CHAPTER 44 #2
Immi took our phones, I know that, and she smashed Benji’s. But perhaps ours still exist here somewhere. I turn on my heels, abandoning the door and the freedom behind it, moving through the kitchen as fast as I can. I yank out drawers and pull open cupboards.
I speak with a false lightness. “Hey, Benji, how are you doing in there?”
I can hear his laboured breathing.
“I’m searching for our phones or something to open the front door, eh?
” I say, my voice rising over the sound of the drawers opening.
I’ll take anything at this point, a spatula, a knife, anything that will get us out of here.
But there’s nothing. This house is all for show.
Nothing lies beyond the surface. My nails worry at my cuticles.
I run back to the front door and try it one more time, to find it still refuses to open.
My eyes land on the top of the stairs. Everything in my soul tells me not to go up there.
Immi could be up there. But I’ve not been quiet, and she’s not come down.
Plus, I can’t get out, and I can’t find anything else, so there’s no other option.
As I toy with the idea of throwing something through a window, I hear the sound of keys in a door. From my vantage point, I can see the back door. It opens slightly, the sound of humming coming in as it does.
Immi.
She walks through the door as though the past few hours, possibly days, have never happened. There’s a tote bag over her shoulder and sunglasses on her head. I don’t catch her face, but she backs into the door, dragging something. Pressing my body hard against the wall, I try to shrink away.
“Benji, are you still with us?” she calls, her voice playful.
I need to hide. The front door behind me is no use, so I head to the stairs, trying to keep to the edge and reduce the sound.
I tiptoe onto the first step, steadying myself and pressing my back against the wall.
Praying that at this angle, she can’t see me.
Her voice carries, sending a shiver across me. “What the hell?”
It doesn’t sound like her. There’s a weird energy to her words that makes me want to run.
I take the stairs two at a time, keeping my back firm against the wall. Luckily, no pictures of memories line these walls.
The top of Immi’s head comes into view as I look down from the bannisters.
She’s rounding the corner of the living room.
She’ll soon find Benji propped up, hopefully alive, but she knows he didn’t leave the doors open, so she’ll be coming for me.
Every part of my body screams as I make it to the top of the stairs.
Unsurprisingly, the place is bare up here, too, but it catches me off guard.
There are four doors off the hallway. What could have been my bedroom, Nate’s room, the bathroom and my parents’ room.
Every door is shut, so I have no idea what lies behind them, but if this house replicates my old home, then the bathroom is the furthest from the stairs.
I falter for a moment. Which room will haunt me the least?
“Oh, Ella?” I hear Immi’s voice from the bottom of the stairs.
She’s moving to the basement. My decision is made for me, and I choose my parents’ room at the front of the house.
The room is decorated as you would imagine a show home to be, with a bed, a wardrobe and a mirror.
A tall dresser is pushed against the left wall, where a small yellow suitcase and a black duffel bag sit open, clothes smattered around them.
I take a few breaths as the door closes with a soft click.
There’s nothing but the sound of my short inhales.
“Oh, Elsie?” My name comes singsong from somewhere below me.
I press myself against the door, sweat dripping down the divot of my spine.
I’m tired, God, I’m tired. I take in the contents of the room.
The dresser isn’t big, but it seems to be solid wood, so it’ll work for what I need it for.
It makes a heavy sound as I drag it across the carpet, giving away my location but securing my safety.
A fire sears through the muscles of my arms when I’m done, but I’ve managed to pile a selection of things in front of the door.
The pillows won’t add much protection, but they’re better than nothing.
The silence from the other side of the door is horrific.
I busy myself near the window, scanning the outside.
There’s a yellow hue coming from a nearby street light, and the beautiful colours of dusk are fading.
I have two options: jump from the window and pray I don’t break anything, or find something useful in here.
I try the duffle. It’s crammed full of clothes; soft, expensive materials of shirts and dresses.
It’s all Immi’s stuff. A shiver runs through me as an idea forms of what she’d do with this stuff once we were all out of her way.
“Elsie,” Immi says playfully, the bang of a door following with a clang. She’s in Nate’s room, my first choice, just right of the stairs.
I push the thought aside and dig deeper.
My fingers hit paydirt in a side pocket: a small black phone.
It’s a basic one without any smart features, but an old-school keyboard that lights up when I turn it on.
My heart stops as a gentle tapping comes from the door.
I take a step back, the phone whirring to life in my clammy hand.
“Do you really think a closed door will stop me?” There’s anger in her voice. I eye the makeshift barricade and pray that it holds. Would it be better to have myself against the door as extra weight?
“Hello, emergency services.”
There should only be so many times in a person’s life that they hear those words. A finite number until you have reached the end and are guaranteed safety from the world. But life isn’t fair like that, and knowing there is someone at the end of the phone gives me so much joy.
“I need help. Someone is trying to attack me,” I whisper, but my words still echo in the near-bare room.
“Let me in.” The door thwacks hard against the dresser.
“Where are you?” the call handler asks.
I press my face against the window, trying to decipher where I am. With no GPS or address, I have no idea. I could stick my head out of a window and hope someone was passing by, but that’s unlikely.
“I–I’m not too sure where I am.” Emotion wells in the back of my throat. I could be anywhere in a three-bedroom terrace house with the same layout as my childhood home.
“Can you see anything else?” the Irish woman says.
“You do like games, don’t you, Elsie?” Immi says, and there’s another thud as the door pushes open. I spring back. It hits the dresser table, but it’s gaining traction.
“Move,” Immi grunts from behind the door.
The dresser buys me some time. Looking over my shoulder, I scan the street below, looking for anything.
A street sign or a van. But it’s no use.
There’s nothing but the lined bushes of a narrow country lane and an expanse of grass ahead.
This isn’t my home. I don’t know where I am.
I look at the phone in my hand. Does this have GPS? Can they track me? Fear swells.
“I–I don’t know where I am. It looks like the house I grew up in, but it’s not. We’re in the country, I think. We could be near where I live, in Ashton. But I–” Panic catches my words.
God, I don’t know where I am. Tears begin to swell as my fingers clutch the phone. There’s a thud from the door, and I realise that she’s ramming it. My body jumps with each movement, torn between watching Immi gain entry and clinging to the windowsill.
I sprint to the dresser, pushing my body full against it in the hope that the weight staves her off. There’s another loud thud, and the wall shakes.
“Do you know how you got there or who is trying to hurt you?” The woman’s voice is so calm, but it does nothing but worry me. Don’t they practise for this? To be calm so the last thing you hear isn’t just the panic in your voice.
I open my mouth, but another thud pushes through the furniture. This one has force behind it and jolts my shoulders forward.
“Imogen Athean.” I say her name from the bottom of my throat, my feet digging hard into the carpet to find some traction.
Immi, Imogen, Genie, my tormentor. She’s been everything and everyone over these last few years, and now she’s going to be the last person I see. From behind me, I hear Immi’s groans, the sound of splintering wood and the ominous dragging of the furniture pushing forward.
“Please, hurry! She’s right outside the door.
I’ve tried to barricade it, but it’s not working.
” My voice is raspy. My muscles scream as the panic winds its way up my throat.
I try to steady it with practised exhales but each one catches on a sob.
I need to find a weapon to fight her with.
I could pull the door off the wardrobe and use the wood, perhaps?
Or break apart the dresser. I wish I had my knife, or the gun, or anything that would make this easier.
“We can’t do anything without a location. Can you tell me what you see?” the call handler is saying.
I stumble from the floor, dragging myself up to the window, my fingers clawing onto the ledge. I’ve been here before, battered and beaten, trying to stay conscious. My body recognises the luxurious pull of unconsciousness, and I grind my teeth against it. I shake my head, yanking the window open.
The cold hits me first, and then the smell. There’s a tang in the air, salty, but also thick? Fresh and crisp, yet indulgent. A memory stirs with the smell.
“Brighton!” I scream. I lean further out of the window, recognising that smell.
A mix of salt, water, cooking chips and warm pavement after it rains.
Immi told me, over a large glass of wine, with tears in her eyes, about a new place that Benji had got.
What did she call it? A poky little pink place.
She was angry at him for making the investment without telling her.
It didn’t have a sea view, and the previous owner had painted it pink in line with the other colourful houses on the street.
She hated that. We drove down to Brighton to see it and made a day of it.
Ate chips on the pier, drank wine overlooking the ocean and never made it to her small house for all the fun we were having.
“We’re not near the coast, but I can hear the sea. We’re near a field.” A field could be anywhere in this city, but the more I talk, the more my brain starts to connect. My legs wobble and beg me to sit down, but I brace myself against the window frame. Behind me, the dresser works forward.
The handler says something, but my attention is on the door. The dresser and door are slowly inching across the thick carpet, Immi letting out a guttural roar. I turn fully, searching for something to fight with. Immi doesn’t intend for me to live. Jude is gone, and Benji isn’t far behind.
Something connects in my brain as the dresser topples towards the floor, landing with a thump that rips through the house.
I’m tempted to lean from the window and scream for help, but who would do anything if they heard it?
Immi steps across the threshold, the look in her eyes telling me that even if someone came, they’d be too late.
My eyes widen, Immi’s face clicks the memory back together as the smell fills my nostrils.
I push my body back out of the window and scream into the phone.