“Elliot? Elliot? Shit, shit, shit! It’s his voicemail!”
My world came to a standstill the moment I heard her sweet voice. For a split second, I allowed the familiarity of it to wash over me before reality slammed into me. I hadn’t heard that voice on the phone, or in person, in four very long years. The closest I’d got was when I watched old videos that she was in.
“Noah?”
The disbelief in my voice registered with me instantly. I could hear an overwhelming flood of shock and confusion the second I uttered those two little syllables. With my free hand, I lifted my fingers to the silver calla lily pendant that suddenly felt heavy against my chest.
“Help us,” she sobbed, the sound causing my heart to clench. “Oh God. Please, I don’t know what to do! Bailey, what’re we gonna do? It’s so dark, put the high beams on.”
My grip on my phone tightened and my breathing hitched. I reminded myself that the voicemail came from my sister’s phone. Noah was with my sister and I had no idea why. I suddenly felt like I was free-falling and no one was around to catch me. I was standing in the kitchen of the station, staring down at the rice I was cooking. I watched the water bubble through blurred eyes as my senses focused on the call.
The line began to break up and I clutched my phone to my ear, hoping the call didn’t drop.
“Tulse Hill,” she whimpered. “Elliot, we’re on – Bailey, slow down!”
“I’m tryin’!” my sister’s panic-laced voice shouted. “I can’t stop, it’s black ice! We’re slidin’!”
“Elliot!” Noah screamed as the line broke up. “Elliot, help us. Tulse Hill . . . Please, please . . . going to kill . . . Bailey! Look out!”
I had never felt true bone-rattling fear until I heard my sister’s terror-filled scream as the line went dead. I blindly reached out and gripped on to the counter to keep my knees from buckling. For what seemed like an eternity, I didn’t move. I felt like I wasn’t in control of my body, like what I was experiencing wasn’t real. I swallowed. The haunting silence that filled the room was louder than Bailey’s scream. It was deafening. Laughter from the common room seemed to snap me back into reality. I pushed the pot of rice off the burner, switched the hob off, then ran into the room where my friends were gathered.
No one noticed my entrance.
“How long did the electric company say it’d be before they got the grid back up and running?” AJ, my best mate, asked Texas, our friend and co-worker. “It’s been years since the whole of bloody London has had no power. Especially not this long – it’s been what, four hours now? People must be going crazy without Wi-Fi for Facebook and Instagram.”
The tail end of a storm had blown London and a few neighbouring towns into a blackout. We were all on edge; no power meant no lights, and no lights on a winter night could lead to some pretty serious accidents.
Bad things happen in the dark. They always have.
“Fingers crossed it’ll all be back on soon,” Stitch, the watch manager, said optimistically. “We’re lucky this place has a built-in generator. Perks of being firemen, we always need power and we get it.”
AJ was about to reply when he caught sight of me. Whatever expression he saw on my face caused him to jump to his feet and hurry over. His hand went to my shoulder, clutching me as his worried eyes locked on mine.
“Irish? What’s wrong?”
I couldn’t form the words to explain myself, so I lifted my hand and pressed on the screen of my phone. I replayed the voicemail I’d received and put it on speaker for the room to hear. Everyone listened with pensive expressions on their faces.
“Noah and Bailey,” I rasped as the message ended. “Somethin’ is wrong with them, they’re at Tulse Hill. We hav’te go!”
I had barely finished speaking when the familiar sound of a siren echoed throughout the station. Everyone sprang into action; we all knew our positions for the current watch, having been briefed not long after we clocked in. We were well rehearsed, but today I couldn’t think straight. My brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders.
“Stitch!” I darted my gaze to his. “I can’t go. Me sister and Noah, something’s wrong. They need me!”