CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Her head was hurting. Stirring, she groaned; her shoulder was hurting too and there was something wrong with her hand. Consciousness returned piecemeal, the overwhelming sensation is that of pain. She shifted and raised her hand to her head. Oh my God, it was throbbing. And her hand was wet, and something smelled bad.
She forced her eyes open, squinting in the dim light, disoriented. Where was she? What was going on?
‘Trisha?’ she called, her voice croaky and unfamiliar to her ears. She rolled over onto hands and knees and the ground gave way under her. She kicked out, thrashing wildly. Dear God, she was underwater. Water swamped her mouth. She choked and coughed, but only swallowed more water. She twisted, frantic. Blinded and choking she struggled to kick upwards. Which way was upwards? Something touched her hand and she grabbed at it, a reflex.
It held onto her, and she felt herself being pulled upwards and in a moment her head was breaking above the water. She coughed and heaved in desperate lungfuls of air. While whoever had hold of her grabbed her more firmly and hauled her out of the water.
She lay on her side, chest heaving, still coughing. Her eyes were tightly closed. She concentrated on breathing. Her mouth tasted awful, a terrible, brackish, stagnant taste. She spat out the slime that seemed to coat everything and leaned over suddenly and vomited.
She groaned. Oh shit. ‘Trisha?’ she gasped. ‘Trisha?’ ‘Yeah, I’m here. It’s all right now, you’re okay.’
Michaela shuddered, her whole body convulsing. She opened her eyes and Trisha’s face loomed over her, pale and wide-eyed.
‘Holy shit, that was close,’ Trisha said.
Michaela rubbed a hand gingerly over her face. ‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘Where are we?’ She was lying on some sort of cold hard floor, and her head was in Trisha’s lap.
Trisha’s hand smoothed her hair.
‘You almost drowned, is what happened. If I hadn’t come round right when I did, I hate to think what would have happened.’
She bent over and planted a kiss on Michaela’s cold cheek. ‘But that bit was the good news. We’re in the goddamned pool house.’
Michaela struggled into a sitting position and looked around. The stagnant pool was right beside them and at the sight of it, twisted green with slime and unearthly plants, she wanted to scream.
‘Fuck!’ she said. ‘Tell me I didn’t just fall into that? Oh God, tell me I didn’t’ She leaned over and spat again. ‘Where’s the fucking door, let’s get out of this hell hole. How’d we get here anyway?’
Trisha stood up, a hand to her head, and walked up the stone steps to the big doors. The light filtering through the branches of the trees above the broken dome sent shadows skittering around her feet. Something splashed in the water. Michaela cringed and staggered to her own feet, almost tripping over them in her hurry to follow Trisha out the door.
But Trisha wasn’t opening the door. Michaela’s head was throbbing and her probing fingers found a lump the approximate size and shape of Russia. Why wasn’t Trisha pulling the doors open so they could get out of here?
As if Trisha had heard her, she turned around. ‘They’re locked,’ she said, and her face was even paler, a white blur in the dim light.
‘Locked?’ Michaela gaped at her.
Trisha sank on the top step. ‘We’re trapped in here,’ she said. ‘It was that bastard, Gardener. He found me snooping around the garage and he knocked me out.’ She touched her head. ‘Must have hit me with something, brought me here.’ She looked up at Michaela. ‘Then he must have gone looking for you.’
Michaela was having trouble processing all this. ‘Locked?’ she said again. ‘We’re locked in here?’
Trisha sighed. ‘Try for yourself,’ she said.
Michaela did. She tugged at the heavy doors. They didn’t budge. She pulled back at them, putting all her weight into it. Still no joy. And her head was screaming in pain. She stumbled down the steps and vomited again. A purging of brackish water and foul bile.
She sat down beside Trisha and shivered, finally becoming aware of the fact she was wet from head to toe, her clothes completely soaked. She was cold.
‘We have to get out of here,’ she said. ‘I’m going to die of exposure if we don’t get those doors open.’ Her teeth were chattering.
Trisha looked around the interior of the building they were trapped in. ‘What about the window over there?’ She got up and walked on unsteady legs around the edge to the window, taking care not to go anywhere the stagnant well of water in the middle. ‘My head hurts,’ she complained.
The window was too high. ‘If I stood on your shoulders I might be able to get out,’ she said.
Michaela judged the height. ‘Yeah, and break your neck tumbling down the other side. Not happening.’
Trisha walked back to their seat at the door. ‘What are we going to do then?’ Michaela closed her eyes and tried to stop shivering. She wrapped her arms around herself and felt something pressing against her ribs. Of course! She should have thought of it straight away.
She tugged her phone out of her pocket and held it up in a shaking hand. She passed it to Trisha.
‘You see if it’s working,’ she said. ‘My hands are shaking too much.’ Trisha took it, handling it like something precious. ‘It won’t work,’ she said, even so. ‘It’s had a dunking in the water.’
‘Try it anyway,’ Michaela said.
Trisha wiped the phone on her shirt and pressed the buttons, peered at the display. ‘No,’ she shook her head. ‘It’s too wet.’ She turned it over and began taking it apart. ‘I’ll see if I can’t dry it a bit.’ She removed the battery and began wiping the interior of the phone.
Michaela rocked back and forth, trying to warm up. Trisha looked up from what she was doing and concern creased her face.
‘Take your wet jacket off,’ she said. ‘You can wear mine. It might make a bit of difference.’
‘Then you’ll just get cold too,’ Michaela said through teeth clenched to stop them chattering.
Trisha shrugged. ‘I’m ok. I’m not wet through.’ She took her jacket off and helped Michaela put it on.
The relief was immediate. Michaela watched Trisha fiddling with the phone a moment then cast a wary glance around the building.
‘Where’s our bag?’ she asked.
Trisha looked up. ‘Don’t know. You had it, didn’t you?’
‘Yeah, so it must be here somewhere. The gardener wouldn’t have left it out there.’ She got to her feet and began combing the debris for the backpack. It only took a minute to find. Michaela held it up in triumph.
‘Hot coffee coming up,’ she said.
Trisha only nodded. ‘You wouldn’t happen to have a hairdryer in there too, would you? This phone could do with a bit of a blast to dry it out.’
Michaela sank on the step again. ‘Do what you can anyway,’ she said.
Trisha nodded. ‘I’m kicking myself for not bringing my phone,’ she admitted.
‘But it has no credit on it, so I didn’t see the point.’
Michaela thought about that for a minute then opened the backpack and took out the coffee. ‘We were hard to know we would get knocked out and locked in this place.’ She looked around and shuddered. ‘God I hate this place.’ She looked at the dank pool and cringed. No way had she almost drowned in that water. If they got out of this she was going to need every shot known to mankind.
She poured two cups of coffee. Trisha was cleaning and drying every inch of the phone she could reach. She put it back together and held it up.
‘Here goes nothing,’ she said.