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At least the light is still on.
I try to sleep, try to will my Aunt Helena to come to me in my dreams. To help me get out of here.
The ring on my finger burns.
Scafoni bone.
I want it off me. Want it gone.
In a strange panic, I sit up, wincing at the pain, and tug at it, tug and tug. But it’s stuck, and it won’t budge. Why did they leave it on me when they took everything else?
I lie back down and the next time I wake, it’s pitch black. The light isn’t flickering anymore. It’s out now.
The weight of a hundred tons of earth seems to bury me and if I’m not careful, I’m going to suffocate. I hug my arms to myself and will myself to sleep because I’ll go mad in this dark. I drift in and out and I don’t know how long this goes on for. I don’t know how long I lie here like this getting weaker and weaker, my throat burning, not sure if my eyes are open or closed because it’s so dark and I’m scared. I am so scared.
I’m going to die down here. They’ve buried me alive.
Aunt Helena didn’t answer that question when I asked it. Maybe she knows.
My eyes burn but no tears fall. None are left, and I sleep again. I go in and out of sleep, never fully waking, and I’m sure I’m dreaming when I hear it. Hear him.
“In here!”
I try to blink. Water drips. My God, that constant dripping of water. It’s like the ticking of a clock, counting down to the end.
“Helena?” A deep voice calls.
I roll from my belly onto my side. My eyes feel crusty, dry. I touch my lips, they’re chapped.
“Helena?” It’s more urgent this time and I want to open my eyes, to call out that I’m here.
But then the door crashes, the wood splintering. I’m startled and I’d scream if I could. I’d scream as a flashlight shines in my face and I can’t open my eyes. After all this dark, it’s too bright.
“She’s here!” It’s Sebastian. “Helena?”
I can’t lift my head up and I can’t keep my eyes open. I want to cry but there’s nothing left in me. I feel like I’ve dried up.
“Fuck.” It’s Gregory and my mind flashes back to the boat, to how the man lit a cigarette after dropping me to the boat floor. After shoving me aside with the toe of his shoe like you would a piece of trash, something you don’t want to touch.
But it wasn’t him. It wasn’t Gregory. I know the way his hands feel. I know his scent.
And I know he wouldn’t have done that to me. I know.
Don’t I?
“Holy fuck,” Sebastian says.
Something light as a feather touches my back, my side.
“Helena, can you hear me?” He’s crouching down close to me, touching my face. I feel his fingers at my neck. He’s checking my pulse. I’m that far gone.
“We need to get her out of here. Get her to a doctor.”
I feel him then. I feel him lift me up. I feel his arms around me and my head rests against his chest and I cling to him, wrap myself around him with the last little bit of strength I have.
And when I open my eyes to the tiniest slits, I find Gregory watching us.
Watching me.3SebastianHelena sleeps for three days. I have a doctor and a nurse on the island and I’m keeping vigil over her. She was so dehydrated that if we’d been even hours later, she wouldn’t have made it.
They left her down there, underground in that forgotten level of our building.
As beautifully restored as the upper floors are, so is that space the opposite. Uninhabitable.
I didn’t even know Lucinda had a key to the chamber she locked Helena in.
Her body was ice cold and she could barely open her eyes. Covered in vomit, piss and something I don’t want to think about, she was left there for four days without water or food.
She was beaten without mercy and left in that pitch-black hole and every time I think about it, I want to kill Lucinda. I want to wrap my hands around her throat and squeeze until her eyes pop out of her head. I want to choke her and watch as life drains out of her.
I’m standing at the window, looking out at the water, at the dock where one boat is missing.
The sun is breaking the horizon, but I can’t enjoy its beauty. I’m still anxious. And I can’t get the image of Helena lying there out of my head. I can’t get the feel of her wrapping her arms around me, clinging to me, clawing into me, out of my head.
“Fingers and toes accounted for.”
She’d joked about that.
Well, not quite joked.
