Gothic in the Deathly Hallows: Creating a sense of decay

Salzman was staggering around the apartment flicking light switches, but it was still very gloomy, not to mention extremely hot. Yellowed newspapers scrunched beneath his feet and Gabriela heard, somewhere within the damp and peeling walls, something alive, like writhing worms. She wondered how long it had been since Salzman had last cleaned inside his apartment to make it fit for guests. There must have been something wrong with the electricity, because the lights flickered momentarily overhead, the bright yellow filaments fluttering and dying like burning moths.

“How about my phone?” suggested Gabriela, as she took it from her back pocket. Salzman stared at her as she tapped her phone and then waved a bright white light to reveal a mat of rubbish spread over the floor, piled onto the sofa and table, and heaped in the doorway to the stinking and unlit bathroom.

Admiral Lavinia lurched across the deck calling her crew, but it was still deathly silent, and bitterly cold. Glowing sails flapped above their heads and Nelson’s eyes caught, in the sickly green moonlight, a glimpse of something black, like the wing of a giant bat. He wondered whether or not Admiral Lavinia had ever bargained with the specters to secure a safe passage. She seemed to be under the impression that the crew were asleep, for she continued to call loudly for their help, her desperate voice echoing off the empty decks.

“It would be wiser to go below decks, ma’am,” said Nelson, and he turned to the stairs. She turned sharply towards him as he cried out in fright seeing the doorway was now filled with an inky blackness, spreading like oil over the deck and running up the masts and the sails.

The man with the party hat was leaning against the rail wiping up his vomit, but his friends had wandered far away, and well past earshot. Freight trains rumbled in the nearby yard and I sensed, in the shadowy corner of the station, someone sitting, like a pile of rags on a bench. I imagined how I might get the drunken man to move along without waking the scarecrow-like figure in the shadows. He appeared to be disoriented, looking around in a daze for his friends, who had long since disappeared into the concrete tunnel at the end of the platform.

“Let me help you,” I whispered, and I took the man’s elbow. The man leant against me, putting one hand on my shoulder and coughing, while I looked over his shoulder and saw the rag-doll figure lurch to its feet and stand there, hunched, hovering and swaying back and forth.