The Red Room

by Nicci French

  I raised my head again. With my chin I felt a shirt. I was wearing clothes. Yes. I could feel them on my skin. A shirt, trousers, socks. No shoes.

  There were other things at the edge, clamoring to be admitted to my brain. Bad things. Restrained. In the dark. Hooded. Ridiculous. Could it be a joke? I remembered stories of students. They get you paralytically drunk, put you on a train at Aberdeen. You wake up in London dressed only in your underwear with a fifty-pence piece in your hand. Everyone will jump out in a minute, pull off the blindfold, and shout “April fool.” We’ll all laugh. But was it April? I remembered cold. Had summer been? Was summer still to come? But of course a summer had always been and there was always another summer to come.

  ALL THE ALLEYS WERE BLIND. I had gone up them all and found nothing. Something had happened. I knew that. One possibility was that it was something funny. It didn’t feel funny. Another possibility, possibility number two, was that something had happened and it was in the process of being officially dealt with. The hood—or bandage, yes, very possibly a bandage. That was a thought. I could have received a head wound, eye or ear damage, and my entire head was bandaged and hooded for my own protection. They would be removed. There would be some stinging. A cheery face of a nurse. A doctor frowning at me. Don’t worry, nothing to worry about. That’s what they’d say. Call me dear.

  There were other possibilities. Bad ones. I thought of the stone under my fingers. The damp air, like a cave. Until now, there had been only the pain and also the mess of my thoughts, but now there was something else. Fear in my chest like sludge. I made a sound. A low groan. I was able to speak. I didn’t know who to call or what to say. I shouted more loudly. I thought the echoing or harshness of the sound might tell me something about where I was but it was muffled by my hood. I shouted again so that my throat hurt.

  Now there was a movement nearby. Smells. Sweat and scent. A sound of breathing, somebody scrambling. Now my mouth was full of cloth, I couldn’t breathe. Only through my nose. Something tied hard around my face. Breath on me, hot on my cheek, and then, out of the darkness, a voice, little more than a whisper, hoarse, strained, thick so I could barely make it out.

  “No,” it said. “Make another sound and I’ll block your nose as well.”

  I WAS GAGGING on the cloth. It filled my mouth, bulged in my cheeks, rubbed against my gums. The taste of grease and rancid cabbage filled my throat. A spasm jerked my body, nausea rising through me like damp. I mustn’t be sick. I tried to take a breath, tried to gasp through the cloth but I couldn’t. I couldn’t. I was all stopped up. I tugged with my arms and my ankles against the restraints and tried to take a breath and it was as if my whole body was twitching and shuddering on the rough stone floor and no air inside me, just violent space and red behind my bulging eyes and a heart that was jolting up through my throat and a strange dry sound coming from me, like a cough that wouldn’t form. I was a dying fish. A fish thrashing on the hard floor. I was hooked and tied down, but inside me I was coming loose, all my innards tearing apart. Is this what it’s like? To die? To be buried alive?

  I had to breathe. How do you breathe? Through your nose. He’d said so. The voice had said he’d block my nose next. Breathe through my nose. Breathe now. I couldn’t take enough air in that way. I couldn’t stop myself trying to gasp, trying to fill myself up with air. My tongue was too big to fit in the tiny space left in my mouth. It kept pushing against the cloth. I felt my body buck again. Breathe slowly. Calmly. In and out, in and out. Breathe like that until there’s nothing except the sense of it. This is how to keep alive. Breathe. Thick, musty air in my nostrils, oily rottenness running down my throat. I tried not to swallow but then I had to and again biliousness flowed through me, filled my mouth. I couldn’t bear it. I could bear it. I could, I could, I could.

  Breathe in and out, Abbie. Abbie. I am Abbie. Abigail Devereaux. In and out. Don’t think. Breathe. You are alive.

  THE PAIN INSIDE MY SKULL rolled back. I lifted my head a bit and the pain surged towards my eyes. I blinked my eyes and it was the same deep darkness when they were open and when they were closed. My eyelashes scraped against the hood. I was cold. I could feel that now. My feet were chilly inside the socks. Were they my socks? They felt too big and rough—unfamiliar. My left calf ached. I tried to flex my leg muscles to get rid of the cramped feeling. There was an itch on my cheek, under the hood. I lay there for a few seconds, concentrating only on the itch, then I turned my head and tried to rub the itch against a hunched shoulder. No good. So I squirmed until I could scrape my face along the floor.

  And I was damp. Between my legs and under my thighs, stinging my skin beneath my trousers. Were they my trousers? I was lying in my own piss, in the dark, in a hood, tied down, gagged. Breathe in and out, I told myself. Breathe in and out all the time. Try to let thoughts out slowly, bit by bit, so you don’t drown in them. I felt the pressure of the fears dammed up inside me, and my body was a fragile, cracking shell full of pounding waters. I made myself think only of breathing, in and out of my nostrils. In and out.

  Someone—a man, the man who had pushed this cloth into my mouth—had put me in this place. He had taken me, strapped me down. I was his prisoner. Why? I couldn’t think about that yet. I listened for a sound, any sound except the sound of my breath and the sound of my heart and, when I moved, the rasp of my hands or feet against the rough floor. Perhaps he was here with me, in the room, crouching somewhere. But there was no other sound. For the moment I was alone. I lay there. I listened to my heart. Silence pressed down on me.

  AN IMAGE FLITTED through my head. A yellow butterfly on a leaf, wings quivering. It was like a sudden ray of light. Was it something I was remembering, a moment rescued out of the past and stored away till now? Or was it just my brain throwing up a picture, some kind of reflex, a short circuit?

  A MAN HAD TIED ME in a dark place. He must have snatched me and taken me here. But I had no memory of that happening. I scrabbled in my brain, but it was blank—an empty room, an abandoned house, no echoes. Nothing. I could remember nothing. A sob rose in my throat. I mustn’t cry. I must think, but carefully now, hold back the fear. I must not go deep down. I must stay on the surface. Just think of what I know. Facts. Slowly I will make up a picture and then I’ll be able to look at it.

  My name is Abigail—Abbie. I am twenty-five years old, and I live with my boyfriend, Terry, Terence Wilmott, in a poky flat on Westcott Road. That’s it—Terry. Terry will be worried. He will phone the police. He’ll tell them I have gone missing. They’ll drive here with flashing lights and wailing sirens and hammer down the door and light and air will come flooding in. No, just facts. I work at Jay and Joiner, designing office interiors. I have a desk, with a white and blue laptop computer, a small grey phone, a pile of paper, an oval ashtray full of paperclips and elastic bands.

  When was I last there? It seemed impossibly far off, like a dream that disappears when you try to hold on to it; like someone else’s life. I couldn’t remember. How long had I lain here? An hour, or a day, or a week? It was January, I knew that—at least, I thought I knew that. Outside, it was cold and the days were short. Maybe it had snowed. No, I mustn’t think of things like snow, sunlight on white. Stick only to what I knew: January, but I couldn’t tell if it was day or night. Or perhaps it was February now. I tried to think of the last day I clearly remembered, but it was like looking into a thick fog, with indistinct shapes looming.

  Start with New Year’s Eve, dancing with friends and everyone kissing each other on the stroke of midnight. Kissing people on the lips, people I knew well and people I’d met a few times and strangers who came up to me with arms open and an expectant smile because kissing is what you do on New Year’s Eve. Don’t think of all that though. After New Year’s Eve, then, yes, there were days that stirred in my mind. The office, phones ringing, expense forms in my in-tray. Cups of cooling bitter coffee. But maybe that was before, not after. Or before and after, day after day. Everything was blurred and wit
hout meaning.

  I tried to shift. My toes felt stiff with cold and my neck ached and my head banged. The taste in my mouth was foul. Why was I here and what was going to happen to me? I was laid out on my back like a sacrifice, arms and legs pinned clown. Dread ran through me. He could starve me. He could rape me. He could torture me. He could kill me. Maybe he had already raped me. I pressed myself against the floor and whimpered deep down in my throat. Two tears escaped from my eyes and I felt them tickle and sting as they ran down towards my ears.

  Don’t cry, Abbie. You mustn’t cry.

  * * *

  THINK OF THE BUTTERFLY, which means nothing but which is beautiful. I pictured the yellow butterfly on its green leaf. I let it fill my mind, so light on the leaf it could be blown away like a feather. I heard footsteps. They were soft, as if the man was barefooted. They padded closer and stopped. There was a sound of someone breathing heavily, almost panting, as if he was climbing or scrambling towards me. I lay rigid in the silence. He was standing over me. There was a click, and even from beneath the hood I could tell he had switched on a torch. I could hardly see anything, but I could at least see through the grain of the fabric that it was no longer entirely dark. He must be standing over me and shining a torch down on my body.

  “You’re wet,” he murmured, or maybe it sounded like a murmur through my hood. “Silly girl.”

  I sensed him leaning towards me. I heard him breathing and I heard my own breathing getting louder and faster. He pulled the hood up slightly and, quite gently, pulled out the cloth. I felt a fingertip on my lower lip. For a few seconds, all I could do was pant with the relief of it, pulling the air into my lungs. I heard myself say, “Thank you.” My voice sounded light and feeble. “Water.”

  He undid the restraints on my arms and my chest, so that only my legs were tied at the ankles. He slid an arm under my neck and lifted me into a sitting position. A new kind of pain pulsed inside my skull. I didn’t dare make any movements by myself. I sat passively, and let him put my arms behind my back and tie the wrists together, roughly so that the rope cut into my flesh. Was it rope? It felt harder than that, like a clothesline or wire.

  “Open your mouth,” he said in his muffled whisper. I did so. He slid a straw up the hood, and between my lips. “Drink.”

  The water was tepid and left a stale taste in my mouth.

  He put a hand on the back of my neck, and started to rub at it. I sat rigid. I mustn’t cry out. I mustn’t make a sound. I mustn’t be sick. His fingers pressed into my skin.

  “Where do you hurt?” he said.

  “Nowhere.” My voice was a whisper.

  “Nowhere? You wouldn’t lie to me?”

  Anger filled my head like a glorious roaring wind and it was stronger even than the fear. “You piece of shit,” I shouted in a mad, high-pitched voice. “Let me go, let me go and then I’m going to kill you, you’ll see—”

  The cloth was rammed back in my mouth.

  “You’re going to kill me. Good. I like that.”

  FOR A LONG TIME I concentrated on nothing but breathing. I had heard of people feeling claustrophobic in their own bodies, trapped as if in prison. They became tormented by the idea that they would never be able to escape. My life was reduced to the tiny passages of air in my nostrils. If they became blocked, I would die. That happened. People were tied up, gagged, with no intention to kill them. Just a small error in the binding—the gag tied too close to the nose—and they would choke and die.

  I made myself breathe in one-two-three, out one-two-three. In, out. I’d seen a film once, some kind of war film, in which a super-tough soldier hid from the enemy in a river breathing just through a single straw. I was like that and the thought made my chest hurt and made me breathe in spasms. I had to calm myself. Instead of thinking of the soldier and his straw and what would have happened if the straw had become blocked, I tried to think of the water in the river, cool and calm and slow-moving and beautiful, the sun glistening on it in the morning.

  In my mind, the water grew slower and slower until it was quite still. I imagined it starting to freeze, solid like glass so that you could see the fish swimming silently underneath. I couldn’t stop myself. I saw myself falling through the ice, trapped underneath. I had read or heard or been told that if you fall through ice and can’t find the hole, there is a thin layer of air beneath the ice and the water and you can lie under the ice and breathe the air. And what then? It might be better just to have drowned. I had always been terrified of drowning above all things but I had read or heard or been told that drowning was in fact a pleasant way to die. I could believe it. What was unpleasant and terrifying was trying to avoid drowning. Fear is trying to avoid death. Giving yourself up to death is like falling asleep.

  One-two-three, one-two-three, I was becoming calmer. Some people, probably about two percent of the population at least, would have already died of panic or asphyxiation if they’d had done to them what I was having done to me. So I was already doing better than someone. I was alive. I was breathing.

  I WAS LYING DOWN now, with my ankles tied and my wrists tied, my mouth gagged, and a hood over my head. I wasn’t tied to anything anymore. I struggled into a squatting position, then very slowly stood up. Tried to stand up. My head bumped against a roof. It must be just under five feet high. I sat down again, panting with the effort.

  At least I could move my body. Wriggle and hump along, like a snake in the dust. But I hardly dared. I had the sense that I was somewhere up high. When he came into the room, he was underneath me. The footsteps and his voice came from down below. He climbed to get at me.

  I stretched my feet in one direction and felt only the floor. I swiveled painfully around, my tee-shirt riding up and bare skin on my back scraping painfully along the roughness beneath me. I stretched my feet. Floor. I humped forward. Slowly. Feet feeling. Then not feeling—not feeling the hardness underneath. Stretched over a space, a blank. Nothing underneath. I lay down and moved forward again, bit by bit. Legs hanging over, bent at the knee. If I sat up now, I’d be sitting over a fall, a cliff. My breath juddered in my chest with panic. I started shifting backwards. My back hurt. My head crashed and banged. I kept wriggling and scraping backwards until I was pressed up against a wall.

  I sat up. I pressed my bound hands against the wall. Damp coarse brick against my fingertips.

  I shuffled upright along the wall in one direction, until I met the corner. Then in the other direction, my muscles were burning with the effort. It must be about ten feet wide. Ten feet wide and four feet deep.

  IT WAS HARD TO THINK CLEARLY because the pain in my head kept getting in the way. Was it a bang? A scrape? Something in my brain?

  I was shivering with cold. I had to keep thinking, keep my mind busy, keep it off things. I had been kidnapped in some way. I was being held against my will. Why did kidnaps happen? To take hostages, for money, or for a political reason. My total wealth, once credit card and storecard debts were deducted, amounted to about two thousand pounds, half of it bound up in my rusty old car. As for politics, I was a working environment consultant not an ambassador. But then I didn’t remember anything. I could be in South America now, or Lebanon. Except that the voice was clearly English, southern English as far as I could tell from the soft, thick whisper.

  So what other reasons were there? I had argued myself towards an area where everything looked really really bad. I felt tears bubbling up in my eyes. Calm down. Calm down. I mustn’t get all snotty, blocked up.

  He hadn’t killed me. That was a good sign. Except it wasn’t necessarily all that good a sign—in the long run it could be a bad sign in a way that made me feel sick even to think about. But it was all I had. I flexed my muscles very gently. I couldn’t move. I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know where I’d been captured, or when, or how. Or for what reason. I couldn’t see anything. I didn’t even know anything about the room I was lying in. It felt damp. Maybe it was underground or in a shed. I didn’t know anythi
ng about the man. Or men. Or people. He was probably close by. I didn’t know if I knew him. I didn’t know what he looked like.

  That could be useful. If I could identify him, he might… Well, that might be worse. Professional kidnappers wore hoods so that the hostage never saw them. Putting a hood over my head might be the same thing, the other way around. And he was doing something to his voice, muffling it up somehow, so that he didn’t sound like a human at all. It could even be that he was planning to hold me for just a little while and let me go. He could dump me in some other part of London and it would be impossible for me ever to find him again. I would know nothing—nothing at all. That was the first bit of remotely good news.

  I had no idea how long I had been here but at the very most it couldn’t be more than three days, maybe even two. I felt dreadful but I didn’t feel especially weak. I felt hungry but not ill with hunger. Maybe two days. Terry would have reported me missing. I wouldn’t have turned up at work. They would phone Terry, he would be baffled. He would have tried my mobile phone. Where was that? The police could have been called within hours. By now there would be a huge hunt. Lines of people scouring waste land. All leave canceled. Sniffer dogs. Helicopters. Another promising thought. You can’t just grab an adult off the street and hide them somewhere without creating some sort of suspicion. They would be out there, knocking at doors, marching into houses, shining torches into dark places. Any time now, I’d hear them, see them. All I had to do was stay alive as long as… Just stay alive. Stay alive.

  I had shouted at him before. I’d said I’d kill him. That was the only thing I could remember having said to him, except I’d said “thank you” when he gave me water. I hated the fact I’d said “thank you.” But when I’d shouted, I’d made him angry. What were his words? “You kill me? That’s a good one.” Something like that. That’s not promising. “You kill me?” That might seem good to him because in fact he’s going to kill me.