Split Second

CHAPTER 44

Tess lay at the bottom of the pit. Her head roared. Her side burned as if on fire. Her breathing came in gasps and quick bursts as the terror swept through her veins. Mud oozed up around her, sucking at her arms and legs like quicksand. Her right ankle twisted under her. Even without attempting to move it, she knew she would have trouble doing so.

The smell of mud and decay gagged her. The black dark squeezed around her. She couldn’t see in any direction. Above her she could barely make out a few shadows of branches, but the fog and the night had already begun devouring the twilight. What shadows she could see were only enough to reveal how deep her earthly tomb was. It had to be at least fifteen feet to the top. Dear God, she’d never be able to climb out.

She struggled to stand, falling when the ankle refused to hold her up. A fresh wave of panic sent her to her feet again. This time she clawed and scratched at the dirt to hold herself up. She ripped at the wall with fingers digging and searching for a ledge that didn’t exist. Chunks of damp earth came off in her hands. She could feel the worms slithering through her fingers. She flung them off. They reminded her of snakes. And dear God, how she hated snakes. The thought alone unleashed a new terror.

Suddenly her bare feet and hands slashed and pounded, climbed and slid. The wind tunnel in her head continued to roar. Her heart slammed against her rib cage. She couldn’t breathe. That’s when she realized she was screaming. It wasn’t the sound that alarmed her as much as her raw throat and her aching lungs. When she stopped, the screaming continued. Surely she was losing her mind. The scream transformed into a whine, then a low moan that emanated from the black corner of the hole.

A shiver slid down Tess’s mud and sweat-drenched back. She remembered the voice. The voice that had led her to this hellhole. Had it all been a trap?

“Who are you?” she whispered into the dark.

The moans became muffled sobs.

Tess waited. She slid along the wall, ignoring her throbbing ankle and refusing to sit back down. She needed to be alert. She needed to be ready. She glanced up, expecting her captor to be smiling down at her. Instead, there was a flicker of light she recognized as lightning. A low rumble in the distance confirmed it.

“Who are you?” she shouted this time, giving in to the raw emotion that squeezed her chest and made it difficult to breathe. “And what the hell are you doing here?” She wasn’t sure she wanted or needed an answer to her second question.

“He…did this.” The voice came with effort, high-pitched and quaking. “Awful things…” she continued. “He did…this. I tried to stop him. I couldn’t. I wasn’t strong enough.” She started moaning again.

The woman’s fear was palpable. It grabbed Tess by the throat and crawled under her skin. She couldn’t afford to take on this woman’s terror, too.

“He had a knife,” the woman said between sobs. “He…he cut me.”

“Are you hurt? Are you bleeding?” But Tess stayed against the wall, unable to move. Her eyes tried to adjust to the dark, but she could see nothing but a huddled shadow only six or seven feet away from her.

“He said…he told me he’d kill me.”

“When did he put you down here? Do you remember?”

“He tied my wrists.”

“I can help you untie—”

“He tied my ankles. I couldn’t move.”

“I can—”

“He ripped my clothes, then he took off my blindfold. He said…he told me he wanted me to watch. He…wanted me to see. Then he…then he raped me.”

Tess wiped at her face, replacing tears with mud. She remembered her own clothes, the misbuttoned blouse, the missing panty hose. She felt nauseated. She couldn’t think about it. She didn’t want to remember. Not now.

“He cut me when I screamed.” The woman was still confessing, her voice rambling now out of control. “He wanted me to scream. I couldn’t fight him. He was so strong. He got on top of me. So heavy. My chest…he crushed my chest, sitting there on top of me. He was so heavy. My arms were pinned under his legs. He sat on top of me so he could stick…so that he could…he shoved himself down my throat. I gagged. He shoved farther. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. He kept—”

“Shut up!” Tess yelled, surprising herself. She didn’t recognize her own voice, frightened by the shrillness of it. “Please just shut up!”

Immediately there was silence. No moans. No sobs. Tess listened over the pounding of her heart. Her body shook beyond her control. A liquid cold invaded her veins. Air continued to leak out, replaced by more of the rancid smell of death.

Thunder grew closer, vibrating the earth against her back. The flashes of lightning lit up the world above, but didn’t make it down into the black pit. Tess leaned her head against the dirt wall and stared up at the branches, eerie skeletal arms waving down at her in the flickering light. Her entire body hurt from trying to control the convulsions threatening to take over.

She wrapped her arms around herself, determined to ward off those childhood memories, those childhood fears she had worked so hard to destroy. She could feel them crashing through her carefully constructed barriers. She could feel them seeping into her veins, a poison infecting her entire body. She couldn’t…she wouldn’t allow them to return and render her helpless. Oh dear God! It had taken years to lock them away. And several more years to erase them. No, she couldn’t let them back in. Please, dear Lord, not now. Not when she was already feeling so vulnerable, so completely helpless.

The rain began, and Tess let her body slide down against the wall until she felt the mud sucking at her again. Her body began rocking back and forth. She hugged herself tight against the cold and against the memories, but both broke through anyway. As though it had been only yesterday, she remembered what it felt like. She remembered being six years old and being buried alive.