* * *
This quilt was heavy. Suffocating.
Inescapable.
And then there was the pain. Pain that suffused her body like some kind of poison. It was in her legs and her arms. Her neck. Her back. Everywhere. For a split-second she thought it might all be a dream, some terrible nightmare from which she would awaken to find herself in bed at home. But as she tried to move her aching limbs, she knew it wasn’t a dream — that what had happened was real.
Slowly, it came back to her. Just scraps at first. She’d been on her way home, and she stopped to see Matt. She was about to knock on the Hapgoods’ back door.
Suddenly those hands closed around her throat. Hands covered with some kind of strange gloves unlike anything she’d ever felt before. Yet there had also been something familiar about them, as if even though she didn’t know what they were made of, she should have known. Her body jerked reflexively as she tried to escape that terrible touch, those awful fingers closing around her throat, and a cry of agony erupted from her lungs as every bone and muscle in her body screamed out against the sudden movement.
But her cry was choked back by the tape that sealed her lips, and instead of exploding out through her mouth, it seemed to grow inside her head until it felt like her head itself might explode.
Suddenly she couldn’t breathe! The unuttered cry held her in its grip, her mouth filled with air, her lungs still trying to empty themselves, the pressure building as her panic grew. Then some instinct inside her took over, and she released the air through her nose. But then, with her lungs finally empty, she couldn’t catch her breath. Her heart began to pound, and panic rose inside her again, a panic even more frightening than the darkness that surrounded her.
Automatically, her body started to fight for breath, but this time she overcame her instincts.
As her lungs slowly filled, the panic receded.
And Kelly began to think.
Once again she tried to move, but this time slowly, methodically, knowing that if she lashed out, began thrashing in the blackness, the pain would overwhelm her.
Her mouth was covered with some kind of tape. By curling her lips back over her teeth and forcing her tongue through, she could just feel — even taste — the adhesive.
Her hands were tied behind her back, her wrists bound together so tightly her fingers felt numb.
Her ankles were bound too.
And the darkness — the terrible darkness — a darkness so complete that it almost felt as if she’d been buried.
Buried alive!
As the thought rose in her mind, a terrible feeling of claustrophobia began to close around her. Another scream rose inside her, and her body fought once more against the cords that bound her. She thrashed, rolling first one way and then another, and it was finally the agony in her joints that cut through the panic and claustrophobia.
When the wave of abject, unreasoning terror finally broke and ebbed away, Kelly lay still again, her chest heaving as she tried to draw enough air through her nostrils to satisfy her body’s demands, knowing that if she gave into the panic again, she might black out.
Part of her mind reached out, grasping at the thought, wanted to escape into the peace of sleep. But even as that temptation crept over her, seducing her, she began fighting against it as a moment ago she had fought the bindings on her wrists and ankles.
If she went to sleep, she would only wake up again; wake up to the terrors of the darkness, the pain in her body, the terror of not knowing where she was or why she was there. So she wouldn’t go to sleep, wouldn’t try to escape from the darkness around her to an even deeper one that might hold nightmares worse than the one she was living. Again she rose above the terror, refused to give in to the panic that had threatened to overwhelm her.
She was alive. That was all that counted. She was still alive, still able to breathe.
Still able to think.
She concentrated on her breathing, carefully taking one even breath after another until her lungs fell into a gentle rhythm.
She moved her legs in one direction, then another. When her feet touched nothing, the last of the claustrophobia drained away.
She wasn’t buried alive, wasn’t trapped in a grave.
She drew in another breath, and now her mind was clear enough to notice the odors filling the air.
Urine.
Her first thought was that she had wet herself, but a moment later she knew that wasn’t true.
But it wasn’t just urine she smelled — there was a musty odor as well, as if the air in the dark chamber was old and stale.
Then she heard a moan, so faint that for a second she wasn’t certain she’d heard it at all. Then it came again, and Kelly had to fight the urge to cry out herself, knowing that with the tape over her mouth the attempt would only bring on another attack of panic. So instead of crying out, she forced a long, low sound — almost a hum — from her nostrils.
Then she listened.
And heard nothing.
She hummed again, but again there was no response. Yet even in the silence that filled the darkness, she knew she hadn’t imagined it. She’d heard something — some sound — in the darkness.
But why was it silent now?
The silence itself became frightening as she imagined what might be lurking there in the darkness, creeping closer to her.
She closed her eyes, telling herself that by not seeing the darkness, it didn’t exist.
Light!
She would imagine light!
She focused her mind, thinking of the chandelier that hung over the dining room table at home, its crystals refracting the light into a brilliant rainbow of color that splashed into every corner of the room.
Slowly, deep in her mind, a pinpoint of light appeared, then began to expand until it seemed she was no longer in the dark chamber, but in the center of a great pool of light.
But then, as something scuttled over her legs, the light vanished and she was plunged back into darkness. And with the disappearance of light, her hope also began to fade away.
No one — not even herself — knew where she was.
No one — not even herself — knew what had happened to her.
Slowly, the truth dawned on her.
She was going to die.
Die alone.
Die in the darkness.
Exhausted, Kelly Conroe finally gave in to the terror and sobbed.
But no one heard her. No one, at least, who cared.
* * *
