The light picks out her injury. Elijah swallows noisily. ‘You said it was just a gash. That it wasn’t bad.’
‘It’s worse than I thought. It goes pretty deep, and it won’t stop bleeding.’
‘In here, all this damp and rot – a wound like that can get serious really quick.’
‘That’s what he said.’
Something tells her that mentioning the ghoul was a mistake. She needs to distract Elijah, and quickly. ‘Don’t suppose you have a first-aid kit.’
‘Afraid not.’
He shuffles closer, his torch beam focused on her wrist. The wound is a gaping black mouth from which blood steadily dribbles. There’s pus, too, a glistening stream.
This close, she hears the nasal rasp of Elijah’s breathing. There’s something odd about it, something thick and loose. She wonders if he has a facial deformity, some kind of a disfigurement. Perhaps that’s why he insists on remaining hidden.
‘You could make a bandage,’ he ventures.
‘Out of what?’
‘Your dress. Just a strip, from the bottom.’
‘I can’t tear the fabric.’
‘I could.’
‘You?’
‘If you wanted.’
The prospect of physical contact nearly makes her gag, but her wound needs attention. ‘You won’t hurt me?’
Elijah’s gasp is so loud it’s almost theatrical. ‘I would never hurt you.’ With a scrape of movement, he edges nearer, torch beam blinking. Elissa can’t help but shut her eyes. He doesn’t revolt her – not like the ghoul – but she still can’t bear him close. When she feels him lift the hem of her dress, it takes an enormous feat of willpower to remain still.
Cold air seeps between her knees. Prising open an eye, she sees he’s turned off the torch. She hears him working on her dress, but it’s not the ripping sound she’d expected, and it makes her heart beat even faster. ‘Is that a knife?’
Elijah stills. As the seconds lengthen, Elissa feels the moisture in her mouth evaporating.
‘Are you worried I’ll cut you?’ he asks.
The question is innocent enough, but in this lightless cell it acquires a disturbing nuance. When she swallows, the sound is monstrously loud, a wordless expression of her unease.
Elijah must have noticed, but he doesn’t say anything else. His question hangs unanswered between them. After what feels like an eternity, the blade continues its work, whispering as it severs the fabric.
On his footwear, she smells the loamy richness of leaf mulch. During his previous visit, he told her they were beneath a place he calls the Memory Wood. She guesses that’s probably true. Damp earth and forest aren’t the only things she smells. There’s a fustiness to his clothes, as if they’ve gone far too long without washing. She wonders how long it’s been since he last bathed.
‘Kneel up,’ he says, once the knife’s travelled a half-circuit. Silent, she raises her buttocks. A minute later, Elijah grunts in satisfaction. ‘All done. Now we have a bandage.’
‘Thanks.’
He makes no move to turn on the torch. ‘You know we have to clean the wound.’
‘I guess.’
‘It’s going to hurt.’
‘Yeah.’
For a while, he’s silent. Then he asks, ‘Would you like me to help you?’
Hearing that, she feels like screaming: I want you to get me OUT of here! I want you to call the POLICE, Elijah! BRING THEM DOWN HERE, LIKE I ASKED! But she doesn’t. Instead, closing her eyes, she murmurs her agreement.
Elijah leaves her side. She hears him rustling around near the door: A3, perhaps, or A4. The ease with which he negotiates the darkness is disconcerting. His mental map of the cell clearly rivals her own. When she hears the scrape of hard plastic against stone, she realizes he’s sliding one of the buckets towards her. A whiff of cleaning solution reaches her nose. Some of the liquid slops over the side, spattering on to the floor.
‘How’d you want to do this?’ he asks.
Elissa feels her mind beginning to seize up. Quickly, she whispers, ‘You decide.’
Elijah seems pleased to be given the responsibility. He clicks his tongue absently, like a tradesman assessing a job. She wonders if it’s all an act.
‘If you held out your arm,’ he says, ‘I could pour some of this stuff over it. But you’d probably get wet, and then you’d get cold. What we should do is dunk your whole arm in. Properly submerge it. Wash out the wound and kill all the germs.’
Elissa clenches her teeth. It makes sense, but she can’t bear thinking about how much it’ll hurt.
‘I’ll hold your bracelet,’ Elijah tells her. ‘You have to do this, Elissa. You’ve no choice.’
She moans when she hears that, and it’s such a pathetic sound – so meek and desperate – that fresh tears begin to well.
‘It’s OK,’ Elijah mutters. And of course it’s not. She feels his fingers slide around the manacle. Deprived of light, her mind paints a picture of the boy she cannot see: lamp-like eyes peering over a mouth twisted by a cleft palate into a monstrosity of bulging gums and reaching teeth. The image frightens her, even though she knows it can’t be true. Elijah suffers no impediment to his speech. If he’s burdened with disfigurement, it’s something far less obvious than that.
Bracelet, he called it a bracelet. Like it’s a harmless piece of jewellery.
‘Ready?’ he asks.
‘Wait.’ Elissa shakes her head. ‘I can’t, not yet. I’m not ready.’
‘You have to.’
‘What if …’ she begins, but she doesn’t really have a question. Her wrist is open almost to the bone. The pain, when disinfectant meets raw flesh, will be extraordinary.
‘Kneel up,’ Elijah urges her. ‘Like before.’ He lifts the manacle a few inches off her lap and she’s so worried about it touching her injury that she complies. With her free hand, she touches the bucket. Elijah guides her arm towards the lip. The chain rattles, snaking out. Soon, her hand is in position.
‘You want to go fast or slow?’ he asks.
‘Fast. Once it’s in, don’t let me pull away.’
‘I’ll do my best. Try not to knock over the bucket.’
Elissa’s teeth are clenched so tightly her reply comes out as a hiss.
‘Ready?’ Elijah asks, and before she can reply he plunges her wrist into a sea of screams.
V
The world returns slowly, a gradual awareness of time and space. It’s a while before Elissa realizes where she is, or what she has become. Her wrist throbs in time with her heart, but it’s not the barbed-wire-in-her-veins agony of before.
She’s lying on her side. In her nose is the pillow’s mildewed stink. When she investigates with her left hand, she discovers that her injured wrist has been bound with the material cut from her dress. Elijah has done a good job.
Sitting up in the darkness, Elissa listens to the silence, trying to work out if she’s alone. Her throat is raw, a memento of her scream. She shuffles over to F7, dragging her chain. Finding her rucksack, careful not to dislodge Monkey, she removes the water bottle and takes a long drink. ‘Well,’ she says, addressing the knitted mannequin. ‘I guess we should see what’s what.’