Page 75 of The Memory Wood

The car door flies open. Meunier leaps out. Earlier, he looked angry. Now, he looks furious. I think of what I stole from his Land Rover and clench my teeth so hard it hurts.

Taking a breath, Annie adjusts hermarama. ‘Wait here while I get his attention,’ she says, going to the door. ‘Then slip off home as quietly as you can.’

‘Yes, Annie,’ I say.

Elissa

Day 7

I

Lying on the cell floor, shivering from fever, sweating despite the cold, Elissa listens to the bronchial rattle of her breathing. At her side, her right arm feels like it’s metamorphosing into something unspeakable, a process of atrophy busily transforming the flesh.

Earlier, she scraped together enough energy to light a candle. Now, watching it, she concedes there’s something wrong with her vision. One moment, the flame fills her view; the next, it accelerates away until it’s nothing but a distant pinprick.

On the walls of her cell,bodachscavort and chitter. She knows they’re not really there, but in their whispered conversations she hears echoes of the ghoul:Down here, if you don’t keep yourself clean, injuries like that can get infected. First thing you’ll feel is the skin getting itchy, getting hot. The flesh will swell, start to suppurate, like it’s a piece of fruit someone trod on and left out in the sun … You’ll begin to feel dizzy, confused. You won’t even be able to trust your own thoughts.

Regardless of the motive, his warning was accurate – right now, she can’t even trust her own eyes.

The candle flame rushes close. Pumpkin light fills her head. On the wall, one of thebodachstransforms into Andrea from Wide Boys:You should see me on Hallowe’en. I wear a pair of eyes that’re bright orange, slitted just like a cat’s. Scares the bejesus out of people.

The flame bobs and swells. It dives and pirouettes. There’s something deeply compelling about its dance, almost as if that yellow teardrop of fire, growing from a blue nimbus, is the periphery where the physical world meets the divine. For a moment, watching it, Elissa feels she’s within touching distance of a revelation, an epiphany. Then the light falls away, leaving her desolate.

Already, she’s past the peak of what her mind and body can endure. The damp, the lack of food and the ghoul’s filthy drugs have all exacted a toll. She’s too exhausted to load her memories of Elijah into the virtual chessboard, too punch-drunk to search for more answers. Her attempts at coercion have failed, as have her attempts at subterfuge. Worst of all – worse, even, than her infected wound and her ever-loosening grip on reality – is the knowledge that somewhere, out there, her mum is all alone. Lena Mirzoyan doesn’t deserve to lose a daughter, and yet that outcome now seems inevitable.

When Elissa hears the deadbolts rattle in their housings, she wonders if her greatest torment is yet to come.

Who are you kidding? You know it is.

II

There’s no voice, no torch beam, and the boomeranging candle doesn’t illuminate her guest, but she knows, somehow, it’s Elijah. That’s neither good nor bad; it just is. Shehasn’t managed to decipher his involvement. She probably never will.

He hesitates at the threshold, as if he’s building his courage. When the silence gets too much, she croaks, ‘Hansel?’

Feet slither across stone. Something emerges from the gloom. Elissa squints, trying to focus, but it’s no use – the candlelight has retreated again, leaving a miasma of smeared greys.

By degrees, the light returns, but now her vision is skittering, like she’s watching images through an old movie projector where the film has slipped from its reel. Out of the mess swims a fleshy blob hosting two dark circles.

Elijah takes a forward step. In theskip-snatchjerkiness of Elissa’s perception, it’s impossible to stitch together the frames and form a coherent whole. Elijah shrinks and swells in size, a restlessbodachwhose dimensions are constantly in flux.

One thing she does notice – from the seething shadows that comprise him – is a hand, buried in a jacket pocket. From the angle of his elbow, it appears he’s clutching something; whether a knife, or some other weapon, she cannot tell.

Elissa’s mouth runs so dry she can barely speak. ‘Elijah?’

He sways on his feet. ‘Gretel.’

‘Has something happened?’

‘I … I think.’

‘Are you OK?’

‘Not really. I don’t … I just can’t …’

Elissa’s pulse is racing, her breathing too, but she tries to keep her voice steady. ‘Did you want to talk about it?’

The muscles of Elijah’s forearm tense inside his jacket, as if his grip on the hidden object has tightened. His lungs fill. His breath judders out.