by Darcy Coates
A cold, damp cloth pressed against her forehead. That felt good. She let her eyes close. The stranger spoke to her, but she still couldn’t understand him. A moment later, she felt blankets being draped back across her body.
She tried to say, “Leave me alone,” but the words came out slurred. A hand pressed onto her shoulder and squeezed very lightly, then it was gone again.
Chapter Three
Wind whistled through gaps somewhere deeper in the house. As Clare moved back towards consciousness, the sound, like out-of-tune flutes playing a song without any melody, taunted her.
She tried to roll over, and a hundred little aches and pains returned. She returned to her back and opened her eyes.
The room was the same. Cream ceiling. Dark wood doors. Tall, latticed windows with drapes pulled back and gauzy curtains muting the light. The man was no longer standing by the windows, though. He sat next to her bed.
Clare flinched back. He reclined in a chair, one leg folded over the other, and a mug clasped in his long fingers.
“Don’t try to run again. You will only hurt yourself.”
Finally, she could see his face. He was slightly older than she was—midtwenties, maybe. His thick black hair was a little longer than was fashionable. His eyes were dark and deep set, and his eyebrows rested low. He’d shed his jacket and wore a green knit top.
Clare pulled the sheets higher so that they were under her chin. A hundred questions wanted to be let out. Who are you? What am I doing here? She swallowed them all. She didn’t know where she stood or how much danger she might be in. All she knew was that nothing about the situation was normal.
The man moved to place his mug on the bedside table and picked up a glass of water. “Drink. It will help.”
Clare didn’t want to remove her arm from the safety of the blanket, let alone move closer to the stranger, but she was desperately thirsty. The water sparkled in the glass. Her mouth and nose were dry enough to ache, and at that moment, the water looked like the most beautiful thing on the planet.
Cautiously, Clare extracted her hand from under the blankets and reached for the glass. She kept her attention focussed on the stranger’s expression. He looked impassive, as though there were nothing unusual about the day. He didn’t try to move. She took the glass, pulling it towards herself quickly enough to spill a few drops. Clare brought the water to her lips, but before drinking, she tried to smell it. He noticed. His eyebrows pulled slightly closer together, but he made no comment.
She managed a very shaky smile and tried a sip. It didn’t have any strange tastes, so she downed the whole glass. Her body silently rejoiced as she drank, and instantly, it begged for more.
The man held out his hand, and Clare carefully returned the glass to him. He placed it back onto the bedside table then picked up his own mug and settled back into the chair. He obviously didn’t intend to start a conversation.
Clare couldn’t stand the silence any longer. She licked her lips. “Who are you?”
“So you do speak.” A very small smile flitted over his lips, but it was gone in an instant. “My name is Dorran.”
She’d never heard of anyone with that name before. Mixed with the ostentatious decorations and abnormally large room, it left her with a sense of unreality, as though she’d tumbled through some portal into a fantasy world and couldn’t find the way back out again. “Where am I?”
“My family’s estate. Winterbourne Hall.”
She frowned. “Where?”
“In the Banksy Forest.”
She tried to edge a little farther away from him. “There aren’t any properties in that forest.”
“There is.” He took a sip of his drink. “It is well concealed and not widely known.”
Clare risked a glance behind her. Snow continued to swirl beyond the window. The room was warm, thanks to the fire, but outside looked bitterly cold. Even if she found her way out of the house, she didn’t think she could run far.
“How…” She swallowed and tried to rephrase her question. “When…”
He tilted his head to one side, his voice soft. “Your car had crashed. I found you. You were bleeding out, so I brought you back here.”
She closed her eyes. She remembered driving into the forest. But what happened after that? She strained, but even though scraps of memories teased the edges of her consciousness, they stayed blurred.
Dorran was watching her closely. The scrutiny made her feel self-conscious. She pulled the blankets a half inch higher. “I don’t remember crashing.”
“Sometimes traumatic events can erase the memories immediately preceding them.” His eyes flicked towards her arm. “You lost a lot of blood. But there are no broken bones. You were lucky in that regard.”
She didn’t feel lucky.
Dorran rose. He was moving slowly, but Clare still flinched as he walked around her bed. “I tried to call for an ambulance,” he said as he opened a massive wardrobe. “But the storm has brought down the phone lines, and the roads are impassable. We must stay here until the storm clears.”
Clare looked at the room’s double doors. “Is there anyone else here?”
“Just us.” He returned to her side and draped a dressing gown over the back of the chair he had been sitting in. “This is one of mine, but it is clean. Will you need help putting it on?”
“No,” she said quickly.
“Then I will bring you some food. You were asleep for two days. You will be hungry, even if you don’t feel it yet.”
Clare watched him cross to the door and let himself out. All of his motions seemed careful and precise, as though he considered every movement before he made it. Once the door clicked shut, she held her breath and listened. Footsteps gradually faded. They seemed to go on a long way, though. How big is this place?
Still holding the blankets around her throat, Clare grabbed for the dressing gown. It was thick and too large for her. She struggled into it as quickly as she could, jarring her arm in the process. She squeezed her eyes closed and hissed as she waited for the pain to fade.
He says I crashed. Did I? I’ve driven down the Banksy Forest road hundreds of times. I know it like the back of my hand.
She gingerly slipped her feet over the edge of the bed. The floor was carpeted, but it still felt cool, and her toes curled. I’ve never seen any sign of a property inside the forest. Around it, yes. Farmhouses and barns. But inside? He’s lying. Isn’t he?
She tried to stand. Her legs threatened to buckle again, and she clutched at the bed’s headboard to stay upright. Her body seemed to have forgotten how to walk. She had to gradually coach her legs through the process of balancing and carrying weight, and even then, she staggered when she tried to step forwards.
A table along the closest wall held a collection of odd items. As Clare passed it, she recognised her shirt. She grabbed it, but as it unfolded, she saw dark stains spread across the blue fabric. She touched them, but they were dry.
She flipped through the rest of the items gathered on the table, including her jeans, her shoes, and her bracelet. Everything was tinged with blood, even the jewellery.
Again, she tried to remember what had happened. She pictured her home, the little rural house she’d bought for a bargain and fixed up. It had been a Sunday morning. She’d woken up early, brewed a cup of coffee, and prepared to curl up in her reading nook for a few hours, like she did every Sunday. She’d run errands and cleaned the house the day before. The following morning, she would be back to her job as an assistant at the nearest town’s bookstore, unstacking new deliveries and returning misplaced books to their designated spots. Every day of the week had its fill of responsibilities, except for Sunday. Sunday was for relaxing.
But everything after brewing the coffee was a confusing fog. Scraps of memories and sensations taunted her. She’d been driving, but she couldn’t remember why. She’d entered Banksy Forest. Beyond that was a blank slate.
Clare used the walls and furniture for balance as
she made her way to the windows. She was laboriously slow. Every step was an effort, and when she finally reached the wall and rested her weight against the window ledge, she was breathless.
She pulled back the curtain. The window reached nearly to the ceiling but was only about as wide as her shoulders. Dark metal divided the panes. She looked for a latch to see if she could open the window and climb through, but its supports only allowed it to open a few inches. She would need to find a way to break them if she wanted to use the windows as an escape.
Clare leaned closer to the window and shivered as cold air rolled off the glass. She looked down to check how far away the ground was and discovered she was much higher than she’d expected. The shrubs poking through the snowdrifts looked miles away. She had to be on the third floor, at least.
Steeling herself against the cold, Clare pressed her cheek to the glass to see along the building’s length. One wing curved away in the distance. The house was immense—there had to be hundreds of rooms.
Everything about this is strange. I’ve never seen or even heard of a house this large. Where am I? Her eyes burned, and she rubbed her hands over them to quell the tears.
When she looked straight ahead, she could pick out small shapes amongst the endless white. One looked like a cottage. Others might have been greenery—trees or shrubs, she wasn’t quite sure. And far in the distance, a massive dark shape, like a giant wall, ran across the horizon. It was barely visible, but as she watched it, she thought she could make out the tips of pine trees.
Is it… could it be possible… that it really is Banksy Forest?
The door clicked, and Clare shrank back into the curtains. Dorran paused in the doorway, a tray held in his hands, then he nodded at the chairs and table spaced around the fireplace. “Come and get warm.”
Clare watched the door as her companion nudged it closed behind him. She tried to draw strength into her voice. “Can I have my phone, please?”
“I didn’t find one with you.” Dorran placed the tray on the coffee table. “Everything of yours is on that bench.”
“Then… do you have a phone I could borrow?”
“I am afraid they won’t work.”
She looked for signs he might be lying, but she couldn’t read him.
He lifted his shoulders into a shrug. “It is as I said earlier. I tried to call for an ambulance. I have continued to try since then. The lines are down.”
She wasn’t ready to believe him. If she could just get a phone, just try calling Beth—
Wait. I remember…
It was just a flash, but she thought she saw herself going through those motions in the car, dialling a number and growing frustrated when the call wouldn’t connect.
Who was I calling? Marnie? No… Beth. I remember calling Beth. The snow was disturbing the signal and disconnected us. I tried to call her back because she would worry if I didn’t.
Beth was worried. Worried because…
The memory danced away before Clare could grasp it. She had a vague sense of deep, crushing unease, as though they had heard very bad news. It felt like something out of a nightmare. Maybe it was a nightmare, a terrible dream she’d had while in the stranger’s house, and she was conflating it with reality.
Dorran was watching her, standing beside the table, patient but expectant. The scrutiny felt too intense, and no matter how thick the dressing gown was, it didn’t seem thick enough. Clare couldn’t bring herself to meet his eyes. “Bathroom?”
Wordlessly, he motioned to the wall beside the fireplace. A door sat there, so shrouded in shadows that it had been nearly invisible.
Clare hobbled around the room. She tried to keep her back straight and her gait as steady as possible. It seemed like a bad idea to let him guess how weak she really felt. She made it to the door and slipped through, acutely aware of his eyes following her until she was inside.
The bathroom was relatively modern, at least. Every surface of the white tiles and expensive white porcelain shone. Another door in the opposite wall told her the bathroom served a second bedroom as well. Clare crept to the bathtub and sank down to sit on its edge. Her body ached. Her head ached. And emotionally, she felt broken.
Clare opened the dressing gown and checked the bandages on her abdomen. The white cloth was tinted pink. She clenched her teeth as she unwrapped it. Her nerves sparked with fresh pain as the fabric peeled off. Breathing heavily but trying to keep silent, Clare examined the injury. Three cuts, long and nearly parallel, ran across the left side of her abdomen. What caused this? Glass, maybe?
She visualised sitting in the driver’s seat of the car as it crashed. The fractured windshield would hit her face, her shoulders, and her arms, not her stomach. That would be protected by the steering wheel and its airbag. She might have anticipated blunt trauma from an impact, but there was no sign of that. Only long, angry red gashes. Clare rewrapped the bandages with unsteady fingers.
I bet a knife could do this.
Nightmarish images of organ harvesting danced behind her eyes, and panic sent tremors down her back. But she didn’t think that was what had happened. The red scores were too shallow. She closed the dressing gown’s flap and tied it securely.
Her view from the window had only shown one direction, but from what she’d seen, there were no other houses nearby except the cottage, and its windows were dark and empty.
She lifted her chin to stare at her reflection in the mirror opposite the bath. Her hair was tangled and oddly clumped. She felt around the matted area and found it was still tacky with dried blood, though not as much as she would have expected. Dorran must have tried to wash it out for her.
Clare would have given anything to speak with Beth, even for just a moment. She was more than a sister—she was the closest thing Clare had to a mother. Nearly a decade older than Clare, she’d taken on her care after their parents passed away. Bethany worried endlessly, but any time Clare was faced with a bad situation or an impossible choice, Beth was always the voice of reason that guided her to the right solution.
She itched for her phone—or any phone. The stranger, Dorran, had said his didn’t work.
Can I trust him?
The closed door separating her from the strange man felt too flimsy. If he wanted to keep her isolated or trapped, cutting off her contact with the outside world would be the first step. Clare tried to imagine where her phone might be. If the stranger had taken it, she would probably never see it again.
She fought to retrieve her last memory. She’d been driving as she talked to Beth. The phone had been in the cup holder. That was where she always put it.
If she had crashed, the impact probably would have jarred it free. Maybe Dorran really hadn’t found it. Maybe it was in the back of the car or hidden under the seat.
She chewed on the corner of her thumb. Dorran said she had been in the room for two days. The phone’s battery would be almost certainly dead, and she didn’t have any cables in the car to recharge it.
But there might be another alternative. The phone wasn’t the only item hidden in her car. She still had the little black box in her trunk. He couldn’t have found that, surely.
She ran her hands over the bandages on her stomach. She was weak, but the forest had been visible through the snow, which meant it wasn’t too far away. I can make it. As long as I can get outside, I can make it.
Clare’s eyes drifted to the bathroom’s second door.
Chapter Four
Clare moved quickly. She turned on the sink’s tap. It gurgled and choked, then finally, a splatter of freezing water fell into the basin. Clare crossed the bathroom and opened the second door. Like she’d thought, it revealed another bedroom. Hers had been decorated with grey-and-blue wallpaper. The new room was painted all in red.
The running tap would buy her a few minutes, but if she was silent for too long, Dorran would check on her. She couldn’t afford to waste time.
Her feet were bare, though. She could deal with the cold for
a few minutes, even cope with being underdressed, but she didn’t think she could wade across a field of snow then walk through the forest without shoes… at least not without slicing up her feet.
The new bedroom was almost a mirror of hers. A coat hanging on the back of the main door told her it was probably in use. The lights were off, and she didn’t want to risk wasting time or drawing attention by hunting for the switch. The bathroom’s light was strong enough to work by. She wrenched open the wardrobe door. It was full of men’s clothes, and, like she’d hoped, several pairs of shoes were lined up on the floor.
She assumed they were Dorran’s. They would be miles too big for her, but she could deal with that.
She pulled out the thickest pair—boots that went up to her knees—and tied the laces as tightly as they would allow. Her mental clock was ticking down. She kept one eye on the bedroom door and the other on the bathroom door as she worked.
Her dressing gown was thick enough to keep her warm indoors, but it would be useless outside. She grabbed one of the jackets from the closet and pulled it on over the top. Then, trying not to let the new boots make too much noise, she moved to the main door and cracked it open.
Outside was quiet. Clare listened for a moment, waiting for any sign of movement, and when it remained still, she pushed the door fully open.
The hallway was just as opulent as the bedroom had been, with plush carpet, decorated walls, and light fixtures every few feet. None of the lights were on, though. The bathroom’s bulb didn’t reach far. She could see a glow coming from under a door a little farther down the hall—her own bedroom, most likely. She pulled the jacket tighter, rolled her feet to keep the boots from thudding too awkwardly, and set out into the shadows, guessing a direction.
As the gloom grew thicker and harder to parse, she became less and less oriented. Her legs were gradually remembering how to walk, but her energy was failing. She was breathless by the time she found the stairs at the end of the hall.