Blackness gave way to a blurry blue light and the room warped as it came into focus. The storm raged outside; rain was beating down on the crumbling walls of the asylum and the wind howled through the broken chimneys.
Lil shook her head to clear it and a dizzying headache awoke. Her arms and legs were numb, her shoulders were sore and her ears were filled with the sawing sound of heavy breathing. ‘Abe!’ she hissed. ‘Abe, wake up!’
The breathing sound stopped, snorted and then continued.
‘Nedly?’ Lil whispered. ‘Can you hear me?’ Then louder, ‘Nedly?’ There was no answer. They were alone.
She and Abe were bound fast together, sitting back to back on old hospital chairs, their hands and feet tied with nylon rope.
‘Abe!’ Lil knocked the back of her head against his.
‘What the …!’ He awoke with a gasp and immediately began thrashing about trying to free himself.
‘Abe! Stop wriggling. There’s no point; the ropes are too tight.’
He went still. ‘Where are we?’
Lil could just make out a blue square shape that looked like a window with bars.
‘It’s some kind of cell, I suppose. I think he released a sort of sleeping gas and then when we were out cold, he tied us up.’ There was a sickly sweet smell on the air like medicated icing sugar. A flash of lightning bleached the room white and in that split second Lil saw something that turned her blood cold.
A cat’s cradle of red string criss-crossed the room, from the floor to the ceiling. At the centre of it, the threads tied to his pink, thin arms, was Wool, with the tiny bells in its hands, its eyes white and empty. Lil and Abe were ensnared below, like a couple of flies in a spider’s web.
‘If we touch any one of those threads it will wake Wool up and he’ll call to Owl.’
Abe gave a humph, the sort of sound that inferred, now look at the mess you’ve got us into.
‘Don’t blame me,’ said Lil.
‘Well, it wasn’t my idea to come here.’
‘No, but you didn’t have to tag along,’ Lil pointed out.
‘You asked me to come!’ he huffed. ‘Anyway, this is my case, remember? If anyone is tagging along, it’s you.’
‘So, it’s your case now – well, you wouldn’t have got very far without me and Nedly.’
Abe took a deep breath. ‘We’re not getting anywhere sitting here and arguing about it.’
Lil pursed her lips, thought about not replying and then said, ‘You’re the one that’s arguing.’
Abe sighed. ‘Can you work the ropes loose on your side?’
Lil tried to move her wrists but only succeeded in rubbing some skin off. She tried to wiggle her shoulders back and forth but she was held fast.
‘They’re too tight.’
Abe spent a minute twisting his arms round, trying to loosen the ropes tying his wrists. There was a slap as something hit the ground.
Lil tried to look around. ‘Abe?’
‘I managed to get one hand free,’ he said flatly.
Lightning flashed again and Lil saw Abe’s prosthetic hand on the floor, palm upwards.
‘Great,’ she sighed.
‘Hang about. I might be on to something.’ Without his prosthetic hand the rope was looser. Abe worked it down over his wrist to freedom and then slipped the other hand out of the slack.
The next flash came with a ripple of thunder and Lil involuntarily glanced up. Wool was still hanging there with the same blank expression, staring emptily at her.
Abe reached for Lil’s hands and began fumbling to untie the knots that bound them.
‘Ouch! Ow! Stop!’ said Lil. ‘You’re nipping me.’
‘Sorry,’ said Abe, not sounding that sorry, ‘but we’re in a kind of life-or-death situation and this is my driving attachment, not my unpicking-knots attachment.’
‘You have an unpicking-knots attachment?’
‘I adapted it from a crochet hook.’
Lil swore and gritted her teeth. ‘Ow!’ Tears came to her eyes.
‘Almost got it – there!’
She wriggled her hands and the ropes loosened. Her fingers prickled uncomfortably as the feeling came back to them.
Abe chuckled triumphantly to himself. ‘Right, let’s undo these cords that are tying us to the chair and then our feet and then … Cripes, this is tricky.’
He was trying to pinch the ones round himself with his pincers. Lil was plucking at hers with her fingertips – neither one of them were getting anywhere and they hadn’t even started on the ones round their ankles.
‘The angle’s all wrong.’ Abe cursed. ‘OK, I’ve got another plan. We’ll both lean to the left and topple the chairs. Once we’re crumpled up against the floor we should get a bit of slack on the rope; if we can wriggle free, then I can get to my Swiss Army hand and extract the letter-opening attachment. I can saw through the ties round our ankles and then we just have to negotiate our way through the tangle of threads without waking that egg thing, and get to the door.’
‘What do we do when we reach the door?’
‘We’ll worry about that when we get there. Now, ready? On three. One, two, three!’
The chair stayed firm.
‘What’s wrong with this thing? Is it bolted to the ground? Give it another go,’ he growled. ‘On three – and this time really swing out to the left. OK?’
The chair wobbled. Abe sat up straight. He snorted.
‘I meant my left – we both lean to my left.’
‘Well, it’s my right.’
‘Thank you for pointing that out. Now – let’s both lean – towards the door.’
‘OK.’
‘On three.’
The chair fell straight away and landed with a smack on the floor.
The linoleum was coated in a sticky dust and smelt of old wax polish and disinfectant. Lil tried to raise her head but gave up and let her forehead collect a grey rim of dust as she inched her way out of the ropes that bound them. Once she was free, Abe was able to slip the ropes off his shoulders and reach for the letter opener. He located the torch from his mac pocket and grudgingly handed it to Lil. It took him several minutes to cut the last of the ties with the slender knife, until finally they were free.
Slowly getting to their feet, they rubbed the life back into their legs and then nervously moved forward. Lil shone the torchlight back and forth to pick out the string that ensnared them, but it became harder to navigate safe passage as they neared the wall, where the threads hung low and were nailed into the floor like guy ropes.
Using a mixture of crouching, jumping and limbo techniques they had almost made it when a single thread caught and knocked Abe’s hat to the floor. It wasn’t a hard tug, but it was enough. The sound of the tiny bell cut through the air like a fairy death knell, a soft tinkle tinkle. They both froze as they heard it.
‘Almost made it,’ muttered Abe, retrieving his hat and frowning angrily at it.
‘It’s too late to worry,’ Lil told him with more confidence than she felt. ‘Let’s just go for it. We have to get out of here, and fast.’
Lightning flashed, temporarily blinding them, and a second later thunder split the air. The storm was overhead now and the temperature in the room had already started falling.
‘He’s coming,’ whispered Lil, trying to keep the panic out of her voice as part of the web where the hat had caught came loose and drooped over Abe, looping over his neck and shoulders. She tried to free him but her hands were clammy and her fingers couldn’t get a grip without pulling hard and disturbing Wool again. The air was full of whispers and she could feel the hairs on the back of her neck rising.
They heard a creak and then doors started banging along the corridor, juddering open and closed with unnatural speed.
‘Leave it!’ shouted Lil over the noise. ‘We’ve got nothing to lose. Just drag it!’
The banging stopped. The torch flickered out.
They froze in the total darkness.
‘Don’t move,’ whispered Abe.
A floorboard creaked.
‘It’s two against one,’ said Abe. ‘We can take him between us.’
And do what with him, Lil thought and she shivered as an icy breath whispered across her cheek and her stomach somersaulted.
They stood motionless, barely breathing. A peel of high-pitched laughter rang out; it seemed to come from all around them. The little bells began tinkling frantically, as if someone had plucked all the threads at once. Thunder crashed, lightning blinked on and off, and through the glaring strobe effect Lil could see Wool staring impassively back at them, its pink chipolata arms waving.
‘Go!’ cried Abe. ‘Now!’ And they scrambled to the door. The broken threads fell around them, snagging on their legs. Wool was pulled to the floor and dragged behind them, tinkling.
Abe finally kicked himself free, grabbed the door handle and began furiously pulling at it.
‘It’s no good – we’re trapped. It’s locked from the outside.’
‘Nedly!’ Lil murmured to herself. ‘Where are you?’
Ice crystals were spreading across the glass. It was freezing but beads of sweat were still glistening on Abe’s brow.
‘Grrr-aah!’ Abe bellowed as the door knob came off in his hand.