Текст книги "Rushed"

Автор книги: Brian Harmon

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

Chapter Twenty

The road carried him past more pastures and a lot more cornfields.  There was even a soybean field.  That made for a nice change of scenery.

Yet the usual peacefulness of the rolling farmland was gone.  He was constantly watching these fields, waiting to see something dark and green rise up above the corn stalks and peek at him.  And of course, if there were such things as corn creeps, why not soybean creeps?  Cow creeps?  Hay creeps?  Or even just another pissed off monkey.

The sun had begun to sink in the western sky, but he still had a few hours left before dusk.  The temperature had not even begun to drop yet.  He considered what Father Billy told him about the corn creeps not coming out at night and wondered if it would really be safer after dark, or if those horrors would only give way to even more dangerous creatures.

He had a feeling that, regardless of the time of day, there would always be something in the fissure to fear.

For the time being, however, the only threat seemed to be sunburn.  His arms and neck had grown noticeably hot from his time in the August sun.  It was going to be an uncomfortable night.  But at this rate, he’d count himself lucky if he lived long enough to suffer through it.

He was also starving.  He’d now missed both breakfast and lunch.  If he was stuck out here much longer, he might find that he’d gladly go a round with Furious George for a McDonald’s drive-through.

In the dream, he recalled making his way along this path.  He also began to recall something else.  An injury.  His arm was bleeding.  It wasn’t bad, but in the dream he kept looking at it.  It burned.

Looking at his right arm now, in the waking world, Eric saw no sign of the injury, of course, but he could remember it vividly.  It looked like teeth marks.

During the time he was off the path, taking his unplanned detour through Father Billy’s church, he was supposed to be continuing along the road, across that wooden bridge.  Because he hadn’t gone there, the memory of that part of the dream never came back to him like it did in the other places he’d visited.  Only vague snippets recurred to him.

He wondered why he’d been able to recall perfectly the details of the rooms back at the resort building without entering them.  Merely standing in the doorway and looking toward those rooms had brought back vivid recollections of the dusty, empty spaces behind those doors.  Similarly, he realized that he’d remembered much more of the grounds surrounding Altrusk’s house than he had actually seen.  He’d even used the memory to save himself the trouble of searching for the path leading away.

Perhaps it was his proximity.  After all, he recalled getting as far as the wooden bridge, though he never saw that structure during his flight from the corn creeps.

Maybe it had to do with straying so far from the path he took in the dream.

All he could recall was some sort of building.  A house, he thought, but he couldn’t quite be sure.

A series of incoherent images rolled around deep in his mind.  A porch.  A driveway.  A decorative well.  Something strange about a tree…  Something watching him…?  Noises.  Panic.  Running.

He couldn’t make any of it come together.  It was no use.

But somewhere along the way, he’d been bitten.  And the shape of the teeth marks in his arm was almost human…

He couldn’t even tell himself that it was only a dream.

But at least he hadn’t been seriously harmed.  He’d continued on, little worse for the wear, meaning that Dream Eric had still probably ended up with the preferred path.  He had only traded a bite mark on his right arm for a painful scratch on his left.

Around him, the fields were quiet.  These were mostly fallow, empty, allowing him an unobstructed view all around him.

Nothing stalked him here.

But perhaps farther out, beyond where he could see clearly…

He walked and he watched for unnatural things, until at last he crested a hill and looked down into the next valley.  A large building waited there for him.

It appeared to be an old factory of some kind.  Several smoke stacks rose from one end of the facility.  Several large storage tanks stood at its back.  A large loading dock with six bays stood empty and silent.  A single stretch of blacktop led away from the building and off through the open hayfields.

An old sign still stood out by the road.  Half of it had blown off long ago—likely in a storm—so that it was impossible to read the name of the company, but its logo was still visible.  It appeared to be a Canada goose.

Standing at the top of the hill, looking down at the sprawling structure, his only thought was, What now?

He closed his eyes and recalled the dream.  Two days ago, the Eric who would never have met Father Billy set off down the hill toward the silent factory.  Today, the Eric who was never bitten did the same.

He had barely begun when his phone rang again.

“I just had the strangest conversation of my life,” Karen announced before he could even say, “Hello.”

He didn’t have to ask who this conversation was with.  “Isabelle’s a sweet kid, isn’t she?”

“Very sweet, yes.  Also kind of spooky.”

“Well she has been trapped in a psychotic, inter-dimensional house for the last thirty-six years.”

“That’s going to take some getting used to.”

“I’ve dealt with harder things to accept today.”  The foggy man’s three golems were not the least of these things.

“I guess you probably have.”

“She looks really good for someone old enough to be your mother.”

“I couldn’t believe it when she told me who she was.  Not just that she got out of the house, but that I was even talking to her.  I mean I believed you…”

“You sort of believed me,” Eric challenged.  “You didn’t entirely believe me.  You never did.  You couldn’t have.  It’s too much to accept.  I didn’t even entirely believe it.  I’m still not sure I do.”

“I guess so.  But it was like when you sent me those first pictures.  Those things from the barn…  It was such a shock.”

“I know.  If it’s even remotely the way I felt when I saw all those things, when I experienced them, then I’m amazed that any part of you believed me at all.”

“I’ve known you too long to doubt anything you tell me.  I trust you.  It would be impossible for me to not believe anything you say to some degree.”

“That’s good.  Because I’m racking up some mileage over here.”

“You are,” she agreed.  “She’s really taken with you, you know?”

“What?”

“Isabelle.  She adores you.  She went on and on about you.”

“That’s…sweet…I guess.  I didn’t do anything though.  I just stumbled into the house.  She was the one who rescued me.  I wouldn’t be here now if it wasn’t for her.  I would’ve vanished into that house just like she did thirty-six years ago if she hadn’t appeared in that hallway and led me to her secret room.  I was nothing but trouble for her.”

“Well, she doesn’t think so.  She thinks you gave her the courage to get out of that monster’s house.  It’s kind of adorable.  I think she might even have a little crush on you.”

“That’s awkward.  I’ve never been into older women.”

“Thinking about it now, I kind of like it.  You’re her hero.  And she’s ours.”

“She’s definitely mine.  In fact, I seem to be collecting those today.”  He recalled Grant’s timely intervention with his tractor and Father Billy courageously taking on the freak-in-the-box.

“I’m just happy you’re running into so many helpful people.”

“I’m not sure how helpful most of them really are.  No one wants to tell me exactly what it is I’m expected to find in the cathedral.”

“Hopefully they all know what they’re doing.”

“No kidding.”

“So where are you now?”

“I’m heading toward what looks like an abandoned factory way out in the middle of nowhere.”

“That sounds lovely.  I can’t imagine it possibly going wrong.”

“I know.  What do you think?  Another of the foggy man’s golems or a nest of ravenous monsters?”

“Maybe it’s where you’ll have your epic showdown with the foggy man, himself.”

“Nice.  I can’t wait.”

“Isabelle promised me she’d watch out for you.”

“That was nice of her.”

“I’m really glad someone is.”

“You’ve done a fine job watching out for me yourself.”

“Me?”

“Yeah.  If it wasn’t for you, I’d still be standing around at that dock, trying to figure out where to go next.”

“You’d have figured it out on your own.  Eventually.”

“I’m not so sure of that.”

“I am.  You’re pretty slow, but you usually get it in the end.”

“Thanks.  You’re too kind.”

“I know.”

“Did Paul call you?”

“He did.  He’s in a real mess, isn’t he?”

“It’s pretty damn funny, isn’t it?”

“Kind of, yeah.  Did he send you a picture of the thing that won’t let him out of the cabin?”

“No.”

“I’ll have to send it to your phone.  It’s almost cute.”

“Doesn’t sound like Paul’s thinking about bringing it home.”

“No.  It doesn’t.”

“At least he’s safe in the cabin.”

“I know.  Hopefully Kevin can get to him before too long.”

“I hope so.”

“Oh, I’ve got to go.  Toni’s here for the cake.”

“That’s okay.  I’ve got to go get the living hell scared out of me by whatever’s waiting in this factory.”

“Have fun.”

“You know I will.”

“Eric…”

“What?”

For a moment, Karen was silent.  He could tell she was frightened.  Between all the pictures he’d sent her and now talking to the undeniably real Isabelle, it was becoming harder and harder to dismiss all these things with a joke and a smile.

“Be careful,” she said at last.

“I will.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“Bye.”

Eric said goodbye and hung up the phone.  He didn’t like hearing so much worry in her voice.  She was usually much stronger than that.  He could tell that she was ready for him to come home.

The factory loomed ahead of him.

It was silent.

The overgrown lawns and crumbling parking lots confirmed that this was not merely a day off.  No one had worked here in a very long time.

Glancing down at his phone again, he saw that he was beginning to lose his signal.  The factory was on the edge of the gray zone.  He recalled his dream.  This was like the lake.  He wouldn’t be able to go around.  The only path was through the facility.

Had the fissure always been here?  Surely a factory could not have been built in such a place without someone noticing it.  Perhaps the fissure was always growing.  Perhaps it had spread to this place only after the facility was built.  Or maybe it was like the resort and someone chose this place specifically because of the fissure, with intentions that went well beyond manufacturing American-made products.

He crossed the parking lot with its weed-choked cracks, following the same path he recalled taking in his dream, and found himself walking toward a heavy, steel door with peeling, green paint.

The lock was broken.  The door remained closed only because it happened to be weighted so that it rested closed.  He recalled this from his dream.  He also recalled the darkened hallway behind the door, the eerie silence that had settled with the dust.

Now he climbed the steps and pushed open the door, trying to prepare himself for whatever terror must await him in the darkness.

The hallway was brightly lit.

He stood in the doorway, confused, as a tall man in business casual clothes and a white hairnet walked from a doorway on the right-hand side of the corridor to a set of stairs on the left and ascended out of sight.  At the end of the short hallway was a door with a scuffed plastic window.  The room beyond was well-lit, too.  As he looked on, someone walked briskly by.

A heavyset woman in a pair of bright yellow coveralls came down the stairs and entered what appeared to be an office without glancing at him.

Where was the darkness he remembered?  Why were these people here?

In the dream, there had been no one.  The entire building had been bathed in gloom so deep it was difficult to see anything.  There had been no signs to indicate that anyone had been here in a very long time.

He stepped through the door, letting it bang closed behind him, and entered the room where the yellow-clad woman had gone.  This room was open and empty, filled with dust, but brightly lit.  There was another door in the far corner, but the room behind it was unlit.

He peered into this darkness and found only another empty room.  There were no other doors.  Where had the woman gone?  And where had she come from?  He hadn’t seen any cars outside.

There was no furniture in this darkened room.  No desks, no chairs, no office equipment filled the empty space.

He took a step back, away from the disconcerting darkness, confused, and turned around.

Walking toward him was a very large man in the same yellow coveralls the heavyset woman had been wearing.  In his meaty hands, he lifted a heavy-looking shovel into the air and swung it at Eric’s startled face.

Chapter Twenty-One

Eric closed his eyes.  He stood there, his back to the wall, cringing in anticipation of the blow.  But it never came.  When he dared a peek, the large man and his shovel were gone.

A tall man was standing in the middle of the room instead, studying a piece of paper.

“What just happened?” he asked, but the man merely turned away and walked out of the room.

“Excuse me…”

Eric followed him into the hallway, but he was gone.  Instead, an attractive woman with dark features was walking toward him from the door at the end of the hallway.  She was carrying a clipboard under her arm and pulling her long, black hair out from under her hairnet.

“Can you help me?” he asked, but the woman ignored him so completely that he had to step quickly out of her way to keep from being pushed aside.

“The hell?”

His cell phone chimed at him, announcing a new text message, and when he pulled it out of his pocket, he again found a single word staring back at him.

LISTEN

He frowned at the word.  Listen to what?  The place was silent.

Then it occurred to him.  It was silent.  Utterly silent.  There was none of the noise a factory should have been making, even before its machinery began running.  It wasn’t even the polite hush of a quiet hospital wing.  Even the footsteps of these people were perfectly silent.

Duh.

He’d been so distracted by the shock of finding people working here that he hadn’t noticed how unnaturally quiet they all were.

Beginning to understand, he turned and peered into the room where the big man had swung the shovel at him.  There, on the wall directly over where he’d been standing, was a metal rack, exactly the sort of place someone might hang such tools when they were done with them.  The man hadn’t been trying to brain the hapless intruder at all.  He was merely hanging up his shovel.  If he hadn’t closed his eyes, he might have seen it pass right through him.

Or simply disappear.

Turning around, he found a very short, rotund woman moving toward him from the door at the end of the hall.  The door wasn’t swinging as if someone had just passed through it, and he very much doubted it that it would open so soundlessly.

This time, he stood his ground and the woman faded away just before she could collide with him.

Residuals.

Completely harmless, Grant had assured him, but deceptive.  The foggy man left them to trip him up.  The first lured him into a trap.  The second had been put there to try and deter him from staying on the path, likely in hopes of making him either give up or try to find another path, which likely would’ve resulted in straying too far into the other world and becoming lost forever.

So what was the point of these guys?

He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to remember what he did in his dream.

It had been dark.  Very dark.  But he’d had a light.

Why did he have a light?  He wasn’t carrying a light now.

Then he remembered.  He used the cell phone.

Dream Eric was pretty smart.

He’d poked around these offices without finding anything.  Then he made his way through the door, which he recalled now was not at all quiet, but instead extremely noisy when pushed open in this deep silence.  Using the light from the phone’s digital screen, he began to explore.

Eric didn’t need the phone to light his way today.  These rooms were brightly illuminated.  But as he looked up at the fluorescent lights in the ceiling, curious about why they were on now and not two days ago, he realized that they were unlit.  The light didn’t seem to be coming from those.

This was new.  Apparently the foggy man could even manufacture residual lighting.

How the hell did that even work?

Too tired to contemplate such a thing, Eric pushed open the door, wincing at the loud screeching of its hinges, and stepped out onto the factory floor.

If this were a real factory, the noise would be deafening, the air would be stifling and the very floor would be rumbling beneath his feet.  But in spite of the dozens of people bustling around, the thrumming of the machinery, the conveyor belts clattering, there was not the subtlest noise to be heard beyond his own shallow breathing.  The air was stale and cool, musty-smelling.  His ears and nose detected the truth.  Only his eyes saw the lie.

He stood in the middle of the walkway, gazing around at the silent chaos, wondering what the foggy man was doing here.

A young man walked past him, appearing no less real than Eric, and he reached out to touch his arm.  It was as if he had only imagined him there.  As soon as his fingers came close, he was gone without a trace.  He did not fade.  And he did not disappear, exactly, if that made any sense.  He was just gone, as if never there in the first place, as if he vanished not before his eyes but even for a second or two in his very memory.

This was insanely weird.

And after all he’d seen today, that was saying a lot.

To his left was some kind of office.  It was dark beyond the door.  No residual lighting had been used there.  Farther to his left, a corridor led into another room where it was also dark.  But to the right, another area of the factory was lit up.  It seemed that the foggy man hadn’t bothered to animate the entire facility.

But why?

Eric looked up at the overhead lights.  Like the ones in the hallway, they were dark.  Looking down, he realized that he did not cast a shadow here, suggesting that the light he was seeing was just like the people:  of another time.

His cell phone rang.

No name.

Isabelle.

He put the phone to his ear and immediately heard her sweet voice say, “That foggy guy’s good.”

“This is definitely quite a trick,” Eric agreed.

“Residual lighting, huh?  That’s a new one.”

“What’s he up to?”

“No idea.  I can’t feel him.  Even when you were looking at him from Father Billy’s church, I couldn’t see him.  It’s like he’s not really there, like he’s residual, too.”

“He can’t be residual.  He causes too much trouble.”

“True.  But I can’t feel him anywhere.”

Eric looked around at the silent workers.  It looked like they were manufacturing some kind of food, but he couldn’t tell what.  Like the sound, the product itself was missing.  Though the production lines were running at full-speed, there was nothing on the conveyors.  It was like the rooms that remained dark.  The foggy man had simply left it out.

“Snack foods,” said Isabelle.

“What?”

“They made snack foods here.  Potato chips, cheese puffs, pretzels.  That sort of thing.  Some specialty organic brand.”

He kept forgetting that Isabelle could read his thoughts.  That was going to take some getting used to.

“Did something bad happen here?  Like at the resort?”

“I don’t think so.  In this case, I think the factory just closed.  But that doesn’t mean nothing bad ever happened here.”

“Are all these people dead now?” he wondered, studying the busy workers.

“I don’t know that, either.”

Eric didn’t think they were.  Not all of them.  Maybe not any of them.  None of them had hair or clothes that looked very dated.  These were people who probably worked here no earlier than the nineties.

If so, these weren’t ghosts at all.  They were merely glimpses into the past.

“Why is he even here?  Why isn’t he looking for the cathedral?”

“You’re not that far away,” Isabelle informed him.  “Given the head start he had, he should’ve been there and gone.  I really don’t know why he’s hanging around.  But it obviously has something to do with you.”

“Obviously.”

“Sorry I can’t be more help.”

“You’re more help than anybody else I’ve met today.”

“I’m glad.”

“And unlike everybody else I’ve met, you’ve stayed with me.  That’s a little reassuring.  By the way, how is it you can call me when I don’t have a signal?”

“I’m not sure.  I use the phone lines in this house to call you, so I really shouldn’t be able to reach you when no one else can.  So I guess it can’t just be the phone.  Maybe the connection has more to do with us, something about the way I’m in your head now.”

“Huh.  Well I’m just happy you’re here.”

“Me too!”

“So what do you think I should do now?”

“What did you do in your dream?”

Eric tried to remember.  “I went right,” he realized.

“I think that’s your best bet.”

He nodded.  At least that way, he could let Dream Eric lead the way for him.

“I’ll hang up so you can watch for trouble.  I’ll text you if I need to tell you anything.”

“Sounds good.”

He disconnected the call, but kept the phone clenched in his hand.  He wanted to read anything Isabelle had to say to him immediately.  And he wanted it at the ready in case the lights went back out, which didn’t seem at all unlikely, given the special nature of the light source.

The next room was mostly empty.  An office of some sort sat in darkness on the other side of a door to the right.  To the left was another corridor.  It, too, was dark, but the room at the far end was brightly lit.

In his dream, he had wandered around the open rooms, trying his best to see the far ends of these empty spaces.  There was no machinery in the dream.  It was all residual, just like the people and the light.  The factory had been cleaned out long ago.

He recalled peering into several offices and storage rooms, but ultimately he made his way down the left corridor.

As he turned around, a skinny woman with a remarkably unattractive face hurried past him and vanished halfway across the room.  A moment later, a very fat man materialized from thin air just a few feet from where the woman disappeared and laboriously strolled out onto the production floor Eric just left.

A few short hours ago, that would’ve blown his mind.

He remembered being jumpy.  In the dream, he’d been mostly calm throughout the day, sometimes in stark contrast to what he felt here in the waking world.  He was never attacked by the wardrobe golem.  He never saw the coyote-deer while trying to cross the gut-wrenchingly scary bridge.  Nothing terrifying waited for him between the resort and Altrusk’s house.  He’d even crossed the lake without encountering Furious George.  Dream Eric had been surprisingly lucky.  But whatever he encountered during the part of his dream that he could not quite recall had frightened him as badly as any of the things he’d encountered today and the result was that he was nearly sick with fear as he wandered these dark, deserted chambers in search of the way forward.

This did not in any way help him feel any calmer now.  If anything, a worried Dream Eric made the situation much worse.  He felt as though he would remember something bad happening any moment, at which point the bad thing would happen here and now, with no time to defend against it.

Yet as he made his way down the corridor, nothing terrible happened to either Eric.

Although there were bright lights at both ends of the corridor, he found that very little of it seemed to reach beyond the doorways, so that he found himself illuminating the floor before him with the cell phone’s digital display to ensure against any unforeseen hazards.

The next room was a great, empty space, likely a large storage area of some kind.  Once upon a time, forklifts probably prowled up and down the corridor, moving things around, keeping the production lines running.  But now the room was empty.  Three men stood in the middle of the room.  Two of them wore hair nets.  One of them was talking, yet he made no sound.

His phone chimed.

SOMETHING SEEMS WRONG

“No kidding,” he told the phone.

BE CAREFUL.

“I will.”

Dream Eric had wandered around this empty room, exploring, searching for the path that would carry him forward.  Eventually, he made his way to the far corner, where a set of steps led up to the second floor.

Now, the Eric that was running two days late walked past the three men and headed for the stairs.

Something felt wrong, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

He glanced back one last time at the three men conversing silently in the middle of the room and then ascended the stairs and entered a long, dark hallway.

In his dream, he peered into each room, probed it with the light from his phone and moved on.  Now he used the returning memory of the dream to avoid these rooms.  He was not at all eager to step through a door and find himself face-to-horrible-face with another golem.

And if he were to be completely honest with himself, this seemed like the perfect place for a golem, as far from any of the outer doors as possible, completely lacking in places to run and hide, plenty of dead ends in which he could find himself cornered.

Apparently, the residuals weren’t restricted to the illuminated rooms.  His light fell on a man and a woman carrying on a silent conversation in the middle of the hallway, then an older man carefully examining a wall where a bulletin board must have once hung.

He followed his dream self down the hallway and into another large, empty room, his eyes wide open, his cell phone illuminating dreadfully little of the space before him.  The fear he’d felt in the dream became contagious.  A sick feeling began to spread outward from deep in his belly.

Yet nothing happened.

He made his way deeper into this dark room, past a young man busying himself with invisible work, through another door into another hallway and finally down a narrow set of stairs into yet another unlit room where he found a pretty young woman who looked as if she might be flirting with someone, except whoever she was chatting with was not there.

From here, another darkened corridor led to an illuminated room that he quickly recalled was the same room where the three men were talking.

But when he returned, only two of the men were standing there.  The one without the hair net had either wandered off or vanished.

In the dream, he returned to the first production floor he’d found and made his way down the other darkened corridor.

Sometimes the dream came to him in bursts, giving him ample time to see what awaited him.  Other times, he was forced to relive the events of his dream as they occurred.  It seemed to be particularly stubborn in revealing the secrets of this factory to him.

It was weird recalling the dream when so much looked so different.  It was distracting.

He made his way back to the production floor and looked around at the dozen silent workers busying themselves with the empty line, going through the motions they went through ten or twenty years ago, oblivious to the fact that this factory would one day replay their actions for a stranger in torn and bloody clothes.

His cell phone chimed again.

I FEEL SOMETHING

Eric glanced around him at the room.  He tried to recall everything he saw in his dream, but too much had changed between then and now.  Thanks to the foggy man, it was almost impossible to know what was real and what wasn’t, much less tell if something had changed.

I DON’T THINK YOU’RE ALONE

Swearing louder than he’d intended (he kept forgetting that the only sounds in this place were those he made), Eric turned and scanned the room.

In the dream, he’d continued on to the left.  But he hesitated to go in that direction now.  Was it another golem?  How would he deal with it this time?  He had neither a tractor nor any dynamite.  And he didn’t know how to get to the roof.  No foul-mouthed father was here to help him.  All he had was a cell phone and a little girl in Australia.

Residual remnants of people who hadn’t been here in years walked silently past him, carrying on their endless business as if he wasn’t there.  Because he wasn’t there.  And they weren’t here.

It was strange being all alone in a room filled with people.

“What am I supposed to do?” he wondered.

A young woman walked away from the line for no apparent reason and vanished into the doorway through which he’d entered the production floor.  A middle-aged man simply vanished from his work station and a much younger man appeared a few feet to his left, silently nodding as if spoken to, though no one was talking to him.  Farther away, a grumpy-looking woman with curly blonde hair escaping from under her hair net hurried around the machinery as a heavyset man strolled thoughtlessly along the isle straight toward her.  The two came within a fraction of an inch of colliding and then both of them abruptly vanished, exactly as they did when he touched one of them.

They didn’t match.  It seemed they weren’t all from the same point in time.

By the far wall, a man in a hard hat was working on one of the machines, oblivious to the fact that the machine currently appeared to be in operation.

A thin man without a hairnet entered from the next room and strolled silently toward him, looking as if he was on his way home for the day.

From the darkened corridor to his left, where Dream Eric had wandered in search of the way out of here, a security guard strolled into the room with his flashlight, apparently going about his rounds in the dark after hours.

Taking a deep breath, Eric set off toward the darkened half of the factory.

He passed a very tall man with a very thick mustache, but found no golem.

At the end of the corridor was a large, empty space.  Another corridor led to another illuminated area far to the right.  Between here and there was only more darkness.

He stood against the wall for a moment, remembering the dream, letting it reveal the room for him.

Phantom workers walked past him, some of whom he’d seen before in other areas.  There was the heavyset woman he followed into that first office.  And the large man who had nearly swatted him with his shovel.  He watched them as he recalled wandering around this room in his dream, revealing nothing of interest before setting off down the next corridor.