A Montana CSI Foresees Her Death
Chapter Four
Lindsay hurled her dead cell phone against the opposite wall, and began to sob again.
She was not a particularly weepy person, but, it seemed to her, that the whack to the back of her head had knocked all those tears loose, and now she couldn't stop. She thought about how much fluid she was losing through tears alone, and then of the blood she could still vaguely feel, in a far, lost, empty kind of way, oozing through her hair. Dehydration could kill a person in three days. How long had she been in here, anyway? It was all about the threes – three minutes without oxygen, three days without water, three weeks without food.
Not that she was hungry. In fact, she was feeling progressively nauseous. It wasn't just the head wound, because she was beginning to be able to tell the various different types of vomit-urges apart. A sort of wavy, crash on crash feeling of sickness was the head wound, coming at fairly regular intervals now, perhaps every five minutes, though it was hard to tell. The constant, aching throb of nausea, resting in the back of her throat, that was caused by the smell.
The blood, hanging heavy in the air, her own sweat and body heat, the dead man as his cells began to break down, even now – and the vomit she had already chucked up in pools all over the other side of the closet (she'd crawled away and switched the torch off again.)
Mac had told her to sing. She couldn't sing – God knew, she couldn't sing – but some non-fear, non-pain focused part of her could just about still identify the sense in the idea. Give her something to keep her awake, and keep a noise up to draw attention to herself for the people looking for her – if they actually were looking for her. Something was beginning to gnaw away at her sanity, telling her that this was all there was, the black, and the pain, and sickness, and the smell. That paranoid six month baby that screamed whenever it felt even the slightest twinge of pain because it couldn't understand that this new, less pleasant state of being was not going to be permanent.
But her mind was a clawing, boiling blank, through which sludge she could drag no words, let alone a recognisable tune. The only thing that was bubbling up, in sticky, useless coughs and gags from the very pits of her mind, was the poem she'd had to learn for her English class her last year in high school.
I know that I shall meet my fate,
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
Lindsay moaned softly and batted the wispy, useless phrases away. She didn't even like Yeats, hadn't even been able to draw him fully to mind when she most needed him (during her English exam) – but here he was, knocked loose, with all those tears, from the back of her mind. Oh, those panic attacks… she was still lucid enough to recognise one when it occurred, but everything was so freaking mixed up… she couldn't tell what was claustrophobia, what was hyperventilation, what was pain, what was concussion, what was just plain old nausea and what was panic grabbing her soul and mugging it down the back of a dark ally.
"Bones, sinking like stones," she mumbled, dredging up the song that had woken her up on her radio alarm lock that morning, "we live in a beautiful world, yeah we do, yeah we do…" the tune took a few stuttering moments to launch itself from her throat, like a half dead baby bird staggering from it's shell, too exhausted to avoid the clutches of a predator waiting for it to do just that.
"All that we fought for, all the places we've gone, all of us are done for," Lindsay had to stop and cough, rocking slowly, though that might just have been the room….
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight,
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
Yeats whispered spitefully into her ear and she flinched away. Mr Sparton, her teacher, had ordered them all think analyse this particular poem to a stick end – what is Yeats saying? Here is someone who fights because he enjoys it – is this anymore shocking than any other reason? Does it matter if the end result (death) is the same?
She shuddered. Mr Sparton was the kind who spat out his 'S's with enough vehemence to shower the people in the front row with saliva every time he got worked up – and he was always worked up.
God, got to keep singing, "I can see clearly now the rain has gone," she cleared her throat and forced out the words, "I can see all obstacles in my way… gone… gone are the dark clouds that h-had me blind – it's gonna be a bright, bright sunshiny day…"
The dark seemed to be swallowing her words. If she shut her eyes, she couldn't tell the difference. Shouldn't it be easier without being able to see the walls? But it wasn't the small space that bothered her, not really. It was that there was just no way out.
Open fields, she told herself, firmly, big, open fields and a sunny day and a city in the distance and… and… a garden party, with everyone there…Everyone from Montana, and my dogs, and the hamster who died when I was twelve, and Mac and Stella and Hawkes, and that nice man from the sandwich place across the street, too… and Flack… and Danny…
"I think I can make it now the pain has gone, and… and… all of the bad f-feelings have d-d-disappeared," she shivered, "Here is the rainbow I've been praying for… It's gonna be a bright, bright sunshiny day…"
The almighty thud that followed seemed oddly detached from her – until, several seconds later, she realised it had been her, sliding sideways and hitting the floor. She moaned through closed eyes and tried to find her arms in the dark, but couldn't make them work.
A second thud. Then another.
But surely, she was already on the floor?
"Lindsay? Lindsay, you in there? Lindsay!"
Suddenly the dark righted itself. Lindsay was up and scrabbling for her torch fast enough to make her want to be sick again. "Danny!"
"Lindsay!" The door thudded again, "Oh, shit, Lindsay, you scared the hell outta me!"
"Danny!" Lindsay gave up on the torch and scrambled blindly for his voice, sure enough finding the door in front of her, "Danny, don't leave me!"
"It's okay," Danny was barely an inch away from her, through the door, with the light she couldn't see, "it's okay, Lindsay, I'm right here, you're gonna be okay, you understand? Keep talking to me."
"Oh, God…" Lindsay struggled to get herself under control, but the movement was making her feel ill again… she turned aside just in time to be sick.
"Lindsay?" Evidently, Danny heard her, "Lindsay, you okay?"
Lindsay shuddered in disgust, "I… I can't stop being sick," she managed.
Danny swore – it should have been under his breath, but she heard it anyway – they both knew perfectly well that a head wound accompanied by vomiting did not spell good things for the afflicted. "Lindsay, hang in there, I will be right back, you understand?"
"No!" A wave of panic hit Lindsay harder than the nausea, "Danny, please! You can't – I can't – Danny!" She began to sob again, great, heaving, hysterical cries of terror. Her fists connected with the door before she was even really aware of what she was doing, channelling all the frustration and pain and absolute panic into the blows.
"Lindsay! Lindsay, for God's sake calm down!" Danny ordered, though his words had little effect, "you're gonna hurt yourself!
Lindsay collapsed against the door, still sobbing.
"Lindsay, if you want out of there, I have to get help, okay? The lock on that door is tough, I'm not getting it open by myself any time soon, do you understand? This will take me thirty seconds – the whole floor is crawling with people looking for you," Danny spoke as calmly and clearly as he could considering the severely upsetting nature of what he was listening to. Having someone stripped back to their core, inner, screaming panic-stricken child like that was not a pleasant thing to witness, and, he suspected, an even less pleasant thing to actually experience. "You listening to me, Lindsay?"
Lindsay drew a deep breath. The black was boiling again, the air hot and suffocating. She gagged, but wasn't sick. She rested her forehead on the door, "I'm listening," she whispered.
"Lindsay?"
"I heard!" She shouted, and would have whacked her head off the door if she hadn't been fairly sure this would have made the pain currently clawing at her mind even worse.
"Good," Danny replied, "okay, I'm going now, count to a hundred nice and slow, and I'll be back, alright?"
"Yes," Lindsay sank her hands into the floor and ran a finger over the seem where door met lino. No gap. Nothing. "Danny?"
"Yeah?"
"Go! Go! Get me out of here!"
"I'm going!"
Danny's footsteps racing away, heavy and hard.
Lindsay curled herself into a ball, and wondered why the smell of blood in the air was beginning to play in her mouth.