56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard
29 Days Ago
In one moment Ciara is deep in a dreamless sleep and in the next she is wide awake and the world is on fire.
A siren is wailing.
So loud that the peak of each iteration feels like something has reached into her ear canal and pinched whatever’s at the very end of it, deep inside the center of her skull.
And it’s here, this ceaseless noise.
With her, in this pitch-black room.
But when she turns she sees that Oliver, for some reason, is not.
It takes a moment for Ciara’s brain to absorb the shock and put the pieces together: the building’s fire alarm has gone off in the middle of the night and Oliver isn’t in bed beside her. His half of the duvet is folded back onto her and when she touches a hand to the exposed sheet, she feels no warmth in it.
But the siren is louder than her thoughts, so she can’t think about that now. She can’t think about anything. She has only one objective and it’s to get to a place where she can’t hear this torturous noise.
She throws back the covers just as the door to the bedroom opens, the warm glow of the light in the hallway swiftly banishing the majority of the dark. Oliver stands in the doorway in silhouette, rendered a shadowman by the hall light.
She can see enough to see that he’s dressed. Sweatpants and a T-shirt—what he puts on when he gets up in the morning but before he gets actually dressed. He only wears his boxers to bed, so wherever he was, it was more than a sleepy trip to the bathroom.
What was he doing?
The open bedroom door has made the siren even louder; the alarms themselves must be in the hall. She reaches for the jeans she wore yesterday and hung from the back of the chair last night, and jams her bare feet into the sneakers she had neatly set on the floor.
She is dimly aware of Oliver not moving as she does this. He remains in the doorway, still, his facial expression blurred by the dark, seemingly unaffected by this brain-piercing noise.
He holds this position even when she reaches him, making no effort to move out of her way.
She calls out his name but he doesn’t react. It crosses her mind that he could be sleepwalking, but now that her eyes have adjusted there’s enough light to see that he’s very much awake and alert.
Awake and alert and blocking her way out of the bedroom.
“Oliver,” she says again.
And then, as if coming out of a daze, he nods and steps aside.
She pushes past him into the hall and grabs her coat from the hook by the door. Her keys are on the hall table; she slips them into a pocket. My phone, she thinks then. This could be an actual fire and God knows how long they’ll be out there if it is. She should take that, too. Where is it? She doesn’t usually bring it into the bedroom with her, so she dashes into the living room—the lights are on in there—and scans for it.
It’s on the coffee table, next to Oliver’s phone.
Which just at that moment lights up with a notification.
She barely glances at it as she picks up her own phone, but she thinks it was a text message.
Touching the screen of her phone makes it light up too—with the time: 4:01 a.m.
Why would someone be texting Oliver at four in the morning?
She turns back around.
“Where are you going?” Oliver shouts over the din.
She points at the door. “Out!”
The entire world is starting to feel as if it’s made of noise and Ciara can’t take much more of it. Whoever designed this alarm did their job extremely well. She needs to get away, to get outside. But as she starts down the hallway she feels a tug on her arm and then a pull, a force strong enough to spin her right around.
Oliver pulls her into the bathroom and shuts the door.
The siren, mercifully, drops a few decibels. She can hear him when he speaks, but there’s a distant buzzing sound that feels as if it’s coming from inside her own ears.
“It’ll go off in a second,” he says, putting his hands on her shoulders. “It’s a false alarm. Happens all the time. Every time someone burns their dinner. Relax.”
But his touch doesn’t match this sentiment. It feels different.
Not reassuring, but holding in place.
She says, “Who’s making dinner at four a.m.?”
“Or someone comes home drunk and lights up in the lift.”
“Comes home from where? There’s a lockdown.”
His response to this is a shrug. He’s standing with his back against the door.
“Oliver,” she says evenly, “there could be a fire. I want to go outside.”
“But there’s no need.”
“Oliver,” she says again, this time in the exhale of a nervous laugh, because this situation is at once completely absurd and increasingly unsettling.
What the hell is he doing?
Her mind runs toward dark places. He’s a foot taller than her, stronger than her, and he’s preventing her from leaving a small room in the middle of the night during a potential fire. Physically holding her in place. She has her phone but . . .
She can see him snatching it from her hand, throwing it against the tiled wall. They’re in the smallest space of the apartment, at the end of the hall, while a deafening siren wails. Even if she screamed—
She pulls herself back. No. She’s just overreacting.
To his overreacting.
“I need to not hear this noise,” she says, breaking away from him and reaching an arm around his side to get to the door handle.
“It’ll stop in a second.” He repositions his body, blocking her path again.
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. Happens all the time.”
“You just moved here.”
“And since I did, it’s been happening all the time.”
“Well, until then . . .”
She reaches again, ducking a little, and grabs a hold of the handle.
Oliver grabs her wrist.
She looks down at his fingers pinched around her skin and then up, very slowly, into his face.
“What are you doing?”
A tense beat passes.
Then he lets go.
“The senior partner,” he says. “At KB Studios. He’ll be out there too.” His tone is desperate and his eyes glisten as if he’s on the verge of tears. “And it’s four in the morning. You can’t be visiting if you’re here at four in the morning.”
Responses to this rush up Ciara’s throat—it’ll be dark, we can stay away from him; we can separate, he won’t recognize her anyway; who the hell cares when the alternative is either going insane from this noise or burning to death in a fire?—but instead of saying any of them, she yanks her arm free and turns around, to the medicine cabinet.
She opens it and pulls out the packet of masks Oliver came home with a couple of days ago, carelessly enough that other things come out too (a can of shaving gel, a box of Band-Aids), which she lets fall to the floor.
Along with all the masks as they spill out of the packaging, except for the one she holds in her hand. She snaps the elastic bands over her ears, roughly pulls on the material until it feels like it’s sitting comfortably on her face, and then slams the cabinet closed again for good measure.
Her hands, she realizes, are shaking.
“Good idea,” Oliver says, “but you really don’t need to go out—”
“Let me go.”
It sounds like what a prisoner might plead of her captor and she fully intends it to.
The words have an immediate effect on Oliver. Something melts away from him. He hangs his head.
And he steps aside so Ciara has a clear path to the door.
She doesn’t waste any time. She pulls it open. With the siren back at full tilt, it feels like the inside of her brain is being burned by each wail. She runs down the hall, toward the front door.
She doesn’t look to see if he’s following her.
She doesn’t care if he is.
On the other side of the apartment door the noise is even worse, with siren wails from every individual unit joining the assault from the speakers installed in the corridor. It’s a tunnel of aural torture and Ciara can’t get outside fast enough. When she reaches the double doors that lead into the courtyard, she jabs the Press to Exit button and pushes her way out into the night.
A small crowd of residents has gathered in the courtyard. They stand at varying distances from each other, shifting their weight from foot to foot, arms crossed against their chests. Everyone has the pale, puffy face of the deep sleeper suddenly disturbed, is wearing some combination of pajamas and outerwear, and is stealing surreptitious looks at their fellow neighbors. They’ve all been locked up together for a while now but have never seen each other quite like this, together in a group, up close. Other residents stand on their balconies, shivering in shirtsleeves and looking annoyed.
No one else is wearing a mask. Ciara quickly pulls hers off and stuffs it into her coat pocket. She’d only be more conspicuous with it on.
The siren wails out here too, but at a much more manageable level. There is no sign of any flames or smoke. She can see there are red bell-like units outside everyone’s balcony doors; a little blue light on each one flashes on and off. She feels very sorry for anyone who lives in the vicinity.
One woman paces up and down by one of the courtyard’s benches, barking into her mobile phone about this happening yet again and how this disruption is utterly unacceptable and why every false alarm makes us less likely to be alarmed when there’s an actual fire.
The other residents are mostly silent, not even talking to each other. Some rub at their eyes, others roll them. One lights a cigarette.
She can’t see anyone who might be the partner at the architect firm that Oliver is apparently living in fear of, and no one seems to be paying her an unusual level of attention.
The woman on the phone drops the device to her neck and says to no one in particular, “They’re saying I can’t turn it off. They’re telling me to wait for the fire brigade.”
A ripple of scoffs and sighs spreads through the residents.
“We’ll be here ages,” someone groans.
A thumping has started in Ciara’s right temple, a pulse out of time with the wail of the siren. As she stands in the cold, she feels it spreading out across her forehead and down over her right eye, but she doesn’t know if it’s actually getting worse or if thinking it is is what’s making her feel that way.
She wants to be in bed in the dark with a Solpadeine tablet. She wants to not be hearing this bloody noise. She’d settle for one out of two for the moment.
Ciara goes back through the double doors that lead to the lobby, and then out the second set directly opposite them, onto the street.
On this side of the building, the night holds everything still. The roads are bare, the sky is a dark mass of starless clouds. There’s a row of terraced houses opposite, just beyond the narrow strip of unlit park; she counts eight whose windows she can see from here and zero signs of life. Surely it would be like this at this time of night anyway, but there’s a deeper level to this stillness, a concentrated quality that she hasn’t experienced anywhere before. It’s as if the city has been reduced to its inanimate parts, the brick and the steel and the glass. The flow of human life that would otherwise be passing through it has slowed to such a trickle that it no longer leaves an afterburn in the night.
It’s empty, that’s what it is.
While she can still hear the siren, it’s nowhere near as loud.
And then a voice says, “God, it’s so much better out here, isn’t it?” and Ciara turns and finds herself face-to-face with Yoga Woman.
She thinks that’s who it is, anyway. What she looks like up close matches what the woman on the balcony looked like from far away. Blond, late thirties/early forties, with a body only a gym could maintain. Unlike Ciara, she’s properly dressed—jeans, socks and sneakers, an oversized cardigan—and there’s no trace of sleep on her face.
She’s smiling at first but then the smile starts to fade and Ciara realizes she hasn’t reacted to this woman’s presence at all, hasn’t said a single thing yet, just looked at her blankly, and now might be the time—
“Sorry,” Ciara blurts. “Miles away there. I think I’m still half-asleep. And yeah. It was so loud in there, I couldn’t think.”
“I’m Laura.”
“Ciara.”
“I would shake your hand, but . . . We can bump elbows.”
Ciara thinks the other woman is joking until she raises an arm and proffers it for a bump.
“Have you just moved in?” Laura asks then.
“Oh, I don’t—I don’t live here. I’m just staying with a friend. For now. During . . . all this.”
“Kind of like a lockdown buddy?”
Ciara isn’t confident that this isn’t a euphemism, and Laura’s knowing smile suggests that it is. So she mumbles, “Something like that.”
“I should’ve got one of those. I’m on my own and going a bit stir-crazy.” Laura looks back at the building, turning her body directly toward the nearest streetlight. It illuminates her features, including a thin, white scar across the base of her throat. She frowns a little. “He must be a very deep sleeper, this buddy of yours.”
Ciara feels a ripple of dread at the prospect of having to talk to him, of having to go back in there, with him, after that.
He pulled her into that bathroom and then physically prevented her from leaving.
Or did he just do a very bad job of trying to get his point across?
And who was texting him at four in the morning?
Over Laura’s shoulders, Ciara catches a glint of light: a reflection on one of the glass doors as it swings open.
Oliver steps onto the street, looking around, scanning.
For her.
But when he turns and sees her, he abruptly turns on his heel and goes back inside.
What the . . . ?
Laura turns around to follow Ciara’s gaze.
“Everything all right?” she asks.
“Fine,” Ciara says absently.
“I wanted to—” Laura starts, at the precise moment the siren wail stops. “Oh.” She smiles. “Well, there we go. Hallelujah.”
“Finally.” Ciara takes a step toward the doors. “I’m getting such a bad headache. Honestly, I wouldn’t have been able to take much more of it.”
“I have some paracetamol if that’s any—”
“Oh no. Thank you.” Ciara turns back, smiles gratefully. “I have something.”
“Are you sure? I’ve got the good stuff.”
“No, no. Really. Thank you, though.”
“Is it Oliver?”
Ciara stops.
She’s sure she’s misheard.
“Sorry?”
“Is it Ollie?” Laura asks. “That you’re staying with?”
Both women have moved from their original positions. Laura is now shrouded in shadow, while Ciara is excruciatingly aware that she is fully illuminated by the streetlight.
She tries to keep her expression totally neutral while also trying to figure out what the hell she should say.
Who is this woman?
And how does she know Oliver?
“If you ever need help,” Laura says then, “I’m in number fourteen. Anytime, day or night, just knock. Or buzz. Okay?”
Ciara blinks at the other woman, confused.
“If you ever need anything.” Laura is staring at her intently, as if trying to silently communicate something she can’t say out loud. “Anything at all.”
Their exchange ends then on two odd notes.
Instead of walking back inside with her, Laura stays exactly where she is, on the street, and bids her goodnight.
And as Ciara walks away, she feels the other woman’s eyes on her back and then another feeling, a sense, that something isn’t quite right.
There’s a different alarm buzzing now, a silent one, but she doesn’t know what set it off or how to make it stop.
In the moments before the fire alarm went off, Oliver was sitting on the couch in the living room, swiping absently through the pages of an e-book on his phone. He kept finding himself lost in the text, having to go back and reread the previous paragraph or page, only to find himself lost again a few lines later.
He couldn’t spare it any attention.
His mind was on other things.
And then the phone vibrated in his hand and the text message he’d been waiting for flashed on-screen—but it said the opposite of what he’d been hoping it would.
From: RICH
Don’t see another way for now. Too dangerous. Get out of there.
Oliver was blinking at the words when a deafening wail started up from all directions: the fire alarm.
Which meant—
Panicked, he dropped the phone onto the table and hurried into the hall. Through the open bedroom door, he could see that Ciara was already awake and getting out of bed, pulling on clothes and sticking her bare feet into her sneakers.
He didn’t move, didn’t know what to do, couldn’t think.
It was as if Rich’s words had had some kind of immobilizing effect on him, a verbal stun gun.
Don’t see another way for now. Too dangerous. Get out of there.
He was sure Rich was wrong.
But Oliver was equally sure that Rich could never be persuaded of that.
Ciara pushes past him and hurries into the living room. The touch of her body against his wakes him from his stupor, switching him into action mode, and he follows her. She seems frantic, wild-eyed, searching—
For her phone, it turns out, which is sitting on the coffee table not far from his.
Just as she bends to pick it up, the unthinkable happens: his phone lights up with Rich’s text message. He never actually opened it, so his phone is alerting him to it for a second time.
Oliver thinks his heart actually skips a beat.
But Ciara just picks up her phone and starts back toward him, toward the door. It seems like she didn’t even see it.
“Where are you going?” he shouts over the din of the alarm.
She points behind him. “Out!”
And then she pushes past him for a second time, out into the hallway.
This is his third fire alarm since he moved in, and his second middle-of-the-night one. The first time he did what he was supposed to do: he went outside. So did everyone else; the courtyard was soon filled with residents. He’d hung back in the shadows, head down, pretending to be enthralled by his phone. He’d avoided invitations to politely chitchat and ignored the opportunity to engage with any of his neighbors. He didn’t want to get to know any of them and he certainly didn’t want any of them to get to know him.
Forty-fiveminutes passed. It turned out to be a false alarm.
The second time it had gone off during the day, so he’d hesitated to leave. The door next to his own was a fire exit that opened onto the street; unless the fire was in his own apartment, he wasn’t in any danger. He figured the chances were there wasn’t one, and he was right. Another false alarm. He’d watched the courtyard through the curtains until the residents who could stand the noise started drifting back inside and the others rolled their eyes and folded their arms and put their phones to their ears, presumably ringing the absentee management company. Then he’d gone into the bathroom, where the siren wasn’t as loud, put on his headphones, and waited it out.
There’d been no need to take another chance.
But Ciara doesn’t have the same motivation to protect her privacy, to hide her face. If they go out there now, together, she could end up chatting to anybody. To everybody. Saying something careless. Pointing at him, calling him over, introducing him.
He can’t let that happen.
After Ciara leaves, Oliver waits four minutes. Five. Six.
The siren continues to wail.
He pulls back the curtains in the living room but can’t see anything in the courtyard except the other residents gathered there. He slides open the door and ducks his head out, but there’s no smell of smoke and no sign of fire. He studies the faces close enough for him to see but detects nothing on them except annoyance.
Another false alarm, then. Just like he thought.
He goes back inside.
His phone is still lying on the table. He deletes the message from Rich, double-checking that he’s not only gotten rid of the message itself but the entire thread of their recent exchanges. He’d thought he was safe at this hour of the night, but he didn’t count on the fire alarm.
He doesn’t think she saw the message, but he can’t be sure. What if she comes back in and asks him about it?
Don’t see another way for now. Too dangerous. Get out of there.
How can he possibly explain away that?
That’s when he realizes that he didn’t see Ciara outside, in the courtyard. He goes back out onto the terrace, this time going as far as the railing, to scan for her, but there’s no sign.
Where is she?
He ducks back inside. The alarm continues to wail. He knows it’s purely psychological, but it does sound even louder now than it did when it first went off.
Where did she go, if not out there?
Maybe she’s just being careful and standing away from everyone else, in a corner somewhere.
Or maybe she’s struck up a conversation and is telling one of the neighbors all about him.
He paces in the hallway, willing the bloody alarm to go off. If it just went off now, she’d come back inside and he could set about repairing this absolute shitshow of a night . . .
But the wail of the alarm continues, unabated.
Eventually he grabs a mask from the bathroom floor and his keys from the hall table and goes out into the corridor. The siren wail kicks it up a notch. Oliver hurries to the lobby where, through the glass doors, he sees the residents huddled outside in little groups. They stand at varying distances from each other, shifting their weight from foot to foot, arms crossed against their chests. Everyone has the pale, puffy face of the deep sleeper suddenly disturbed and is wearing some combination of pajamas and winter coat.
What no one is wearing, however, is a mask.
He quickly pulls off his own and stuffs it into a pocket before anyone can turn and look—wearing one when no one else is would only draw attention, would only make him stand out when what he needs to do is blend in.
Ciara isn’t among them.
He turns and looks at the main doors, the ones that lead out to the street. Would she have gone out there? Maybe she would if she had actually listened to him, if she thought that the fictional senior partner at his firm posed a threat.
He pushes through the doors and—
Sees her, standing a little ways up the street.
Relief, first of all.
But then he sees the other figure in the shadows, the featureless silhouette. A woman. The woman that Ciara is talking to. She’s dressed in day clothes, but she must be another resident, trying to escape the siren’s relentless wail.
Over this woman’s shoulder, Ciara’s eyes find him.
But at the same time, the woman turns to see what Ciara is looking at, a movement which illuminates her face with streetlamp light and—
Oliver abruptly ducks backs into the shadows of the doorway, out of sight.
What the—
It can’t be.
That would be an astronomical coincidence.
And it’s dark, it’s the middle of the night, he’s under stress and he only saw her for a fraction of a second . . .
But in bright light. And he’s been awake for a couple of hours already. And perhaps it’s no coincidence at all.
The woman with the scar and the cigarettes. Whom Oliver had scared half to death, unintentionally, outside the rear doors of the Westbury. Three weeks ago, when he’d taken Ciara there for cocktails.
Outside his apartment building at just after four in the morning, that’s who Ciara is talking to.