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‘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 goingto 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?’