The darkness was immediate and total.
It swallowed me whole.
I stared into the blackness and told myself to breathe.
Told myself not to panic.
Which was impossible, obviously, because I’d been trained to panic down here. It had been conditioned into me.
An unpleasant, tacky coolness swept over my skin, slick and waxy.
I could hear nothing now except an inexplicable clicking and it took me a moment to recognize it was coming from my teeth. They were chattering.
The blackness could only have lasted two or three seconds but it seemed to last much longer.
Then my eyes began to adjust.
Not to the blackness. That was too complete.
But to the faint glimmer of light around the rim of the door.
It was flaring and pulsing.
Flames, rasped a voice inside my head.
And then the first whiff of smoke.
It was faint but plasticky. A warm scent on the air.
Using the glimmering light, I traced around the outline of the door with my fingertips until I settled on a spot partway up from the door handle, where I judged the external bolt to be.
Wedging the point of the chisel into the hairline gap between the edge of the door and the door frame, I then felt around with my other hand until I could tell that the head of the hammer was lined up with the bulbous end of the chisel handle.
I pulled the hammer back and tapped it forwards.
And hit my thumb.
I sucked air and adjusted my grip and tapped again.
This time I struck the chisel and the backlit gap widened fractionally with a crack.
OK.
I set my feet wide, stretched my neck to one side, drew back the hammer and was about to swing again when a new electronic noise blared out.
It was piercing, shrill, maddening.
The smoke alarms.
They’d been hardwired into the circuitry, but they also had back-up batteries in the event of a power cut.
I grimaced and slammed the hammer forwards.
And missed.
Almost.
But I caught the edge of the chisel with a glancing blow and it pinged sideways, dropping from my grasp and tinkling in the blackness near my feet.
No.
I crouched as the alarms screamed on, scrabbling around.
It took me a few panicky seconds until I found the chisel again, then I rose up, slammed it into the door frame and held it firmly in place, partly by the handle, partly by the blade.
Another whiff of smoke reached me.
I swung again with the hammer and hit my thumb again.
It hurt but I didn’t care.
I was already swinging again.
And then again.
Sometimes hitting.
Sometimes not.
But hitting enough, finally, so that the blade jutted forwards in my hand, slicing my palm.
It stung but it had to.
Because I wasn’t going to let go of the chisel again.
I wasn’t going to be stuck down here.
‘Fuck!’ I screamed, my eyes streaming, my ears ringing, and this time the hammer struck harder, plumb on the base of the chisel, and the entire thing drove forwards, spitting fragments of timber, emitting a dull, chinking sound of metal striking metal.
The bolt.
I swung my hips to one side, giving me more space to work with, and I slammed the hammer against the end of the chisel twice more.
A splitting sound.
A metallic spring.
A low clattering, clunking noise of the bolt falling onto the kitchen tiles, jumping and bouncing around on the other side of the door.
Had anyone heard? Had Sam?
After using both hands to wrench the chisel free from the door jamb and drop it behind me, I raised the hammer up by my shoulder and reached for the door handle.