‘Hansel?’
The name hangs in the air, but he doesn’t claim it. She hears him shuffle closer. Without candlelight, he could be creeping towards her with a knife and she wouldn’t know.
Pulling herself into a sitting position, gritting her teeth against a flood of nausea, she edges backwards. The chain clanks along the floor, betraying her retreat.
‘Gretel,’ Elijah says. So much emotion chokes his voice that she wonders if he’s crying. ‘I thought … I thought …’
Elissa swallows. ‘I did too.’
‘You weren’t here. I came and you were gone. Everything else, too. Just that bleach smell. Like … like they did before.’
She licks her lips with a dry tongue. ‘Like they did to Bryony?’
Elijah makes a hard sound in his throat.
‘Where’s your torch?’
‘I … I got panicked and I dropped it, and then I ran away. It’s the reason I came back. I thought you were dead, Elissa. What happened?’
He’s cycling between names: Elissa, then Gretel. She doesn’t know what that means, but she doesn’t think it’s good.
‘He came,’ she tells him. ‘The whispery one. The one I call the ghoul. He took me outside, made me get into his van. Then … he drugged me – a cloth across the face, just like at the hotel.’
Elissa winces as another spike of pain lances her. It feels like her brain is pogoing around her skull. She hears further sounds of movement: Elijah, shuffling around the cell, dragging his feet like a zombie. ‘What’re you doing?’
‘Looking for my torch.’ After a few minutes of searching, he collapses down somewhere close. ‘It’s not here.’
‘He must have it, then.’
Elissa knows how badly her words will have frightened him. Right now, she doesn’t care.
Clearing his throat, Elijah says, ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Sure.’
‘Promise you won’t laugh?’
‘I promise.’
‘It’s going to sound stupid. And I … I never asked anyone before, but … is all this …’ He pauses. ‘Is all this real?’
Elissa blinks. ‘Real?’
‘Sometimes … sometimes I think … it isn’t.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m not Hansel.’
‘No,’ she says. ‘You’re not Hansel. You’re Elijah.’
‘Am I?’
Elissa waits for him to continue, but he remains silent. After a while, she says, ‘This is real, Elijah. All of it. You’re real, so am I. So is my mum. So is my family. This place is real, too. It’s not where I want to be, and I hope I’m not going to die here. I hope, more than anything, that you’re going to help me survive this – but it’s real, I promise you. It’s about as real as a thing can get.’
Elijah sniffs. ‘You don’t want to be here.’
‘No. I want to go home, see my family. Eat my mum’s food. Sit on the sofa with her and watch Netflix.’
‘You want me to get you out.’
‘I want that more than anything.’
She hears a scrape in the darkness. Something innocent, perhaps. Or something not. She tries to dispel her last vision of him; a boy whose tulip-bud mouth is a grotesque counterpoint to a face devoid of eyes.
When Elijah speaks next, he’s far closer. ‘Are you frightened of death,’ he asks, ‘or just the actual dying?’
Elissa flinches. It’s an odd question. Right now, everything about Elijah’s behaviour is alarming. She can hear his breathing, but’s it’s difficult to pinpoint his location. She knows she has to maintain the conversation, so she tells him the truth: what worries her most is her mum being all alone.
‘You could haunt her,’ he points out.
‘Don’t say that.’
‘You could haunt me.’
His tone turns her skin to gooseflesh. ‘Are you haunted already?’
‘Sometimes I think I am.’
‘By Bryony?’
‘Not her. Bryony was my friend.’
‘They killed her.’
‘Yes. They did.’
‘Why, Elijah? Why did they do that? Why are they doing this?’
‘Because …’ he says, in that awful disembodied voice. ‘Because it’s what’s right.’
III
It’s not the answer Elissa was expecting. Her gasp triggers a bout of coughing that’s almost impossible to stop.
‘Are you OK?’ Elijah asks. ‘You sound sick.’
‘Why did they do that? Why are they doing this?’
‘Because … Because it’s what’s right.’
Does he believe that, or is he simply repeating what he’s been told?
‘My wrist,’ she says. ‘I think it’s infected. I think it’s really bad.’
Silence, for a while. Then Elijah scrabbles to his feet. ‘Oh, this is all my fault,’ he moans. ‘I could have done something, and … and I—’
‘How can this be your fault?’
‘I’m so sorry, Gretel. If only I hadn’t been so stupid!’
She frowns. ‘I don’t get it. You’re saying this is because of you?’
‘I left the estate. Went through the Memory Wood, all the way to the road. Don’t know how long I walked – I think I must’ve got lost. And then … next thing I was in a police station, answering questions. I told them how to contact Papa and he came to fetch me.’
Blood drains from Elissa’s stomach. ‘You were in a police station?’
‘Yes.’
‘You spoke to them?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘What did you say?’
‘Well … I told them about the crow Papa fixed.’
Her mouth falls open. ‘Did you tell them about me, Elijah? Did you remember my name, like I told you? Elissa Mirzoyan. Did you explain where I was? What was happening down here? Did you tell them how to find me?’
‘No, I—’
‘No?’
‘You don’t understand!’ he shouts. ‘I told you already – I wasn’t thinking straight. I’d never been in a police station before. It was scary. I wanted to tell them, of course I did, but by that point I was such a mess I thought they wouldn’t believe me. I promised myself I’d say something once I calmed down, but by then I was already home.’
His admission is so crushing, so utterly devastating, that it saps Elissa’s remaining strength. She slumps on to the floor, ignoring the nubs of rock that dig into her flesh. ‘Where were you going?’ she whispers. ‘Why did you leave the estate?’
‘I … I don’t know. I think I just needed some time. Time to work things out. My head, it’s …’ His feet scrabble across the floor. ‘I can fix this,’ he tells her. ‘I know I can. I’ll figure something out and I’ll come back.’
Moments later, the cell door squeals in its rubber frame.
Once he’s gone, Elissa finds the matches and lights a candle. Elijah, she knows, isn’t going to figure anything out. She’d hoped he was her ally, her chance of survival. But he isn’t. When she looks down at her wrist and sees the oozy, swollen mess it has become, she knows her time has run out.