Page 71 of The Memory Wood

Is this her coffin? Is that why her head feels so confined?

Her lungs grow tight. It’s an effort to breathe. When she tries, fractionally, to move her leg, it slides over something rough and cold. The floor beneath her is uneven. It’s also familiar. Somehow, she’s back in her cell.

What shocks her most is her relief. Relief that she’s back in surroundings she knows, relief that her situation has stabilized. Earlier, she’d convinced herself she was about to die. Instead, it seems she’s received a reprieve. She has no idea why the ghoul evacuated her to the van. Perhaps it was a test, or a sick form of entertainment.

The pressure in Elissa’s bladder grows. When she raises her head, something cold and slimy drips from her face – partly digested eggs and bacon. With her good hand, she wipes it away.

Next, she feels for the manacle, groaning when she findsit back in place. There’s a wetness all along her arm that she knows must be blood. She feels no pain from where the wound reopened – just a vague pulsing – but thereisa smell, like someone threw a dead thing into a laundry basket of soiled clothes.

A rattling cuts through the chaos of her thoughts. Moments later, Elissa hears the squeal of a rubber seal. Cold air washes over her. Then a voice, wavering and uncertain.

II

‘Hello, Elijah,’ she says.

If he hears her response, he gives no indication. She doesn’t sense him cross the floor, doesn’t see his torch’s stuttering beam.

There’s shallow breathing. Nothing else.

‘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 weredead, 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.

‘Hecame,’ 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.’

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