NOW
* * *
two. Troy
* * *
OW! A cascade of pain volley-punches me awake. With a groan, I slowly open my eyes. Damn it! My wrists, my shins, knees, neck, even my backside ache. The jabs and stabs of pain overlap and keep coming. And my head … That hurts worst of all. My head is in a vice and, with each beat of my heart, the vice tightens – gripping, squeezing. I stare up at the ceiling, its sickly yellow-brown colour telling me nothing, before closing my eyes again.
Where the hell am I?
I remember walking back to school—
‘Troy! Wake up, damn it. Troy—’
I try to sit up, only to groan again as the vice tightens its grip on my skull in response. The pain is now so acute I feel physically sick from it. I lie back again and, swallowing down the bile now filling my mouth, concentrate on my breathing. In. Out. Rinse. Repeat. Rolling in the direction of the voice, I try to focus on the person lying on the ground over a metre away.
‘Libby?’ I whisper, stunned.
A juggernaut of memories slams into me. A dusty, dirty grey van … The doors at the back bursting open … Two men wearing animal masks – a rabbit and a tiger – jumping out … an arm round my throat … struggling for air … wrists cable-tied behind me, the plastic biting into my skin … a filthy cloth pushed into my mouth, a canvas bag pulled over my face … being dragged backwards and thrown into the rear of the van … my head hitting something hard. Pain ricocheting around my skull as the van pulls away at speed.
I stare at Libby as more jarring memories crash through my mind. I relive them all.
Being dragged out of the van by my feet, the canvas bag pulled further down my face so I can’t see where we are. I try to run, though I can barely make out shapes through the bag over my face. A crippling punch to the side of my head comes like an explosion inside my skull. I drop to my knees. Flashing lights strobe before my eyes. While I’m dazed and doubled over, my phone is removed from my trouser pocket, my smart watch from my wrist. I’m half hauled, half carried into this place – wherever and whatever this place might be. Though my face is still covered, I know I’m being taken inside some kind of building. Sounds echo differently. The very air around me morphs into something stale and rank. I buck and kick and twist like a snake shedding its skin, but the two men carrying me never loosen their grip.
Moments later, I’m dragged down a couple of steps. The canvas bag is pulled off me, then there’s a brief feeling of weightlessness as I’m pushed and fall the rest of the way down the stairs. The crack of my knees as I hit the hard floor sends a flare of white-hot agony shooting through my body. There’s a sharper crack as I pitch forward and my head hits the floor.
Then … nothing.
Until now. Here I am, hurting and with many more questions than answers. All I know for certain is that Libby and I are in the same place. And where’s that? A world of trouble I didn’t volunteer to visit. I force myself to try sitting up again. Every muscle braced and clenched, I push myself upright.
‘Libby, what – and I sincerely mean this – the actual bollocks is going on?’
‘We’ve been snatched off the street and brought here. Now you know as much as me,’ Libby replies. ‘Hang on. Let me try to get you free, then you can do the same for me.’
For the first time, I notice that Libby’s wrists are bound with a cable tie in front of her. I try to stand, but my head immediately starts to swim again. All I can do for the next few moments is kneel as if in prayer and wait for the pounding in my head to lessen. She shuffles over to kneel behind me. Though her wrists are bound, I feel her hands moving over the ties around my wrists. I’m so glad to see her, hear her, feel her fingers against my skin. I’m not alone.
‘Are you OK? Did you … did you faint or something in the van?’ I ask, recalling how still she was in the van after we were abducted.
‘No. A cloth smelling of something sweet was put over my mouth and nose,’ says Libby. ‘That’s all I remember until I woke down here. Now the skin round my mouth and nostrils is burning.’
‘They drugged you?’
‘Must’ve done.’
‘Why you and not me?’ I ask.
‘No idea. Ask me another,’ says Libby.
‘Ow! I don’t know what you’re doing back there, but you’re making things worse,’ I tell her as the cable ties tighten.
‘Patience.’
I’m about to yell at her for trying to slice my hands clean off my arms when suddenly I’m free.
‘My turn,’ Libby says.
Vigorously rubbing my wrists, I turn towards her and start pulling at the tie around her wrists.
‘Not like that, you idiot,’ she says. ‘You have to stick your fingernail in the recessed bit and push it down, then you can slide the tie out. Don’t you know anything?’
Glad to hear her? I’m beginning to rethink that one. I frown, my fingers still on her wrists. Shaka on a unicycle! Even when I’m doing her a favour, she still manages to make it sound like the other way round.
‘I’m doing my best.’
Libby sniffs. ‘Do better. You’re hurting me.’
Breathe, Troy …
If it wasn’t for the fact that I might need her help to get out of this room, I would’ve happily left her wrists tied. Would it kill her to be a little more pleasant? After a lot of prodding, poking and pulling, I finally manage to loosen the cable tie enough for Libby to slip her hands out. The look she casts at me as she rubs her wrists tells me she is less than impressed with my efforts. What does she want? My fingers aren’t as slender as hers and besides, when fastened, these bastard cable ties are designed to stay that way.
Now that Libby is free, I take a proper look around. We’re in a dark, dank, dingy room filled with crates and boxes. And it stinks of things dead or slowly dying. A single light bulb hangs from a frayed wire on one side of the room, close to a wooden staircase that’s seen better days. The bulb’s sickly yellow light barely makes it to the nearest walls, casting the rest of the room in lurking shadows and creeping darkness. A windowless, confined space. A walk-in coffin with a light bulb. Not good. I swallow hard.
‘Where exactly are we?’ I ask again, failing to disguise the tremor in my voice.
‘I don’t know,’ says Libby. ‘How long were we in the van?’
‘About thirty minutes, maybe more, maybe less,’ I reply.
‘Well, as an answer, that’s worse than useless.’
Thanks, Libby, but I already knew that. I didn’t exactly have a chance to set the timer on my phone.
The pain in my head slowly begins to subside – thank God. I head up the rickety wooden stairs.
‘I wouldn’t bother,’ Libby calls after me. ‘Whoever kidnapped us locked and bolted the door when they left.’
I try the door anyway, turning then rattling the door handle. I push against the door, then shoulder it. It doesn’t budge. I kick it a couple of times. It barely moves. It sure as hell isn’t made of MDF or chipboard. The ache in my toes and my bruised shoulder informs me that it’s solid wood, no messing about. I head back down the stairs.