Elliot folds his arms and peers up at the door with irritation, before turning to me. ‘Think those guys were winding us up?’
‘Maybe,’ I say. ‘Seems like a weird thing to make up on the spot though.’
Owen holds up his phone screen to the group. ‘It’s officially five o’clock. Guess it’s now or never.’
This prompts Josh to frantically jump back into action and rap his knuckles on the door several times with a desperate call of, ‘Hello?Anybody home?’
The door opens.
Josh rears back with a nervous squeak, shooting a quick wave to the man smartly dressed in all black standing at Ransom’s entrance.
He stares at us, his dull eyes taking in each of us in turn. Hennie anxiously glances at me in the corner of my vision. He looks at me for a little longer than the others; I can only assume this is because I’m standing closest to the door.
‘Um…’ I gulp, feeling ridiculous. ‘Eclairs?’
I bare my teeth in what I hope is a charming smile but probably looks more like a wince, and wait for him to close the door in my face.
But he nods and gestures me inside with an easy motion, looking like he’s trying not to roll his eyes.
And I realise that this man is not intimidating. He’s bored. He’s probably listened to an exhaustive list of cherished desserts for most of the day.
‘Thanks!’ I chirp, zipping past him and stepping into whatever the hell Ransom is.
I find myself standing in a completely unremarkable hallway with a large clock hanging on the wall in front of me. The walls are made of corrugated metal, like I’m in a storage container, but the carpet beneath my feet is a patterned beige. I hate to be negative, but it’s a little uninspiring.
I thought I’d be stepping into some kind of performance space like most stages here, but I’m starting to think that’s not what Ransom is.
The others join me one by one, and it’s difficult not to laugh at Josh’s reaction when he enters: a series of slow blinks followed by a quizzical look at Owen.
Following the path from the entrance, we come to a set of unremarkable double doors. A simple printout on A4 paper has been taped to one door that readsRansom I.
Josh rubs his hands together with anticipation, and I hope he’s not horribly disappointed by what we find.
He pushes them open, and we step inside.
I can tell the space is huge, but it’s too dark to work out the true scale of it. Inky purple light filters around it, meshing together with slow, spinning red lights. From corner to corner stretches pale-grey separating walls that one might find in an office space. Some tall and some shoulder-height, all uniform in colour, they create a scene that feels almost like a maze. I peer around a corner behind one wall and see two desks crammed in a nook. It feels… suffocating.
‘What’s this supposed to be?’ Hennie says with scorn. ‘Am I not pissed off enough with ordinary life that we have to bring anoffice spaceinto a music festival?’
‘A big one, too,’ Elliot adds, frowning.
‘Something about it does feel… weird,’ Owen notes.
He isn’t wrong. For one thing, it feels like the music doesn’t fit the space we’re in. Loud, long echoes of a muffled trombone ring through the space. It reverberates between the walls of the office hallways, making the sound feel uncomfortably close.
We start making our way through endless walkways, lit only by the heavy purple lights overhead and the odd lamp adorning some desks. We see no one but occasionally hear the murmur of fellow Ransom guests. Wherever they are.
Josh is much more spritely than the rest of us, checking around every corner with eager eyes.
‘Hold up!’ he calls out, then motions for us to follow him into a corner unit, surrounded by white walls that has been smothered with pink and yellow post-its. A strange figure has been scrawled across them in black ink, leaving pools of ink residue on the desk below it, now dried into a stain. The figure’s head is tipped right back, its jaws opened freakishly wide to accommodate what looks like a pair of legs inside them.
‘Nice,’ I mutter.
Hennie recoils next to me. ‘I hate it,’ she says.
Josh plants himself onto the table next to the freakish sketch. ‘Do you think this could be a clue?’
Elliot and I shake our heads in unison.
