The Void Read online

  Chapter 29

  Keri

  I was sure I had now been wearing my exit outfit for two or maybe three days. Even though I’d showered a few times in between, I kept putting it back on. It might be silly to have a planned outfit for the day we were getting out, but it was the way I had wanted it to be. Sure, the whole world had seen me wearing my most comfortable clothes, and no makeup at all, but I wanted to go out in style. I wanted, for the first time since being in here, to feel like I still had control over the way I looked. I had stormed out of the room after Jon had called me fat. I expected him to come after me, to tell me he was only joking, but he never came. Instead, I heard him talking to himself again. Was that the sort of guy I had chosen to be with? One who didn’t care at all about me when I cried? We had two mirrors in this pod, one in the room and one in the bathroom. As I gazed at myself I knew it was two mirrors too many. I may have a nice outfit on, but I looked awful. Also, the clothes felt tight on me, and a definite odour was emanating from them. I sniffed under my arms and grimaced. I took the shirt off and scrubbed it under the sink with what was left of our soap. Then I took off my skirt and did the same. Washing clothes in here wasn’t the wisest thing to do, because there was nowhere to hang them. We had a wash basket in the corner, where all of our clothes were going to be seen to on the day we got out of here, but whoever had come up with that idea clearly hadn’t thought it through. No wonder the place smelled so bad. Two weeks of clothing now lay one on top of each other, the fumes moving through the air with nowhere to escape. I couldn’t take it anymore. I grabbed the basket and dumped the entire contents into the shower. Then I pulled off the shower head, and hosed them down. I noticed that there was still a bit of shampoo left, so I threw that in too, and continued to clean. The shampoo had been a bad idea, because no matter how many times I tried to get rid of it, the clothes remained heavy with the stuff. This was unlike any shampoo I had ever used before, and I now wasn’t even sure if it was the real deal. What the hell had we been putting in our hair every day?

  “Shit,” I murmured as I poured water over the clothes. Nothing seemed to help. The clothes were laden in the soapy mixture, and the water cascaded over them. I was also making more of a mess than I intended, and water and soap oozed over the edge of the shower. I noticed water trailing under the shower curtain and out the room. I threw a towel down on at the edge of the sanity line to stop any more from escaping. As I did this, Jon stuck his head in and gasped in surprise. It was only then that I realized how crazy this must look to an outsider. I was completely naked, my clothes from earlier now wet and hanging to dry, and at the base of the shower lay a heap of all our clothes covered in shampoo. I kept saying Jon was the one going insane in here, but now I wasn’t so sure.

  “What the hell is going on in here? Are those all our clothes?”

  I looked at them again, the soapy mixture still oozing down the sides. It looked like a school volcanic project gone wrong. “I…I…” What could I say? I sat down, but even the edge of the shower was covered, and I almost slid right off. I held onto the pile of clothes, and grimaced as the slime touched my skin. “I just want everything to be clean.”

  Jon came in, making sure to close the curtain securely so that the cameras couldn’t see inside. Out of all the things he’d done so far, that was probably the nicest. He knelt down, then took my hands in his. “Ke, this is crazy. You know that, right?”

  I nodded. “I know. I just want to get out of this place.”

  “We will,” he said and for the first time he spoke with so much conviction I believed him. “In fact, those doors could open any minute now. You don’t want to leave without any clothes on do you?” he smiled at me then and I glimpsed the man I had once fallen in love with.

  I smiled back. “Definitely not.” A few droplets fell then, and I looked up to see my exit outfit hanging on the towel rack. “Oh no, my clothes. They’re all wet. Why did I do that?”

  “Come on, let me get you something to wear. These aren’t all our clothes, are they?”

  “I still have my pyjamas,” I said. “Oh, Jon, I can’t go out in my pyjamas.” I felt the weight of what I had just done sit heavy on me now. Cleaning those clothes had felt like someone possessing me.

  He squeezed my hand. “Your pyjamas happen to be very cute. Wait here, I’ll get them for you.”

  Jon returned with a towel and my pyjamas for me. The towel was slightly damp, but that wasn’t unusual. We’d been given quite a few in here, and I assumed it was so that while one was wet, another would be dry. But I had showered so many times since being in here that I seldom had a towel that was completely dry anymore. Jon helped me dry myself, and even helped me change. We didn’t say anything to each other the whole time, but I could tell we had reached a breaking point. We were either going to come out of this stronger, or we really had broken up for good. He put down the towel, and we both sat down with our backs against the wall. The room was so small that even with our legs bent they still touched the edge of the shower. I leaned into him, feeling his support for the first time.

  “I’m so glad that none of this was on camera,” I said to him as I eyed the mounds of clothes sitting on the floor of the shower.

  “Yeah, I hope not,” he said.

  I glanced at him, and frowned. “You hope not? There’s no camera in here.”

  “Hmm.”

  I stiffened at his response. Did Jon know something I didn’t know? “What do you mean, Jon? There’s no camera here, right?”

  He sighed. “I don’t know, Ke. It’s been bugging me for ages.”

  “Really? You think there’s a camera here? But where?” I gazed around the room, but I couldn’t see any evidence of a camera. If he’d found one and not told me I would never forgive him.

  “Not in here. I don’t think so at least. I’ve looked. Oh, trust me, I’ve looked.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Up there,” he whispered.

  “Jon, you’re freaking me out. Up where?”

  “That camera in the room. It’s pointed this way. What if it can see over this wall? Maybe that’s why they didn’t build the shower walls all the way up. What if Larry now has tapes and tapes of us showering?” He was whispering, but it was almost as loud as if he were speaking. He’d clearly given this a lot of thought.

  “What the hell? Oh my god, is that why you’ve been sitting when you shower?”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I tried to. A few times. You kept telling me I wasn’t making any sense.”

  “Well, you weren’t making sense. Shit. Do you really think they would do that?” I glanced up at the camera, but I couldn’t see it from where we were sitting.

  “I don’t know, Ke. It’s been driving me insane. But don’t worry, ’kay?” He squeezed my hand. “I’m going to demand we see the tapes as soon as we get out of here. If I find even a few seconds of footage of us, or the other contestants, in the shower, I’m going to sue the hell out of them. I’ll also make sure that none of this gets shown on the telly. There’s not going to be a reality show. The Void, or whatever the hell Larry called it, is not going to ever see the light of day.”

  My usual reaction to this would’ve been to either laugh, or to tell Jon that he was completely insane. Maybe I was going crazy too, but something about what he was saying made sense. I wasn’t sure if the shower thing was true, but there was something about this place that didn’t sit well with me. I couldn’t quite figure out what it was, but over the past few days I’d gained the suspicion that something wasn’t right. We sat there in silence, finally together.

  “Jon?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I’m not sure they’re ever going to come for us.”

  Chapter 30

  Melanie

  Something was wrong. After what I thought was an hour-long meditation I tried to draw Todd. The previous illustration was of him sitting by a window, looking ou
t. Today I couldn’t find any way to position him, and I knew it was because he shouldn’t be in the pod anymore. And neither should I. I thought I’d lost a day or two, and to be honest, I’d been quite proud of that. It had been good to let go of the control. I flipped through the book and saw Todd in various stages, and without realising it, almost all the drawings reflected my own mood at the time. This book was like a diary only I would understand. Maybe that’s why I didn’t want to draw Todd today. I didn’t want to see how panicked I really was. I no longer felt safe in here. I felt bored and lonely, and I missed being in the outside world. For a long time I had forgotten how to live, but I was ready now. I was ready to do all the things I had always wanted to do. Go to Paris, take a drawing course, take long leisurely breaks at various cafés with a book in hand, take more photographs, maybe even meet someone. And get a cat. Definitely get a cat.

  I drew Todd now, just to give myself something to do. He was perched up against a door, his claws deep into the wood as he tried to claw himself out. I put down the pen, stood up, and went to the door. I needed to get out too. I pressed my ear against the door, which was a little ridiculous considering I hadn’t heard a thing from outside since being in the pod. I wasn’t sure what I was hoping to hear, but I knew that even the slightest sound would reassure me. I suddenly became aware of my beating heart, which seemed even louder in the still of the room. I put my hand on my chest and reminded myself everything was going to be fine. Maybe I had gotten the story all wrong. Maybe they didn’t come to get us when the two weeks were up. Perhaps they wanted to see how long we would last, even if it was over the allotted time frame. Could I have pressed the buzzer days ago already? Was I staying in here longer than was necessary? I tried to recall the conversation I’d had with Larry when he’d first taken me into the pod. I was pretty sure that he said he would open the door after two weeks, but the more I tried to think about his exact words, the more they disappeared. With all the excitement of starting, I might not have heard him right. I stared at the buzzer.

  The buzzer had been positioned in such a way that made it obvious in the room. Like a bright beacon on a misty day, it was meant to beckon us toward it. I’d noticed it the first few days, but it had soon blended in with the rest of the room.

  “Screw it,” I thought and marched right over to press it. Even if I had gotten it all wrong, and walked out without the money, I didn’t care. The money would’ve been great, especially since I could no longer get the thought of Paris out of my head, but it wasn’t the most important thing to me. I was ready to leave. I needed to leave. If I left now, I would still be leaving in the right frame of mind. Any longer and I was sure I’d start to unravel. Losing control was one thing, but going crazy was another. I had done enough exercises, meditations, games and drawings. Even my pad of paper was almost full, and Todd had grown from happy to desperate near the end.

  With the buzzer pressed, a lightness came over me. It was over. It was all over. I calmly walked over to my bag, threw a few things in, including Todd, and zipped it up. Then I sat on the bed, and waited for the door to open.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  I wasn’t expecting the door to fling open the moment I pressed the buzzer, as if the two were connected to each other. However, I did expect someone to open the door relatively soon after. I stared at the door, willing it to open, but nothing happened. There was an eerie silence in the room now. The silence had turned from peaceful to unnerving, and the longer I sat there, the louder my breathing became. I could feel the panic rising inside me. Come on, just open up. How long should I give it? Was this all part of the plan? To see how we would cope when the door didn’t open right away? It was a cruel game to play with people who had already gone through a lot of emotional distress. There was no chance of meditating or drawing my time away. If Todd were real, he’d be clawing at more than the door now. Had they forgotten about me? Were the others out? I hadn’t thought much of the others since being in here, except for Ryan who had been on my mind every so often. I wished we’d all met beforehand and exchanged numbers, with promises to all message each other once we were out. But why would we have done that? It wasn’t like anything was supposed to go wrong. This was a TV production. There were probably rooms filled with staff all around the clock. Wouldn’t there be producers, and editors, and whoever else they needed for the show?

  I thought of Larry then, his white hair, and the excited way he had about him. He’d seemed eccentric to me when I’d first met him, a bit of a social outcast whom I’d felt a bit of a connection with. It was Jon who’d whispered that the guy was a weirdo, and Elton had agreed. I’d thought nothing of it at time, because, well, they were Elton and Jon…the two people I wouldn’t usually consider as reliable sources for anything. Were they right to be suspicious? Was something more sinister going on?

  “Calm down,” I whispered to myself. I was no longer looking at the door, but staring intently at my hands. As much as I tried to relax, I couldn’t get rid of the building anxiety, and my thumbs made circles in the air. My foot was tapping now, the sound matching the beating of my heart. My foot tapped faster as I grew more and more nervous. They should’ve answered by now. I got up and hit the buzzer again, then did it again. Three times now. That was enough for someone to have heard it. I waited a few minutes, then stared into the camera.

  “I think my buzzer is broken. Can you hear me? I have pressed the buzzer. I’m ready to come out now. You can open for me. Thank you.” My voice sounded strange in the room. I sounded like the few times that I had been forced to do some sort of public speaking, the shakiness of my voice betraying my otherwise calm exterior. Although, judging by the way my body could no longer be still, I was sure my exterior now matched what was going on inside. Pure panic. I waited again, but still nobody came.

  I walked over to the door and tried to open it, which was ridiculous, but I no longer knew what to do. Why was nobody coming for me? What if the cameras and the buzzer were broken? I waved into one of the other cameras just in case. Then I rushed over to open my bag, pulled out my notebook and scribbled ‘LET ME OUT’ in big block letters. I stood on the bed, and held it front of the camera. Then I jumped off, and did the same into the other cameras, hoping at least one of them would be working.

  “Hello? HELLO! Can anyone hear me? HELLO? It’s Melanie. I’m ready to come out.” I banged on the door, over and over again. Then I fell to the ground. “Help me,” I whispered. “Help me.”

  Chapter 31

  Ryan

  I paced my small living room, trying to figure out what to do. I’d told my mother not to worry and asked her to stall Alison while I made a few more calls. I seemed to be going around in circles. Jon and Keri were still not answering their phones, I wasn’t getting replies from Larry through the email I had for him, and Elton Rigby had been no help at all. In fact, Elton had sounded strange on the phone, a hyped-up version of his already hyped-up stand-up persona. Bizarre. It was one thing them not phoning me, but it was another thing altogether that they weren’t answering their calls. Without knowing what to do, I called Jon’s place of work, to see what he had told them.

  “Jon? Yeah, I haven’t heard from him. Been trying to call him all day. He had a client scheduled for this afternoon, and I have no idea if he’s coming in or not,” Thomas, the gym manager, said. “Do you know if he’s coming in?”

  “Uh, I have no idea,” I said. “I’m struggling to get through to him, too. Maybe he got his days mixed up.”

  “Maybe. Hey, any idea where he was these past few weeks? He was all secretive about it when he left, but said he’d tell me when he got back. Something about being famous or something.”

  I rolled my eyes. Only Jon would think that a show like this would make him famous. “I’m not sure,” I lied. “He said the same thing to me.”

  “Well, if you hear from him, tell him that his client will be in at three.”

  “Okay, I’ll tell him.”

&nbs
p; The phone calls were not getting me any closer to the truth. I sat down because the pacing was doing nothing to clear my head, and tried to figure out another way to get hold of them. Keri worked for herself, so there was no work colleague or boss I could call, and Jon’s work hadn’t been helpful at all. The only thing that I could think of was to fly back to Brisbane, make my way back to Victoria Point, and see what was going on for myself. But what was I going to do? Knock on every door in the hopes of finding the right place? I was nervous about the whole thing, as if I had been a part of some weird plan I hadn’t been aware about. The only logical explanation I had was that something had happened to Keri and Jon. I grabbed my laptop, retrieved the names of all the hospitals in and around Victoria Point, and then called each one to ask if a Jon Mann or a Keri Linden had been admitted. When that didn’t get me anywhere, I called more places further out, thinking that maybe they had decided to go sightseeing upon their exit. This seemed like something they would do, especially with Keri spending two weeks away from her camera. Maybe something had happened the day they had gotten out, and they were lying in some hospital bed somewhere. I got the same result each time. No, nobody with those names had been admitted. I was a nervous person, not that you’d think so by my social media presence. There I was all positive vibes and witty comments, but in my real life I constantly felt as if I were drowning. This was not helping my anxiety levels, especially since I hated nothing more than being in a situation I had no control over.

  “Mum, what should I do? Do you think I should call the police? If they stayed the full two weeks, then they’ve only been missing for a few days. Is that long enough?”