The Girl Below(15)

After we had exchanged places, Mum was above me on the stairs, and I was at the bottom of the group, closest to the water and whatever else was down there. I swung round to face the chamber and breathed in air that was thick and smelled of the earth, as if my face was being pushed into garden soil. Not wanting to take my eyes off the black space, I stepped backward up the stairs toward Mum, but lost my foothold and slid in the opposite direction. The candle flew from my hand and blew out, and for a few seconds, I too was airborne before landing in a puddle of freezing-cold water. From my mouth came a crunching sound, as if I’d bitten down on gravel, and a second later, my jaw exploded with pain. Hot liquid pooled in my throat, and I tried to breathe but gagged. The surrounding water was gritty with sediment and I shivered as it rose over my limbs. I reached for the glasses that should have been on my face, but they had come off in the fall.

I screamed then, a shrill gargle that ricocheted around the stone chamber and echoed back to me, louder and disembodied, as though the sound had come from two people, not just me. I could hear Mum groping toward me down the stone steps, but she had no candle and splashed around in the dark, as good as blind.

“Suki!” she called out. “Where are you?”

Her voice was coming from too far away. Something was wrong. I was on the opposite side of the bunker from my mother, a long way from where I should have fallen. I had been standing right next to her, had only slipped from the bottom step, yet a cavernous space now separated us. I reached for her anyway, and called out—only my words were treacle, slow and thick. The pain that had started in my jaw was growing to fill my whole head and I realized I was panting but getting no air. I thought perhaps it was the locket chain that was choking me, but even after I’d loosened it, I couldn’t breathe.

“Wait there, Suki,” said my mother, her voice growing shrill. “I can’t see. I’ll come back for you, stay where you are.”

“No!” I yelled. “Don’t leave me here. Please.” But my voice made no sound. I was mute, trapped in silence behind thick glass at the far end of a long, dark room. My head grew heavy, then leaden, and rolled to one side and sank in a halo of cold water. The pain fanned out from my head, my chest, pinning down my limbs, but at the center of it, I was shrinking, becoming a wisp. Then the wisp wasn’t there at all, only a chill.

When I came to, a candle quivered somewhere overhead, and I saw my dad’s face, his worried eyes searching through the murk. I was near the bottom of the stairs. I managed a whimper, the noise an injured puppy might make, and he found me and scooped me into his arms.

Up on the surface, daylight blinded and stung my eyes. I put my hand to my face and touched my glasses. I did not understand how they’d found their way back to me. My father, I supposed, must have picked them up. A while later I realized that the pain had gone. I wasn’t even crying, though I was sure I had been right before I passed out.

Dad carried me inside over his shoulder, and with his other not-quite-free hand, tried to comfort my mother, who was shaking uncontrollably. When he put me down on the bed, she started weeping. “I thought it was the end,” she said through tears. “I thought I’d finally made it happen, that I’d killed her.”

My father laid a steadying hand on her arm. “It was an accident,” he said, wearily. “She fell off the step, that’s all.”

“Nobody pushed me,” I said, hoping to clear things up. “I just slipped.”

“I know, dear,” said Mum. “I know.” She attempted a smile. “We’ve all had a terrible fright, but the main thing is, you’re okay.”

Dad left me alone with Mum, and she helped me out of my wet clothes. Was I okay? I certainly didn’t feel it. Everything around me looked familiar but I wasn’t sure if I was seeing any of it through my own eyes. My bare skin too felt like borrowed clothes and under my ribs was a growing, hollow patch of hunger for something that wasn’t food.

“What is it, weenie?” said Mum, using the nickname she’d given me as an infant, when I’d been small and weak and often sick. “Do you feel unwell? I hope you haven’t caught a chill.”

I wanted so much to tell her what had happened down in the bunker but when I opened my mouth to speak, I burst into tears, and anything I might have said was swallowed up by long, unruly shudders. Mum pulled me to her chest, and rubbed my back and made hushing noises. “I should never have let you go down there,” she said. “This is all my fault.”

After a time I stopped crying, but I felt no better, nor was I ready to speak. A hundred horrible images crowded my head but they were too muddled to put into words. “I’m thirsty,” was all I could manage.