well. I'd try silence.
"Anita, Anita, answer me."
I didn't answer. If he wanted to find me he could damn well turn on the light. I thought I wanted some light. But then I thought maybe I didn't really want to see what hung above me in this room. Maybe it would be one of those sights that blasts the mind, one you never really recover from. But I badly wanted to see something, almost anything. I lay in the dark, the way I used to huddle under the sheets as a child, afraid of the dark, afraid of what I could not see.
"Answer me, Anita!" He screamed it this time, voice harsh.
A male voice from above me. "Answer him if you can, you don't want him angry with you."
Another man gave a sound like a choking laugh. It sounded thick, as if there were blood in his mouth and throat.
The dark was suddenly full of voices saying, "Answer him, answer him." It was like the wind had found a voice and was giving me instructions in the dark.
Another drop of blood fell on my cheek and began to slide slowly down my skin. I didn't wipe it off. I didn't move. I was afraid any movement would let Chimera know where I was, and I didn't want that.
"Shut up!" Chimera yelled, and I heard him move farther into the room. The voices above me fell silent. But I could still feel them hanging there like weight above me, like a rock ceiling pressing down on me. I took a deep breath, let it out slowly. My claustrophobia was trying to scream in my head that I couldn't breathe, but it was a lie. The dark did not have weight to it; that was the fear talking. If Chimera wanted to let me lie in the dark for the next hour until help arrived, I'd let him. I would not panic. It wouldn't help anything for me to start crawling frantically across the floor with feet brushing my back. If I did that, I would start screaming, and I wouldn't stop for a long, long time.
The blood oozed along my neck into my hair, and I kept my eyes closed and concentrated on breathing shallow, quiet.
"Answer me, Anita, or I will start cutting on the men hanging above you," Chimera said. His voice was closer, but not too close. He was still outside the forest of hanging bodies.
I still didn't answer.
"You don't believe me? Let me prove it to you."
A man screamed, high, piteous, hopeless.
"Don't," I said.
"Don't what?"
"Don't hurt them."
"They're nothing to you, not your animal, not your friend. Why do you care?"
"Orlando King knows the answer to your question."
"I'm asking you," Chimera said.
"You already know the answer," I said.
"No, no! Orlando knows the answer. I don't. I don't understand. Why do you care about strangers?" The other man screamed again.
"Stop it, Chimera."
"Or what?" he asked. "What will you do if I don't stop? What will you do if I stand here in the dark and cut pieces off this man? How will you stop me?"
The man was shrieking, "No, don't, not that, nooo!" The scream fell off, which meant the man was either dead, or he'd fainted. I hoped he'd fainted, but either way I couldn't do much about it.
"Can you taste the fear, Anita? Roll it on your tongue like the strong spice it is."
Right then my mouth was so dry I couldn't have tasted a damn thing. But I could sense their fear, smell it on them. All of them were afraid now, fresh terror, pouring out of their skin. "It's easy to scare people in the dark, Chimera. Everybody's afraid of the dark."
"Even you?"
I avoided the question. "I was told if I came down here that you'd let Cherry and Micah go."
"I did tell Zeke that."
And in that moment I knew he had no intention of letting them go. It shouldn't have surprised me, but it did. Had I really expected fair dealings from him? Maybe. It offended some part of me to know that he wasn't going to do what he'd said. It meant all deals were off. I'd gone from having something to bargain with, to nothing. Just on a whim, he could kill Cherry and Micah before help arrived. My pulse was speeding up again, and I fought to keep my breathing steady. I took my hand out of the cooling pool of blood. I might as well move. He'd locate me soon through my