Chapter 19 Below
Below
The light is dead. It was dying before, but now it’s gone for good, and if I don’t get out, I’ll never see light again.
I wish I knew it was the last time, when I switched the flashlight off, but I thought I was saving them—-those final flickers of dim illumination, those final moments of sight before it all vanished.
What’s next? the gossamer girl asks. The one with copper hair and eyes I almost recognize. I think she was the last—-the last girl to breathe this stale air and wonder if she’ll ever be free.
“How did you die?” I whisper. “Did it hurt?”
Less than I thought it would, the girl answers. She touches the end of the bolt—-single, whole. This isn’t nothing.
Not nothing. Not much better than that, though. I had the image in her mind of bracing the bolts against each other, using them as levers to prize apart one of the links of the chain. I can’t do it with one.
I’m so thirsty. So tired. Not hungry anymore, but there’s no comfort in that.
It’s as if my body knows it’s nearly dead, is shutting off pieces of me in anticipation.
I will go slowly, gasping. Did the others die this way?
Is this how it ends? The door no longer opening, the girls like me left to wither?
I used to say things like We’re all dying. Some of us are just dying faster than others. I thought it made me better than other people, being cynical.
I hate that girl now, that version of me who thought I knew what suffering was. I was proud, wasn’t I? To be clever and cruel, as if one demanded the other.
I don’t think I’ll be mourned.
You deserve this, the gossamer girl says, matter--of--fact.
“No.”
Then why are you sitting there?
I shake myself. I need to move. Gripping the bolt in one hand, I follow the length of the chain, feeling each link. One of them must be weaker than the others. How many girls have twisted and tugged and pulled at this thing? It’s damp down here. I’ve seen the rust on the metal. It’s weakened.
Link by link, I follow it, marking where I feel the rough texture of rust. Those links will be the most likely to break.
But it’s only at the end that I truly find hope, because the final link—-the one attached to the metal ring sunk into the wall—-is the most rusted of all.
I grope along the wall, and notice for the first time what I never have before: the slightest whisper of moisture.
I long to press my tongue against the liquid, but it isn’t enough to wet my mouth with.
I pinch my fingers around the seam where the two ends of the link meet. The bubbling of metal tells me it’s welded—-but how well?
I slide the bolt through the link of chain. Here, I can brace it against the wall. Wrap my fingers around it.
I pull hard. All my strength, all my weight into it. Does it start to give? Or is it my flesh that’s yielding?
All at once, the resistance is gone. The bolt slips.
Flies free. My position puts my hand in line with my face, and without the tension of the bolt, it flies back, my knuckles striking my mouth.
I cry out at the pain, grab at my face. My lips sting and ache.
I taste blood and feel something shift in my mouth.
A tooth already loosened by a fist so long ago (or not so long, maybe—-I can’t tell anymore).
I spit it into my hand, a hard lump with a twist of gristle at its end.
My mouth floods with the taste of blood.
I press my brow against the cold wall, gripping the tooth.
Five more, I think. Isn’t that the story?
Six teeth on a string, and you can summon the witch.
But what good would a witch’s vengeance do me down here?
There’s no one left to punish except me.
But there was another part of the story.
The girls swallowed up and gone. I would like that, I think.
A gentle vanishing with only this one price.
I set the tooth carefully on the bedpost and run my hands over the ground.
The bolt. Where’s the bolt? My movements become more frantic.
I scrabble over the ground, patting at the concrete.
Nothing, nothing, nothing. I thrust my upper body under the bed and run my fingers all the way to the seam of the wall. Nothing.
I’m panicking.
Stop.
Dead girls cluster. Have they always looked so hungry?
Breathe.
Have they always sounded so scornful?
I swallow another mouthful of blood and shut my eyes. It changes nothing. I open them again.
I stare at nothing for the space of a dozen heartbeats. I still taste nothing but blood.
I raise my palm and spit into it, once and then again. With my other hand, I spread it down each finger methodically, blood and saliva cooling quickly in the air.
Fingers splayed, I press my hand against the wall. I swear I can see it, gleaming in the dark. I was here, it says. I was here, and I’m not dead yet.
Begin again.
I shuffle to the limit of the chain and start my sweep once more.