‘I said, I’ll do it! Turn the lights back on.’

Nothing.

‘Are you still there? Hello?’

He must be gone, she thought. He wouldn’t just sit there, speechless in the dark. Would he?

She screamed until her throat was raw. Pounded the concrete walls until her palms throbbed. Somehow being alone was even worse than being stuck in there with a psychopath. Eventually she collapsed.

Shannon didn’t come back.

To pass the time, she counted all the people who would be looking for her. Tara, her roommate with the hooded eyes and the volleyball obsession, must have reported Abbey missing by now. They didn’t know one another well and rarely spoke when their paths did cross, but Abbey came home every night. So Tara would have noticed she was gone, and would do something about it. Right?

So that meant the police would be searching. And her mom, and her brother. Who had seen her leave the party with Shannon? No one whose name she knew. But maybe someone who knew hers.

The dark seemed to be inside her now, nibbling at her lungs. Her breaths grew tighter. Her pulse was deafening. She could feel the panic growing. Was it possible for a nineteen-year-old to die of a heart attack?

This thought led to another nightmare scenario. What if Shannon had a heart attack? What if he was the only one who knew this room existed, and he died? She might starve to death in this little room. No, she would die of thirst first. She’d taken a first-aid course, and heard the rule of three: you can survive three weeks without food, three days without water, three minutes without air.

Oh God—what if there was no source of fresh air? She wouldn’t even feel herself running out of oxygen. She would get confused, pass out and suffocate.

Eventually the silence grew too much and she started screaming again. She yelled that she would do anything he wanted if he just turned the lights on. She told herself she was lying. That she wouldn’t have to do anything—as soon as there was light, she would see a way out. Something he had overlooked.

It didn’t matter. She screamed for hours—or what felt like hours—and no one came. She realised the sun could be up by now.

She got thirsty, and hungry. She sat on the floor, quaking. The adrenaline had exhausted her, but every time she got drowsy, she worried she was running out of oxygen, and suddenly she was wide awake again.

Eventually she slept, right there on the concrete. Using the bed would have felt like accepting his terms, whatever they were. She woke up disoriented and alarmed, thrashing like she was drowning.

After a thousand years the lights came back on. Suddenly she was blind for an entirely different reason.

‘Hello, Dolly,’ Shannon said.

‘Please,’ she said, ‘just let me out of here.’