I half laugh. “It’s the Carpets that saved us.”
“You saved us,” she replies. “And I’m sorry about what you had to do to Tongue.”
I don’t answer right away. The image of him is still too vivid, the movement beneath me as he died feels like a stain on my memory that I’ll never be rid of.
“Are you OK?” Farah says.
“Honestly?” I say. “I’m a little scared.”
Farah squeezes me tighter and my body wants to dissolve into hers. “No you’re not,” she whispers. “You’re courageous.”
If I was really courageous I’d turn round now and kiss her, but I don’t move.
Farah shifts, leans forward and kisses the back of my neck. I can feel the shape of her lips, her breath scalding my skin.
Brothers? Is she serious?
“Sleep well,” she murmurs.
Not a chance, I think.
But I do sleep. I must have, because the next thing I know, I hear Farah screaming.
I sit up, staring desperately around at the rows of beds.
No sign of her.
An icy quench drops through me. I leap out of bed and I’m scrabbling on the floor but the knife is gone.
Jonah?
Chiu is up too. “This way!” he says. “This way!”
“Farah!” I shout.
We run, dodging between the beds and then between sofas and coffee tables. It’s hard to pinpoint the sound in the warehouse-like space. We stop next to a fake kitchen with a fake sink and dishwasher and listen, disorientated and panicking. The noise is nearby: a reedy, horrified noise, half sob, half moan. It’s an appalling sound – the noise of a rabbit caught in a snare, the noise of something badly hurt, dying.
“Over here,” Chiu says.
We bolt. It’s a trap, obviously. I don’t know why Jonah didn’t just kill us in our sleep but I guess he wants something else. He wants to make us suffer; he wants to punish us.
Think, Kyle. Be smart.
But my body is fizzing and crackling with fear and I can’t stop. I bolt through a fake kitchen that has a bowl of fake fruit on the dining table. There’s a fake television, a set of cookery books that have no pages, a stack of brightly coloured ceramic bowls that will be forever empty.
I wish I had my knife. Not that it would do me any good against Jonah, but I still wish I had it. I spot Farah at a desk, part of a squared-off area designed to look like a teenager’s bedroom with a single bed and a rack of storage units. She’s scrunched forward, clutching something close to her chest, rocking slowly, forwards and backwards, sobbing.
“Where is he?” I gasp, scanning the room. “Where’s Jonah?”
Chiu is at my side a moment later, his body tense, ready to fight. He’s a good kid, I think. As brave as they come.
I move closer, cautious now.
Where is he? What did he do to her?
I see the blood first.
Then my knife on the desk and the blade and handle slick with yet more blood.
Then Farah: her T-shirt drenched in it, her jeans black with it. “What did you do?”
Farah looks up and stares at me like she’s seeing me for the first time. There’s more blood flecking her cheek. She pushes her hand forward, flat on the desk. Among the treacle-streaks of gungy blood I can see that she has seven … no … eight fingers.
“What’s happening?” Chiu whispers.
“It’s Puzzles,” I answer.
“Help me,” Farah gasps.
She grabs her wrist with her free hand. There are more fingers now, nine … no ten … they swell and split, bulging from under the skin and then bursting out, contorted and malformed. I draw an empty breath.
“Cut them,” Farah pleads. “Please cut them.”
“I can’t.”
“It hurts…”
I can hardly bear to look at the hand, the thought of cutting into those twisted, alien fingers makes me sick. But I know what will happen if I don’t. Already her wrist and the lower part of her forearm are beginning to bulge and shift, before long her hand will be gone altogether and then her arm and then … her.
