Chapter 25
I’m overcome by a blind, stifling panic. The only illumination comes from the green glow of an emergency exit sign mounted somewhere near the laundry room door. My end of the basement and the cage that I’m currently trapped in is so dark that I can’t even see my own hands.
I retreat to the velvet love seat and sit down.
Common sense dictates that I should turn the phone’s flashlight off to preserve what little juice it has left, but I can’t bring myself to do it.
Being stuck in the basement is bad enough without having to do so in almost total darkness.
And I still cling to the hope that someone will find me before the worst happens.
There’s still that load in the dryer, and Jennifer will return for her washing at some point.
But the longer I wait, watching the minutes tick by on the screen like a death row inmate counting down to the inevitable, the less sure I become.
Then, with brutal indifference to my plight, the screen goes black, and the flashlight snaps off.
The darkness rushes in around me as if it’s been waiting for the opportunity.
I know this situation is different. There are no graves down here, and I’m not a kid anymore, but that doesn’t help. Because I’ve made a connection between Archie Hazen and the loss of my own child. In this darkness that I can’t escape, my mind betrays me.
Which is why, when I first hear the shuffling—a noise that sounds to my stressed mind just like that of an infant crawling along on all fours—I dismiss it as a trick of the darkness.
Sensory deprivation has been known to cause hallucinations, both auditory and visual, and in my suddenly fragile state, who knows what my terrified mind might conjure up.
But soon, I can’t ignore the obvious. There really is something moving in the dark basement.
At first, I try to reason it away. Dismiss the noises as the furnace kicking on in the boiler room or the sound of someone moving about on the floor above and filtering down through the elevator shaft.
But the sound isn’t coming from that direction.
It’s behind me, and it’s getting closer.
I shrink back on the love seat.
The hairs on the back of my arms stand on end.
I resist the urge to scream—I don’t want to reveal my location to whatever is there.
I strain to see, my eyes darting around uselessly in the darkness.
If only the phone hadn’t died . . . but it did, and now I wish I’d turned it off and saved some of that precious battery power for when I really needed it.
Then a new sound disturbs the still air, somehow worse than the shuffling.
A scratching, scraping noise like tiny fingernails on concrete.
An image flits through my mind, of Archie Hazen climbing out of the dirt and crawling across the floor toward me .
. . pulling himself along with emaciated, bony fingers.
I can almost feel his fetid presence. Except that it isn’t Archie.
Not quite. In my mind’s eye I see something far worse.
A young child with a face that resembles mine and eyes that look like Sam’s.
It crawls forward, reaches out, small hands grasping at my ankles.
I scoot backward on the love seat, pull my feet up off the floor, hug my knees to my chest, and pray that I won’t hear a small voice utter a breathless word that should never be frightening, but down here in the darkness would be more terrifying than I could bear.
Mommy.
Instead, the basement falls silent.
Whatever was moving in the darkness has stopped.
Silence surrounds me like a cocoon.
Then, out of nowhere, something slams into the cage with a sharp, echoing bang.
Now my wits desert me, and I scream at the top of my lungs.