Chapter Fourteen: Not Alone
. . . . .
That night was a lifetime of pacing and shivering, dozing fitfully only to wake in horror time after time. It must have been close to dawn when she finally fell into an exhausted slumber, propped against the chilly, rough stones of the farthest corner of the cellar.
She dreamed of her family. Of blue eyes filled with tenderness. Familiar voices and laughter. A hand holding hers. Familiar rooms, and a kindly maternal presence. Light, and warmth, and love.
She awoke to silence and cold and a brutal, aching loneliness; and for a moment she wanted to give in to the despair which suddenly welled up inside, to curl up and weep like a lost child.
Enough, she thought, hoping a little sternness would help her pull herself together. For a moment, it did help. Then she sat up and realized that among her body's needs, there was one she could not ignore, and the sheer undignified unfairness of it made angry, helpless tears well up despite her best intentions. She got up and went to a different corner- not that it matters- and urinated quickly. Ordinarily she might have felt pragmatic about handling her bodily functions. Today it was hard not to feel ashamed.
Trapped in here like an animal. Soiling my own cage. Oh, god, I have to get out.
Shame led to fear and fear led to fury until her emotions were a seductive spiral, drawing her inward, battering her psyche the way she had battered her body against the immovable door yesterday.
Enough, she thought again. Since when do you give up like this?
She got to her feet. Think harder. There must be something useful in here.
Her captors had taken her purse, naturally; but the light sundress she had pulled on over her bikini what seemed like a lifetime ago had, miraculously, pockets. A quick exploration of these yielded two bobby pins, a folded five-dollar bill, and a tampon.
Okay, she conceded, dropping the tampon onto her sad little pile of objects. This is all useless. Not for the first time, she cursed the loss of her purse, which had contained her phone, her penlight, and her Swiss Army knife.
Restless, now, she rose again and paced, trailing a hand along the walls. The room was lighter, now. What time was it? She climbed the stairs and sat at the top for a few minutes, breathing fresh air through the crack in the door and wishing it were wide enough to stick her arm through. Maybe then she would have a shot at picking the lock with one of her bobby pins. Could she widen it? No, she could not, as it turned out. The old doors were still remarkably solid.
It was as she descended the stairs, spirits flagging once again, that she spotted it: a nail, long and only slightly rusted, half-hidden in the debris of dead leaves and cobwebs which had collected in the corner of a step. She seized it, heart pounding, hope fluttering wildly through her veins.
Find a way, or make one? I think I'll make one.
The walls were lined with stone; but if she could pry one or two loose, might it be possible to dig her way to freedom through the earth outside the cellar walls?
Do I have any chance of making it before I'm incapacitated with dehydration? And if they come back and see what I've been doing, what will they do to me? Can I use the nail as a weapon, if need be?
Reining in her galloping thoughts, she turned her attention toward using the nail to scratch away at the mortar between two stones. The work felt good. The work narrowed her focus, sweeping away her worries, her thirst, her hunger. Nothing mattered but her hands and that stone.
The mortar did not crumble as easily as she had expected, given the apparent age of the cellar. She added that to the list of things she refused to think about- which by now included thirst, hunger, cold, fear, and a set of scraped knuckles which could easily lead to infection if she could not get out and clean them up properly- and kept gouging. Steady. Mechanical. Tireless.
Except that she was tired, by the time she felt the stone wobble. Very tired. How long had it been? That precious shaft of sunlight had shifted a long way across the floor. How long until she lost it completely?
At least I'm not cold, now, she thought, continuing her grim assault on the wall.
The rock moved. Toppled. She just barely managed to catch it and lower it to the floor before it fell on her feet.
The adjoining stone came out after a brief struggle. She took hold of one more, just to be sure she had enough free space to begin digging, and that one came free so easily that she fell back and sat down hard with a cry of surprise, still clutching the stone and staring at the place from which it had come.
There was no earth, where the stone had been. There was only space, dark and empty.
A tunnel?
She was on her feet again, tearing away stones, heedless now of her knuckles, her feet, until at length the stones were cleared away from the opening. She stood, panting, and gazing at what she had discovered: not a tunnel, but a niche, like a little walled-off shrine. And inside, arranged in a neat and reverent pile, was a set of bones.
There was no doubt that these were human remains. The skull sitting neatly atop the pile confirmed it. And there was something more- something draped over the skull. She leaned closer and then knelt for a closer look, because the light was nearly gone, now.
It was a necklace. The chain lay coiled on the crown of the head and the pendant had been arranged carefully so that it dangled in the middle of the bony forehead, a deliberate and almost ceremonial adornment.
Her breath caught in her throat. She knew that necklace, had seen it in photos and memorized its description from police reports and missing person posters.
She had found one of the missing girls.