Land of the Living by Nicci French Read Free Book Online Page B

blisters. My gums were soft and swollen. When I swallowed, it was like swallowing poison, the taste of the rag and the taste of my own decay, so I tried not to do it, but it was very hard.
    I sat in the dark, I twisted my hands together. My nails had got longer. One of the facts that everyone knows is that nails go on growing after you’ve died, but I’ve heard or read or been told that’s not true. It’s just the skin shrinks, or something. Who told me that? I couldn’t remember. There’s a lot I’d forgotten. It was as if things were falling away, one by one, the things that bound me to life.
    The letter. Who would I leave my things to? What have I got to leave? I don’t have a house, or a flat. I’ve got a car that’s rusty round the edges. Terry tuts when he looks at it, but in a pleased kind of way, as if he’s saying, ‘Women!’ A few clothes, not so many. Sadie can have those except she’s bigger than me after having a baby. Some books. A few bits of jewellery, nothing expensive, though. Not much. They could all be sorted out in a couple of hours.
    What was it like outside, I wondered. Perhaps it was sunny. I tried to picture sunlight falling on roads and houses, but it was no use. Those pictures had gone—the butterfly, the lake, the river, the tree. I tried to put them in my mind, but they dissolved, wouldn’t hold together. Maybe outside it was foggy instead, all the shapes shrouded. I knew it wasn’t night yet. At night—for six hours, five hours—he put a noose round my neck and left.
    I thought I heard a sound. What was it? Him, padding towards me? Was this it, then? I held my breath, but my heart pounded and blood roared round my head so fast that for a moment all I could hear was the rushing inside my own body. Could you die of fear? No, there was no one there. I was still all alone on my ledge, in the dark. It wasn’t time yet. But I knew it would be soon. He watched me. He knew I was coming apart, bit by bit. That was what he wanted. I knew that was what he wanted. He wanted me to stop being me, and then he could kill me.
    And I watched myself blindly in the darkness. How can the brain know that it is failing, the mind feel itself disintegrate? Is that what it is like to go mad? Is there a period of time when you know, with the bit of you that is going mad, that you’re going mad? When do you give up and, with a ghastly kind of relief, let yourself fall into the abyss? I imagined a pair of hands gripping on to a ledge, hanging on, and then very slowly the fingers relax, uncurl. You fall through space and nothing can stop you.
    The letter. Dear anyone, help me, help me, help me, I can’t do it any more. Please. Oh, Jesus, please.
    My eyes stung and prickled. My throat was sore, sorer than usual, I mean. As if there were bits of grit in it. Or glass. Maybe I was getting a cold. Then I would gradually stop being able to breathe. All blocked up.
    ‘Drink.’
    I drank. Just a few sips this time.
    ‘Eat.’
    Four spoonfuls of mush. I could barely swallow.
    ‘Bucket.’
    I was lifted down, lifted back up. I felt like a rubbishy plastic doll. For a brief moment, I thought about writhing and kicking, but I knew he could squeeze the life out of me. I felt his hands holding me around my rib cage. He could snap me.
    ‘Noose.’
    ‘Piece of shit,’ I said.
    ‘What?’
    ‘You. Rubbish. Piece of shit.’
    He hit me in the mouth. I could taste my blood. Sweet, metallic.
    ‘Garbage,’ I said.
    He stuffed the gag into my mouth.
    Five hours perhaps, and some minutes. How many was it last time I counted? I couldn’t remember any more. Then he’d come back. Perhaps he would be carrying a piece of paper and a pen. Outside, it must be dark now; probably it had been dark for hours. Perhaps there was a moon, stars. I imagined pricks of light in the black sky.
    Here I was, alone inside my hood, inside my head. Here I was and nothing else seemed real any more. At first, I had not let myself think of