ELENA SMELT THE DAMP BEFORE she felt it on her skin. It settled on her shoulders like a fine mist, and made her shudder with cold. The woman had run ahead, into the pitch dark, while Elena stopped to catch her breath. Her arms flung out, collecting the wet rock with her fingertips, and she recoiled in shock at how quickly the jagged walls had closed in on her. She leaned forward and placed her hands on her thighs, still gasping for air, then straightened slowly, deliberately. She stared straight ahead.
Footsteps, receding. The sound coming from everywhere and nowhere, bouncing off the walls, echoing in her ears.
Elena hesitated, turned to look back. A chink of light from the doorway, the faintest sliver, was the only sign of where they’d come from. They had run down the narrow steps to the basement with the wooden door in the far corner. At one point, she could have reached out and touched her, taken a handful of long black hair, but she’d stumbled on the uneven floor and lost her footing. When she’d righted herself, the woman had disappeared down the tunnel and she had no choice but to follow. Elena felt for the walls again, guiding herself forward. The smell was of gunpowder and dank earth and ancient basalt stone hidden by an impenetrable darkness. She took another step, wavered. Fifty metres back and she’d be safe once more.
“Are you there?” No reply. The only sound she heard now was her heart beating in her ears. Her legs gave out.
“Elena,” said a high voice.
“Please come back,” she said, scrambling in the dirt, struggling to a seated position. Her knees were wet. Water? She rubbed at them, felt something viscous, sticky. No. Not water, blood. The jagged path had cut her palms too. There was a rank smell, different from before. Everything was happening at once. Noxious gases seeping up from the earth’s core made her eyes water. She couldn’t stay here, had to move. She coughed and felt for the wall, levered herself up. “I know you can hear me. I just want to talk.”
“Elena,” said the voice again.
And with that, she was running. She ran until she saw a faint phosphorescent light at the end of the tunnel. As she grew closer, a great crack appeared in the rock, like an opening carved by pickaxes and hammers, against mother earth’s will, against all the odds. At its centre, a brilliant emerald iris. Elena slowed to a walk. Her eyes weren’t working properly, still thick with irritation, and she didn’t see the woman until she was almost upon her. She put a hand out to find the wall.
“Why did you run away?” she choked. “I just wanted to talk.”
The light from the iris grew bright. Elena held out a hand, palm upturned. The figure, bathed now in a halo of emerald green, took a step forward. Smiled. Elena saw the dark eyes, the line of the nose. The cowlick at the right temple, the long elegant neck. She gasped, could not comprehend it. Her legs were going again, giving way where she stood.
She was looking at herself. But no. No – The image morphed before her very eyes. In an instant, light turned to dark.
It was him.
It was Anderson.
Elena was up. She rubbed her eyes, caught sight of Tommy watching her from the armchair opposite, one side of his face soft in the lamp light. “Oh, I fell asleep,” she said groggily.
“Are you OK?” he asked. “You were calling out to someone. I was about to come and wake you.”
Elena smiled weakly. “Uh, sorry. Yes. Yes, I’m fine. It just seemed so real, the dream.”
He cast her a sceptical glance. “You sure?”
She nodded. “A lot on my mind, that’s all.”
“I’m going to sleep in the spare room,” he said. “You should probably get some rest.”
She didn’t move. They sat for a few moments in silence.
“Daniel?” she asked.
“I put him in my room. Poor little bloke – he was dead on his feet.”
“Right.”
“Go back to sleep, love.”
She felt her head dip, as heavy as a stone. She didn’t want to sleep – not with him there in her head, as though having flooded her every waking thought he now haunted her dreams too. Her hands were clenched, aching.
“Talk to me, Tommy,” she said.
“About what?”
“Anything. Nothing. Just until I fall asleep.”
He came over to the bed and slid down beside her, the way she did with Daniel every night. He held her.
“I’m so scared,” she said. It was the first time she’d said it out loud, and the words seemed to take on a life of their own, the utterance giving them more power. Weight. Her head was on Tommy’s shoulder. But she didn’t catch his reply, asleep again the moment the last word tumbled out.
The following morning it was drizzling, an undecided kind of rain pattering at the window. When Elena woke it took her a moment to register where she was. Daniel had snuck in beside her sometime during the night, and was lying on his side, one arm flung loosely across her waist.
“Time to get up, bub,” she said.
Daniel blinked tiredly.
As he was rolling over, she shook him gently. “You have to get ready for school.”
“I don’t want to go,” he said.
She rested a hand on his chest and looked down at him, her eyes studying him. “Are you worried about him?”
He shrugged.
“Nothing to worry about,” she said with false cheer. “Your dad won’t find us here, and he won’t go to the school because he knows he’s not allowed. You just go and play with your friends, OK?”
Daniel sniffed. If he believed her it was hard to tell, but he got up and dressed, while Elena set the table and made breakfast, trying to give him some semblance of their normal routine. Tommy had already left for work – Back by seven, said the note on the fridge. But nothing was the same. Daniel may not have known the details of her plan, but he knew something was coming. She saw the way he watched her even more assiduously now, as though trying to read her thoughts, and she knew that in her rush to reassure him that everything was just fine, her edginess, her fear, were on full display.
They got to the school just as the assembly bell rang.
“Off you go, darling. We’re already late.”
Daniel cast her a sceptical glance. He seemed so reluctant that she was tempted to let him stay home, but she had things to do.
“I love you,” she said, as if that might offer some consolation. Then, “When you get out we’ll go for ice-cream.”
He nodded, his expression grim.
“I don’t want to leave you,” he muttered.
In that instant Elena saw how completely she had misread the situation: Daniel’s reluctance to go to school had less to do with his father, and more with a fear of leaving her alone. Without ever saying so, he had taken on the role of protector, and the weight of that knowledge filled her chest with a crushing guilt. She leaned over to kiss him on the forehead.
“Nothing is going to happen to me, Daniel. You just go and have fun and I’ll be here when you get out.”
She pushed the door open. Then he slid out and disappeared through the gate, a blue shirt swallowed by a sea of children.