Dangerous Games

Chapter 16 part 1

She hesitated. I took her arm, rather roughly I admit, but it was time for firm, decisive action. I'd pussy-footed around long enough. I mean, I knew she was scared – hell, we were both scared, terrified in fact – but we couldn't just sit there comforting each other for the rest of time. We had to get out! It was that simple.

I pulled her arm again. "Come on. We're going." This seemed to rouse her from her stupor and she stumbled to her feet. My mind was racing, racing with what strikes me now as being meaningless nonsense. How long was the journey going to be? Should we pack something to eat? Oh no, that was a stupid idea. Should we wrap up warm? Why was my brain producing this rubbish? Must have been the shock of seeing that monster out of the window.

As I got to my feet, I was careful to keep my head lowered and my gaze averted from the window. I didn't want to cast a single look anywhere near the view outside, even for a split second. Perhaps if I couldn't see the cross, hiding and pulsating in the far distance, it wouldn't be able to see me, and we would stand a chance of being able to get out of the flat alive.

One good idea did bubble up to the top of my thought tank. One of the rooms I had passed on the way into the kitchen had what looked like a knitting basket in it. A knitting basket meant balls of wool, and that meant a thread which could be stretched out along the corridor. Like that character from the Greek myth, it would be our link to the only firm point that we had – this flat – and it might just help us to retain our bearings as we walked along that seemingly endless corridor.

"Look," I said, "Stand there a moment. Don't move. I'm just going to get something."

I slid into the room, and felt around in the dark shape that I'd taken to be the basket. My hands touched wool. Thank goodness, a stroke of luck at last, our first one since arriving in this God-forsaken place! I grabbed what seemed to be the largest ball in the basket and made my way back to Anita, who had obeyed me and hadn't moved.

"Great," I said, feeling my spirits lift slightly for the first time since I could remember. "Look. This is a ball of wool, and I'm going to tie one end tightly to the door handle. Then we unroll it as we walk along. If we get lost, then we just have to feel for the thread and we can use it to find our way back here."

"Where are we going?"

"To the lift shaft – and home! Just fix your mind on that. Soon you'll be back with your family in Kingston and all this will be nothing more than a bad dream. Then you'll forget all about it. That's a promise."

Not for the first time I'd promised something I wasn't sure I could deliver, but what could I say? Besides, I was doing the best I could, and I don't think anyone else could have done better.

Outside the flat, I felt around for the door handle in the splintered fragments of the door. No luck. Of course, there was no door handle, was there! Perhaps my brain was succumbing to the fog that swirled round this place. Okay, what about the letter box then? More luck finding this one, but it wobbled when I touched it and I certainly wasn't going to trust what might prove to be our one and only lifeline to it.

"No, that's no good. I'll tie to the next door along. Stand there." The policeman in me was starting to reassert himself. I felt my way along the corridor to the next door along and scrabbled for the letter box on that one. Great, that one was nice and firm, and there was a small protrusion on it – ideal for tying round. Another stroke of luck. I was beginning to think that we might just survive this after all. I tied the knot as firmly as I could, then tied it round the protrusion again just to be on the safe side. Never has a piece of knotted thread been more important than at that moment – two people's lives may have depended on it.

"Right," I explained. "Now, we're going to walk together down that corridor, holding hands while I release the wool. I know it'll feel stupid holding hands with someone you've only just met, but no-one's going to see us, and we have to stick together."

It did indeed feel awkward, walking along in the dark hand in hand with a thirteen-year old girl, particularly as I was a police officer, but as I'd said, there was no-one else there. Normally what I was doing might even be grounds for suspicion if not arrest, and certainly ridicule from my colleagues. However, the rules of the Elevator Game had promised us that we were the only two people existing in this world, so the ordinary rules didn't apply. Anyway, I no longer cared – I just wanted to get out of there.

Doors came and went in the gloom as they had done before, and I paid out the wool gradually, desperately hoping that it wouldn't run out before we reached our goal. As if reading my mind, Anita spoke up.

"What are we looking for?"

"The lift door, of course." I snapped before adding "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it to come out like that. Look, the only way back to our world is the lift, so we need to find the lift door."

"Shouldn't we be looking out for it?"

She was right, of course. After what had seemed like hours of seeing one shadowy door replacing another in the periphery of my vision, my mind had slipped into neutral. The lift door would probably appear as just another dark rectangle on the wall, a little deeper than the apartment doors perhaps, but not enough to stand out.

"Yes, yes. Okay. I'm sorry, I dropped the ball there. Tell you what. Stretch your left arm out as far as you can go."

I saw her form blur slightly in the gloom as she moved away from me. My grip on her right hand tightened slightly.

"Ow, that hurts."

"Sorry. I didn't mean to. I mean, erm, I was afraid of losing you. Can you feel anything?"

"Yes, I can feel the wall. It's cold."

"Good. I can feel this wall as well. It's just as I thought. Between us, we're wide enough to stretch across the entire corridor. Here's the plan. We'll walk more slowly, and every time we come to a doorway, give it a feel. If it's a normal door, it'll feel like painted wood, but if it's the lift shaft, it'll feel cold and metallic."

"All right."

We started walking again, more slowly this time, with our hands outstretched. We must have looked a real sight – or would have done if the lights hadn't been turned down so low and there'd been anyone else in that world to see us. Every so often, one of us would ask the other to stop, so that we could feel a suspect opening, but they never turned out to be the lift door. Unwinding that ball of wool while feeling for doorways with the same hand was also inconvenient, but such matters counted for nothing. Before much longer, we were at the window at the end.

"Don't look out," I warned. "It's okay. All we have to do is turn round and walk the other way." I released her hand. "I'm going to tie the rest of the wool round my waist. There's most of the ball left, which is good. It means we weren't that far away from the window when we started."

"Do we still have to feel for doors."

"Yes, I think so. We don't want to overshoot and end up at the other window. I tied the wool as best I could and stuffed the ball into my trouser pocket. "Okay, let's go."