She tried to stand. Her legs threatened to buckle again, and she clutched at the bed’s headboard to stay upright. Her body seemed to have forgotten how to walk. She had to gradually coach her legs through the process of balancing and carrying weight, and even then, she staggered when she tried to step forwards.
A table along the closest wall held a collection of odd items. As Clare passed it, she recognised her shirt. She grabbed it, but as it unfolded, she saw dark stains spread across the blue fabric. She touched them, but they were dry.
She flipped through the rest of the items gathered on the table, including her jeans, her shoes, and her bracelet. Everything was tinged with blood, even the jewellery.
Again, she tried to remember what had happened. She pictured her home, the little rural house she’d bought for a bargain and fixed up. It had been a Sunday morning. She’d woken up early, brewed a cup of coffee, and prepared to curl up in her reading nook for a few hours, like she did every Sunday. She’d run errands and cleaned the house the day before. The following morning, she would be back to her job as an assistant at the nearest town’s bookstore, unstacking new deliveries and returning misplaced books to their designated spots. Every day of the week had its fill of responsibilities, except for Sunday. Sunday was for relaxing.
But everything after brewing the coffee was a confusing fog. Scraps of memories and sensations taunted her. She’d been driving, but she couldn’t remember why. She’d entered Banksy Forest. Beyond that was a blank slate.
Clare used the walls and furniture for balance as she made her way to the windows. She was laboriously slow. Every step was an effort, and when she finally reached the wall and rested her weight against the window ledge, she was breathless.
She pulled back the curtain. The window reached nearly to the ceiling but was only about as wide as her shoulders. Dark metal divided the panes. She looked for a latch to see if she could open the window and climb through, but its supports only allowed it to open a few inches. She would need to find a way to break them if she wanted to use the windows as an escape.
Clare leaned closer to the window and shivered as cold air rolled off the glass. She looked down to check how far away the ground was and discovered she was much higher than she’d expected. The shrubs poking through the snowdrifts looked miles away. She had to be on the third floor, at least.
Steeling herself against the cold, Clare pressed her cheek to the glass to see along the building’s length. One wing curved away in the distance. The house was immense—there had to be hundreds of rooms.
Everything about this is strange. I’ve never seen or even heard of a house this large. Where am I? Her eyes burned, and she rubbed her hands over them to quell the tears.
When she looked straight ahead, she could pick out small shapes amongst the endless white. One looked like a cottage. Others might have been greenery—trees or shrubs, she wasn’t quite sure. And far in the distance, a massive dark shape, like a giant wall, ran across the horizon. It was barely visible, but as she watched it, she thought she could make out the tips of pine trees.
Is it… could it be possible… that it really is Banksy Forest?
The door clicked, and Clare shrank back into the curtains. Dorran paused in the doorway, a tray held in his hands, then he nodded at the chairs and table spaced around the fireplace. “Come and get warm.”
Clare watched the door as her companion nudged it closed behind him. She tried to draw strength into her voice. “Can I have my phone, please?”
“I didn’t find one with you.” Dorran placed the tray on the coffee table. “Everything of yours is on that bench.”
“Then… do you have a phone I could borrow?”
“I am afraid they won’t work.”
She looked for signs he might be lying, but she couldn’t read him.
He lifted his shoulders into a shrug. “It is as I said earlier. I tried to call for an ambulance. I have continued to try since then. The lines are down.”
She wasn’t ready to believe him. If she could just get a phone, just try calling Beth—
Wait. I remember…
It was just a flash, but she thought she saw herself going through those motions in the car, dialling a number and growing frustrated when the call wouldn’t connect.
Who was I calling? Marnie? No… Beth. I remember calling Beth. The snow was disturbing the signal and disconnected us. I tried to call her back because she would worry if I didn’t.
Beth was worried. Worried because…
The memory danced away before Clare could grasp it. She had a vague sense of deep, crushing unease, as though they had heard very bad news. It felt like something out of a nightmare. Maybe it was a nightmare, a terrible dream she’d had while in the stranger’s house, and she was conflating it with reality.
Dorran was watching her, standing beside the table, patient but expectant. The scrutiny felt too intense, and no matter how thick the dressing gown was, it didn’t seem thick enough. Clare couldn’t bring herself to meet his eyes. “Bathroom?”
Wordlessly, he motioned to the wall beside the fireplace. A door sat there, so shrouded in shadows that it had been nearly invisible.
Clare hobbled around the room. She tried to keep her back straight and her gait as steady as possible. It seemed like a bad idea to let him guess how weak she really felt. She made it to the door and slipped through, acutely aware of his eyes following her until she was inside.
The bathroom was relatively modern, at least. Every surface of the white tiles and expensive white porcelain shone. Another door in the opposite wall told her the bathroom served a second bedroom as well. Clare crept to the bathtub and sank down to sit on its edge. Her body ached. Her head ached. And emotionally, she felt broken.
Clare opened the dressing gown and checked the bandages on her abdomen. The white cloth was tinted pink. She clenched her teeth as she unwrapped it. Her nerves sparked with fresh pain as the fabric peeled off. Breathing heavily but trying to keep silent, Clare examined the injury. Three cuts, long and nearly parallel, ran across the left side of her abdomen. What caused this? Glass, maybe?
She visualised sitting in the driver’s seat of the car as it crashed. The fractured windshield would hit her face, her shoulders, and her arms, not her stomach. That would be protected by the steering wheel and its airbag. She might have anticipated blunt trauma from an impact, but there was no sign of that. Only long, angry red gashes. Clare rewrapped the bandages with unsteady fingers.
I bet a knife could do this.
Nightmarish images of organ harvesting danced behind her eyes, and panic sent tremors down her back. But she didn’t think that was what had happened. The red scores were too shallow. She closed the dressing gown’s flap and tied it securely.
Her view from the window had only shown one direction, but from what she’d seen, there were no other houses nearby except the cottage, and its windows were dark and empty.
She lifted her chin to stare at her reflection in the mirror opposite the bath. Her hair was tangled and oddly clumped. She felt around the matted area and found it was still tacky with dried blood, though not as much as she would have expected. Dorran must have tried to wash it out for her.