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But she would not fall for it. Carl’s plan – whatever it was – was not going to work.
The tapping started on the wall. She counted the taps and assembled the message.
I DONT KNOW WHY WE ARE HERE
He would, of course, say that. But now she had an inkling of what was going on, she felt a little more in control. She tapped her answer.
HOW DO I KNOW YOU ARENT LYING
She deciphered the reply.
WHY WOULD I LIE
HOW WOULD I KNOW
There was a pause before the taps began again.
I DONT KNOW BUT I WANT TO GET OUT OF HERE
She wasn’t sure what to do. She wasn’t sure if she could believe him. She was about to reply, to ask how they could get out – which might reveal his hero rescue plan – when she heard a sound that threw everything back up in the air.
It was the low growl of an engine. It grew louder as it approached the lake house, then she heard the sound of tyres on the rough track. There was the thud of a car door closing, then footsteps approaching the house, and the sound of the front door opening.
She heard footsteps in the corridor, followed by the creak of the other bedroom door opening.
Carl – if it was him – shouted out, his cry muffled by the gag. There was no reply from whoever had entered the house, from whoever had checked on the other bedroom. There was only the sound of the door closing and footsteps moving down the corridor towards her room.
The footsteps paused outside her door. Moments later it opened, slowly. A head, the face obscured by a hood hanging low over its eyes, appeared around the door frame. It was there for only a few seconds, long enough to check that she was still in the room, and still secured, and then it vanished, the door closing shut behind it.
Mary cried out, trying to say No please come back, let me go free, but the only sounds she could make were guttural, inarticulate cries.
The footsteps receded in the direction they had come. The front door opened, then closed, then she heard twigs snapping in the driveway, and the roar of an engine.
She listened, in dismay, as he drove away.
The man in the other room began to tap out a message.
DID U SEE WHO THAT WAS
Her reply was only one letter.
N
The Neck Bone’s Connected to the Backbone
The problem was simple. All the mystery, all the strangeness, all the unanswered questions, meant nothing. Mary could solve them all, but she would still face one insurmountable obstacle.
There was nothing she could do.
Nothing to alleviate the pain in her scalp and shoulder, nothing to assuage her panic and anxiety, nothing to set free her aching hands.
And nothing to ease the growing pain and stiffness that radiated from her neck through her spine to her hips and into her legs. She was reminded of a child’s nursery rhyme. She wasn’t sure she could remember the actual words, but they went something like: The neck bone’s connected to the backbone, the backbone’s connected to the hipbone, the hipbone’s connected to the leg bone, and on and on.
Whatever the words were, they certainly felt true now, written in the agony radiating through her body.
And there was nothing she could do to contact Ryan or her children, no way of knowing whether they were still alive.
She felt oddly calm. Her entire focus was on trying to ignore the pain; the problem was that the more she told herself to ignore it, the worse it seemed to get.
