Mace Crindle Plant
December 3, 4.00 a.m.
Every few seconds a drop of water hit the ground. In the brick cell, the hollow drip of the water on the wet floor echoed, and then silence returned. Silence and absolute darkness.
Denise woke. It was pitch black. She was lying on her back. Where was she? She lay still for a moment. The events returned to her mind. Her heart thumped and thumped. The evening with Tom. The shower. The American Devil. Fear. Horrible fear. A knife slashing at her. She sat upright. Was he watching her? She couldn’t hear a thing, just the dripping water. No, wait. There was something. There. What was it?
A mechanical sound.
Yes. A faint mechanical sound in the distance. She couldn’t make it out, though. It was so dark. So very, very dark. It was hard to focus, to get your bearings. There was no point of reference. She closed her eyes. That was better.
Her hands reached down. She was naked. She had bandages on her arms. She felt bruising on her lower back as if she had been dragged over something. Perhaps down stairs. And she was stiff all over. Arms and shoulders and legs. Very stiff.
She opened her eyes again. Still darkness. So much darker when you open your eyes. So dark it swallows you. It seemed to swarm about her. A darkness within the darkness. She listened. The mechanical noise had stopped. She was lying on a bed of some sort with a coarse blanket. A blanket like they used to give you at camp. She turned her head and smelled it. The dusty mouldy smell overwhelmed her. I may not be able to see but I have a sense of smell. I have memory. Yes, Denise, think about camp. Tell me what you can remember.
Past images swarmed through her mind. The drips fell again and again and echoed against the hard cold walls.
Her hand reached out to her right, but there was only space. She reached out to her left and felt a wall. Her fingers touched it gently. Cold. She felt the groove of mortar. A brick wall. Smooth. The water dripped again. The smell of damp rising from the stone floor filled her nostrils.
Slowly, she was piecing things together. She was in a building. A cold, wet basement. There was something mechanical in the building. A dripping tap somewhere close. The brick wall suggested something industrial. But it might be somewhere that people were near. That comforted her.
She remembered all the tricks her father had told her. She had never imagined that his years in prison would be of use to her. All those hours and days spent chatting away across a scarred blue table.
‘Daddy,’ she said aloud into the darkness, ‘I will be all right, won’t I?’
She heard his voice in her head as clear as if he was right next to her.
‘Course you will, my little sparkler. I carry you in my cell and whenever I’m scared I light you up and you burn so brightly and so fiercely that I can see for miles and miles and miles. My fantastic sparkler.’
She could light a fantastic sparkler any time she wanted to. She would, too. When she needed to. And she would see everything and see for miles and miles and miles.
‘What’s the worst that can happen?’ he’d asked her.
‘I don’t know.’
‘The worst is they could hurt you, but the most hurt they can do to you is make you afraid. There’s no worse hurt than afraid. Hurt doesn’t last, but fear has you to himself all night long.’
Yes, she remembered it now. There’s no worse hurt than afraid.
Denise clenched her fists. She shouted at the top of her voice: ‘I’m not scared of you!’
Out of the near darkness, close enough to terrify, came a low, long whistle. The sound echoed around the room and into some spaces beyond.
The fear came rushing back.
Someone was with her down there in the dark.