“No!” I whimpered at the sight of the cuts and gashes that covered my back. But it was the sight of those black bony fingers wriggling from the cuts that frightened me the most. They protruded from wounds that were bruised green and purple where they had been stitched together.

Pulling the hospital gown back over my head, I slumped back onto the chair and wrapped my arms around myself, rocking back and forth.

“Why are they doing this?” I whispered as tears fell onto my cheeks.

Ignoring my question, Nik stood up on his four muscular legs, and said, “Oh, I nearly forgot, I brought you something else.” I heard the sound of his paws padding against the floor as he headed back towards the door. He returned moments later pushing a book along the floor with his snout.

“I thought you might want to read this, you know, to relieve the boredom,” he said.

Numbly, I glanced down at the floor and at the book he had bought for me. I didn’t say anything – I couldn’t.

“I thought it might help you,” he said, stepping out of the moonlight and heading back towards the cell door.

“Wait a minute…don’t go!” I called out to him.

“What?” he woofed, from within the gloom.

“Where am I?” I asked softly. “You can at least tell me that.”

“You’re in a zoo,” his voice floated back out of the darkness.

“A zoo?’ I whispered. “What do you mean, in a zoo?”

“That’s where animals are kept, isn’t it?” he asked.

“I guess,” I said numbly, not really taking in what he had just told me.

I don’t know how long I sat there for, dazed and confused. But when I peered around the cell some time later, the werewolf had gone and my cell door was closed again. My skin had started to itch again and my stomach had started to flip and I knew what I needed to make those feelings go away. Glancing down at my feet, I could see the upturned bowl and the dirty strips of bloodied meat that had fallen from it. I picked it up with my filthy fingers and brushed away the dirt that had stuck to it from the cell floor.

Closing my eyes, I put the meat in my mouth and it tasted bitter and felt gritty against my tongue. Swallowing hard, I forced the raw meat down my throat. I sat on my chair, stinking and dirty with the taste of raw meat in my mouth, I shut my eyes and wondered if Nik hadn’t been right after all. Perhaps I was an animal and deserved to be kept in a zoo.

Chapter Nine

Doctor Hunt came into my room at the facility - zoo? Again I felt incredibly tired and struggled to keep my eyes open, let alone focus in on him. It was like I was coming around from anaesthesia.

He came towards my bed, the lower half of his face covered with a blue surgical mask. There was something about him…perhaps it was his eyes and his jet-black hair that lay across his brow that made me think I had met him before.

“Do I know you?” I babbled, my mind feeling groggy and my lips opened and closed as if out of sync with my voice.

“I don’t think so,” he replied softly, picking up a book that he had brought into the room. He began to read.

My eyes closed again and I could hear Doctor Hunt reading ‘The Wind In The Willows’. My father had read the book to me as I child, and for a moment I could see myself nestled on his lap, my head resting against his chest and listening to the soft beating of his heart. I’d been about six then and I’d loved to hear about the adventures of Ratty, Mole, Badger and Mister Toad. But I was older now – twenty – so why was Doctor Hunt reading this children’s book to me?

Hunt’s voice was soft and soothing, and I couldn’t help but let my eyes slide close again. I listened to the story but there was something not quite right. Why hadn’t he started reading the story from the beginning? Why had he started the story towards the end, where Mister Toad had been sent to prison and needed to escape?

I struggled to open my eyes again, but I managed to look past the doctor who sat beside my bed. He had left the door to my room open, and like Mister Toad, I knew I needed to escape. I raised my arm off the bed and it felt heavy and sluggish as if held down by a thousand weights. Pointing towards the open door, I…

…tipped forward and fell off the chair onto the hard stone floor. I wailed in pain as I landed awkwardly on my injured leg and back. I rolled onto my side and gripping my shin, I told myself never to fall asleep on the chair again. It was still night and pale blue light continued to slice my cell in two from above.

Looking up at the square hole then at the chair, an idea came to me. So, with the tips of my fingers, I positioned the chair directly under the hole. Using it as a crutch, I hoisted myself up and climbed on. I held the back of the chair and pushed myself into a standing position, gingerly teetering on the foot of my good leg, being mindful not to put any weight on my bad leg.

Balancing like a tightrope walker, I slowly raised one arm above my head and reached up towards the hole. To my amazement and delight, I could reach it. I pushed my fingers through the wire mesh and felt the cool night breeze dance over them. The chair wobbled beneath me and I gripped onto the wire mesh as tightly as I could until I had regained my balance. Hovering on a chair on one leg wasn’t easy, but at last I felt that perhaps there was a way out of my cell – some hope. I tugged on the mesh, but it was fixed firmly into the surface of the ceiling. Running my fingers around the inner edge of the hole, I could feel that the wire had been embedded into the plaster and concrete that went to make up the structure of the cell.

I clenched my teeth tightly together and yanked several times on the mesh, hoping it would come away, but however hard I pulled on it, the wire didn’t budge. Unless I was mangled through a mincing machine, there was no way I was ever going to fit through the tiny holes that made up the mesh.

With growing frustration, I tugged on the wire one last time but in doing so I lost my footing and cartwheeled through the air, landing on the floor. There was an explosion of pain in my calf and I bit my arm to drown out the sound of my screams.

I lay on my side panting like a wounded animal.

“Let me out of here!” I screamed, in frustration, but my cries just echoed harmlessly off the walls.

I felt cheated and more frustrated than before. As I’d stood on that chair and poked my fingers through the holes, I felt for a moment that perhaps I could escape – perhaps I would be free. But the most infuriating thing about it all was that the only thing separating me from the outside world was a small square of wire mesh.

I pounded my clenched fists onto the floor and screwed up my eyes until I could see white spots dancing around on the inside of my eyelids. I wouldn’t be beaten – not ever! I told myself. I was Kiera Hudson – I could see things. Wasn’t I meant to be good at figuring things out?

“We’ve been sent a right little Miss Marple, this time around,” I heard Potter say inside my head, and it was almost as if he had whispered it in my ear. Hearing his voice like that just frustrated me even more. Where was he?

When my hands became numb from the constant banging against the cold, hard floor, I opened my eyes and looked across my cell at the upturned chair. It was then that I saw something; I could see my way out. It gleamed at me in the moonlight and I wondered if there could still be yet a glimmer of hope.

I crawled across the room to the upturned chair and inspected its legs. The base of each leg had been fitted with a silver-coloured cap – each one was the size of a £2 coin. I felt around the edge of the caps and found a small grove where each one had been fitted to the legs of the chair. I dug my fingernails into the groove and without too much effort, managed to prise one of the caps free. The inside of the chair leg was hollow.

Holding the cap in the palm of my hand, I could see that one side of it was concaved like a tiny dish. I tossed it up and down in my hand like a coin and looked up at the hole, grinning to myself.

Gritting my teeth against the burning sensation in my leg and the ache in my back, I pulled myself up onto the chair. Balancing again on one foot, I took hold of the wire mesh. With my free hand, I took the metal cap and began to chip away at the grey-coloured plaster that housed the wire.

To my delight, the plaster began to break away in tiny pieces and fall to the floor below. I scratched the cap against the edge of the hole again and more of the plaster began to crumble. It only broke away in minute pieces at a time, but it was something. I wondered how deeply the wire mesh went into the ceiling. If it was only an inch or two then it wouldn’t take me too long – but if it went further than that, it could take me days – perhaps weeks - and that was time that I didn’t have.

I reasoned that I could probably do with releasing the wire mesh on two sides. Once I had them free, I could bend it to one side and this would give me a big enough gap to climb through.

So without wasting any more time thinking about it, I put my plan of escape into action. For the rest of the night, I teetered to and fro on the chair as I hovered on one leg and chipped away at the ceiling. It took longer than I had originally thought, as I had to keep stopping to rest. It wasn’t my leg which caused the problems, it was my arms and back. With one hand, I gripped the wire mesh and with the other I furiously scratched away at the plaster. With both arms constantly held above my head, they began to ache with numbness and tingle with pins and needles. When the pain became too much to bear, I’d carefully climb down and shake my arms.

As soon as I could feel them again, I climbed back onto the chair and started all over again. I worked through the night until I could see the first rays of sunlight fan across the morning sky above me.

I can’t wait to be standing under that sun and feeling totally free! I thought to myself.

The urge to continue was strong, but it was light now and I might be seen and if I were to be caught now, I may never escape. So reluctantly, I climbed down from the chair and looked up at my handy work.

“Oh, shit!” I gasped.

All along one side of the square hole the plaster was broken and chipped. The wire mesh could now be clearly seen, where once it had been hidden. It would be obvious to anyone what I had been up to, should they glance upwards.