16.6

 Roisin could feel it. She felt the way a compass needle must feel when it stops spinning and aligned with the earth’s magnetic field. It was as if she’d been drunk and had spewed it all down a toilet bowl, then brushed her teeth. All the chaotic feelings she’d been experiencing dropped away, leaving her as clear as waking up in an alpine meadow in July.

The pressure pulsed again — not violently this time, but with a slow, deliberate rhythm, like a hand in a velvet glove pushing her from the inside, but not toward the door anymore; not toward the street but pushing her upward, toward the hall, the door and Steve’s room.

She swallowed hard. “It’s stronger.”

Steve nodded once. “I know.”

The assistant backed away, pressing herself against the wall. “What’s upstairs? What’s in your room?”

Steve didn’t look at her. “Things that shouldn’t be touched.”

Roisin felt the pressure pulse again, harder this time, like a Roman galley master beating the great drum. Her foot shifted forward without her meaning to move it.

Steve caught her wrist. “No.”

Roisin’s breath trembled. “I didn’t—”

“I know,” Steve said. “That’s why you’re staying here.”

The assistant’s voice cracked. “What happens if she goes up there?”

Steve hesitated, tearing his eyes from Roisin to glance upward, then said, quietly, “It finishes what the gallery started.” He moved his hand from her wrist to her shoulder.

Roisin felt a wave of nausea. “I don’t understand.”

Steve turned to stand in front of her, at the bottom of the lobby stairs to block her way past. “You don’t have to understand. You just have to resist.”

The pressure increased further, building up like a sudden-onset migraine — a sharp, electric jolt that made her gasp. Her knees buckled. Steve caught her before she fell, lowering her gently onto the bottom stair.

The assistant craned her neck forward. “Is she okay?”

“No,” Steve said. “But she will be.”

Roisin pressed both hands to her chest. “It’s… it’s become my heartbeat.”

Steve crouched in front of her. “That’s how it anchors.”

The assistant stared at him. “Anchors? Anchors to what? What do you have up there?”

Steve didn’t answer, but Roisin could see the answer he was withholding as clear as if it were written on a banner above his head, and despite the excruciating pain she was experiencing, couldn’t help but laugh.

Both Steve and the assistant stared at her like she was projectile vomiting pea soup, but she weakly waved a hands and smiled as she waited for a brief release of the pressure inside. “He’s got a stairway to Heaven.”

Steve’s eyes flicked to hers — a brief flash of recognition, or worry, or both. “You’re hearing it.”

Roisin nodded, breath trembling. “It’s like… like it’s speaking without words.”

The assistant made a small, horrified sound. “What is it saying?”

Roisin closed her eyes.

And she heard it, like a stentorian voice echoing through her soul with every heartbeat:

Not a voice.
Not a thought.
A direction.

Up.

Up.

Up.

She opened her eyes. “It wants me to go upstairs.”

Steve expanded his chest, trying to fill the whole stairwell with his presence. “Then that’s exactly what you’re not doing.” He fished in his trouser pocket and extracted a bunch of keys – a far larger bunch that could have been hidden in a trouser pocket, in Roisin’s opinion – and called upstairs. “Paul?”

Their flatmate appeared at the top. “I heard every word. How can I help?”

Steve twisted as far as he could and tossed the keys up to him. Paul tried to catch them but failed, knocking them half way down again. He scooted to collect them, sucking at the knuckles of his hand which had taken the brunt of the force. He grabbed the keys and scooted backward as if Roisin was the vampire he was so worried about.

“Go and lock my door, mate. She can’t be let loose up there.”

The assistant grabbed Roisin’s hand. “Can you fight it?”

Roisin shook her head. “It’s not… it’s not like a thought. It’s more like gravity, pulling me upward. It feels like if I’m a jumble of spoons being called to an orderly velvet cutlery case.”.”

Paul held up the bunch of keys. “Which bloody key is it? There must be a couple of dozen on here.”

“The one shaped like Damabiah,” Steve called, his eyes not leaving Roisin’s face.

“Like what?” Paul’s face creased with confusion as he looked at the keys. “I have no idea what that is.”

“It’s a mortice key. It has two triangles on one side and an arch on the other. You can’t miss it. It’s the only key that doesn’t look normal.”

“You’ve got a skewed view of what normal is, mate, let me tell you.” Paul held the keys up, flicking through the bunch until he came to the right one. 

“That one.” Roisin didn’t even have to look up. She could feel the energy contained in it. It seemed obvious that Steve would use one artefact to protect the others.