Title: Charlotte's Web (Chapter 31)
Rating: M for graphic violence and language
Fandom: The Mentalist
Summary: Patrick Jane has lived his life obsessed with the capture of Red John ever since finding his beloved wife and daughter slain by the maniac's hand. Now, 10 years to the day after that horrific night, a young woman appears in Patrick's life, someone who threatens to destroy everything his life has become in the interim... if not his sanity, itself.
Author's Note: Sorry guys for the long delay! I will really try to get these chapters out in a more timely manner! Thanks!
"An end in terror is preferable to terror without end." ― Sophie Scholl
"Every morning
I wake up with the news
of bloodshed.
I feel my body,
desperate to know whether
I'm still alive."
― Suman Pokhrel
Saturday, November 4th, 2013 12:53 pm PST
Lisbon stepped through the front doors of Hermosillo's tiny hospital, heart beating hard, forehead dotted with perspiration. So much was riding on this. The idea that Charlotte might be terrified right now, or dying, gnawed at her brain and soul like a rat in a cage. She walked up to the tiny triage desk.
"Excuse me?" Lisbon forced out. She strove for an irritated tone, somewhere between scared and worried. A young, petite dark-haired Latino woman with dark circles under her eyes lifted her head and smiled pleasantly at Lisbon. Apparently indifferent to the tone or trying to placate the white American tourist.
"Yes?" The receptionist said pleasantly.
"I think my truck is missing!" Lisbon shouted loudly, loud enough to get Jane's attention. It had to work. The receptionist looked up with saucer eyes, alarmed by the sudden shout.
"Ma'am, please do not yell at me."
"Where is my truck? People park outside, come back, and there vehicles are gone? Don't you have security here? Cameras?! What sort of place is this?!"
"If you will just calm down..." the receptionist begged Lisbon with tired, pained eyes, and suddenly Lisbon didn't have the energy to keep yelling. She took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down. She'd yelled That was good enough.
"My truck outside... I can't find it. I think it might have been stolen. Now can you help me, or not?!," Lisbon said through gritted teeth. Her heart would not slow down. Her legs felt like jello and right under the surface was the profound need to cry. She would not cry. She was not upset about the fucking truck. She couldn't stop seeing Jane's haunted, terrified face. If he lost his daughter a second time, he would be crushed.
He might never recover.
And Charlotte. Hadn't that child been through enough Hell already? What was Red John doing to her? Every second was a second Charlotte was in terror or possibly bleeding or dying or being tortured or...
"Stolen?" The receptionist repeated blandly, a crease forming between her brows. Lisbon startled at her words, lost in thoughts. "Your truck is stolen?"
"I don't know. It's not where my husband parked it," Lisbon said easily, amazed at how easy the words came out. "It should be there, but it is not. He has hitched a ride into town, to contact the police. But I was wondering if the security guards could check outside with me, or if I could talk to them, see if they know something or..." Lisbon trailed.
"Our passports were in there, all of our money," Lisbon let out in a deep sigh. Her eyes were burning, glazed with tears. She wiped angrily at her eyes. Tried to keep the sudden need to sob at bay.
"I don't know if we can get home without that truck," Lisbon said softly, afraid she was going to crumple. Not the truck. Charlotte. Without Charlotte would they ever get "home"? What would happen to Jane? What would happen to her?
She had grown to love Patrick's odd, intelligent, quirky, courageous, funny, traumatized child. The idea of Charlotte surviving through so much only to be slaughtered this late in the game was an affront to everything good Lisbon believed in. It was an affront to her concept of God.
Jane had said to create a scene, but that seemed potentially dangerous and Jane was exhausted and not thinking straight. If she was sedated or locked up, Red John could conceivably gain access to her, and then they'd be in an even worse position. Silently, she congratulated herself for out-thinking Jane. She'd calmly distract the security guards without pitching a fit. Not everything had to be a theatrical production, regardless of what Jane seemed to believe.
"We only have one security guard," the receptionist said, looking unnerved. This was not the sort of publicity the small town needed.
"Could I speak to him? Maybe show him where the truck was parked? Maybe he will have some ideas?" Lisbon tried to sound agreeable, worried but mature, a woman on vacation having a very bad day and requiring assistance from a security guard. It was an altogether reasonable request. Anxiety clawed at her windpipe.
She kept imagining different, horrible scenarios involving Charlie. Charlie tied up with duct tape. Charlie being tortured by a grinning Red John (even worse, now, because Red John wore Jane's face). Charlie being raped. Charlie being held underneath murky water, small hands thrashing at the surface. So many ways to kill a person. So many ways to break them down and make them wish they had been killed.
How did anybody live day to day in a world full of rapists and serial killers and sex traffickers, live with all these dangers, and not go mad, go crazy? Lisbon wasn't sure, suddenly, how she had ever done it. Knowing Charlie and gaining insight into her world was almost paralyzing. No wonder Charlotte was the way she was, after being exposed to all that she had been exposed to. After seeing her mother murdered, after being tortured, after being disbelieved.
What had she said about that youth hospital, that facility? ECT? She had alluded to so much, so much horror. It boggled the mind. The mind wanted to shut down, to forget, not to go there. Nobody wanted to think about such horrors, yet Lisbon knew she had a moral duty to think of them for Charlotte, to bear witness for the little girl.
Charlotte was a little girl.
Charlotte was a 5 year old in a stunted 16 year old body with extreme intelligence, extreme courage and extreme trauma warping her behavior. She could not die. She had fought too fucking hard to die. It would not be fair, God could not let it happen, not to Charlotte, not again, and not to Jane. Not to Jane. Jane.
Jane who had ended up in a locked ward the first time around, smearing his blood on the hospital walls in a smiley face pattern, restrained, sedated, sobbing in a fetal ball on the ground, not speaking, face ashen, eyes sunken. He had alluded to certain things, and the rest she had read. She hadn't wanted to betray him or overstep her bounds, but she cared about Jane, knew he'd want to protect her, knew he was ashamed.
She wanted to know what Hell he had been through, because he was in the field, and because he was a mentalist and because he was unorthodox, but more than that, more... she had had to know what her best friend had endured. She'd asked Van Pelt to get her Jane's files from his stay in the hospital, explaining the situation, explaining her worry for Jane, her worry for all of them if something happened with Red John that might set Jane off, might make him unpredictable.
Van Pelt had weighed the pros and cons, nervous of breaking the law, nervous about betraying Jane, but had finally acquiesced and later delivered Lisbon a small usb flashdrive in an envelope, silently, eyes averted. And Lisbon had taken it home, plugged it in to her personal computer. and read about Jane's breakdown and his Hell.
She'd cried. She'd vowed to stand by Jane no matter what, no matter how much of an ass he was sometimes.
Because he was good and kind and had been through Hell and was struggling so much harder than most people would ever, ever begin to see. More than she had even seen. Suffering in his own private Hell, but grinning in the daylight and telling jokes.
"Ma'am?" The receptionist said, a bit too loudly, and Lisbon blinked and realized she was lost in thought. She needed to focus. She wiped her eyes. Exhaled deeply.
"Yes," Lisbon said. She was here, present. "Yes?"
"Yes, I think it should be no problem, for our security guard to go outside with you, to look around. I will go and get him," the young woman said carefully, gently. She slipped out from beneath her desk and scurried down the hall, returning less than a minute later with a baby-faced security "guard" who couldn't have been more than twenty-three years of age and who wore a large pistol on his side holster like Lisbon had seen her young nephews do with their cap guns.
He hurried towards Lisbon, face careful and concerned.
"Miss? Your truck... stolen, you think?"
"Yes, yes," Lisbon said, smiling awkwardly, relieved. Relieved and scared and worried. The smile broke and her eyes filled with tears again. The young security guard watched her concernedly, darting a quick look to the receptionist. He reached out an uncertain hand and gently tapped Lisbon on the arm in a there-there gesture.
"I will take a look, yes? You show me where truck was please?" The young man said kindly, dark eyes full of warmth. A tear ran down Lisbon's cheek. Too much stress and fear. Her hands were shaking with adrenaline. Oh Charlotte... the scenarios and possibilities were endless, and horrifying, and thinking of them made it hard to breathe, to think.
"Miss, you okay? You look very pale."
"Just... we really don't need this," Lisbon said in a low voice, hands still shaking. Lisbon was a little amazed at her body. She generally handled stress very well, but days of terror and poor sleep had taken their toll. In a minute she'd be shaking all over, adrenaline-overload. Her fingertips felt numb, felt shaky.
"I will show you where the truck was? And maybe... I don't know. What do you usually do for this sort of thing? Is there some protocol?"
"First we take look, yes?" The young man said calmly, trying to be a rock for the American lady a good 15 years his senior. "First we take look. Maybe... maybe kids doing joy ride, yes? And truck is back? This might be the case, yes?"
"You really think so?" Lisbon said, and they walked towards the front doors of the hospital and through the doors and out into the bright sunlight. The light was so bright. It stabbed at the back of her brain and shot darts of pain through her head. Lisbon wasn't sure, of course, but she hoped Jane could see them, had figured out what she had done and would make his move soon, if he hadn't already. Hopefully Jane had heard her yelling and was already inside. Lisbon darted a look down at her watch.
So far she had used up five of her ten minutes.
She caught the young security guard watching her.
"My husband... he should have been back from the police station by now," Lisbon said numbly. It sounded real. Her distress was very real... just not about a missing truck.
"I am sure he comes back soon, okay?" The young man's voice was remarkably certain of itself. He scanned the parking lot, seeing nothing. There was nothing to see. No litter, no broken glass, no clues, no truck. There were a few beat up vehicles, one almost completely eaten away by rust, but nothing matching Lisbon's description.
"I don't see any truck," the security guard said calmly. "No truck at all."
"Is there anywhere around here, any side streets they might have stranded it? Or around back of the hospital maybe?"
"We... we check? Okay?" His dark eyes were full of emotion for the poor American woman who had lost her truck and all her money, her passport.
"Yes," Lisbon said, smiling gratefully, sniffling, rubbing at her eyes like a child. "Yes, we'll check. Thank you."
"Oh, no problem, no problem at all. Bad days happen to all of us, yes?"
"Yes. Bad days happen to all of us."
Saturday, November 4th, 2013 12:58 pm PST
Jane heard the yell from across the small street and smiled. He was sitting on a small bench, sunglasses on, surveying the scene. A tourist taking a breather. He ran across the street, down the side alley and found a door on the side of the building, which opened without a key. Jane entered and found himself in a hallway that smelled strongly of pine cleaner.
He walked quickly down a hall, saw the sign for "emergency treatment" (tratamiento de emergencia, it read in Spanish). Jane pushed through two way swinging doors and found himself in a large, mostly unattended treatment area with a few bed areas closed off by sheets. He walked quickly to the first curtained area and peeked inside.
In the bed and unconscious lay an elderly woman hooked up to a number of tubes and wires, eyes blackened and lip split. Jane scanned her face, saw the faint hint of older bruises. Almost certainly a tragic domestic violence case. Probably her youngest son, a young man with a drinking problem and a "temper" and almost certainly in a drug-running gang.
No doubt this young man wore a crucifix around his neck, and kissed it often... He was always sorry after he hurt his Mama, always sorry for his bad behavior. But he always repeated it. Jane ducked out and tried the next curtained area. A young woman sitting on the bed and holding a small boy of about two and a half gazed up at him, startled. The little boy stared at Jane curiously before deciding to grin a sloppy grin at him.
Jane grinned at the woman by way of apology, grinned at the toddler, muttered "lo siento, mi error," (I'm sorry, my mistake) and ducked back out. One last curtained area. He peeked inside and found an unconscious young man of about 20 with a bandaged head. Traffic accident? Fall? It didn't matter. Not for Charlotte. Not for the Chicken Man.
Jane darted a glance at his watch.
6 minutes.
If the Chicken Man was somewhere else in this little hospital, Jane wasn't sure where. He'd seen four rooms in the hallway on his way into the "treatment area" and all four doors were open. In two of them there had been patients in the beds, both sleeping, neither one the Crazy Chicken Man.
The little hospital was one story and the size of a small elementary school. If they had a morgue it was one refrigerated room, probably in the "basement". There were no elevators that he had seen, no signs for elevators. One public washroom. A few rooms that probably served as doctor's offices, maybe a phlebotomist office, an X-ray room. Probably an operating theatre.
This tiny little hospital wasn't set up for much.
Jane glanced back down at his watch as he ducked back into the hallway he'd just been from. 7 minutes into his ten... He'd have to get back to Lisbon soon. Suddenly the idea of Lisbon ate at him. 7 minutes alone in Red John's Hermosillo- a city covered in the monster's fingerprints- felt much too long.
Jane looked down at his arm and saw goosebumps standing up all over the flesh of his relatively tanned forearm. Not a good sign. The body often knew things the mind was not prepared to consciously deal with. Jane knew this was true, knew it often manifested in so-called psychosomatic responses. Heart palpitations, stomach aches, headaches, depression, ulcers, even cancer... the mind and body were interconnected and when the mind couldn't face something painful or horrifying or depressing or otherwise traumatic, it buried it in the body and the body told the world what the person could not consciously think.
And his arms were covered in severe gooseflesh and he felt suddenly nauseated and headache-y and terrified. Not good at all.
He turned to leave.
"Sir?" It was a nurse, and almost as fast as she had said the word, her eyes seemed to widen just a little. She thought he was Red John, that Jane knew immediately.
"Sir," she said again, but this time it wasn't a question, it was acknowledgment of his presence. "How can I... can I help?"
"The Chicken Man?" Jane asked stonily, voice the right mixture of imperious and irritated.
"You... you wish to bring him back now?" The young nurse said, almost hopefully, eyes darting to Jane's and then away. She was afraid to make direct eye contact.
"No, no," Jane said, flapping a hand dismissively. His mind whirled. Spun. The nurse's comment meant Red John had gotten the Chicken Man, that Red John had him and that he almost certainly would be used as a pawn or would be dead or dying somewhere else.
"No. What are his chances?" He tried to sound nonchalant, but inside part of him was screaming. With the Chicken Man gone, it would be so much harder to track down Charlotte...
"He... he needs to be in hospital, sir," the young woman said, and now she looked genuinely frightened. Jane smiled, trying to soothe her and she stiffened more. But, of course. When Red John smiled it was a universally predatory gesture.
Jane let the smile bleed from his face, a feeling of guilt and shame and sadness blossoming in his stomach. He wore the monster's face, whether he wanted to or not. Red John's victims- the ones he let live long enough to know who he was and fear him- thought he, Patrick, was Red John. They thought he was the monster.
The feeling was sickening, shameful. It made Jane feel dirty, like he needed a shower, like he might never be clean, it niggled at him, ate at him... He pushed it away. What he felt right now was of no importance.
He was of no importance.
All that mattered was getting Charlotte back, alive. And keeping Lisbon safe.
Everything else was superfluous.
"Without the hospital, what are his chances?" Jane said, as calmly as he could. He knew he looked upset, but could not help it. Let the nurse think what she wanted.
"Not... not good. Not good. He needs fluids. He needs to be monitored. His liver..."
Jane waved a hand again. It felt right. It felt like a gesture Red John might make, condescending and haughty and dismissive.
"Statistically what are his odds?" His voice came out snappier than he had intended.
He was warring with his emotions. Too much stress. An invisible noose, tightening around his neck... madness clawing at the backdoor in his brain, like it had before, right before he'd lost it and ended up in the funny farm on a plethora of magic medicines that dulled his cognition to that of a slug's.
They had wanted to give him ECT, and he had had the presence of mind, thank God, to protest. He needed his brain to function properly, he needed it to find Red John...
"Out of hospital? About... I am not a doctor, sir." Not wanting to say the wrong thing. Not wanting to upset Juan-de-fucking-Rojo. Juan-de-fucking-Rojo was unpredictable and the people that displeased him often ended up cold and unmoving under the watchful eye of a bloody smiley face that hung on the wall like a macabre visage of the old testament God. Pleased to meet you... I bet you guessed my name?
"I know that. I know you are not a doctor. But, as a nurse, give me your best guess. Please." Red John wouldn't say please. But he wasn't fucking Red John. He wasn't fucking Red John...
"10%? Maybe? Maybe 10% out of hospital? Again, sir, please remember, I am not a doctor. Only a nurse."
"How long does he have out of hospital? How many hours?"
"Maybe a day?"
"If he comes back within, say, the next ten hours?"
The nurse looked at him, blinked, hard. Trying to understand this game.
"Um... maybe, maybe.. 50%?"
Jane strode away from her before she was even done. The Chicken Man was as good as dead unless he managed to find him and Red John very soon and he had to meet Lisbon back in the parking lot. He'd tried his best to save the old coot, but the Chicken Man had been snatched up by Red John, like an egg gulped down whole by a fox in a hen house.
Maybe he'd be able to save him, but Jane wasn't holding out any real hope anymore. The world seemed to be darkening, colour seemed to be dying. It was almost a visual thing. The surroundings looked grayer. Jane was certain of it.
Lisbon led the young security guard back around the hospital, eyes scanning, looking desperately around for any sign of the... well, she wasn't sure.
She wasn't actually looking for the truck, but being here in Hermosillo made her felt paranoid and uneasy.
The air felt too hot, and too electric.
The young man's eyes scanned the back of the hospital. A small clot of physicians' cars parked together like a bruise on the black asphalt, two large BFI-style dumpsters (one locked with chains) and a small trailer with a wooden stoop outside and a sign which read "Centro de asesoramiento para niños" (Lisbon wasn't sure, but she thought the sign read "counselling center for children" and she felt a chill at the idea that such a place was necessary in such a relatively small South American city.
What sort of legacy had Red John left here that made such a place necessary? Surely it had something to do with Red John...
"What's that?" Lisbon said, pointing to the trailer. "What does it say?"
"It is for the kids. For them to have counselling. If they see... scary things."
"Scary things?" Lisbon inquired, seeking out the young man's eyes. "What sort of scary things?"
"The types of things that might live on in a person's dreams and nightmares," the young man said, after a reflective moment. His eyes seemed a bit unfocused. "The kind of things that are hard to forget, even when you must forget."
Lisbon watched the kid worriedly.
"Look, I'm sorry... I think I am going to go wait for my husband now. I think he must be back by now."
"He... he not back yet," the security guard said, meeting Lisbon's eyes. "He not back."
"Oh?" Lisbon said, hating the rising swell of uneasiness in her gut. "How can you be sure?"
"I just know," the young man said, hunching his shoulders innocently.
"Well, I think I will just go and wait for him anyway. Thanks. Again," Lisbon ground out a bit more forcefully.
"No," the young man said. "No. You can't go wait. You must stay here. With me."
"Excuse me?" Lisbon took a step away from the security guard. The young man smiled at her, but there was something broken and haunted in his features, something tormented, deranged...
"You must remain here, Teresa," he said calmly. He met her eyes then, and then his eyes shifted up and over to the right, a quick dart of recognition and Lisbon knew there was someone behind her. She moved to turn when the pain caught her in the back of the head and the lights and sounds stopped. She had a quick moment of recognition and pain before she was knocked into unconscious nothingness.
Saturday, November 4th, 2013 2:08 pm PST
She woke up slowly to terrible pain in her neck and to a feeling of disorientation. She was in the dark. It was extremely hot. The air felt almost like rubber, like something solid that came into her body in slippery little units of molecules as opposed to the invisible, unnoticed gas it usually was. She could feel satin under her fingers. She could smell iron-rich earth.
Charlotte tried to open her eyes again. She squeezed them shut and tried again, tried to open them in the heat.
Nothing. Pitch black, black with the swirling, psychedelic blobs of colour human eyes saw in complete dark. For a moment the thought came to her that she was dead and this was Hell and that was why she was so hot and in pain but then her brain woke up a bit more and she forced her eyes open as wide as they would go and meaning and awareness locked into place in her head like the gears being changed on a bike and finally clicking over.
She opened her eyes wide like her mouth and began to scream. She began to scream and scream in the hot, inky blackness and her heart beat dub-step against her chest and her throat felt hot and dry and like her trachea had been torn out of her body. It was a crunched, broken, strangled sort of pain, somewhere between an acid burn and a broken bone type of feeling.
It pulsed through her.
It was hard to breathe and she knew she had vertigo, even though she couldn't see. She could feel herself spinning, but knew she wasn't.
Charlie battered the top of the casket with her tingling fingers, scratching and clawing and screaming and begging, begging against the blackness and the horror and the unreality of the situation, terror beyond terror and fear beyond fear and a sense of being done away with on purpose and it was all so wrong.
Please God, please help... please God...
But God would not answer back. The colours swirled in front of her eyes, changing from neon green to blue to violet and then to fuchsia and she screamed and battered her hands, dimly away of pain in the fingertips, clawing and banging, hysterical, as her heart raced so fast that each beat was no longer clearly distinguishable and the heat and the terror and the black pressed in on her like stones, like she was being crushed to death...
She lost consciousness some time in that long hellish panicked screaming episode and sometime later bubbled back up into consciousness, into the same hotness, the same blackness, the same pain...
And the terror was back, pulsing red in front of her vision, and she knew then that she was dead, despite the beating of her heart. That was a mockery. She was in Hell, in the dark and the heat, buried alive for all eternity. She was in Hell. She was in Hell. She was in Hell...
and the screaming began again, the screaming and the banging and the crying and the hotness burning away the sweat on her fever-dry face and sometime later she kicked out and felt a spike of pain shoot through her ankle but could only dimly register that sharp blossom of pain.
Something hot and then cool and liquid and syrupy was coming from her ankle and her brain told her in giant puffball letters that were cartoon red that the word she was looking for was BLOOD, and the word came at her all balloon-y, in balloon letters. Popped into her strangled, terrorized mind in the dark.
She could see it (BLOOD) in front of her eyes, cartoon letters hovering in the blackness. Cartoon blood-red balloon letters.
BLOOD. In all capital letters.
Her ankle was bleeding.
BLOOD.
THE WORD YOU ARE LOOKING FOR IS BLOOD. And then the word BLOOD exploded in the dark into component bits of red and began to fade back into the black.
Her body kept screaming hysterically but part of her mind found it could communicate with whatever entity was sending words as thoughts in a visual sense right into her head, right in front of her eyes.
Who are you? A dim part of her brain asked the CAPITAL LETTERS. Who are you?
I'M YOU. YOU ARE DYING. BURIED ALIVE. BURIED ALIVE. SCARY, HUH? CAN'T BELIEVE IT IS REAL, CAN YOU?
it was amazing.
She could read the letters in the black, even as another part of her knew that her mind was splitting from reality and there were no letters and she was thrashing in a hotbox in the ground and yet another part of her still believed she was in Hell and was panicking over that and yet another part thought she must be having a nightmare and yet another part thought she might be having a nervous breakdown and be drugged in a funny farm somewhere and yet another part...
Her mind seemed to have split into a prism with an endless number of consciousnesses stretching out into infinity, like looking at one's reflection in a mirror, when there is another mirror facing the mirror, and the image is bounced back and forth forever.
LIKE THAT, HUH? The capital letters part of her mind shot at her. YOU HAVE GONE COMPLETELY CRAZY, CHARLOTTE.
Her body was still screaming hysterically, and far away in her body she could taste blood in her throat as some blood vessel burst on account of all that hysterical screaming. But her body didn't care, it kept screaming and thrashing and clawing in its hysteria.
The part of her mind that was communicating with CAPITAL LETTERS was calm and analytical and almost- but not quite- annoyed by all the screaming.
Silly human.
Silly mortal.
SHE was so much more than a body that could be hurt, could be tortured and abused and degraded. She was eternal consciousness, she was a soul, and could never die, not ever.
I've gone crazy?
CRAZY AS A FRUIT BAT.
Am I dead?
NO, BUT YOU'RE DYING. YOUR THROAT IS CRUSHED. WITHOUT HELP YOU WON'T MAKE IT.
Is there any chance I can live?
ONLY IF PATRICK FINDS YOU SOON AND GETS YOU TO A HOSPITAL. YOUR THROAT IS SWOLLEN AND YOU ARE NOT GETTING ENOUGH AIR. ALSO, YOUR BODY TEMPERATURE IS TOO HIGH AND YOU ARE DEHYDRATED.
When am I going to die?
IT COULD BE ANY SECOND NOW. ANY MINUTE. COULD BE ANY TIME NOW. MAYBE NOT MUCH LONGER NOW.
I am so hot.
YES. HOT. HHOTHOTHOTHTTOHTOTHOTHOHHHHHHHHHH
Stop it!
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Stop it, PLEASE!
I AM HERE.
Do you have a name?
CHARLOTTE IN CAPITAL LETTERS. SO HOOOOOOOTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT.
I'm so scared!
SCARRRRRRRRRRRRRRED!
Please don't do that again. If I am going to survive, you have to help me. My body won't stop screaming and thrashing. What do I do?
WHAT IS THAT LUMP?
Lump?
BY YOUR LEG?
Through the screaming, through the tinnitus and whining terror and racing heart, her body's hand reached down and felt the rough material of her backpack.
RED JOHN BURIED YOU WITH YOUR BACKPACK ON.
I see.
NO, YOU DON'T. DON'T YOU HAVE A FLASHLIGHT IN YOUR BACKPACK?
Yes. Yes!
Her body's hand flapped at the backpack and pulled it up in the coffin. She brought it to her chest, rested it on her heaving chest, and fumbled hysterically with the buckles. Found the zipper.
Zipped it open.
Felt around.
Felt the flashlight.
Clicked it on.
And there was light in the darkness then.
LIGHT. Capital letters said to her in the dark. LIGHT.
"Yes," Charlotte croaked in her broken voice, and this time Charlotte heard the words and felt them come out of her throat. "Yes. Light." Above her pulsing eyes (her vision was pulsing because her heart was pumping so hard and because her blood pressure was unusually high) she saw the top of the coffin, green satin. A mockery.
Living people weren't supposed to be buried in coffins! That was sheer craziness!
WHAT ELSE DO YOU HAVE IN YOUR BACKPACK?
"I don't know," Charlotte said into the hot, airless coffin.
SURE YOU DO. LOOK. LOOK AROUND.
So she did. She shone the flashlight beam into her backpack. There was her mp3 player with radio and earbuds. Her pocket knife. Some candy (gum and skittles) at the bottom of her bag. A toothbrush, a hairbrush, tampons. A miniature bottle of Vodka she'd stolen from the minibar at a hotel years back and forgotten about.
VODKA. MAYBE RIGHT NOW IS A GOOD TIME TO GET DRUNK.
"No. Will dehydrate me..."
YOU'RE DEHYDRATED ALREADY. MIGHT MAKE YOU A BIT CALMER. YOU MIGHT BREATHE LESS AIR THAT WAY.
Air. That was right. There would be a limited amount of air in the coffin.
She could feel the all-encompassing panic building back up to a crescendo.
DON'T DISSOCIATE. DRINK SOME VODKA. WE DO THINGS IN STEPS. FIRST TAKE THE LID OFF. DON'T SPILL.
Charlotte felt her hands unscrewing the lid. She could smell the vodka in the coffin, disgusting, putrid, deadly. She lifted it to her lips and took a long gulp. Then another. Then kept gulping until the mini bottle was empty.
Now she had to wait for the alcohol to make her drunk. There was no way out of this coffin. God only knew how many pounds of rocky earth was pressing in on her from above. Even if she managed to bore a hole in the lid of the coffin with her pocket knife, that would only allow the dirt to flood in and choke her.
She had to pray and wait for Patrick.
And maybe she would die.
It was quite possible she wouldn't live to see Patrick again.
She would die.
But at least she'd die drunk.
Probably screaming, but with slightly less panic in her mind than she might otherwise experience.
MAYBE LISTEN TO YOUR MUSIC. MAYBE DO THAT.
She could feel the urge to scream bubbling back up in her throat.
She felt a few garbled, hysterical shrieks squeal out of her, but yet she still managed to pluck out her MP3 played and put the earbuds in.
She turned the MP3 player on, turned to the radio function and scanned through the channels.
No reception.
Of course no reception. She was "underground".
She turned back to her music. Blue Oyster Cult. Don't Fear the Reaper.
Shut the flashlight off to save the batteries.
Waited for the vodka to dull her senses.
But her body began to panic again and she began to scream again, head pounding with pain from dehydration and terror, fingers clawing even as she knew it was useless... she felt distant shooting pain in her finger tips, hot blood that turned cold too fast, and realized distantly that she had torn out at least one fingernail in her panic. At least one...
Her fingers were on fire and they were wet. They screamed pain at her. She screamed back at them. Thrashed. Screamed. Alone in the hot, inky black.
Blue Oyster Cult played on, but the song no longer seemed as soothing and reassuring as it once had.
Please God. Please Patrick. Please.
I've gone insane, but I still don't want to die.
Please find me soon, Patrick, please Dad, please Daddy, pleasedaddy, daddy, daddydaddy daaaaaaaaaaaa...