The Nightmare Game (12 page)

“What can I use?” she said slowly. “Where can I make it?”

Zak shrugged. “There's only one place with enough room, where you can be private. But it's going to be cold down there. You'll need to take some furs. And a blade.”

He waved a hand at Bando and Annet. Without any questions, they went to the corner of the cavern and picked out a sharp, light blade and a couple of bat fur blankets. Lorn took the blade in her hand and slung the furs over her shoulder. Then she walked out of the circle and down the cavern, toward the brazier.

The others stood aside to let her go. She wanted them to ask about what she was going to do—and about whether she needed food and water with her. But no one said a word. They all watched her, but there were no sympathetic smiles. They looked annoyed and impatient, not understanding why she'd had to disrupt the story. Not understanding
anything.

She felt like an outcast as she went past the brazier and down the ramp into the storeroom under the cavern. No one spoke until she was halfway across the storeroom. Then the voices started up overhead. She knew they must be talking about her, but the earth muffled their words, so that she couldn't work out what they were saying.

Down in the storeroom there was no light at all, but she moved just as easily without it. That was how she'd grown up. Shut away under the floor, in the dark, with nothing but what she could hear and smell and feel. When she couldn't see, her brain had learned how to make pictures out of what her other senses told her. She could navigate by the soft padding sounds of her feet and the swirl of the air she disturbed.

Without hesitation, she made her way to the wall at the far end of the storeroom. Beyond that were the huge dark tunnels where her story could take shape. Kneeling down, she unblocked the entrance to the secret passage that ran through the wall. Pushing the furs and the blade ahead of her, she wriggled into it.

When she came out at the other end, the air was cold and damp. She stood up and wrapped the furs tightly around her shoulders, breathing in the musty animal scent of the tunnels. The roof arched high above her and the wide space curved away in both directions, inviting her to begin. She began to move forward, impatiently.

SHE FOUND THE RIGHT PLACE VERY SOON, A NARROW SIDE TUNNEL WHERE THE roof had collapsed. As soon as she saw it, she realized that the great mound of loose soil gave her the start she needed.

She began work immediately, not visualizing the result in her head, but digging straight into the earth with her fingers and the blade. But the thing she had to make was too big for her imagination. Too frightening to think about. And if she couldn't think about it, how could she get the others to see what she saw?

It was impossible to build anything big enough without stones and water to bind the earth. She hunted back through the tunnels for stones, prizing them out of the side walls and lugging them back to the place where she was working. But there was no source of water down there, and nothing to carry it in.

It would have to come from the storeroom.

She knew there was a good supply there. It was stored in big snail shells, just on the other side of the wall. Wriggling back through the narrow passage, she scooped out what she needed, dipping with one of the smaller shells that Annet used.

She needed a lot of water. Dozens of times she walked through the tunnels, carrying the full shell back to the place where she was building—
HIM.

Even to herself she couldn't name the shape she was making. It was beyond naming. Each time she came back with the water, she sensed it ahead of her, a vast dark mass that absorbed the noises she made and blocked the flow of air along the tunnel. Its sour, fresh smell was like the scent of an alien creature and she had to force herself to take the final steps around the corner to confront it.

BY THE BEGINNING OF THE SECOND DAY, SHE WAS TOO WEAK TO GO ON without food. She'd sipped at the water she fetched, but that was all she'd had, and she was hungry and exhausted. Twice she stumbled when she was carrying water, spilling half of it over her feet. Once her mental picture of the space around her blurred confusingly. She was clambering up the huge mound of earth, to add more to the top, and she fell sideways, tumbling headfirst to the ground.

All she wanted to do was keep working until
HE
was finished. Her mind was completely focused on what she was doing—but her body wouldn't let her go on. She had to have a rest and something to eat.

And that meant going back up into the cavern. She could take water from the storeroom, but taking food was utterly forbidden. All of them would drink mouthfuls of dew if they were outside on their own, but no one (not even Dess, not even
Ab
) would eat anything.

Every seed, every berry had to be brought back and shared. It was the only way they could survive. Once she'd taken a thornberry to Robert, before he found the cavern. She'd taken the risk because she was desperate to keep him from starving, but she'd known what the penalty was. If anyone had found out, she would have been thrown out of the cavern forever.

She hated the idea of breaking her concentration. She hated the idea of facing the others before she had something to show them. But there was no way out. Without food she couldn't go on working.

Slowly she walked back along the tunnels, to the wall that closed off the storeroom. As she crouched down to crawl through the secret passage, she heard something at the other end. The sound of someone breathing.

“Hello?” she called. “Who's there?”

The reply came quickly. “Lorn! Where are you? Are you all right?”

It was Bando, of course. She ought to have known he would be worrying about her. “I'm fine,” she called back soothingly. “Wait a moment, and I'll be right beside you.”

She wriggled through the tunnel. He was crouching at the other end, feeling for her in the darkness.

“I was going to come and find you,” he muttered. “Only I didn't know where you were. But you need to eat. I've got some food for you.”

“That's wonderful,” Lorn said.

She was grinning broadly, even though he couldn't see, from sheer relief that the others hadn't forgotten her. They weren't angry after all. They understood that she had to be on her own—and they'd sent her the food she needed.

It was bundled up in a piece of bat leather, tied with a clumsy knot. Bando pushed the bundle hastily into her hands. “Here you are,” he mumbled. “You can take it back into the tunnel with you. I'll bring some more tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” Lorn said. “Oh, thank you, Bando. Tell the others—”

But he was already backing away, muttering at her over his shoulder. “I've got to get back now. I'm supposed to be helping Annet with the wood.” He stumbled against a heap of grain and almost lost his footing, but he didn't stop. “I'll see you tomorrow, Lorn.”

“OK,” Lorn said. “I'll be here.”

She waited long enough to be sure that he'd reached the ramp safely. Then she sat down on the ground, where she was, and untied the bundle he'd given her.

If she hadn't been so tired, she would have taken the food back into the tunnels, but she couldn't face doing anything else until she'd eaten. As soon as she smelled the fruit, as soon as she laid her hands on the first grain, she realized how hungry she was.

Sitting with her back against the wall, she began to eat as fast as she could, chewing the dry food greedily. She was still eating when she fell asleep, slumping forward over the grain in her lap.

She didn't hear the footsteps coming down the ramp. She didn't see the red glow of the torch moving across the storeroom.

AFTERWARD, EMMA COULDN'T BELIEVE SHE'D BEEN SUCH A
fool
. Why hadn't she used her brains? Why hadn't she
guessed
?

It was the boys' fault.

She was worried and distracted, because they were going off to this weird Magee man's flat. And she was angry, too, about having to go to Shelley's party. She'd only accepted as a way of saying no to Robert, because she wanted him to understand that he was being obsessive. But he hadn't understood—and now she was stuck with the party.

She was furious with Robert for his stubbornness. And miserable, too, because she had an uncomfortable suspicion that she was behaving like a selfish coward.

It was all boiling in her head as she cycled out of school and she began the journey on autopilot, mechanically following the usual route home. Pedaling hard, she swung around the corner and then turned sharp left into the pedestrian alley. When she saw that the alley was empty, she didn't get off her bike. She just put one foot to the ground and scooted quickly between the high brick walls.

There was a blue van parked across the opening at the far end. As she came out beside it, she was startled by a sudden noise from inside. Bare knuckles knocking against metal.

“Hello?” said a woman's voice. It had some kind of odd accent. Slightly foreign. “Is zere someone there?”

Emma stopped uncertainly.

“Hello?” said the voice again, slightly louder. The woman sounded tentative and embarrassed. “Please, can you 'elp me?”

Emma took a step nearer. “What's wrong?”

“Oh, sank
goodness
!” There was a light, apologetic laugh from inside the van. “Zis 'orrible 'andle is broken and I'm stuck in ze van. Please—could you give ze doors a pull?”

It seemed straightforward enough. Emma relaxed. (How could she have been so stupid? So
gullible
?) “No problem,” she said cheerfully. “Hang on.” She leaned her bike against the alley wall and then reached for the handle on the right-hand door of the van.

After that, everything happened very fast. As she opened the right-hand door, the left-hand one flew open as well. Inside the van was a woman in a stocking mask. She grabbed at Emma's wrists and pulled her forward. At the same moment, someone charged from behind, knocking Emma completely off balance and seizing her legs.

As she started to fall, she opened her mouth to scream. But before she could make a sound, the left-hand door swung back accidentally and hit the side of her head. The inside of the van blurred in front of her eyes and then she lost consciousness, sliding down into the dark.

 

WHEN SHE CAME AROUND, SHE WAS SHOCKED AND SHIVERING AND desperately thirsty. And her head was pounding as though it was ready to split in half. She was lying on her side, with her clothes clinging damply to her skin, and her whole body felt aching and peculiar.

Where was she?

She opened her eyes, still half dazed. There was nothing to see except darkness and the ground underneath her smelled of mold and decay. When she tried to open her mouth, her jaw wouldn't move. Her whole face seemed to be paralyzed.

Wild thoughts raced through her mind. Was she near the cavern? Had she been changed, like Robert? Closing her eyes, she sniffed hard, trying to catch the scent of wood smoke, but all she could smell was wet, stinking earth.

Then she tried to sit up—and she knew this had nothing to do with the cavern.

She couldn't move. Her body was trussed up with long, sticky strips that felt like packing tape. There was a piece right across her face and it pulled at her cheeks when she struggled to open her mouth.

More tape spiraled up her legs, binding them tightly together, and her arms were fixed behind her back with the wrists crossed. Underneath the tape, she could feel the slow beat of blood in her veins.