We Will Be Watching by Ruth Ware

Author:Ruth Ware [Ware, Ruth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

5

‘Move up!’ I say urgently. ‘Give us some space!’ My face is crushed into someone's bare clammy shoulder – it must be Carol's, I realise with a shudder – and Ravi's beak is digging into the back of my head. I can smell sweat and aftershave and my own coffee breath from the cappuccino I had earlier. I feel panic rise in my throat. The music is painfully loud and discordant now – it sounds like it's being distorted by being played at too high a volume through cheap speakers.

‘I can't,’ Alistair's muffled voice comes from ahead of me. ‘This is barely a cupboard. Shit. Did anyone bring the matches?’

There is a horrible silence.

‘OK, feel around yourself,’ Alistair says. ‘There must be some way out.’

I cannot raise my arms, I'm too crushed in between Carol and Ravi, but I can feel Ravi patting the walls behind himself. His beak jabs me again, painfully stabbing the top of my head, hard enough to draw blood, or so it feels, and I finally snap.

‘Oh for God's sake, Ravi, take that mask off. You've just taken a chunk out of the top of my head. Carol's right, it's going to end up with someone's eye out.’

‘All right, all right,’ Ravi grumbles. ‘They said it was against the rules, that's all.’

‘At this point, I think I speak for us all when I say, fuck the rules,’ Alistair says. ‘I don't really care whether we've won or not, I'm taking mine off.’

‘Fair point,’ Ravi says. There is a kind of struggling kerfuffle, and then a clunk as a mask drops to the floor, and then another.

‘I need to get mine off too,’ Carol gasps. ‘Oh my God, I'm asthmatic. I can't breathe. I'm going to have an attack.’

‘You're not having an attack,’ Alistair says brutally. Beside me I can feel Carol trying to get her hands up to the mask, and then I hear a rasping sound as she pulls it over her head.

‘Better?’ Ravi asks brightly.

‘There's no oxygen! I can feel it,’ Carol pants, ‘we're using it up with all this talking, oh my God, we're going to die here, I don't want to die!’

‘You're not going to die,’ Alistair snarls. ‘Ravi? Found anything?’

‘Nothing,’ Ravi says. ‘It's just blank walls. It's like you said – we could be in a cupboard.’

‘There has to be something,’ Alistair says. His voice is level, but I can tell he's finding it hard to keep it together.

‘I think I'm going to faint, we're all going to die,’ Carol sobs. I grit my teeth. I have never told anyone this, but I'm claustrophobic. This is my worst nightmare, being enclosed in a small dark space with no way out. That was what I was going to shout to Ravi as the door swung shut – don't let the door shut.

But it did shut. And now we are trapped.

I'm not sure if it's my imagination, but it does feel like the air is getting stale, and the music has risen

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