Free The Fury by Alexander Gordon Smith Page B

attempt growing weaker and feebler until the sound of her body hitting the wood and metal was no louder than a gentle slap.
    It was the noises in between the crunches that had turned his stomach, though, that had made him think he was going to go insane sitting there in the darkness. Brittle snaps, something wet that accompanied her steps, shuffling flaps that he imagined were her falling and trying to get up again, some of which went on for ten, fifteen minutes at a time.
    And worst of all were the groans and snarls, noises that could have come from a wounded animal in a trap if it wasn’t for the half-words buried in the mess. The only one he could recognise was his name, spat out again and again in panting, wretched screams until he had to clamp his hands over his ears and blot them out with cries of his own.
    At 10.53 the attack on the door had stopped. Brick had pressed his ear against it, hearing jagged, even breathing. Lisa was asleep, or unconscious. That’s when he’d made his way up the stairs. He knew that was the exact time because he’d had his crappy Nokia on his lap ever since, 999 thumbed into it but the call button unpressed. He’d been on the verge of ringing for an ambulance about a hundred times, but something had stopped him – the thought of what the paramedics would say when they got here, them and the cops. They’d see a girl beaten half to death, a broken nose, a snapped ankle and God only knew what else; a girl who’d almost killed herself trying to break out of a locked basement in an abandoned theme park. And when Brick showed them his single injury, the teeth marks in his eyebrow, they’d just say she’d done it in self-defence.
    And, of course, Brick had one of those faces. Everybody hated him.
    But that alone hadn’t stopped him calling for help. After all, if the police arrived and Lisa was still going mental then they’d know for sure this wasn’t his fault. No, it was a voice in his head, a good voice for once, saying She’s going to be fine, she just went a bit crazy, that’s all; give her a few hours and she’ll be better , over and over, too convincing to ignore. The voice had to be right; give her some time and she’d be okay.
    Something else in his head started to argue but he drowned it out, pushing deeper into his hands. His eyebrow was burning – he’d actually had to pick Lisa’s missing tooth out of his flesh, the incisor still gripped in his palm – and he could barely open his swollen right eye.
    He looked down into the pool of liquid darkness that sat at the bottom of the steps. There was a fine silver gauze hanging from the skylights but it didn’t have the guts to go anywhere near the basement. He could just about make out the crack of candlelight under the door, unbroken ever since Lisa had stopped moving. He’d thought about going back down, seeing if she was okay, but his body had mutinied, refusing to obey a single command from his brain.
    What was his plan? He didn’t know. He just wanted to curl up and sleep, to wake the next morning in his own bed with a text from Lisa saying soz, wnt hpen agn . But he was too wired to sleep, his body aching all over from the fight, the adrenalin now a spiked ball in his stomach and lead weights in his arms.
    There was a soft noise from below. Brick cocked his head, his heart once again in overdrive. At first he thought he’d imagined it, but sure enough there was another sliding sound, then a scrape that could have been fingernails on wood.
    She was awake.
    Brick didn’t move, afraid that if he so much as breathed too loudly it might set her off again. The stripe of golden light split into two, then into four, then disappeared altogether as Lisa pressed herself against the door. He could hear breathing now, wheezed, desperate. There was a rattle as she tried the handle, the metal pole holding.
    ‘Brick.’
    Her voice was an old woman’s, his name misshapen, the ‘B’ barely there and the ‘r’ now a