53
This time the cold was like a shell around her.
She pecked at it, picked at it, scraped her nail along it, but it
wouldn’t crack. Her mind couldn’t understand why. It struggled.
Grew weary. The organs of her body were shutting down, she could
feel them inside her, one by one, going to sleep. Abandoning her.
The cold. They hated it. It was only when she became aware of a
sudden warmth between her legs that she woke up.
Her eyes opened. To total blackness. She tried to
churn her thoughts into action, but all they wanted was sleep.
Where had all this blackness come from?
Things came to her in bits and pieces. A pain in
her leg. Her head sore and her cheek on something hard. Icy skin.
Her knees up under her chin. Gradually it dawned on her that she
was lying on her side curled up in a tight ball. Her hand risked
stretching out into the darkness but it couldn’t reach far because
there were cold metal walls all around her. Her heart thundered in
her ears.
Where was she?
She tried to sit up. It took three attempts. And
when she’d done it, she felt worse. Not because of the pain in her
leg that felt as if someone had kicked it. Nor because her head
started to spin inside a crazy kaleidoscope, lights flashing behind
her eyes, reds and blues and fierce brain-searing yellows. No, it
was because she touched the ceiling one inch above her head and
knew where she was. She was in a box. A metal box.
They put me in a metal crate.
Three months, perhaps more.
Chang An Lo’s words.
Her stomach spasmed with fear and she vomited, sour
acid in her throat. It sprayed over her knees, and the sticky
warmth of it recalled to her sluggish mind the earlier warmth
between her legs. Her fingers explored along the metal base under
her. It was wet. She had peed.
Her mind went white. She started to scream.
She was fighting her way through cobwebs. They
stuck to her eyeballs, and a spider with a red speckled body and
yellow pincers ran up inside her nostril.
She opened her eyes. And immediately wished herself
back in the spider nightmare again. This was worse. This was real.
Her body struggled into a crouching position and her hands inched
along the four walls to discover the dimensions of her miniature
cell. Long enough to sit up but not to straighten her legs, wide
enough to touch both walls with her elbows at the same time. An
inch of headroom when she was seated in a hunched sort of position.
She then examined her own body. Her knees. They smelled. She
remembered the vomit. The stink of stale urine scored the membranes
of her nostrils, a lump on the back of her head, and high on her
left thigh another one the size of a saucer. But no broken skin. No
broken bones. No missing fingers.
It could be worse.
How? How in God’s name could this devil’s rat hole
possibly be worse? How?
She could be dead. Think of that.
The cold didn’t increase. It didn’t improve but it
didn’t get worse. That was something. She worried about the
constant shivering. It was using up so much energy, draining her
reserves. She was exhausted already. Or was that the fear?
Her mind kept blanking out.
She’d be in the middle of trying to work out how
long she might have been a captive in the dark, when her mind would
suddenly slip away from her. Blank out totally. That terrified her
almost as much as the box. Brain damage? From the blow to the head.
Please, no, not that. Or was it sheer terror? Her mind
escaping.
To find a tiny scrap of warmth she wrapped her arms
around her knees and huddled tight, stroking her shins for
comfort.
Breathe. In. Hold for the count of ten. Out. Slow
and smooth. In. Hold. Count. Out.
Control. Keep control. Concentrate.
Her thoughts felt like glass. The slightest touch
and they shattered. Panic stalked her. Sprang out at her from the
dark corners when she wasn’t looking.
‘Chang An Lo,’ she murmured, and was astonished at
the reassurance the sound of her own voice gave her. ‘How did you
keep yourself sane?’
She’d worked out three things. One was that she’d
only been inside Box - she thought of it as a creature that had
swallowed her whole - for less than a day. Otherwise she’d have
peed more than once, though admittedly she’d not had anything to
drink. Don’t think of that. Her mouth was dust-dry and her
throat parched. The screaming hadn’t helped. Stupid that. Wasting
strength. Anyway. Nor had she done . . . her brain shied away from
the prospect . . . done more serious toilet matters. So. Less than
twenty-four hours then.
The second thing she’d worked out was that she must
be underground. In a cellar maybe. Or a secret dungeon. It was the
temperature that made her decide that. It never varied. A constant
cold, never warmer by day or icier at night. Not that she had any
idea whether it was day or night inside Box. Just dark. And more
dark. Cold. And more cold. No sounds either. If she’d been anywhere
aboveground there would be sounds. Not this dead weight of
silence.
Third thing. There must be air holes. Must be. Or
she’d be dead by now. Her fingers started the search.