blackness began closing around her, a blackness far deeper than that of the night.
The blackness of unconsciousness.
She reached out to it, embracing it. As she let herself fall into its welcoming arms, she heard Cynthia whisper,
Her sister’s voice echoing in her mind, Joan let herself fall away into the blackness.
CHAPTER 21
At first, the words seemed to have no meaning at all.
It was as if they’d been spoken in some foreign language and were emanating from some unseen place.
But then she heard them again, and this time they were more than mere sounds.
This time they had meaning:
The words resounded around her, but very slowly — so slowly that it took Kelly a moment to realize they weren’t coming from some unseen place, were not echoing out of the darkness around her. Instead, they were coming from within her own mind, and as the last tendrils of sleep released her from their grip, their meaning sank in.
She had survived.
Her body was cold with a chill that seemed to penetrate to the marrow of her bones. Her muscles ached with a pain that had moved beyond the level of the unbearable into another realm; it was as if her mind had come to accept that the pain could be neither alleviated nor controlled, and so must therefore be ignored. Otherwise the agony in her joints, the numbness in her hands and feet, the spasms in her muscles, would render her completely helpless.
For a moment she lay perfectly still. The impenetrable darkness still cloaked her like a shroud, but while she’d slept — or fallen into the sanctuary of unconsciousness — it, like the pain, seemed to have lost some of its power. It no longer ignited panic within her, and when she opened her eyes she had no expectation — not even any hope — that she would find so much as a glimmer of light to reveal her surroundings.
But she was not dead.
How long had she been here?
She had no idea — it could have been hours; perhaps days.
Her stomach ached with hunger; her throat was parched with thirst. How long had she given herself up to the escape of sleep?
She’d had no dreams — none, anyway, that she could remember.
Nor had she rested, for her body felt exhausted, as if its battle against the pain had drained it of all its resources.
Yet she was still alive.
Her lungs were still functioning.
Her heart was still beating.
She could hear it in the silence of the darkness, thudding almost below the threshold of her hearing.
Feel it, throbbing inside her, driving blood through her tortured limbs, refusing to give in to the pain that all but paralyzed the rest of her body.
Then, through the throbbing, she heard something else.
Her mind suddenly went on full alert, ignoring the pain in her body, filtering out the sound of her heartbeat.
She held her breath to concentrate on the sound that had come from the darkness around her.
There!
There it was again! The same sound she’d thought she heard when she first found herself in the prison of darkness, but that had faded away as quickly as it had come, as if it hadn’t been there at all. But this time, with her mind focused perfectly, she knew it was real.
And she knew it had come from somewhere behind her.
She was still lying on her side; her hands still bound behind her back.
Her knees were bent.
But she had to roll over.
She stretched her legs out, then twisted her body, ignoring the agony that shot through every muscle. For a moment she lay facedown, her neck twisted sharply to keep her face from pressing into the dirt beneath her. Then she twisted again and was lying on her other side. Her lungs heaved as her body struggled to replace the oxygen she’d expended in her efforts. As her breathing returned to normal, she heard it again. But this time the sounds formed a word, then another word.
“Help… help me…”
The words were uttered in a voice so soft — so weak — that it seemed as if the darkness itself had whispered them. But then Kelly heard them again: “… help me… please…”
A sound reflexively formed in Kelly’s throat, but as before, was abruptly blocked by the tape over her mouth. This time, though, she didn’t fall victim to the panic that had overcome her the last time her scream had been strangled.
Calming herself, she eased the pressure through her nostrils.
She wasn’t alone! Somewhere in the darkness — somewhere close by — there was someone else.
Someone who was alive, and awake, and able to talk.
Forcing herself to stay calm despite the excitement raging inside her, Kelly made the same humming sound as the last time she thought she heard something in the darkness. Even to her own ears, it sounded pitifully faint, pathetically weak.
She resisted the urge to repeat the sound, and instead listened for a response. At first there was nothing, but then she heard the voice again.
“Cynthia? Help me…”
As the sound was swallowed up by the darkness, Kelly had a feeling she’d heard that voice before. Her pulse quickening, she made her muffled humming moan again, and this time the answering words came almost immediately.
“Help me… help me, Cynthia… Please help me… ”
Then Kelly knew: it was Matt’s grandmother! It was Emily Moore. So she wasn’t dead! She hadn’t wandered off somewhere and gotten lost! Matt’s grandmother was here, only a few feet away, trapped in the same darkness as she. Kelly felt an overwhelming need to communicate with Mrs. Moore, to speak to her, to let her know that she was there. She knew she had to find a way to talk, to rid herself of the tape covering her mouth so she could call out.
Kelly twisted her body until she was again lying facedown, ignoring the pain that shot through her. But this time she didn’t turn her face away from the hard-packed earth on which she lay. Instead, she pressed the right side of her face into it, scraping the tape hard against the floor, trying to get a single corner of the tape to catch on something, to snag on some unevenness in the floor that would allow her to work it free.
But there was nothing. Nothing at all.
* * *
MATT COULD HEAR Kelly whispering to him. the words were indistinct at first, muffled by the darkness that kept him from seeing her. But though he couldn’t quite distinguish the individual words, there was a yearning in her voice that stirred something deep inside him.
He felt a burning heat spread through his loins.
He reached out in the darkness, searching for her.
Her words became clearer:
