This is the moment.
Suddenly, it feels like Elissa’s entire life has been moving inexorably towards this point. So much hangs in the balance. A future, or no future at all.
Wetting her lips, she leans forwards and kisses him.
II
The world goes still. The blood in Elissa’s arteries ceases to flow. Raging rivers become dormant canals. Even gravity seems to fade away. She feels no floor beneath her, no bonds of mass holding her down. If not for the chain, she might float out through the open cell door and up into the night.
Elijah’s lips, loose and slightly parted, are rougher than she’d expected. He tastes strange: sour, almost fizzy. Closing her eyes, filling her lungs, Elissa opens her mouth. When she pushes her tongue between his lips, the world returns like air rushing into a vacuum. Her ears roar with equalizing pressure.
She’s never, ever in her life, kissed someone like this. She didn’t expect it to be so intense. Elijah’s tongue is hard and hot, a strip of pan-fried stewing steak surrounded by sharp teeth. If he chose, he could bite down and cut her own tongue to pieces.
And then his mouth is gone.
Elijah reels away from her, groaning as if he’s been stabbed. He skates backwards across the floor, a clumsy mess of limbs, until the darkness swallows him. ‘What was that?’ he shrieks, his falsetto voice ringing off the walls. ‘What did you DO?’
When he scrambles to his feet, she’s convinced he’s going to rush forward and attack her. She’d expected a reaction, but not this.
‘WHAT DID YOU DO, ELISSA?’
The sight of him scurrying from the light, like a soft-bodied sea creature retreating into its burrow, is burnt on to her brain. Two more backward steps and Elijah is through the open door. It squeals in its frame as he slams it. The deadbolts shoot home.
Elissa leans forward, retching. She wants to vomit, wants the taste of him out of her mouth, but with her Evian bottle empty, she can’t afford to lose any fluids. Instead, she spits on the cell floor. That kiss – the dark, compulsive horror of it – belongs in the deepest dungeon of her mind, locked up tight with the key hammered flat.
One hand supporting her manacle, she inches across the floor. Elijah was sitting in D6, but when he lurched away from her, the iPhone fell face down into B7. When she turns it over, she sees a crack running right across the screen. Elissa gasps as if she’s been kicked, but the apps are all still visible. When she scrolls sideways with her thumb, the phone responds as it should.
How much time does she have? Once Elijah recovers enough to realize his mistake, it’ll take him no more than fifteen seconds to unlock the door. Once he’s inside, there’s no hope of fighting him off.
She has a phone, but no signal. She can’t make calls, can’t get online. Her brain is too skittish with adrenalin to cut through the chaos. But there’s a way to make this work, there has to be.
Think, Elissa.
Think!
Is that a sound outside? She hunches over the screen, trying to concentrate, trying to tune out her panicked keening.
Tapping the SMS icon, she brings up a blank message. Typing with her left thumb is far trickier than she’d expected, but the software auto-corrects her worst errors. Getting the phone numbers right will be vital.
There’s that sound again – something new, that she hasn’t heard before. Not from the door, or behind it, but above her head.
Completing the message, Elissa taps the address panel. Carefully, trying to steady her shaking fingers, she keys in all the mobile numbers she knows: her mum, her granddad, Lasse Haagensen, Mrs McCluskey.
That sound above her is racing now, rattling and ticking. She wonders what it is, what Elijah – in his rage – has done.
If she presses send immediately, the phone will attempt delivery. After a few failed attempts, it’ll abandon the task. Instead, Elissa opens the email programme and writes the same message. Adding email addresses is more laborious than phone numbers. Several times, she has to correct her mistakes. All the while, her heart beats so fiercely it feels like a hammer is breaking through her chest.
The rattling sound above her changes in pitch, becomes a popping, a plinking. Elissa raises her shoulders, terrified without knowing why. Completing the email, she hits send and watches it disappear. Exiting the email app, she finds her SMS and sends it. Then she holds down the power button and puts the phone to sleep. Placing it on the floor before her, she sits cross-legged and waits.
If the phone is reactivated down here, its attempts to send her messages will fail. But if it’s switched on outside and finds sufficient reception, her cries for help will be delivered.
Something lands on the floor in the far corner of the cell, bouncing away into darkness. Elissa twists round in surprise as another three hit, trying to work out what is happening.
Then, all around her, there’s a pattering like falling rain. Something small and hard strikes her on the head. She recoils, touching her hair. Her fingers come away wet. When she looks up, she sees that the wooden roofing has turned dark.
A few feet away, in F6, the candle flame bobs and flickers. Elissa brings her wet fingers to her nose.
Not water. Not rain.
Fuel.
Elijah
Day 7
The storm that’s been threatening all week – the one Mama warned me about – has finally broken.
And it’s a deluge. Raindrops hammer the ground all around me, as if the Earth’s gravity has been transformed into Jupiter’s. It feels like someone’s tattooing my shoulders, my scalp. Within seconds, I’m soaked through. The sky is so dark and strange I fear something cataclysmic is happening; a solar collapse, a meteor strike or some other extinction event. Has the rain been sent by God to wake those who lie beneath the Memory Wood? Perhaps it’s been sent to flush His creation away. I think of Noah and his three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth. I think of Mama, Papa and Kyle. I think of Gretel, and how she tried to tempt me. Then I turn my mind away, and I run.
I follow my usual path through the woods. Everything looks wrong, like a landscape painted by a lunatic. The storm unleashes its full force. Soon, I can’t even remember what I’m running from, or where I’m running to. Rain beats down on my head, scrubbing away my memories. What happened back there? Why was I so afraid? And what, in my fear, did I just do?
Lightning flashes, so sharp and blue that I lose my balance. The ground rushes up, punching the breath from my lungs. I roll on to my back, gasping.
Bryony is standing over me, beautiful Bryony. Blood sheets down her face from a monstrous gash in her forehead. She was crying, towards the end, but she isn’t crying now. ‘You promised me, Eli,’ she hisses. ‘You promised you wouldn’t hurt me.’
‘I didn’t,’ I moan, scrabbling backwards. ‘I never even touched you.’ Raindrops spatter off my chest. The air’s so wet I can hardly see. This storm’s fury is savage, elemental, and yet it affects Bryony not at all.
I did touch her, but not like that.
Never like that.
I only helped. That’s all I ever did.
‘Help?’ she sneers. ‘Is that what you call it?’
In death, she’s so much fiercer than in life. As she stalks towards me, I realize she’s wielding Kyle’s rifle. I think of the deer, and the calamity inside its head, and suddenly I’m scared – terrified – because my head is already a calamity, and I couldn’t handle another. On my elbows, I crab backwards across the soil.