CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Light spills from overhead, illuminating a small section of the dirt cellar. It doesn’t help.
“Have fun, sweetheart,” Jimmy says, dropping the door over the tiny opening and plunging me into total blackness.
“Help!” I scream.
Jumping as high as possible with my arms stretched out, I push on the door. It barely budges. My efforts allow a small streak of light to shine through the opening then nothing as the door drops again. “Shit.”
I try a second time with no more success. My feet make contact with the dirt floor unevenly, and I’m forced to step forward. Wet, cold dirt smears over my fingers.
“Ewww.” I hope it’s only dirt.
Thoughts of screaming continue to float in and out of my mind, but it won’t do any good. There’s no one around to hear me but bad guys. Quickly, the silence settles around my feet like a thick fog as I do my best not to move. The adrenaline from my kidnapping and being thrown in a dirt hole fades as my imminent demise is no longer staring me in the face in the form of a gun barrel. Panic replaces it, and my calm demeanor disappears.
A cold-feeling thing ruffles the hair on the back of my head, dragging over and around.
“Oh my god.” I turn and bat away at the mystery attacker. Flashbacks from the movie Arachnophobia push me deep down a hole of fear. The silent attacker whacks me in the forehead. I slap it away, but it swings back, hitting me between the eyes.
It swings back?
I stop flailing and let my arms fall. The suspected vicious beast smacks me in the face twice more—softer each time. On the third bounce, it stops, resting against my forehead and nose.
With slow fingers—ready to attack again if I need to—I snatch the cord from my face. The cool, beaded, metal chain reminds me of a light pull cord.
Because it is.
I tug, hopeful the force won’t cause the whole roof to cave in, burying me in the process.
A light flickers.
Turns off.
Flickers again before turning on completely.
Sadly, having light doesn’t improve my view. There’s a lot of dark brown dirt. A few smaller tree roots stick out of the makeshift walls, but they don’t look strong enough to use to hoist myself out, even if I could get the door open.
To the left, someone has installed three shelves. They’re braced against the wall but leaning slightly forward. A few mason jars of canned food rest against the edge of the top shelf. I doubt the criminals upstairs have taken up canning.
The important item is on the bottom shelf of the plastic unit. A wooden crate flipped upside down and dusty from nonuse. Above me the sound of something dragging echoes from the far corner of the ceiling. Muffled yelling seeps through the walls.
I carefully pull the crate from the shelving unit, aware that if I can hear them, they can hear me. A door slams shut, and I freeze, the crate held out in front of me.
“Put him with the nurse until I decide what to do with him,” a deep voice yells above me.
Moving quickly, I drop the crate on the dirt floor and take a few large steps back to the light, pulling on the cord, sending the cellar into darkness. There’s bumping sounds, a door closing again, and then scraping on the cellar door.
Slowly, then all at once, the small area is lit up.
Jimmy peeks his head in the hole, casting a shadow on the ground. Odd. I thought demons didn’t have shadows. “We’ve brought you company,” he says as his head disappears from view.
A larger portion of the light is blocked out, and something heavy falls from the opening, landing on the floor with an audible thud. Jimmy laughs and his form leaves the door, sliding something heavy over top.
The floor lump moves, the dirt and loose pebbles scratching together.
“Are you okay, Ms. Joslin?”
“Pete!” I squint in the dark, not wanting to turn the light on yet in case they are waiting outside.
He sits up. “That’s me.”
“What are you doing here?” It’s a simple question that doesn’t do our situation justice, but it’s all I’ve got at the moment.
He laughs, the sound quickly turning into a cough. “I saw you get out of the van and knew something was wrong. I thought I’d come and stage a rescue. Fat lot of good that did.”
“Oh, Pete.” I flick the light on, and bend down to get a closer look at him. “Are you hurt?”
His wrinkled face is smeared with dirt, and his shirt looks ripped in the shoulder, but there isn’t an obvious wound. He holds out his shaking hands and flips them over. “Just a few scrapes. Nothing to worry about.”
He’s right and wrong. In a healthy, young person they aren’t concerning, but Pete is suffering from alcoholism. Our prison isn’t a place he should be. Hell, neither of us should be here.
“Give me a minute. I’m going to get us out of here.” I shuffle back to my crate and place it in front of the cellar opening. Jumping did me no good, but maybe with more height, I’ll be able to push the door and whatever is on top of it open.
I line the crate up in the middle the door and, after careful consideration, push it a few inches to the side.
"What are you doing?" Pete asks.
I step up onto the crate, the added boost bringing me closer to the door. "I'm busting us out of here."
With a carefully calculated push, I throw all my weight into it. I'm able to lift the door the highest yet, but I still don't have enough umph to swing it open. I use a few seconds to peek around outside and see if I can determine what they're using on top of the door, but from my angle, I can't make anything out.
There has to be a way out of the situation. I refuse to go out in this style. If I'm to die young, it has to be from something cool like a bungee-jumping accident or stage diving at a Metallica concert. I hold the door open a few inches until my arms tire and it sags lower and lower.
Something cold and wet rubs against the edge of my palm, and I rip my hand away and inside, my outstretched arms falling more.
"What?" Pete stands and comes to look out the opening for himself.
"Something touched me." I'm so tired of being touched by unidentified things.
Pete stretches onto his tiptoes. "It's a dog."
"What?" I heave open the door, widening the space a few more millimeters.
Sure enough, when I lean closer for a better look, a big black nose greets me. A dog drawing attention to the fact I have the door open is the last thing we need right now.
It gets worse when the dog barks.
"Shhhhh," I whisper as loud as possible. Because we all know dogs speak so much English.
The dog claws at the edges of the opening. Little white dots on one of her big black paws catch my attention. "Frankie?"
The dog keeps digging but there's no doubt in my mind this is Spencer's dog. Frankie found us.
"It's Spencer's dog, Frankie." I turn back to Pete and whisper.
"Who is Spencer?"
There is no time to explain. I'm pretty sure Lassie never chewed up shoes or ate used condoms, but I don’t have Lassie, I have Frankie. And I've got to do the best I can. "Frankie," I say in a super sweet voice. "Go find Spencer," I coax.
Amazingly, she stops digging. Pete lifts one eyebrow my direction and gives me half a shrug. I'm tempted to use an, "I told you so," but I'm as surprised as he is that she actually listened.
Except she didn't.
The digging picks up on the other side of the door, her claws hitting the metal of the hinges. "Frankie, no."
My demand does no good. My arms finally give out, and I drop the door, pumping my shoulders to get ready for another push when the digging turns to a scraping—a heavy item being dragged across the cellar door.
Is it possible the dog who ate a bar of soap has just pulled whatever they're using to block the door away?
It's silent for a few beats. My heart thumps the only sound I distinguish in the quiet. I count to five, just to be safe, and then push again.
This time it goes up. Not all the way, but definitely higher than before.
I turn back to Pete. "Okay, I'm going to get this open and then we have to get out fast." There's no way I can hold it long enough for us to escape, and getting it all the way open is not going to happen quietly.
Pete shakes his head. "Don't worry about me. Get out and find help."
"I will not leave you here." I allow the door to drop and then, with a burst of energy, I jump, my hands straight out above me. They make contact with the door, and it swings forward. With one last push, it sweeps past the middle mark, falling the rest of the way open.
There isn’t time for celebration.
My arms are weak, but without stopping to take a break, I lunge for the top. With enough ground underneath me, I kick and pull myself to the surface in some form of demented Army crawl, using mostly my elbows.
"Pete, come on."
He doesn't budge. "I told you to leave me. I'll only hold you up."
I lean over and stick both hands back in the hole. "I'm not leaving you, and that's all there is to it. So hurry up."
His eyes light up, and he shakes his head, yet I swear I hear him mumble something about stubborn women. Eventually, Pete moves faster than I’ve ever seen him. He's older, but also taller, which is helpful. Pete’s hand sticks out above the hole when he steps on the crate and lifts his arms. My hands make contact and I pull his heavy body up as he kicks at the dirt doing his best to help.
When he makes it to the surface, I roll over, my lungs gasping for each breath as I stare at the tops of the leafless trees. There isn't time to do more than that. We need to be on our way and far from the cabin as soon as possible. I get to my knees, ready to help Pete, when a twig breaks on the forest floor behind me.
"Put your hands in the air," a deep male voice commands.
I let out a sigh and drop my head. All that work for nothing.
There’s a clicking behind me—one I haven’t heard enough to be sure about, but I’ve watched enough TV to consider the possibility it’s a gun. Another twig snaps.
"Don't shoot!" Pete yells from somewhere sounding far off in the distance. Or maybe I’m losing it.