She reaches the window, tapping her short fingernails on the glass. We headbutt the glass; we want to come in.
She smiles at the eagerness. Her teeth are straight and white. She can’t be much more than thirty. Aside from her injuries, she is healthy. Her cheeks look hot with relief and excitement at seeing us.
Except of course she has not seenus. She only sees Blue.
She says something to him, unintelligible, then struggles with the latch on the small thin window to let us in. With a shudder, it opens inward, the external steel bars blocking it from opening outward.
We slip through, where no human could, and she quickly shuts the window behind us.
A chill shudders through me, at the realization that I was right the first time I saw this. I see as Blue scans it that the room doesn’t appear to have a door handle to leave via. Everything in the room looks purpose-built, a hotel room, but one you would never want to stay in. It looks like something from one of the Netflix documentaries Ben used to put on—a bunker of some kind.Where is this place? Which house is this beneath?I lean even closer to the screen.
We drop down onto the floor of the basement room. As I had noticed before, the carpet is made up of office-grade tiles, easy to clean, easy to remove.
We wander the space, the woman letting us roam. I study the walls as we pass them.
The outline of a door is visible on the far-left-hand wall, but there is no handle on this side.There is no handle.
Around the door are nail marks, and savage dent marks in the plywood, as if something has been repeatedly smashed up against it.
We turn back to her as if she has said something. She is down on the floor, a pillow beneath her, her features soft, as she beckons us over. She is talking, her lips unreadable, but her expression calm and kind.
It is only when we are face-to-face with her, at eye level, that she seesusand shoots up to sitting.
Open-mouthed, she lifts Blue and stares directly into the camera lens, at first confused, then I see understanding drop in. Her eyes widen, her pupils flaring, as, with a sharp intake of breath, she bolts up to standing, setting us down.
She is pacing, fast.
She lurches back to us and lifts Blue again, the camera trained directly at her eye height, as she stares into it and mouths, “Oh my God!” her lips shaping the words, her eyes filling with emotion. “Oh my God! Oh my God.” Then an almost frantic, “Hello?Hello?Can you hear me?”
She is shuddering with emotion, then seeming to realize Blue’s discomfort, his back legs, claws out, rising into the shot. She delicately returns him to the floor and fumbles off his collar.
We are suddenly free of Blue’s neck and flying through the air in her hands.
She places us down on the table, angled on her. She adjusts us, fingers shaking, her breath coming in high, tightly panicked snatches, her eyes flicking constantly, feverishly, to the locked door.
She is talking fast, too fast. I have to scrub back to decipher from her lips what she is saying.
“If you can see this:help me. You need to help me.”
I slam the laptop shut and I am on my feet now, too, pacing just as she did.
Oh my God. The words on the collar that first day were real. She scratched them into Blue’s collar. Blue found her. She needs help.
I grab my phone and dial the police, but then stop. What do I say? I don’t know who she is or where she is.
I place the phone back onto the coffee table and open the laptop again.
The woman is inspecting the camera, then seems to realize thereis no mic. She places us back on the table, and, raising a hand, signals for us to stay,wait.
I hunch over the screen, waiting, my hand to my mouth.
I watch as she hobbles away to the edge of the small room, and pulls up a loose carpet tile.
She returns to the table with a splintered pen and some squares of toilet tissue.
She lays them out methodically on the tabletop, blowing out calming breaths as she tries to stay focused, every now and again her eyes flashing up to the closed door.
She bends and writes, her hand moving delicately, with intense determination.
