The Nightmare Game (14 page)

“No one's going to come looking for you,” Mrs. Armstrong murmured. “Not for a long, long time. We've got plenty of time to persuade you to tell us what we want to know.”

It would have been less frightening if she'd sounded angry. But her voice was low and even, without any emotion. She unscrewed the top of the water bottle and tilted it again, letting a drop of water fall onto Emma's hand.

Emma swallowed and tried to ignore it. (How long could a person survive without anything to drink?)

“A couple of words will do for now,” Mrs. Armstrong said mildly, letting another drop fall. “Just give us a hint and you can have some water.”

Emma licked her lips. “Ask your husband what happened to Hope,” she muttered. “He was there.”

Mrs. Armstrong didn't reply to that. But her mouth tensed and she started to pour the water straight out onto the ground, in a slow, continuous stream, right in front of Emma's face. When the bottle was empty, she dropped it and pulled a roll of brown tape out of her pocket.

“No!” Emma began to move her head furiously, trying to avoid the tape. “You don't need to do that again. No one can hear me, anyway.”

It was all useless. Mrs. Armstrong pulled off a length of tape. Then she caught Emma's bottom jaw firmly with one hand, jamming it shut and digging her fingers in under the chin. With her other hand she plastered the tape across Emma's mouth, running it from ear to ear to make a tight, efficient gag.

“I
know
you've got Hope,” she said. “Do you think I'm a fool?” Leaning forward, she snatched at Emma's braid, tugging it free and bringing the end around to flap in her face. “Did you think I wouldn't recognize one of her braids? She did this, didn't she?”

She plastered another loop of tape around Emma's jaw and then took a pair of pointed scissors out of her pocket. Before she cut the tape, she held them for a second in front of Emma's eyes.

“Next time I take off the tape, you
will
tell me,” she said coldly. “You'll tell me everything.” The she started to snip.

She began with the parcel tape, cutting the roll free and letting it fall to the ground. But she didn't stop there. Pushing Emma's head sideways, she bent closer, working the scissors quickly over her head.
Snip, snip, snip.

Emma heard Warren draw in his breath sharply, but it took her a moment to realize what Mrs. Armstrong was doing. As soon as she did, she began to wriggle and grunt in protest, but that was useless. She was rolled firmly onto her face.

“Hold her down, Warren,” Mrs. Armstrong said crisply.

He threw his weight across Emma's back and she was pushed down onto the wet black plastic. All she could see was the spilled water around her head and the scraps of paper that Warren had pulled out when he was hunting for Hope's picture.

She strained at the parcel tape, trying to open her mouth enough to let some of the water leak in, but it was impossible. The water lapped tormentingly at the tape and the words on the paper mocked her, dancing in front of her eyes. They were disconnected and incomprehensible, like the weird things Warren had muttered at her when he thought she was dead. Surreal nonsense, scribbled in capital letters.

They were totally mad—like everything else in that horrible nightmare house. The phrases danced tauntingly in her head, in time to the snipping of the scissors and the slither of dirty water over the black plastic.

At last the scissors made their final snip and Mrs. Armstrong stood up, tugging at Emma's arm to roll her onto her back again. The long red braid was dangling from her other hand.

“This is just the beginning,” she said. Her voice was still cold, but this time there was an edge to it. Emma could hear that she was near breaking point. “It will be worse next time—and every time after that. I won't give up until I get Hope back here.”

She nodded at Warren and he scuttled back to the trapdoor, taking the flashlight with him. When he had heaved himself out, she picked up the empty bottle and the roll of tape and followed, taking Emma's braid with her. Emma had a last glimpse of her familiar red hair gleaming in the winter sunshine and then it was gone. The trapdoor thumped down, the carpet slithered over it, and there was a soft thud as the television was lifted back into its place.

Emma was alone, in the dark, lying in a pool of cold water. Her clothes were already soaked. Now, when she tried to move, the water slurped across the black plastic, washing against the bare skin of her neck.

She hadn't had short hair since she was five.

Her hair had always been the first thing people noticed.
Who's Emma Doherty? Oh, you know. She's that girl with the wonderful red hair.
Now, when she turned her head, all she felt was the prickle of stubble and the chilly movement of the water.

She didn't feel like Emma Doherty anymore. Emma Doherty was a bright, capable girl who sorted out everyone else's problems.
She
was a different girl—thirsty and bald and terrified.

She let her face fall down onto the wet black plastic and cried, without being able to wipe the tears from her face or the snot from her nose. She'd lost herself. She was no one.

The water lapped against her cheeks, and Warren's crazy pieces of paper brushed her forehead. It was too dark to read them now, but the meaningless phrases had lodged in her mind, mocking her with their nonsense.

Hammer. Death. Mad.
They were nonsense, but they seemed to threaten darkness and violence, stirring up the terrors at the bottom of her mind. She wanted to be positive and plan an escape.
I'm Emma Doherty, and I don't let anything beat me.
But how could she be Emma when the things that made her special—the briskness, the upbeat efficiency, even the hair—had all been stripped away? What was left?

The nonsense words resounded in her head, making a raw new picture.

Mary the Demo had short, spiky hair, thick with earthy dust from the torn black plastic. Mary was afraid of the little rustling noises that came through the darkness. She couldn't keep herself cheerful. She was afraid of hunger and thirst and cold. Afraid of being trapped—

But the picture grew, sucking the strength out of her. Mary was different from Emma. Emma had never thought of wondering how Robert had felt when he was up in the nightbird's tree with his leg slashed open. When he saw the familiar, terrible view below him and knew that he was shrunken and trapped. But Mary thought about it now. She began to imagine the agony and the panic and the terror—

Emma screwed up her eyes and pushed the thoughts away, wishing that Robert was there. For the first time in her life, she needed him. He could have told her how to survive.

“YOU SMELL,” WARREN SAID.

He was there when Emma woke, squatting beside her again. She couldn't believe that he'd come without waking her, but he was there, shining the flashlight full into her eyes. His face was so close that she could have spat onto the end of his nose if her mouth wasn't taped shut.

“You smell,” he said again. “You need a wash.”

She was completely at his mercy. For an instant her mind raced, imagining horrors. As long as he left the tape in place, he could do anything that came into his weird little head. Anything at all . . .

Then her common sense kicked in.
Don't be so melodramatic. He's not a Dracula-psycho. He's just a pathetic fat boy who's trying to scare you. Stop giving in and THINK.

Warren ran a finger lightly up and down one side of her head, rubbing at the stubble. Was he gloating? Or was he sorry to see her hair cut off? There was no way to tell. Emma realized how little she knew about him.

There might even be a way of getting him on to her side, if only she could find out some more. But how could she do that? She had no way of asking questions, and no way of watching him, except in this strange underground setting. What could she do to catch him off guard?

As an experiment, she tried pulling faces. She tilted her head to one side and smiled behind the sticky tape, half comic and half rueful.

The hand that was rubbing her bristly hair stopped dead, just above her left ear. Warren leaned closer, peering at her. She let him look for a second—and then winked.

Like lightning, Warren pulled his hand away. He sat back on his heels and the flashlight wavered sideways so that Emma saw his face for the first time. He looked nervous and uncertain.

That wasn't what she'd meant to achieve, but at least she'd had some kind of effect. What could she try next?

There wasn't a great deal of choice. She tilted her head the other way, raising one eyebrow, as if she were asking a question. But Warren just kept very still, frowning warily.

If Emma could, she would have shaken him.
What do you think I'm going to do? Eat you? For goodness' sake, REACT!
How could he be so frightened of someone who was completely wrapped up in tape?

Maybe it would be better if she tried to make him laugh. She thought for a second and then stuck her tongue into her left cheek, bulging it out while she opened her eyes wide and looked to the right. She counted up to three and reversed the movement. And then did it again.

It was hard work and it made her eyes feel strange, but she kept it up for several seconds. Then she stopped and grinned again. The most uncomplicated, friendly grin she could manage under the circumstances.

“Why are you doing that?” Warren muttered shakily. “Stop it.”

She shrugged and raised her eyebrows again. Then, still smiling, she started wiggling her ears.

For a moment, Warren obviously had no idea what she was doing. He kept looking nervously at her eyes and nose and mouth, waiting for the next movement. It was only when she rolled her head—first one way and then the other—that he saw her ears going up and down.

A slow, unexpected smile spread across his face. Propping the flashlight on the ground, he moved back slightly so that Emma could see his whole head. Then he began wiggling his own ears.

He was way beyond Emma, in a class of his own. He could move his ears together, but he could move each ear separately, too. And he could do it at different speeds, setting up a rhythm.
Left, right, left RIGHT, RIGHT, left, right, left, RIGHT, RIGHT.
Before she knew what she was doing, Emma found herself putting words to the rhythm.

She began to laugh, snorting helplessly through her nose because she couldn't open her mouth. It messed up her face, but she couldn't help herself. Warren looked irresistibly funny, frowning with solemn concentration as he wiggled out the song. She rocked her head from side to side, hiccuping with laughter.

Warren stopped at last, looking pink and gratified. If he'd been standing onstage, he would have taken a bow. Emma gazed up at him, still grinning, and he studied her face for a second.

Then he muttered, “When Hope was here, I sometimes used to—she didn't mind—can I—?”

What did he want to do? All the laughter drained out of Emma. She remembered Hope's wasted body and her mumbling voice.

“It's all right,” Warren muttered. “I'm not going to hurt you. I just—look, it's all right.”

He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and blew Emma's nose, very gently. Then he began wiping the tape underneath it and the skin all around the tape. As he worked, he muttered in a low, soothing voice.

“It's OK. I won't be a minute. You'll look much nicer when it's done. Just keep still. . . .”

Emma knew, without being told, that he was talking to her the way he'd talked to Hope. It was like peering through a window into the past. She hated the touch of his fingers, but she lay still and let him clean her face. Even when he licked the handkerchief without thinking, with his own tongue, and then rubbed it on her chin. She let him do it.

Until the handkerchief reached her right cheekbone. And it
hurt.

Taken by surprise, she gave a loud grunt. Immediately Warren dropped the handkerchief and flapped his hands at her, signaling that she had to stay silent.

“I'm sorry,” he gabbled. “Sorry, sorry, sorry. Didn't mean to hurt you. We didn't know how hard we needed to hit. And then the van door—sorry. We just had to be sure we knocked you out.”

Suddenly, everything they'd just been doing seemed ridiculous. Emma cringed at the memory of herself pulling faces and trying to win him over. How could she ever have thought he might be on her side? The Armstrongs were all maniacs, completely cut off from reality. And they were never going to let her go. Never, never, never.

“No,” Warren said desperately, flapping his hands again. “Don't cry. You'll be home soon. The moment we get Hope back.”

You'll never get her back
.
And nor will we. Not even Robert—though he wants that more than anything in the world. Hope's lost forever. And now I'm lost, too.

She was gagged and trussed—and if she died down here, in this horrible, stinking hole, no one would ever know where her body was. Robert and Tom would try to find her, but the Armstrongs would be expecting that. They were bound to have some plan to keep her hidden.

Warren was patting her arm frantically, to try and keep her quiet. Babbling stupid reassurances into her ear. “Mom will give you a drink soon. I know she will. And something to eat as well. You're going to be all right. All you have to do is be sensible—”