The Red Room

by Nicci French

  I tried to seize some other kind of comfort. It could just seem funny to him because I was so much in his power that the idea of me getting back at him could be completely ludicrous. I was taking a risk being rude to him. I’d made him angry. He could have tortured me or hit me or anything. But he hadn’t done anything. That might be useful to know. He had kidnapped me, he had me tied down and I’d threatened him. It could be that if I stand up to him he feels weakened and unable to do anything to me. If I don’t give in to him, that may be the best way of playing him along. He may have kidnapped a woman because he’s frightened of women and this is the only way to control at least one woman. He might expect me just to be pathetically begging for my life and that would give him the control he wants. But if I don’t yield, then it’s not going according to his plan.

  Or it may be the opposite. It may have shown nothing more than that he’s in control. It doesn’t matter to him what I say. He just finds it funny and is proceeding with his plan, whatever that is. Surely the point is to be as much of a flesh-and-blood person for him so that he finds it harder to do anything to me. But if that is threatening to him, then it may make him angrier. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t fight, I couldn’t escape. All I could do was to slow him down.

  What was the best way of doing that? Making him angry? Happy? Scared? I lay on the floor and stared into the stifling darkness of my hood.

  THERE WAS A CHANGE of texture in the blackness around me. There was a sound and a smell. Once again there was that hoarse croaking whisper.

  “I’m going to take your gag out. If you shout I’ll bleed you like an animal. If you’ve heard and understood what I’ve said, nod your head.”

  I nodded frantically. The hands—large, warm hands—fiddled behind my neck. The knot was untied, the cloth pulled roughly from my mouth. As soon as I was free I coughed and coughed. A hand held my head down and I felt the straw pushed into my mouth. I sucked the water until a bubbling sound told me it was gone.

  “There,” he said. “There’s a bucket here. Do you want to use it?”

  “What do you mean?” Get him talking.

  “You know. Toilet.”

  He was embarrassed. Was that a good sign?

  “I want to go to a proper one.”

  “It’s the bucket or you can lie in your own piss, sweetheart.”

  “All right.”

  “I’ll put you by the bucket. You can feel it with your feet. I’ll stand back. You try anything funny I’ll cut you up. All right?”

  “Yes.”

  There was the sound of him going down some steps, and then I felt his arms under my armpits, then as I slithered toward him, around me. Hard, strong hands. I was pressed against him. An animal smell, sweat, something else. One arm under my thighs. Nausea in my throat. Swung across and put down lightly on a rough floor, gritty. I raised myself up straight. My legs and back felt terribly sore. My hair was seized by a hand and I felt something hard against my neck.

  “You know what this is?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a blade. I’m going to untie the wire holding your hands together. Try anything and I’ll use it.”

  “I won’t. I want you to leave me alone.”

  “It’s dark. I’ll step back.”

  I felt pressure as he freed a knot behind my back. He stepped away. For just a second I thought of trying something until I saw the absurdity of it. Partially tied up, hooded, in a dark room with a man carrying a knife.

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  I hadn’t really meant it. I just wanted to be moved. I felt my clothes. Tee-shirt, slacks. I couldn’t do this.

  “You’ll have the bucket again tomorrow morning.”

  Tomorrow morning. Good. Some information. All right, all right. He said it was dark. I unfastened my trousers, pulled them and my knickers down, and sat on the bucket. Nothing but a dribble. I stood up again, pulled the trousers up.

  “Can I say something?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know what this is about. But you mustn’t do this. You won’t get away with it. You may not realize what’ll happen when they find me. But you can let me go. Drive me somewhere. Turn me loose. That’ll be it. I’ll be reported missing, they’ll be looking for me. I know you can do what you like to me and it probably won’t do me any good but you’ll be caught. If you let me go, we can just go back to our lives. Otherwise, you’ll be caught.”

  “That’s what they all say. When they say anything.”

  “What?”

  “Stand still.”

  “All?”

  The sensation of knots being refastened. The sensation of being lifted up high, set down like a small child being put up on a high shelf. Like a doll. A dead animal.

  “Stay there,” he said. “Right there.”

  I sat there, thinking he would go away now.

  “Open your mouth.”

  He was beside me. The rag was pushed in, a cloth tied hard around my face. I heard footsteps and then felt a new pressure around my neck. Tight. I was pulled back. I could feel the wall behind my back.

  “Listen,” the voice said. “This is a wire looped around your neck. It goes through a loop behind you and fastens on a bolt in the wall. Understand? Nod your head.”

  I nodded.

  “You’re on a platform. Understand?”

  I nodded.

  “If you move, you’ll slip off the ledge, the wire will throttle you, and you’ll die. Understand?”

  I nodded.

  “Good.”

  And there was silence. Just silence. And my heart, pounding like the sea. The wire burnt my neck. I breathed, in and out, in and out.

  I WAS STANDING on a wooden jetty and the lake around me was still as a mirror. Not a ripple of wind. I could see smooth pebbles far beneath me, pink and brown and grey. I bent my knees slightly and brought up my arms to dive in to the cool, quiet water, and then suddenly something caught me around the neck, and I was falling with a sickening lurch but being held back at the same time, and the water disappeared, became inky darkness instead. The noose was digging into my neck. I sat up straight. For a moment, I was a blank, and then fear rushed in, filling in all the spaces in my body. My heart was pounding and my mouth dry. Sweat ran down my forehead, under the hood, and I could feel wisps of hair sticking to my cheeks. I was clammy with fear, itchy and sticky and sour. My fear was so real now it was something I could smell.

  I HAD FALLEN ASLEEP. How could that be? How could I sleep when I was trussed up like a chicken waiting for its neck to be snapped? I’d always wondered how prisoners could sleep before the day of execution, but I’d slept. How long for? I had no idea—perhaps a few minutes, nodding off on this ledge before the noose woke me, or perhaps several hours, longer. I didn’t know if it was night, still, or morning. Time had stopped.

  Except that time hadn’t stopped. It was marching on. It was running out. Silence roared around my ears. Something was going to happen, and I didn’t know what and I didn’t know when, but I knew something was going to happen. It could be now, as soon as I stopped this thought, or it could be ages away, through the sludge of days. His words came back to me, and with them came a burning sensation in my stomach. It was as if there were an animal inside me, a scabby rodent with sharp yellow teeth eating away at me. “That’s what all the others said.” What did that mean? I knew what it meant. It meant that there had been others before me. They were dead and I was the next here on a ledge with a noose around my neck, and then after me—after me…

  Breathe and think. Make plans. Plans of escape were futile. All I had was my brain and the words I spoke to him—when he pulled this foul rag out of my mouth. I counted in my head. Seconds into minutes into hours. Was I counting too fast or too slowly? I tried to slow down. I was thirsty and the inside of my mouth felt soft and rotten. My breath must stink by now. I needed water, ice cold water. Gallons of clean water pulled up from a well deep in the earth. I was no longer hungry at all. Eating fo
od would be like eating twigs or gravel. But clean cold water in a tall glass tumbler, chinking with ice, that would be good. I kept on counting. I mustn’t stop.

  ONE HOUR, TWENTY-EIGHT MINUTES, thirty-three seconds. How many seconds was that altogether? I tried to continue counting while doing the sum in my head, but everything scrambled, and I lost the time and I lost the sum. Tears were rolling down my cheek.

  I shuffled forward and stretched my body out as far as I could, leaning back my neck until the noose cut in just under my chin. I balanced myself on the ledge, its edge sharp on the small of my back and my lower body hanging over. The wire must be about three feet long. I was like a see-saw. I could tip backwards again, and go on sitting and waiting and counting seconds and minutes and hours, or I could tip forwards into the darkness. He would find me hanging there, the wire noose around my neck. That would be one way of beating him, beating time. It would be that easy.

  I shuffled myself back into sitting position. My whole body was trembling with the effort. I concentrated on breathing, in and out. I thought of the lake in my dream, with its still water. I thought of the river and its fish. I thought of the yellow butterfly on the green leaf. It quivered there, almost as light as the air around it. One whisper of wind would dislodge it. That’s like life, I thought; my life is that fragile now.

  My name is Abbie. Abigail Devereaux. Abbie. I repeated my name to myself; I tried to hear the sound out loud. But the sound quickly lost its meaning. What did it signify, to be Abbie? Nothing. Just a collection of syllables. Two syllables. Two mouthfuls of air.

  “I HAD THIS DREAM,” I said. My voice sounded hoarse and feeble, as if the noose had already damaged my windpipe. “I slept and I had this dream. Did you have a dream? Do you dream?” I’d rehearsed this sentence while waiting for him; I didn’t want to tell him personal things about myself, because somehow that felt risky. And I didn’t want to ask him anything specific about himself, because if I knew anything about him he could never let me go. I asked about dreams, because they are intimate but abstract; they feel important but their meanings are vague, insubstantial. But now, speaking my sentence out loud with him beside me, it sounded fatuous.

  “Sometimes. Finish your water and then you can use the bucket.”

  “Did you dream last night?” I persisted, though I knew it was futile. He was a few inches from me. If I put out an arm I could touch him. I resisted the sudden urge to grab hold of him and wail and howl and plead.

  “You can’t dream if you haven’t slept.”

  “You didn’t sleep?”

  “Drink.”

  I took a few more sips, making the water last as long as I could. My throat was sore. It had been night, and yet he hadn’t slept. What had he been doing?

  “Do you have insomnia?” I tried to appear sympathetic; my voice sounded horribly artificial.

  “That’s crap,” he said. “You work and then you sleep when you need to. Day or night. That’s all.”

  There was a faint grainy light showing through the hood. If I lifted my head up high and peered downwards, perhaps I would see something; his outstretched legs beside mine, his hand on the ledge. I mustn’t look. I mustn’t see anything. I mustn’t know anything. I must stay in the dark.

  I DID EXERCISES. I pulled my knees up and let them down again. Fifty times. I lay down and tried to sit up. I couldn’t do it. Not even once.

  People in solitary confinement often went mad. I had read about that. I must have briefly imagined what it would be like, to be locked up and all alone. Sometimes they recited poetry to themselves, but I didn’t know any poetry, or if I did I could remember none of it. I knew nursery rhymes. Mary had a little lamb. Hickory dickory dock. The cheery, insistent rhythm felt obscene and mad, like someone inside my sore head, tapping away. I could make up a poem. What rhymed with dark? Stark, hark, lark, park, bark. I couldn’t make up poems. I’d never been able to.

  I tried once more to reach back into my memory—not my long memory, the memory of my life and my friends and my family, not the things that made me into who I am, the passage of time like rings in a tree trunk, not all of that, don’t think of that. My recent memory, the memory that would tell me how I came to be here, now. There was nothing. A thick wall lay between me here and me there.

  I recited tables inside my head. I could do the two times table, and the three, but after that I got muddled. Everything became jumbled up. I started to cry again. Silently.

  I SHUFFLED FORWARD until I found the drop. I struggled into a sitting position. It couldn’t be that high. He had stood beneath me and lifted me down. Four feet, maybe five. Not more, surely. I wriggled my feet in their bindings. I took a deep breath and shuffled forward a few inches more, so I was teetering on the edge. I would count to five, then I’d jump. One, two, three, four—

  I heard a sound. A sound at the other end of the room. Wheezing laughter. He was watching me. Squatting in the dark like a toad, watching me writhing around pathetically on the platform. A sob rose in my chest.

  “Go on then. Jump.”

  I wriggled backwards.

  “See what happens when you fall.”

  Back a bit more. Legs on the ledge now. I shifted myself back against the wall and lay slumped there. Tears rolled down my cheeks, under my hood.

  “Sometimes I like watching you,” he said. “You dunno, do you? When I’m here and when I’m not. I’m quiet, like.”

  Eyes in the darkness, watching me.

  “WHAT TIME IS IT?”

  “Drink your water.”

  “Please. Is it still morning? Or afternoon?”

  “That doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “Can I…?”

  “What?”

  What? I didn’t know. What should I ask for? “I’m just an ordinary person,” I said. “I’m not good but I’m not bad either.”

  “Everyone has a breaking point,” he said. “That’s the thing.”

  * * *

  NOBODY KNOWS what they would do, if it came to it. Nobody knows. I thought of the lake, and the river, and the yellow butterfly on the green leaf. I made myself a picture of a tree with silver bark and light green leaves. A silver birch. I put it on the top of a smooth green hill. I made a breeze to rustle though its leaves, turning them so that they glinted and shone as if there were lights among the branches. I put a small white cloud just above it. Had I ever seen a tree just like that? I couldn’t remember.

  “I’M VERY COLD.”

  “Yes.”

  “Could I have a blanket? Something to cover me.”

  “Please.”

  “What?”

  “You have to say please.”

  “Please. Please give me a blanket.”

  “No.”

  Once again I was filled with wild anger. It felt strong enough to suffocate me. I swallowed hard. Beneath the hood, I stared, blinked. I imagined him looking at me, sitting with my arms behind my back and my neck in a noose and my head in a hood. I was like one of those people you see in newspaper pictures, being led out into a square to be shot by a line of men with guns. But he couldn’t see my expression beneath the hood. He didn’t know what I was thinking. I made my voice expressionless.

  “All right,” I said.

  When the time came, would he hurt me? Or was he just going to let me die bit by bit? I was no good with pain. If I was tortured, I would crack and give up any secret, I was sure of that. But this was much worse. He would be torturing me and there would be nothing I could do to stop him, no information to give. Or perhaps he would want sex. Lying on top of me in the dark, forcing me. Pull my hood off, naked face, the rag from my mouth, push in his tongue. Push in his… I shook my head violently, and the pain in my head was almost a relief.

  I had once read or heard or been told how soldiers who wanted to join the SAS were ordered to run a long distance with a heavy pack on their back. They ran and ran, and at last they arrived at the end, near to collapsing. And then they were ordered to turn round and run
the distance back again. You think you can’t bear any more, but you can.

  There is always more in you than you think. Hidden depths. That’s what I told myself. For what was my breaking point?

  I WAS WOKEN by slaps on my face. I didn’t want to wake. What was the point? What was there to wake for? Just curl up and sleep. More slaps. Hood pulled up, the gag pulled out of my mouth.

  “You awake?”

  “Yes. Stop.”

  “I’ve got food. Open your mouth.”

  “What food?”

  “What the fuck does that matter?”

  “Drink first. Mouth dry.”

  There was muttering in the dark. Steps going away and down. That was good. A tiny victory. A minuscule bit of control. Steps came back up. The straw in my mouth. I was desperately thirsty but I also needed to rinse away the lint and fluff of the awful old rag I’d been choking on for so long.

  “Open your mouth.”

  A metal spoon was pushed into my mouth with something soft on it. Suddenly the idea of eating something I couldn’t see, pushed into my mouth by this man who was going to kill me, was so disgusting that I imagined chewing on raw human flesh. I started to retch and spit. More swearing.

  “Fucking eat or I’ll cut the water off for a day.”

  A day. That was good. He wasn’t planning to kill me today.

  “Wait,” I said and took several deep breaths. “All right.”

  The spoon scraped in a bowl. I felt it in my mouth. I licked the food and swallowed it. It was something porridgy, but blander and smoother and slightly sweet. It tasted like one of those powdery bland mushes for babies. Or it could have been one of those concoctions that is given to convalescents, the sort you buy in a chemist’s. I thought of gibbering glassy-eyed people sitting in hospital beds being spoon-fed by bored nurses. I swallowed and more food was pushed into my mouth. Four spoonfuls altogether. I wasn’t being fattened, just kept alive. When I was finished I sucked more water through a straw.