Land of the Living Read online

  He was lifting me off the ledge again. My toes buzzed with pins and needles and my legs felt as if they did not belong to me any more. They were stiff, like sticks, or not like sticks, like twigs that might snap at any moment. I stumbled and lurched and he held on to my arm to keep me upright. His fingers dug into my flesh. Perhaps they were leaving bruises there, four on top and one underneath. I could tell there was a light. It was dark grey not black inside the hood. He dragged me along the floor, then said: "Sit. Bucket."

  He didn't bother to untie my wrists. He tugged down my trousers himself. I felt his hands on my flesh. I didn't care. I sat. I felt the metal rim under me and behind my back. I curled my fingers round it and tried to breathe calmly. When I'd finished, I stood up and he pulled up the trousers again. They were loose on me now. I took a kick at the bucket and sent it flying. I heard it hit his legs and tip. He grunted and I launched myself blindly in the direction of the grunt, screaming as hard as I could with the rag stuffed in my mouth. It didn't sound like a scream, but a shallow croaking noise. I hurtled into him, but it was like running into a solid wall. He put up an arm to stop me and I brought up my head and butted him in the chin. Pain filled my head; there was red behind my eyes.

  "Oh," he said. Then he hit me. And hit me again. He held me by the shoulder and he punched me in the stomach. "Oh, Abbie," he said.

  I sat on the ledge. Where did I hurt? Everywhere. I could no longer tell which bit of me was which. Where the pain in my head stopped and the pain in my neck began; where the cold in my legs became the cold in my body; where the taste in my ulcerous mouth became the bile in my throat and the nausea in my stomach; where the sound ringing in my ears became the silence packed in around me. I tried to flex my toes but couldn't. I twisted my fingers together. Which fingers belonged to my right hand and which to my left?

  I tried the times tables again. I couldn't even make it through the two times table. How was that possible? Even tiny children can do the two times table. They chanted it in class. I could hear the chanting inside my head but it didn't make any sense.

  What did I know? I knew I was Abbie. I knew I was twenty-five. I knew it was winter outside. I knew other things too. Yellow and blue makes green, like the blue summer sea meeting the yellow sand. Crushed shells make sand. Melted sand makes glass; water in a glass tumbler, ice chinking. Trees make paper. Scissors, paper, stone. There are eight notes in an octave. There are sixty seconds in a minute, sixty minutes in an hour, twenty-four hours in a day, seven days in a week, fifty-two weeks in a year. Thirty days have September, April, June and November but I couldn't finish that one off.

  I mustn't sleep. And yet I slept, falling into a shallow, muttering dream. Then I woke with a jerk because he was there beside me. There was no light this time. And no water. At first he said nothing, but I could hear him breathing. Then he began his muffled whispering in the darkness.

  "Kelly. Kath. Fran. Gail. Lauren."

  I sat quite still. I didn't move at all.

  "Kelly. Kath. Fran. Gail. Lauren."

  It was a shuffling drone. He repeated the five names over and again, and I sat there, with my head hung forward a bit as if I was still asleep. There were tears sliding over my cheeks, but he couldn't see that. They stung. I imagined them making tracks down my skin, like snail tracks. Silver.

  Then he stood up and left and I went on crying silently in the dark.

  "Drink."

  I drank.

  "Eat."

  Four more spoonfuls of sweet sludge.

  "Bucket."

  My name is Abbie. Abigail Devereaux. Please help me, someone. Please.

  Nobody will help me.

  Yellow butterfly. Green leaf. Please don't fly away.

  He slipped the wire around my neck almost with a kind of tenderness. For the third time, or was it the fourth?

  I felt his fingers around the neck checking the position. If I was thinking about him all the time, then I must always be in his mind. What did he feel towards me? Was it a kind of love? Or was he like a farmer with a pig that must be kept penned and fed in the days before it is slaughtered? I imagined him in a day or two coming in and tightening the wire around my neck or cutting my throat as a weary duty.

  When he was gone, I began counting again. I did countries this time. I walked along a hot sunny street in Australia counting the houses. It was raining as I climbed a winding medieval lane in Belgium. It was hot in Chad. Cold in Denmark. Blustery in Ecuador. Then at number 2,351 in a long, tree-lined avenue in France I heard a door close outside, footsteps. He had been away for about five hours forty minutes. A shorter time than before. He was anxious about me. Or his time away varied at random. What did it matter?

  More of the gruel fed to me with a spoon. Not as much as before. I wasn't being fattened. I was being thinned while being kept alive. The bucket. Carried back to the ledge.

  "You're feeling tired," he said.

  "What?"

  "You're not talking as much."

  I decided to make the effort once more to be bright and charming and strong. It was like dragging an enormously heavy sack up a steep hill.

  "Do you miss my talk?" My voice seemed to come from a long way off.

  "You're fading."

  "No. Not fading. Just a bit sleepy at the moment. Tired. You know how it is. Very tired. Echoes in my head." I tried to concentrate on what I was saying, but words didn't seem to fit together properly any more. "Can you cope with that?" I said, meaninglessly.

  "You don't know what I can cope with. You don't know anything about me."

  "There are things I know. Things I don't know, of course, more things. Most. I know you've grabbed me. But why me? I'd like to know why me. I don't know that. Soon they'll catch you. They will. I listen for footsteps. They'll rescue me."

  There was his wheezy laughter beside me. I shivered. Oh, I was cold all over. Cold, dirty, aching, scared.

  "It's not a joke," I said, with an effort. "They'll save me. Someone. Terry. I have a boyfriend, you know. Terence Wilmott. He'll come. I have a job. I work at Jay and Joiner's. I tell people what to do. They won't let me go." That was a mistake, to tell him things like that. I tried to force the words in a different direction. My tongue was thick and my mouth dry. "Or the police. They'll find me. You should let me go before they find me. I won't tell. I won't tell and I have nothing to tell. There is nothing to tell, after all'

  "You talk too much."

  "Then you talk. Talk to me now." All I knew was that he mustn't stuff my mouth with a rag and tie a wire round my throat. "What are you thinking?"

  "You'd no way understand what I'm thinking, even if I told you."

  "Try me. Talk to me. We could talk. Find a way out. Find a way for me to go." No, I shouldn't be saying that. Keep thoughts silent. Concentrate.

  A long silence in the darkness. I thought of him sitting out there, a foul, wheezing thing.

  "You want me to talk to you?"

  "Yes. Can't you tell me your name? No, no, not your real name. Another name something I can call you."

  "I know what you're trying to do. Do you know what you're trying to do?"

  "I want to talk to you."

  "No, you don't, sweetheart. You're trying to be clever. You're trying to be a clever girl. You're trying to be, like, all psychological."

  "No. No."

  "You reckon that you can become my friend." He chuckled. "You're tied up and you know you can't escape. You know you can't get at me. I'm in control. The only reason you're alive at this moment is because I want you to be. So you wonder what you can do. You reckon that maybe I'm a sad, lonely man and I'm scared of girls. And if only you can be all friendly with me that I'll let you go. You see, you don't understand at all."

  "I just want to talk. Too much silence."

  "You see, some of them just snivel. They're just like an animal that's been half run over and it's flapping around on the road and it's just waiting to be put out of its misery, to be stamped on. And others tried to b
argain with me. Like Fran. She said she'd do anything I wanted if I let her go. As if she had anything to bargain with. What do you think of that?"

  I felt sick.

  "I don't know."

  "Gail used to pray. I heard her when I took the gag off. Didn't do her any good."

  "How do you know?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "How do you know it didn't do her any good? You don't know."

  "I know, I promise you. Funny, isn't it? Some whined, some tried to be all seductive. You did a bit of that. Some prayed. Lauren, she fought and fought and never let up. Had to do her in quick. It all amounts to the same thing in the end."

  I wanted to cry. I wanted to sob and sob and be held and comforted and I knew that was the one thing I must never do. Then I would be the flapping wounded animal and he would stamp on me.

  "Is this real?" I said.

  "What?"

  "These women."

  That coughing laugh.

  "You'll be with them in a few days. Ask them yourself."

  He went away but things seemed different. He was back again in a few minutes as if he couldn't stay away. He had thought of something else. He had inserted the gag and now he removed it again. I felt his lips near my ear, wet wool and sweet meaty oniony breath.

  "One day soon," he said, 'and you won't know in advance, I'll come in here and I'll give you a piece of paper and a pen and you can write a letter. A goodbye letter. You can write to anybody you want. I'll post it. You can say anything you want, unless I don't like it. I don't want any moaning. It can be like a will if you want. You can leave your favourite teddy bear to somebody or whatever. And then when you've written the letter, I'll do the deed. Did you hear what I said? Yes or no."

  "Yes."

  "Good."

  He pushed the gag into my mouth. He was gone.

  I wondered what Gail had prayed for. Did I love life as much as those other women? Kelly, who cried for her lost life. Fran, who desperately offered herself. Lauren who fought. Gail who prayed. For what? Maybe just for peace. For release. I doubted that I was as good as Gail. If I prayed, it wouldn't be for peace. I would pray for a gun and my hands untied. Or a knife. Or a stone. Or a nail. Anything to do damage.

  A last letter. No last meal but a last letter. Who would I write to? Terry? What would I say? If you find someone else, be better to them than you were to me. Not exactly. To my parents? I imagined writing a noble letter full of wise thoughts about life that would make everybody feel better. When somebody dies it's important for the people who knew them to find ways of comforting themselves. She didn't suffer. Or, she did suffer, but at least it's over and she is at rest. Or, she showed her spirit to the end. That might make people feel better. Good old Abbie, she managed to crack a few jokes even when she was about to be murdered. What a lesson to us all. What a fucking lesson to us all in how to deal with the problem of being murdered. Pay attention, children. If ever you're captured by a psychopath and he's about to kill you, here's this letter by Abigail Devereaux. That's exactly the spirit in which to be murdered. Brave and forgiving and at the same time not taking herself too seriously.

  But I'm not wise and I'm not forgiving and I'm not brave and I just want it all to go away. People talk about what you would have for your last meal as if it were some little game like your desert island discs. Well, if there were a last meal I wouldn't be able to swallow it. And if there's a last letter a brilliant bit of writing to sum up my life -I won't be able to write it. I can't write a howl in the darkness.

  When I was first here, all that time ago, I was tormented by the thought of ordinary people a few hundred yards or a mile away. People in a hurry somewhere, wondering what they were going to watch on TV tonight, feeling for their change, deciding what bar of chocolate to buy. Now it all seems far away. I don't belong to that world any more. I live in a cave deep down in the earth where light has never penetrated.

  When I was first here I had a dream about being buried alive. It was the most frightening thing I could think of. I was shut in a dark box. I was pushing at the lid of the box but the lid couldn't be opened because above the lid was thick, heavy earth and above the earth was a stone slab. It seemed the most frightening thing that my brain could think of. Now I think of it and it doesn't seem the most frightening thing at all, because I'm already in that grave. My heart is beating, my lungs are breathing, but it doesn't really matter. I'm dead. I'm in my grave.

  "Did I fight back?"

  "What are you on about?"

  "I don't remember. I want you to tell me. Did I come peacefully? Did you have to force me? I was banged on the head. I don't remember."

  The laugh.

  "Still trying that on? It's so too late for that. But if you want to play that game, all right, yeah, you did fight back. I had to smash you up a bit. You fought worse than anybody. I had to give you a few thumps, quieten you down."

  "Good."

  "What?"

  "Nothing."

  Do the knee-ups. Don't give up. One, two, three, four, five. Have to do ten. Try. Try harder. Six, seven, eight, nine. One more. Ten. Horrible sickness rising up in me. Don't give up. Breathe, in and out. Never give up.

  All right, then. My last letter. It's not to anyone. Well, maybe it's to someone who doesn't exist, whom I might have met in the future. Like writing a diary. I used to write a diary when I was a teenager, but it always had this embarrassing tone. It made me into a stranger, and one I didn't particularly like. I never knew who it was for, or to.

  Where was I? Yes. My letter. When did I last write a letter? I can't remember. I write lots of emails, and every so often I send postcards, you know the kind of thing, the rain is raining or the sun is shining and I'm thinking of you, here, now. But real letters, well, it's been ages. I had a friend called Sheila who went and lived in Kenya in her gap year, doing voluntary work and living in a thatched hut in a small village. I wrote her letters every so often, but I never knew if they were going to arrive, and I discovered when she came home that only a couple of them ever did. It's a strange feeling you get when you're writing to someone and not knowing if they'll ever read it. Like those times when you're talking to someone, really talking, I mean, and you turn round and they've left the room. What happens to those words and thoughts? Things that don't ever arrive.

  My mouth felt horrible, full of blisters. My gums were soft and swollen. When I swallowed, it was like swallowing poison, the taste of the rag and the taste of my own decay, so I tried not to do it, but it was very hard.

  I sat in the dark, I twisted my hands together. My nails had got longer. One of the facts that everyone knows is that nails go on growing after you've died, but I've heard or read or been told that's not true. It's just the skin shrinks, or something. Who told me that? I couldn't remember. There's a lot I'd forgotten. It was as if things were falling away, one by one, the things that bound me to life.

  The letter. Who would I leave my things to? What have I got to leave? I don't have a house, or a flat. I've got a car that's rusty round the edges. Terry tuts when he looks at it, but in a pleased kind of way, as if he's saying, "Women!" A few clothes, not so many. Sadie can have those except she's bigger than me after having a baby. Some books. A few bits of jewellery, nothing expensive, though. Not much. They could all be sorted out in a couple of hours.

  What was it like outside, I wondered. Perhaps it was sunny. I tried to picture sunlight falling on roads and houses, but it was no use. Those pictures had gone the butterfly, the lake, the river, the tree. I tried to put them in my mind, but they dissolved, wouldn't hold together. Maybe outside it was foggy instead, all the shapes shrouded. I knew it wasn't night yet. At night for six hours, five hours he put a noose round my neck and left.

  I thought I heard a sound. What was it? Him, padding towards me? Was this it, then? I held my breath, but my heart pounded so fast and blood roared round my head that for a moment all I could hear was the rushing inside my own body. Could you die of fear? No, there was
no one there. I was still all alone on my ledge, in the dark. It wasn't time yet. But I knew it would be soon. He watched me. He knew I was coming apart, bit by bit. That was what he wanted. I knew that was what he wanted. He wanted me to stop being me, and then he could kill me.

  And I watched myself blindly in the darkness. How can the brain know that it is failing, the mind feel itself disintegrate? Is that what it is like to go mad? Is there a period of time when you know, with the bit of you that is going mad, that you're going mad? When do you give up and, with a ghastly kind of relief, let yourself fall into the abyss? I imagined a pair of hands gripping on to a ledge, hanging on, and then very slowly the fingers relax, uncurl. You fall through space and nothing can stop you.

  The letter. Dear anyone, help me, help me, help me, I can't do it any more. Please. Oh, Jesus, please.

  My eyes stung and prickled. My throat was sore, sorer than usual, I mean. As if there were bits of grit in it. Or glass. Maybe I was getting a cold. Then I would gradually stop being able to breathe. All blocked up.

  "Drink."

  I drank. Just a few sips this time.

  "Eat."

  Four spoonfuls of mush. I could barely swallow.

  "Bucket."

  I was lifted down, lifted back up. I felt like a rubbishy plastic doll. For a brief moment, I thought about writhing and kicking, but I knew he could squeeze the life out of me. I felt his hands holding me around my ribcage. He could snap me.

  "Noose."

  "Piece of shit," I said.

  "What?"

  "You. Rubbish. Piece of shit."

  He hit me in the mouth. I could taste my blood. Sweet, metallic.

  "Garbage," I said.

  He stuffed the gag into my mouth.

  Five hours perhaps, and some minutes. How many was it last time I counted? I couldn't remember any more. Then he'd come back. Perhaps he would be carrying a piece of paper and a pen. Outside, it must be dark now; probably it had been dark for hours. Perhaps there was a moon, stars. I imagined pricks of light in the black sky.