of the penthouse suites were either holiday homes for the