From what she can gather in the darkness around her, she has fallen roughly six feet below the ground she was on. Her scientific mind quickly calculates this and she knows she is safe for now, but not yet out of the woods.
My phone, she impatiently, and maybe a little too carelessly for someone with an archeology background, shoves one of the jagged, hard objects from her side, throws it a short distance away and hears it roll on for some time. She is anxious to expose whatever is tightly enclosed around her, lying in the dark crevices of the night. But it is not what she sees that makes her heart pound a rhythm faster, it is what she hears.
“Help,” a faint and almost deafeningly quiet voice wearily grunts from somewhere near where she threw the object. It’s the strained voice of a man.
“Who is it?” Melody’s mouth moves, but her body does not. She sits there, still, in amazement she is not alone after all.
Her phone is in her hand. She clasps it, yet dares not turn it on. Curiosity to explore what she has been unceremoniously dumped on is vanquished by immediate terror. Even her mouth is now dry and she wishes she had finished her glass of water.
“Mel… ody?” The voice asks, life seemingly evaporating with each utterance. She thinks of who it might be struggling in the dark, and panic setting in. My father? Could he be…? Suddenly, in a most desperate fashion, she switches on her flashlight and turns it to the voice.
There are heaps of rubble everywhere. Closest to her are the highest piles and in what looks like a downward slope, the rubble descends into a basement. As she searches through the slabs of cement with her phone, only partly through the decline does she locate the voice. It’s coming from behind some rubble.
With tears in her eyes, she starts digging, worried that what might be her father’s cries for help may not last long. She shouts, “Hello, hello? I’m coming.”
In response, the groans are more laborious, pulsating short pings of torment. She can feel craggy stones scratching away at her nail. Still, she digs frantically. Melody digs just above where she thinks she heard the voice.
“I’m coming. Hold on!” as Melody digs she thinks of the rumors about many people dying at Deacon house. She didn’t want to believe it at first, but she is beginning to see why the townspeople think it’s cursed. This property is becoming more and more of a menace to society.
As if to remind her to focus on the task at hand, the surrounding rubble crumbles into the concave space she just cleared. Melody who is growing tired by the minute is momentarily discouraged, but recalls how Will and Tam did not give up when her and Rebecca were in danger. With renewed determination, she removes the rubble and gets closer to the voice.
Is it him? She must be sure. When she steadies the light over part of a face with eyes, a nose and mouth poking out, the eyes squint from the glare and she moves her phone away as the mystery man answers, “It’s me… Will.”
A part of Melody is disappointed it’s not her father. For a moment, she had hope that she might have found him. Another part of her is relieved but also surprised to find Will stuck in here.
He groans in pain. “Hold on, Will.” She stands up and takes a more advantageous view of the room. She now sees grooves where cement stairs once stood and have since collapsed.
One shift of her gaze to the side reveals that if she had fallen just a couple of feet further, she would not have had any ground to catch her fall. Instead of feeling safe, she realizes she just narrowly escaped death. But Will is still very much facing fatality if the rubble under him is disturbed.
Taking a step in his direction, some of the cement slabs roll and she hears them slide off the edge of what’s left of the stairs, then fall steeply down the side and crush into smaller pieces upon hitting the ground below. This could have been her.
“Careful, it’s not stable.” Will warns. Melody hears a creaky noise penetrate the room. She’s not sure where it is coming from, nor is she concerned about it right now. This place is dangerous and she needs to get Will and her out of here.
Melody kneels down and starts digging. His body is smothered under some rubble and under him is a pile of larger cement blocks that were molded then stacked together. The room looks like it was under construction and she remembers Tam told her last week that there would be work going on in the basement.
Tam! She thinks.
“Tam!” Melody yells for help, but he does not hear her.
At her request, he’s still outside playing with Rebecca. How my plan has quickly caved, she regrets. Besides, if Tam sees her here, he’ll wonder what she was doing there in the first place.
Finally, she clears enough rubble for Will to move his head freely. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, I think so. Please, help me get me out of here.” It’s the first time Melody has seen worry on Will’s face over someone other than Rebecca. He is nearly afraid – a vulnerability she did not expect to see in Will.
“Let me get Tam. This is a lot of rubble.” She gets up and hears the creaking noise in the stairwell again. And there she now sees it; an unstable pile of small, rock-size cement pieces that could easily fall right where Will’s face rests.
Will sees it also and says, “There’s no time. You have to try to get to those
