The Mysteries of Brambly Hollow

dislodged from the ceiling. After several frantic seconds Bill stepped back, and flapped an urgent hand, indicating for Meli to be quiet. Above the roar of blood gushing through the dilated veins in her ears, Meli strained to hear, buoyed by the assurance that their ordeal was almost over. Thoughts of rescue however, crumbled like stale Hobnobs between her tightly coiled fingers, when cobwebs and dust continued to rain down on them, and her ears still rang with their cries. Meli clamped her hand over her mouth, in an attempt to stop her screams. It took a moment for the slow moving cogs in Meli’s brain to register that the sound wasn’t coming from her at all, it was coming from outside. She shrank backwards until she was brought up short by the workbench jamming in the small of her back.
    “Finn, is that you?” She heard Bill bellow above the external racket.
    Rigid with fear, her teeth bit into her thumb joint as the awful truth dawned on her. There was no posse of villagers, armed with pitchforks, rushing to their rescue, ready to beat off the fearsome freak of nature; it was Finn, the fearsome freak of nature himself, and he was mocking them, cruelly imitating their frantic cries for help.
    As if realising that Finn couldn’t possibly hear him above his own demented pandemonium, Bill grabbed the handle, and subjected the door to a brief, but fierce rattling that rivalled anything Finn could do outside. Unusual though this tactic might have seemed, in this particular madhouse setting it worked. Total silence fell. It was an unsatisfying silence that made Meli’s scalp clammy.
    “Finn, I know it’s you out there.” Bill called again. “Come on. Let us out.” He paused, head cocked, ears straining. “Finn,” Bill’s voice was strong, authoritative. “You must let us out. Others will come looking for us, and then they will find you. If you let us out now no one need know.” Placing both palms on the door, he lowered his head, as though trying desperately to ‘connect’ with his son.
    “Is he still there, do you think?” Meli whispered. She had extracted herself from the bench, and was now standing behind him, despondency like a ten pound lump of clay which had dropped to the bottom of her intestines.
    Allowing his arms to fall away, Bill straightened, then with a shrug he dragged his feet back to his seat. “What time is it?”
    Meli checked her watch. “Nearly twelve.”
    “Midnight or midday?” He asked.
    “Midday, I think,” she had to hazard a guess. It was amazing how being shut in a box, dependent on artificial light, totally disorientated the senses. “What I wouldn’t give for a huge plate of roast lamb, with rich gravy, roast spuds and parsnips, all smothered in mint sauce,” Meli mused, recalling the wonderful aroma of cooking in Barbara’s homely kitchen. Had it really only been yesterday?
    “Me too,” Bill replied faintly, easing out his legs in front of him.
    “Don’t suppose you’ve got anything edible in your pockets? Like an old toffee? Or a biscuit? Or maybe a mint?” She was so ravenous that she’d have slit his throat for less.
    “Nope.”
    “What do you think Finn intends to do with us?” Meli ventured a little later, uncoiling herself from where she was scrunched like a human ball in her corner. Wouldn’t do to become too lethargic, she needed to stay alert. “Do you think he understands what he’s doing? The trouble he is in? Does he understand that he will have to let us go sooner or later? And more importantly, that we need food and water?”
    Bill shrugged his rounded shoulders. “I don’t know. The last six months or so he changed. Wouldn’t do what Elsa told him. Kept wandering off, wanting to do his own thing. They had some terrible arguments. And after Elsa died, well he just disappeared. Until now,” he added.
    “How do you know all this?” Meli asked, pinning him with a pair of intense green eyes.
    “Because I used to visit them, in secret. Tried to keep an eye on them both.”
    “Didn’t you ever think to report what was going on?” She asked tartly.
    “And what do you think would have happened?” Bill’s face became animated, the first change in his expression for some time, and he used it to cast her a withering look. “Do you think they would have been any better off? They would have split them up. Taken them away from their home. I couldn’t have done that. Elsa loved Finn. He was her reason for living.”
    ‘And maybe for