Jordan's arm was on fire as she was shoved into the country house cellar. The doors above her were slammed shut, and she could hear a padlock being clicked into place.
"Hey!" Jordan yelled angrily. "What the hell are you doing? Why am I here?"
Only fading footsteps responded to her demands, not that she had expecting anything more than just that. She started to gnaw at the ropes that had been wrapped around her wrists before being thrown into the car trunk. But her attacker had tied the knot tightly, and it seemed that her efforts were only making her bindings tighter as the hour went by. In the end, she had only managed to chew through a few threads before her swollen and bleeding lips had forced her to stop. She had lost enough blood already; every drop she could keep would count for something at this point.
She fell against the wall of the cellar and jumped as a spider crawled over her hands. She hated spiders, and from the looks of it- this cellar was infested with them. Great. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She choked down a sob that for the past two hours she had fought to contain. She wasn't so much afraid for her own life as she was for Garrets. Her last memory of him was of the chief ME entering her bedroom, and then crumpling to the ground as two bullets had hit him in the chest. The sudden surprise that washed across his features was just as quickly replaced with both fear and pain as he lay in her doorway bleeding to death. Had he made it to a hospital? Was he in surgery right now? She prayed that he had survived, but knew that the chances of it happening were slim. She had witnessed enough gun related murders and investigations to know a fatal shooting when she saw one. But doctor Macey was a fighter, and for now- she'd cling to the belief that he was going to be ok.
Jordan dwelled on her worries of the ME for only a few moments. Her thoughts were quickly interrupted by something shuffling around in the back corner of the cellar. How long had it been since she had been thrown down here? She wasn't sure. Great. She thought to herself. I'm probably in the middle of a raccoon nest or even better… Rats. Wonderful. She brought herself to her feet and slid along side the wall. But the noise grew closer, and changed into something more of a shuffling.
Her heart pounded against her chest as she became increasingly aware that the shuffling noise was coming from something much larger than a rat or raccoon. She swallowed nervously, "Hello? Is someone there?"
The shuffling stopped, but only for a moment or two. Then it increased, coming faster now.
"Who are you!" Jordan called out into the darkness, unable to keep the growing unease and fear from her voice.
Then, something reached out and grabbed her wrist in a painfully tight grasp. She screamed and fell back against the wall, something she rarely did before now. Then a face appeared in the darkness, illuminated only by the sliver of moonlight that crept in through the crack between the cellar doors. It was a face, with pale blue eyes and equally pale skin. A girl, with skin stretched taught over high cheekbones and a slender nose stared back at her. She was probably in her early twenties, if not her late teens. Pale freckles dotted her cheeks, and her lips were cracked from a lack of water. Her cheeks had begun to hollow and her hair hung in loose strands across her features.
"Don't say anything, or he'll come after you!" The girl hissed.
She didn't loosen her grip on Jordan in the least.
"Who will? Who are you?" Jordan asked suddenly, forcing the edge of fear from her voice.
"Sabrina." The girl whispered. "My name's Sabrina Callaway. You need to be quiet or he'll take you sooner that he should."
"How long have you been down here?" Jordan asked her.
There was a hesitation.
"I don't remember anymore." The girl blinked hollow, opaic eyes at Jordan. "None of us can remember."
Jordan did a double take with the new information, "us?" She peered into the darkness past the girl, trying to define any other figures she may have missed. "How many of you are there?"
"Four of us. There used to be seven of us. There were always seven of us."
"What happened to the other three?" Jordan pressed, the hairs on her neck beginning to stand on end.
"They're dead." Sabrina said simply, without emotion. "Heather was here when I got here. She starved to death about a month after I arrived. He had already stopped choosing her long before I came. Sophia, she was the youngest. We told her to not show fear, but she was too weak and too young. She tried to run one night, and he strangled her in the field as soon as he caught her. Then Katrina." She paused, and sniffed sadly before continuing, "Katrina just couldn't take it anymore. She killed herself with a rusty nail."
Sabrina loosened her grip on Jordan's wrist. "Come with me, you'll get sick if you stay in this part of the cellar."
"But it isn't that cold down here yet." Jordan protested, not ready to learn anymore about the cellar and the horrors it contained.
Sabrina looked over her shoulder at Jordan and blinked once more, "It's not the cold I'd be afraid of. The rats, they'll be coming fairly soon now. They do every night."
The girl nodded towards a corner of the cellar floor, yet another nook that Jordan hadn't noticed before. "Because she killed herself, he refused to take her body."
Horrified, Jordan could suddenly see the outline of a figure in the corner. A lump, slumped against the wall, it was shrouded in cobwebs and smelled of human rot. The stench, which Jordan had originally identified as dead rats mixed with the dry rot of an ancient cellar, was really coming from a rotting corpse- half eaten by rats and bugs. Jordan looked away from the corner, and wordlessly, she followed Sabrina through the darkness. The girl's fingers wrapped around her hand tightly and felt like ice in Jordan's warm palm.
It seemed like they walked for an hour before Jordan finally caught the glimpse of a dim light only yards away. A single light bulb hummed in the darkness, attracting moths and other insects that buzzed around its glow.
"How big is this place?" Jordan asked in amazement as they entered a room the size of the lab back at the ME's office.
Sabrina smiled faintly, "Pretty big. The house above us isn't the original. It was much larger, a sort of southern time mansion smack in the middle of a field outside of Boston."
"You're from Boston?" Jordan asked, trying to think of anything now except for the searing pain in her arm.
Sabrina shook her head, "No. Samantha came from there though."
Sabrina released her hand and headed over to a broken down cabinet whose doors were hanging off its hinges. She knocked on the outside panel twice, "It's ok." She whispered. "It's not him. You're safe."
There was a moment's pause and then the door creaked open. Three figures emerged, each holding hands with the other, each were just as pale and hollow cheeked as Sabrina and just as empty eyed.
The smallest of the three ran over to Sabrina, she released the hand of the older girl and clasped onto Sabrina with both hands.
"This is Samantha, she's the youngest. She doesn't speak much anymore, not since Katrina…" She trailed off, and sniffed again, eyes growing watery.
Jordan waved to the little girl, "Hi." She said softly with a smile.
Samantha blinked back at her, unable to answer.
Sabrina cleared her throat and scooped Samantha up into her arms, she turned then to the other two girls. It was then that Jordan noticed their clothes. All of them wore vintage style nightgowns. Sabrina's was by far the prettiest, aside from the fact that moths in certain places had eaten it, and the lace had come apart from the hem in others.
"This is Lucy," Sabrina pointed to the tallest of the remaining two.
Lucy gazed on and smiled meekly in response. Her eyes were a honey gold and her hair a sunless blond; bleached white from the months of leaving underground. Her nightgown was a sea green, long sleeved, and flowed across the hard packed earth beneath her feet.
"She's from Georgia."
"Grew up on a farm." The girl said softly. "My family raised cows for dairy. He was hired as an attendant. A month later I was here."
Sabrina nodded towards the girl behind Lucy; she looked to be about fourteen, with mahogany curls that bounced against sugar white cheeks. Ebony eyes gazed at Jordan from beneath curly lashes.
"That's Jenna." Sabrina turned back to Jordan. "He broke into her home one night, took her out of her bed while she was asleep and left."
Jordan's interest perked as she heard about the break in.
"And you two- how did you get here?" Jordan asked her.
Sabrina sighed at the memory, "Me, I came home one night after a date. My front door was unlocked. I thought my parents were home. The next thing I knew I was waking up in this place with a concussion. And Samantha, well he took her from a shelter one night while her mom was out getting a fix."
"What about you?" Lucy asked quietly.
Jordan had unconsciously been pressing her palms against her shoulder, willing the pain to cease.
"Me?" She choked down a grimace; her arm was going numb now. "My boss was walking me home tonight after we went out to dinner. I was getting ready for bed and he took me. We fought in the bedroom. My boss, Garret, he had come back because he had forgotten his keys. He found us in the bedroom. The guy, he had me at gunpoint. He shot Garret twice, we fought over the gun and then he shot me in the arm. Then he just, took me… Along with all my money and every piece of cheap jewelry I ever owned."
Sabrina and the girls were silent.
Jordan broke the silence by asking, "Do you having anything for this? If I don't do something with it soon it could get really bad." She lowered her hand, pointing at her arm.
Lucy took in a breath and Samantha hid her face in Sabrina's shoulder. Jenna's eyes widened and she hurried over to a compartment inside of the closet the girls had just emerged from. Jordan could hear her scrambling around inside of the drawers. Jordan's knees grew weak and she was getting light headed from both blood loss and fatigue. She quietly sat down against the cellar wall.
The last thing she heard before slipping into an unconscious stupor was Lucy whispering to Sabrina, "She's lucky. She's damaged. He won't take her until she's healed. May be she can help us."
Jordan could feel someone gently removing the blood stained cloth from her shoulder. Then something cut through the ties around her wrists. She could feel Jenna's hair swish around her cheeks as she shook her head softly, "No one can help us Lucy. We're going to die down here."