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Authors: Gillian Cross

The Nightmare Game (13 page)

BOOK: The Nightmare Game
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She lifted her head slightly and felt something tug at her hair. She'd braided it into the twelve-strand braid that Robert had taught her—the braid he'd learned from Lorn. Someone had used that braid to tie her down, knotting a cord around it and pegging it into the ground.
And that wasn't the only cord that fixed her there. She wriggled, experimentally, and felt resistance in every direction. The people who'd tied her up hadn't left her any chance of escaping. She was completely immobilized.
But why had they done it? Who
were
they?
She fought back a surge of useless, feeble panic. There was no point in getting hysterical. What she needed to do was think coherently. She might not be able to move or see, but she still had the rest of her senses.
Slowly, she worked out as much as she could about the place where she was lying
.
The surface underneath her was smooth and pliable, and slightly noisy, like plastic. The ground underneath was hard and cold, but not as hard as concrete. It felt slightly uneven, as though the plastic had been laid over bare earth.
It was very quiet where she was, but there was a radio playing somewhere nearby. And, with her head pressed to the ground, she could hear a constant hum like the sound of distant traffic.
She lay still and concentrated, trying to work out how she'd got there.
She remembered coming out of school, distracted by worrying about Tom and Robert. She remembered scooting down the alley and seeing something blue. And then her memory cut out. Every time she tried to get beyond that glimpse of blue, she hit a blank. There was no link between
then
and
now
, between
there
and
here
.
She longed to tell herself that it wasn't real, that she was dreaming. But she knew that wasn't true. Ever since she'd seen Robert come back from being small, she'd known that
real
was a much bigger word than most people realized. And the cords and the sticky tape were certainly real.
And so were the people who had tied her up and left her in the dark.
All she could do was lie and wait for them. Every time a board creaked above her, every time a draft of cold air slid across her face, she peered into the darkness, thinking they must be coming. But nothing happened. She simply lay there, getting thirstier and stiffer every minute.
 
WHEN THE NOISE CAME AT LAST, IT WAS SO SUDDEN AND SHOCKING that it gave her a jolt. It sounded like a television, turned up to full volume, blaring directly overhead.
Then there was a sequence of small scraping sounds. Metal moving over wood. Emma tried to work out what it was, struggling to add up all the clues and make some kind of deduction about where she was, but her brain was slow and stupid. It wouldn't make any sense of the sounds.
And then she was blinded by a sudden rush of light.
For a second she was totally dazzled and her eyes closed automatically. She forced them open and found herself staring at a hole in the darkness. There was a square opening above her head, giving her a view of gray sky, seen through glass. It looked like a huge window crossed by a single diagonal strut.
I ought to recognize that—
But before she could grab at the memory, a head appeared in the opening. It was hardly more than a silhouette, but its ungainly, short neck was angled toward her and she knew instantly who it was. Suddenly, everything slid into place.
She was trapped in the secret room, under the Armstrongs' conservatory floor. The room where they'd kept Hope hidden all her life. The diagonal strut was part of the conservatory roof, and below it was Warren Armstrong, staring down at her.
She hardly had time to think about it before she was blinded again. A flashlight shone into her face, and there was an awkward scrabble as Warren let himself down through the trapdoor. She closed her eyes quickly, listening as he blundered toward her across the black plastic.
As he crouched down beside her, she held her breath, determined not to react. She could feel him peering at her, panting slightly from the effort of climbing down into the hole, but she resisted the urge to look at him. She concentrated on staying totally still.
After a second or two, Warren began muttering to himself. Odd, incomprehensible words that were barely audible.
“Tread my home . . . Mary the demo . . . my other dame . . .”
Emma had to hold her body tense to keep herself from shuddering. He was mad. Completely mad.
Then one of his pudgy hands prodded at her cheek—and she couldn't bear it any longer. Her eyes opened, involuntarily, and for a split second she saw him staring down at her with a look of desperate anxiety.
And then he realized that she was looking back at him, and the anxiety was replaced by an overwhelming flood of relief.
He thought I was dead.
That was staggeringly obvious. Emma didn't know whether he'd been part of the kidnap, but he was clearly worried about the result. She wondered, suddenly, whether she could turn him into an ally.
Jerking her head upward, she grunted as loudly as she could to let him know that she wanted to be free. The noise she made was pathetically small—she could hardly hear it herself above the sound of the television—but even that made Warren uneasy. He jammed his hand over her mouth, crinkling the tape so that it pinched her skin.
“Be quiet!” he hissed urgently. He tapped her cheek with his hot, sweaty fingers and leaned forward, putting his mouth next to her ear. “We'll let you go soon. When you've told us where to find Hope.”
That was what they wanted, of course. They wanted the one thing she couldn't tell them. The thing she
mustn't
tell them. She frowned and made an attempt to shake her head.
Warren leaned even closer. “You've got to tell us,” he whispered. “Or you'll have to stay here forever.”
He nipped Emma's cheek painfully, between his fingernails. Feeling his power, and her helplessness.
In a minute,
Emma thought,
he's going to start enjoying it.
She had a sudden, shameful memory of feeling like that herself. When she and the boys were working out how to save Hope, they'd cornered Warren in the street.
You don't want us poking around in the conservatory,
she'd cooed.
We'll have to look for your sister.
When his mouth trembled, she'd had an exhilarating sense of control.
He'd have done anything he was told
, she'd said to Tom afterward.
Now she was the helpless one, and he was doing his best to frighten her. Emma felt the stirrings of a different kind of panic, deep and dark. For the first time, she understood that she might get hurt.
She took a long, slow breath, determined to stay calm. Wrenching her head around, she looked Warren straight in the face. Raising her eyebrows, she opened her eyes wide and shrugged her shoulders, miming as hard as she could.
I can't help you
.
I don't know anything.
Warren's mouth tightened and he leaned forward so that their noses were almost touching. “You
do
know where she is,” he hissed. “We heard you on the phone. You've got her locked up and you have to tell us where. Because she's
ours.
”
Emma shook her head fiercely, trying to get away from the feel of his breath and the glare of his eyes. But there was no way of escaping.
This is how he felt,
said a little voice in her head.
You had him trapped exactly like this and you made him do something he'd been told not to do.
She forced herself not to listen. What they'd done was different. It was all about rescuing Hope. What Warren wanted was to get her back into this horrible prison. Emma clamped her mouth shut, determined not to give in.
When they took the gag away, she wasn't going to tell them anything. She was going to resist everything they tried—and escape if she could.
Warren saw the stubborn look in her eyes. He frowned and sat back on his heels. “She
is
ours,” he said. “Look.”
He started to fumble in his pocket, pulling out pieces of paper and dropping them impatiently as he hunted for something. When he found it, he held it up and shone the flashlight at it, so that Emma could see.
It was a photograph of a pretty little baby girl, with her hair tied up in a wispy bunch on top of her head. She was grinning happily and waving her arms at the camera.
It took Emma a full minute to realize that she was looking at a picture of Hope.
“You see?” Warren said emphatically. “She was here all the time. From the beginning. If she has to live anywhere else, she'll die.”
Helplessly, Emma stared at the photograph. How could anyone be
so wrong
? Didn't he understand what his parents had done to Hope? She'd started out as the baby in the photograph—animated and happy and
normal
—and ended up as a stunted, miserable captive, so afraid of making too much noise that she hit out at her own face.
If Emma had been able to speak, she would have argued and shouted and
made
Warren understand. But all she could do now was pull faces and grunt. And what use was that?
For a second longer, Warren waved the photograph in front of her eyes. Then he glanced suddenly over his shoulder. As he scrambled to his feet, Emma realized what he'd heard.
Footsteps were coming quickly across the floor above their heads. Someone else was approaching the opening.
Mr. Armstrong!
she thought, before she could stop herself.
And she felt a jolt of fear that went through her whole body.
10
BUT IT WASN'T MR. ARMSTRONG. IT WAS A WOMAN. A SMALL, slight woman, with a long tail of hair that hung down into the opening as she leaned forward.
Emma had forgotten all about Mrs. Armstrong. She'd dismissed her as a passive, frightened person totally dominated by her husband. But now, as she recognized her, one more piece of the puzzle slid into place and she began to understand her mistake. She remembered the woman in the van.
It was her. She was the one who trapped me.
Mrs. Armstrong peered down for a second and then swung herself expertly through the trapdoor. Crouching under the low roof, she came quickly down the secret room, watching Emma as she came.
For an instant, the two of them stared at each other. Emma heard Warren start breathing faster and she thought,
He's nervous. He doesn't know what she's going to do.
She tried to hold her eyes steady, but her own breathing quickened, too.
When Mrs. Armstrong reached them, she knelt down on the black plastic, still not shifting her eyes from Emma's. “I want to know where my daughter is,” she said.
Emma tried to shake her head vigorously, but the cord attached to her braid was too tight. All she could do was grunt behind the tape, getting as close as she could to the words she needed to say.
We haven't got her. It's not like that.
But even while she was making the sounds, she knew they were incomprehensible.
“I gave up my life to keep Hope safe,” Mrs. Armstrong said softly. “For years I haven't had any friends, or a job, or a holiday. Just her. I'm not going to let anyone take her away from me.”
In the dim light, she looked painfully like Hope, with the same narrow mouth, the same sharp jaw, and finely arched eyebrows. It was terrifyingly easy to imagine Hope herself kneeling just like that in the middle of the black plastic. Except that she wouldn't have had anyone with her. She would have been down there on her own.
You chose to give up your life!
Emma wanted to shout.
But Hope didn't have any choice. You stole hers from her.
The words beat inside her head clamoring to be spoken.
Mrs. Armstrong lifted a hand. For the first time, Emma saw that she was holding a small plastic bottle. She brought it around into the flashlight and tilted it slightly so that Emma could see the water inside.
“If you promise to keep quiet, I'll take off the tape and give you some of this,” she said.
Emma's eyes locked on to the water bottle and she swallowed dryly behind the brown tape.
“Well?” The raised hand gave the bottle a tempting little shake.
Emma knew what she had to do. She took a quick breath and nodded, as well as she could. Mrs. Armstrong leaned forward and ripped the tape off her mouth in a single, quick movement. It felt like having the skin ripped away, but Emma didn't let the pain put her off. She opened her mouth and looked up at the square opening, yelling as loudly as she could.
“HELP! I'M A PRISONER UNDER THE FLOOR! GET ME OUT!”
But even while she was shouting, she could hear that it was no use. The earth around soaked up her voice, and any small sounds that reached the outside were hidden by the noise of the television. When she looked back at Mrs. Armstrong, she could see that it had all been planned. She'd been meant to shout, so that she would understand how pointless it was.
When she stopped, Mrs. Armstrong leaned forward and slapped her face. Just hard enough to hurt. “Liar,” she said evenly.
“Why should I tell you the truth?” Emma croaked, hoarse from the shouting. “I don't owe you anything. You
kidnapped
me.”
Mrs. Armstrong shrugged. “Please yourself. But if you don't cooperate, you'll never get out of here.”
“Yes I will,” Emma said fiercely. “Robert and Tom will guess where I am and they'll call the police.”
“Not yet,” Mrs. Armstrong said. She sat back on her heels and smiled a small, tight smile. “They think you're staying at your friend's house. Remember?”
Emma felt the cold of the earth seep into her bones. She could hear her own voice, calling out to the boys.
I'm going to stop over at her house. . . . See you tomorrow night
. Where had Mrs. Armstrong been hiding? How had she overheard that?
BOOK: The Nightmare Game
8.76Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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