She rolled her eyes up, though she didn’t want to, and saw the rabbit pressing on ahead. Her trendy quiff, the one she’d specifically told the hairdresser to keep long with the rest of it short because she felt that was next not now, was revealing its true purpose. Bunched together and pulled straight and tight. Terminating into a single point that was somewhere inside the rabbit’s hand.
When it first slashed its claws at Joyce and Bob it had reached over and yanked Rachel’s hair, dragged her right off the chair and spun her round. Even as the Hodges cried out and stumbled after her. At first the pain in the scalp was immense. As if her entire front fringe would loudly tear away like a badly glued wig and her Joan of Arc head would crash to the floor.
But it didn’t tear away because even in hell good genes remain good genes. And after a while the pain slipped across the threshold of hurt, over the peaks of agony and settled itself into a numb shutting down of the nerves in that part of her body. She could barely feel it now, even as the rabbit dragged her over the loose bricks that were scattered in the dirt.
Every now and again the rabbit would look back down at her and tilt its head a little. And at one point, through the bubble of her tears, she saw a flash of its eyes locked on hers. She wondered if that was hunger she was seeing there. And quickly decided yes, it was definitely, certainly, undoubtedly hunger. Maybe that’s all hell is, after all. Just an elaborate tube and tunnel system to get people to Satan’s kitchen. To his oven. His plate.
She felt the rabbit slow down. She heard the sound of tinkling metal.
Keys.
The rabbit was rattling keys into a rusted iron door that said ‘Recreation Room’ above it.
I don’t really feel like ping-pong right now, she thought – screaming or laughing, it didn’t matter which. Down here, such expressions were essentially the same thing.
Then the door creaked open, catching on some rubble on the floor so that the rabbit had to grapple with it and drag it open. Then she was in a room that had actual light in it. Not candlelight but electric light. Dull and buzzing in the corner, turning this part of the vault into a deep, photographer’s-studio red. Hell red. Over in the corner she saw a huge pile of heavy bricks and breeze blocks, like that rabbit had been knocking walls down as it burrowed its way down here.
She felt that clump of fringe sliding through the rabbit’s hand and a second later her right shoulder crashed into the floor. The side of her skull clocked off the concrete with a comedy-sounding pop. A cricket ball cracking off wood. The impact set tiny fireworks exploding in the corners of her vision. Then the rabbit was crouching, yanking at her arms and tying her to what looked like metal pegs wedged into the floor. Her arms stretched wide and the rabbit kicked her legs open and tied the ankles.
She was a star shape. She was a snow angel, bathed in red light.
She could hear the rabbit’s breath heavy in its mouth and every time it breathed its face seemed to suck in and out, like it was puckering up for a kiss.
No … not an it … she thought. A he. The Black Rabbit is a he. And he is preparing his:
Snow Angel.
His rape victim.
She heard herself say. Oh, God.
He kicked her ankles apart.
It was while he was tying up the last ankle that she first started to pay attention to the walls. To what looked like hundreds of pictures stuck there with gaffer tape. Pictures that were ragged and torn at the edge. Ripped from newspapers and magazines. Even in the midst of hell, she found it hard to resist that habit she’d always had when she was alive. Of always wanting to lean over on the Tube or in the street to see what book a passer-by was weeping or yawning through.
She lifted her head a little and blinked. Lots of pictures, lots of faces on the wall.
That was when the rabbit started to talk. Standing up above her, sucking his face in and out. And he said, ‘Say the Lord’s Prayer. Say it.’
‘What …’ she said, ‘what?’
Then she heard a noise coming from beyond the wall. The Rabbit flicked his head to the side.
Some sort of scrape.
The rabbit gasped.
‘The prayer. Try and remember it,’ he said. Then he suddenly scurried off into a dark corner. Gone.
She stared at the red glowing bricks above her while her baffled brain flicked through the files of desperate fears, of teeth chatters, of heartbeats close enough to the chest to hurt. Searching like a madwoman for sanity and courage but most of all … for long-forgotten prayers.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
He skipped the final rung of the ladder and dropped soundlessly into the dirt, just behind Keech. The impact wafted a tiny cloud of dust around his ankles that fluttered the three candles at the base. One of them blew out and he saw its ghost twist into the air, then vanish.
The candles must have been there to mark out the exit and he was pretty convinced the Hodges had put them there. The biggest clue they were down here was one of those expensive Yankee Candle jobs called Sycamore Dreams – and everybody knows that only English old ladies and American cat-fans buy those from garden centres. Try as it might, the thin flame did nothing to overcome the intense odour of dust and wet stone.
Frankly he was
