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Oliver took several deep breaths. His heart had slowed a bit, and his thoughts were coming back in focus. Then he remembered how the fingerbones had felt against his cheek and he shuddered, causing the water around him to splash. He got himself under control once again and pulled the loop at the end of the rope out of the water. With another deep breath, he bent down toward the skeleton beneath the surface and got to work.
It took a few tries before he managed to fit the rope under the skeleton’s arms and around its rib cage, mostly because he had to stop and shudder every so often, like when one of her bony arms draped over his shoulder. Finally, he stepped back and shone the flashlight over the contact points between the rope and body.
“Okay,” he called. “Lift her up.”
The rope tightened, and the skeleton slowly rose out of the water where it had been lying for the last fifty years. Oliver made a face as he watched it head toward the gloomy circle of light above. Water dripped from the bones and he tried to avoid being touched by it, making sounds of disgust when a wet and slimy piece of material splatted on his forehead. He flung it aside, and it stuck to the wall across from him. In the glow of his flashlight beam, he could see the vague hint of a plaid pattern and figured it was part of Rebecca Hawkins’s skirt, and he shuddered so hard he might as well have been dancing in place.
“She’s a lot lighter than you were,” Cody called down. “You may want to lay off the desserts once we get home.”
“Asshole,” Oliver grumbled.
“I heard that,” Cody said. “Amazing how sound travels from the bottom of a well.”
“Good,” Oliver said, holding up a middle finger. “Did you hear that?”
“Loud and clear, Ollie old boy.”
He crossed his arms and watched the body rise. Faint sounds drifted down to him: Katherine’s exhausted yells as she fought to keep the ghost away and Cody’s occasional shouts of warning to her as he slowly and steadily pulled the body to the surface.
A shiver went through Oliver, and he hugged himself tighter. The water was freezing and had quickly sapped his body heat. Even though he was now the only body at the bottom, it felt like the stone walls had closed in a bit more around him. He shivered again and stepped up and down, trying to keep blood flowing to his freezing feet in his waterlogged shoes.
The skeleton finally reached the top, and Cody made a sound of disgust. “Gross.”
“Yeah, I know,” Oliver said. “Hurry it up, I’m freezing down here, and it’s creepy as fuck.”
“Okay, hold on.”
Oliver heard the clack of bone against stone as Cody lifted the skeleton out of the well. As he watched, Oliver saw the skeleton’s left arm catch on the edge of the well. Before he could shout a warning, it had separated from the body and plummeted down to splash in the water in front of him.
“Fuck!” Oliver shouted. “The arm came off!”
“What?” Cody finished hauling the skeleton out of the well and leaned back in, shining his flashlight down at him. “What happened?”
Oliver reached down and grabbed the arm, holding it up as if in proof. “The arm came off! Throw the rope back down and lift me out. We have to burn the entire body for this to work.”
“Son of a…”
Cody moved back, and Oliver heard grumbled curses as he worked somewhere out of his line of sight. Moments later, the rope was tossed down and splashed beside him. Oliver forced himself not to think about the rope having just been around the skeleton moments before as he slipped it over his head and positioned it beneath his arms. He held the skeletal arm tight in one hand, refusing to look at it, and gripped the flashlight in his other.
“Okay! Pull me up!”
In short starts and stops, Cody lifted Oliver out of the freezing water up toward the surface. The fingers of Rebecca Hawkins’s skeletal hand pointed up at the opening of the well, as if eager to finally be out of her watery grave.
When he reached the top, Oliver tossed the flashlight onto the ground and extended the skeletal arm. Katherine grimaced and stepped back.
“Just fucking grab it,” Cody said with a grunt and a grimace. “He’s a lot heavier than the damn skeleton.”
“Gross,” Katherine muttered.
But, she stepped in and, using just two fingers, took hold of the tip of one of the fingers. With an expression of extreme distaste, she lifted the arm from Oliver’s grip and dropped it out of sight.
Oliver grabbed the edge of the well with both hands as Cody took hold of the seat of his jeans and hauled him out onto the ground. Lying on his back in the mud, Oliver took several deep breaths in an effort to slow his racing heart before sitting up and looking around the clearing to take stock of their situation.
Dave lay on his back nearby, rolling side to side and staring up into the steady rainfall. He had managed to loosen some of the duct tape, but was still hogtied. Demetrius lay in a similar position not far away. The skeleton was next to the well, the separated arm on top of the breastbone. Tattered pieces of the clothes she’d been wearing the night she died clung to bits of bone, as if stubbornly determined to keep her decent even after all these years.
Katherine and Cody approached him, both wielding one of the long iron pokers. Their faces were tight with tension as they held the pokers like baseball bats.
“What are you doing?” Oliver said.
