‘I’ll open a window,’ Annie says, but I shake my head, sliding on to the U-shaped bench seat that surrounds her table. Although the smoke makes my eyes water, I find it relaxing.
The TV stands on the countertop, angled towards me. It’s showing that programme with the judge who sorts out people’s squabbles. Annie picks up the remote and mutes the sound. ‘These daps of yours are falling apart,’ she says, carrying them to the wood stove. ‘About time your da bought you a new pair.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Is that a growling tummy I hear?’
Opening a cupboard, she takes out her biscuit barrel and arranges three pecan-nut biscuits on a plate. Then, pouring a glass of milk, she sets the lot down in front of me.
‘What I want to know,’ she adds, huffing the turquoise lock out of her eyes, ‘is what you’ve been doing in those woods without a jacket or jumper, with wet socks and shoes and bare legs.’
My hand freezes in the act of reaching out. Has Annie somehow learned of my discovery in the Memory Wood? It’s only when I realize she’s concerned solely about my inappropriate clothing that my heart resumes its beat.
I snatch up a biscuit. Nobody makes them like Annie, gooey and crumbly and packed full of niceness. I’m on to my second before she’s filled her kettle and taken down her mug.
The show with the bad-tempered judge finishes. I watch an ad for Bold washing powder, followed by another for Petits Filous. I pluck up the third biscuit and am about to tackle it when Elissa Mirzoyan peers out of the TV screen.
IV
She watches me for at least three seconds before I even make the connection. The girl I met in the cellar looks nothing like this image. My Elissa might be dirt-streaked and shivery, she might be bloody and frightened, but she’s determined, strong. Chained, yes, but still a dragon.
This girl, by contrast, is a pale imitation. The photograph is a formal head-and-shoulders shot. In it, Elissa’s wearing school uniform – blue blouse and striped tie. She looks uncomfortable, reluctant to pull a smile but too polite to object. The result is forced and unnatural. Her eyes, even so, are just as arresting.
Promise me. Promise you won’t let me die in here.
I didn’t. I couldn’t.
But that doesn’t mean I won’t.
Promise me.
I hear Annie put down her mug. From the counter she can’t see the TV, but any closer and she’ll have a perfect view. Just before she comes over Elissa’s picture disappears and a whitewashed Victorian building fills the screen. Across the front, in big black letters, is its name: THE MARSHALL COURT HOTEL. Now, the image changes again – a huge room filled with long tables, covered with chequerboards crowded with little statues. Children hunch over them, deep in thought.
The room is replaced with another. This time there’s only one table. Three people sit at it. In the centre, a woman with Elissa’s mouth and cheekbones is crying. She reads from a piece of paper as an older man rubs her back. The screen flickers white and I wonder if I’m about to faint. Then I realize there are others in the room that I cannot see, people with cameras taking photographs.
Annie reaches for the remote. I think she’s going to change the channel. Instead, she cancels the mute. My ears fill with words I don’t want to hear.
‘—ust want my daughter back,’ the crying woman says, followed by something I can’t make out. ‘… precious,’ she sobs. ‘… so talented and beautiful.’ The cameras go crazy. A telephone number appears onscreen.
‘There are people on this earth,’ Annie says, ‘that have no business walking it.’
When Elissa reappears, we stare at her in silence.
‘Did you come for the magic?’ Annie asks, eyes still on the TV.
I swallow.
On TV, Elissa is replaced by a weather report. Dark swirls race across a barren land. I wonder how long it’ll be before the storm hits.
Elissa
Day 3
I
After putting Andrea from Wide Boys into the drawer at Y8, Elissa is about to interrogate her memories of the Marshall Court Hotel when she stops and backs up. Although the waitress – with her green eyes, big boobs and attitude – made everyone else fade to grey, she wasn’t the only person in the restaurant that day. On the next table sat the couple who engaged her in conversation before she took refuge in her book.
Closing her eyes despite the darkness, Elissa transports herself back to Wide Boys. As she settles in her seat, her mum and Andrea begin to materialize, but she purposely keeps their details vague. The restaurant, too, is sketched in the faintest of charcoal shades. She reserves all the colour for the table on her left and the couple sitting around it.
It’s hard, this. Andrea stole so much of the light. The pair are like bodachs – shadow creatures from a ghost story Elissa once read. Their faces are foggy blurs. One of the bodachs lifts a hand to its throat, stroking and fondling. Abruptly, Elissa remembers the spot of shaving cream and the man’s dirty fingernails.
Colour rushes into the scene. She sees slick-combed hair, mud-stained shoes. The woman has a jade necklace and violet lipstick. Stop that, she hisses. Always touching yourself.
When Elissa’s mum went to the loo, the couple spoke a few words, but the details have slipped away. She does remember the woman’s apologetic smile. Did they talk about the chess tournament? Possibly.
To her right, Elissa spots another bodach. This one sits alone. Its clothes are clear enough – turquoise jumper, mustard corduroys, toffee-apple-red shoes – but its face is a child’s black scribble, entirely absent of features. It swivels towards her and she knows, despite the lack of eyes, that it’s evaluating her. Minutely, it shakes its head. With a start, she recalls the older man this bodach represents. He’d been reading – a history of some ancient Greek war. At the time, she’d wondered if his head-shake indicated disapproval or solidarity. Now, as she tries to tease more detail from that sooty smudge of a face, it splits open to reveal a set of pointed yellow teeth.
Disturbed by the image, Elissa blinks it away. Wide Boys folds into darkness.
The drawer at Y8 glows with Andrea’s vibe. Anything else Elissa puts in there will likely be outshone. Instead she opens Z8 and deposits the three bodachs. Even as she’s loading them, she recalls the man with dirty fingernails gesturing at her book:
‘What’s it about?’
‘It’s about chess.’
‘Huh. Ain’t ever been my thing. Used to like a bit of poker, before.’
‘Before what?’
His knife angles towards the woman. ‘Before … you know.’
Elissa shudders. Slams the drawer shut. She might have to revisit the contents at some point, but right now they feel toxic, dangerous.
Her memories of Wide Boys exhausted, she’s about to move on to the Marshall Court Hotel when she hears the muted but now-familiar rattle of deadbolts.
II
Her first visitor inside this cell was a ghoul, her second a creature even more complicated. She fears both, but of the two, the one whose name she doesn’t know scares her most, and when the door opens and she sees a torch far more powerful than Elijah’s, she knows it’s the ghoul who’s returned.