Elissa’s feet bicycle in empty air. A different sound, now, or more like the lack of one: a muting of traffic and seagulls; an absence of wind. Her heels make contact with something beneath her. There’s a hollow banging. All at once she realizes she’s in some kind of container, a metal one – or, possibly, a vehicle.
With a spasming contortion of her spine, she recalls the white van and its creepy sticker: the trilby-wearing skull smoking a cigarette.
CHILLAX.
Elissa gags, tries to control herself. If she pukes, there’s nowhere for it to go. She imagines vomit spurting from her nose, and the idea of that is so shocking that her muscles slacken and her head sags. She’s unconscious for no more than a few seconds, because when she recovers hardly anything has changed. The fingers over her eyes shift position and she sees a slim triangle of sky. There’s a squeal and a thunk: the door slamming shut. It ensures some level of privacy for what comes next.
Breathing in her ear again – elevated, but only slightly. ‘Easy now,’ rasps a voice. ‘Easy now.’
She wants to sink her teeth into the stranger’s fingers, but she can’t bear the prospect of his blood rushing into her mouth.
‘I’ve got plans for you, darl,’ he tells her. ‘You won’t die today.’
She shudders at that. Beneath her, the van shudders in sympathy. Through her confusion she realizes it’s the shake of the engine turning over, followed by the liquid rattle of an exhaust.
The sound represents a rupture, a cataclysm. Across the car park, through the lobby and along the carpeted corridor to the ballroom, her mum sits on a cushioned conference chair, munching a tuna sandwich. Already, she might as well be an ocean away.
Bucking, thrashing, using all the strength that her muscles can supply, Elissa struggles to throw off the clamping hands and let out a scream. If she doesn’t free herself in the next few seconds it’ll be too late, and that ocean will become uncrossable. She grinds her heel down the stranger’s shin, slams him repeatedly with her elbows. Then, the unexpected happens; the hand covering her mouth is knocked free.
Elissa draws in breath for a scream. As her lungs begin to fill, she feels something wet against her face – a cloth dripping cold liquid. When her chest expands, she inhales the fumes sloughing off it. Too late, she realizes her struggles haven’t saved her but damned her.
The chemical rips into her lungs, blossoming like a gaseous flower. She goes loose, slippery. Her chest deflates and she takes another breath. Now, it’s no longer a single flower but an entire meadow. Her anguish fades. She feels euphoric. Something important was happening, but already she can hardly remember. Was there somewhere she had to be? The meadow is calling, and its song is so beautiful that she decides to ignore the tiny voice that pleads with her to hold on, hold on.
Elissa’s muscles relax and she sinks down. The darkness is not to be feared but accepted, so that’s exactly what she does.
Elijah
Day 6
I
I’m walking again, through the Memory Wood. It’s still light, just about, but the autumn colours have seeped away. I feel like I’m travelling through a pencil sketch, or somebody else’s dream. Moving steadily between these trees, it’s hard to say exactly when I realize I’m not alone. It’s more a slow dawning than anything immediate; a change in the feeling of the woods around me. The wildlife has fallen silent – that’s my first clue. Suddenly it seems as if the very trees are holding their breath, and when I turn around there he is, standing beside an ivy-covered oak as if he’s been waiting here hours, killing time, even though he definitely wasn’t there when I passed by moments earlier.
We stare at each other for what feels like an age. Kyle’s face is dark with anger, his blood close to the surface. I can feel his intensity. It boils off him like smoke, poisoning the surrounding air. Anxious, I take a backward step, immediately wishing I hadn’t. Showing weakness in front of Kyle is always a mistake.
My older brother wears a camouflaged jacket that blends perfectly with the surrounding woodland. So perfectly, in fact, that he seems almost unreal, a disembodied face floating above the bracken.
Over one shoulder is his rifle. It’s a .22, designed for small game, but with a decent head shot it’s powerful enough to kill something much larger. Once, I was playing in the Memory Wood when I heard the crack of his gun and saw him, some time later, dragging a dead muntjac through the trees. ‘Hey, Eli,’ he shouted. ‘Come and have a look at this.’
A month earlier I’d told him his rifle couldn’t bring down a deer. Now here he was to prove me wrong. Kyle had prepared his evidence in advance – when he lifted the muntjac’s head I saw he’d scalped it.
‘See here,’ he announced, probing a hole in the white-pinkish mess. ‘That’s where I drilled him. And look what happened after. Energy in my bullet cracked the top of his skull like an egg.’ With a dirty finger he traced the splits in the bone. Then, showing no respect for the creature he had killed, he ripped its head around, so savagely that something in its neck popped like a champagne cork.
‘Check out that exit wound,’ Kyle said.
A large piece of skull flapped open like a trapdoor, offering a view of the pulped-up brain tissue within. Seeing it, I thought I’d feel sick, but I didn’t. I just wondered how it must have felt to the deer, that sudden calamity inside its head. I wondered how such a thing would feel inside my own head, and thought of all the experiences Kyle’s bullet would flush away.
Calamity is a word far prettier, I think, than its meaning.
Now, I watch my brother stride towards me, his booted feet making no sound. I’m pretty sure he’s learned how to walk like that from one of his survival magazines. Something dark and crusted is streaked across his cheeks. He stinks, too. Not a human smell but something vile he’s cooked up to disguise his scent. I cringe to think what it is, or how he made it.
Only a two-year age gap separates us, but Kyle seems more like an adult than a child. His jaw has lengthened. His eyebrows are thick and black – in a few years I reckon they’ll meet. Beneath them his gaze is as cold as a comet, sharp and clever yet utterly lacking in compassion.
‘What did you do, Eli?’ he snarls. ‘Where did you go?’
I knew this showdown was coming, but I wasn’t expecting to be quite so scared. Out here, in these darkening woods, Kyle terrifies me. This close, he smells dreadful, a rotten-mummy stench that gets in my nose and makes my eyes water.
‘Gretel,’ I say, swaying on my heels. ‘What did—’
Before I can finish my question he swings his fist. It smashes against my cheek, sending me reeling. My heel catches a root and I sprawl into a pile of dead leaves. When Kyle’s hand moves to his rifle strap I cry out, convinced he’s about to shoot me (That’s where I drilled him, energy in my bullet cracked the top of his skull like an egg), but the gun stays on his shoulder and I realize he’s only bracing it. Bending, he grabs a fistful of my clothing below my chin.
My cheek throbs in time with my heart. I’ll have one hell of a bruise. Probably a black eye, too.
Kyle twists my clothes like a corkscrew, choking off my breath. I rear back my head, trying to open my airways. But with my throat exposed, I’m gripped by sudden panic that he’ll sink his teeth into it.