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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. ‘Youpromisedme, Eli,’ she hisses. ‘Youpromisedyou 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.
‘Youstink, Elijah North,’ Bryony hisses. ‘You stink of lies and betrayal, but most of all you just stink.’
She’s walking faster than I can crawl. The rifle barrel swings like a pendulum. Bryony’s lips have peeled back. Her teeth, inexplicably, have sharpened into points. I imagine them tearing my skin, reducing my face to ropey tatters.
‘Please!’ I scream. ‘I got you a tree! A tall one, just like you asked!’
She snarls. Her lips split further apart. She looks more like a dog, now, than a girl. Rolling on to my tummy, I jump to my feet and flee.
‘Get back here!’ Bryony shrieks, her voice even fiercer than the storm. ‘It’s not too late to fix this! IT’S NOT TOO LATE!’
She’s wrong about that. We both know it. It’s too late for me, for dead Bryony, for soon-to-be-dead Gretel. I tried to save them, but I couldn’t. This always ends the same way.
For a while, as I run, the world retreats completely. When my awareness returns I find myself at the Memory Wood’s eastern boundary, with no memory of how I got here, or how much time has passed. Bursting free of the trees, I slip-slide along the track towards home. Lightning rents the sky. The clatter-crash of thunder is so violent that I sprawl on my belly and take a mouthful of putrid mud. For a moment I can’t find my feet, slithering eel-like through slime and ruin.
Up ahead, I see our cottage. Kyle is standing outside. He’s holding the same rifle Bryony was pointing, which is impossible, until I remember that Bryony’s dead, and the girl I saw in the Memory Wood wasn’t really there.
By the time I reach the front path I can hardly breathe. My clothes, sodden with rain, stick to me like a second skin.
Kyle raises his gun. ‘You fuckin’ slug,’ he says. ‘What have you done?’