Julia fishes her iPhone from her pocket. ‘I hope he’s paying you for this, Alice, was it?’ She takes the photo. ‘Hey, next Comic-Con you should come along, sit on the fanfic panel. You’ve got a great face for publicity.’
Alice opens her mouth to respond, but the drums seem to swell, drowning out the rest of her words, and this strange smell fills my nostrils – medicine and burning fabric. I clasp my hands to my temples, my pulse ramping up a gear.
‘Violet?’ Katie says.
The creaking is back, louder this time – it definitely isn’t the violins. And that emerald light begins to flicker, like a bulb’s about to blow or a thousand moths have got stuck behind the glass casing.
‘Violet? Are you OK?’ Katie says. Her face turns from green to white, white to green.
The floor seems to swing a foot to the left, and I start to feel like I’ve stepped off a waltzer – this morning’s porridge hot and thick at the base of my throat. I think I hear someone scream my name. I turn to see Nate’s mouth pulled open in a yawn, his brown eyes wide. Instinctively, my eyes flick up. And that’s when I see it. The emerald light spinning from a flex, the scaffolding lurching forwards. I barely have time to cover my face as the entire metal structure hurtles towards us.
Waking feels like crawling out of a bog. Every time I see the surface, feel the fresh air on my skin, some dark phantom pulls me under again. It’s so tempting to just keep on sinking, but the thought of the scaffolding pinning me down, imprisoning Nate, Alice, Katie . . . even Russell and Julia . . . drives me on. Somehow, I drag my body from the mud, force my eyes to open, compel my brain to engage.
The light from the fire door casts the room in a ghostly glow. I can just pick out the metal rods of the scaffold, spearing the floor like a bizarre postmodern sculpture. That smell – medicine and burning fabric – grows in my nostrils, causing my eyes to smart.
‘Nate?’ I lever myself on to my elbows. Pain shoots through my skull.
‘Violet?’ I hear his voice, wavering at the edges, soaring above the muffled theme tune and the chime of metal against metal.
I extend my fingers like I can somehow draw him to my body. ‘Nate, are you OK?’
I see his face, nipped with fear, pitching towards me in the gloom. ‘Violet, you’re bleeding.’ He slips his hands beneath my armpits and pulls me into a half-standing position. My head feels like it may explode.
‘Alice? Katie?’ I push my hands into the wet flesh of my forehead.
‘I’m OK . . . I think.’ Alice kind of reels towards us, her dress and thighs streaked with ash. ‘What the hell happened?’
But I don’t answer, I need to find Katie. I drop on to all fours and begin to pat the ground. She was standing right next to me, she can’t have gone far. ‘Katie? Katie?’
I hear a groan to my right. My head pivots – pain slamming into the backs of my eyes – and I see her neon tights, luminous in the black. Nate reaches her first. They wobble into a kneeling position.
‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ she mutters, almost to herself.
That alien scent grows, and we hear another creak, louder this time.
‘The fire door . . .’ Alice says, her voice stretched with panic.
And somehow, a unit of four, we stagger towards the exit sign, stumbling over metal and equipment. We burst through the door, hacking and spitting and clinging to each other. The daylight stings my eyes, and I feel like some kind of ghoul, squinting and recoiling. I can’t help but notice how cold it’s become, my skin growing coarse with goosebumps. We slide on to the paving stones, backs pressed against the cool of the stone walls.
‘Where the hell are we?’ I say. At least, my mouth forms the words, but I hear only this deafening noise, like I’m standing in a tunnel with a train storming past – rumbling and groaning and kicking up dust. At first I think it’s a bad case of tinnitus, my brain objecting to the movement, but my eyes slowly make sense of the colours and shapes. People. Thousands of people. All tall and slim and dressed in tailored clothes. Fists pumping the air, voices raised, the vibrations of stamping feet travelling through the backs of my thighs.
‘We need to get help,’ Nate shouts, pulling his phone from his pocket. His eyepatch must have fallen off at some point, because I notice both his eyes glisten with tears. ‘No signal,’ he says.
I nod, which I immediately regret, the pain kind of sloshing around my skull like toxic goop. ‘Russell and Julia are still in there . . .’ And the security guards, and Clipboard Lady . . . I try to say, but my voice sinks beneath a fanfare of trumpets.
‘Is this some kind of cosplay event?’ Alice shouts.
I wipe the blood from my face with my sleeve and blink quickly. I recognize the scene now. We’re in the Coliseum from The Gallows Dance, ground level, right at the back. The raked auditorium, filled with perfect, symmetrical faces, surrounds us on all sides, leading the eye upwards to the crest of the circular stone wall, dotted with armed Gem guards. Before us, an angry crowd pushes forward with a life of its own, perfect bodies topped with thick, glossy hair. I can’t see, but I know the stage and the gallows rest at the front, hidden by the throng.
‘It’s like the best role play ever.’ Alice removes her broken heels and stands to get a better view.
She’s right – they’ve even got the smell right. The Coliseum rests on the border between the Imp city and the Pastures, and I can smell the sweetness of the Pastures battling the filth of the city. Pollen and freshly mown grass colliding with dead meat and vinegar.
‘Screw role play,’ Katie shouts. ‘We need to find security.’ She leaves the safety of the fire exit and dashes towards the back of the crowd.
‘Screw security,’ Alice says. ‘We need to make sure Russell posts that photo.’
Nate helps me stand, and even though my head feels like it may dissolve, the thought of Russell and Julia trapped and wounded forces my limbs into action. I grab a tall, broad shoulder, briefly noticing the blood on my fingers as they splay before me. A man turns to look at me. The symmetry of his features makes my words jar in my throat.
‘We need help.’ My voice comes out scratched and damaged like an old analogue recording.
He looks confused for a moment. ‘Get lost, Imp, or I’ll call the guards.’
‘Look, I know you’re in role,’ Nate says, ‘but there’s been an accident. The blood’s real.’
The man easily shoves Nate to the ground. ‘I said, get lost, Imp.’
‘Jesus, Nate, are you OK?’ I drop beside him, brushing the dirt from his hands.
‘And I thought I was a Gallows Dance fanatic,’ he says. ‘This fandom is hardcore.’
I jump to my feet and grab another person. This time a woman in her forties, maybe even older, it’s hard to tell. She’s still beautiful, her skin kind of smoothed over her face like a veil, her auburn hair curling to one side. She looks at me and her almond eyes narrow with disgust. ‘Don’t touch me you . . . you filthy Imp . . . you ape. Guards!’ She begins to shout. ‘Guards!’ But her voice gets swamped by the crowd and the fanfare and the stamping feet.