CHAPTER SIX

Sarah Thompson’s mind fumbled through a fog of grogginess, piecing together bits of time lost to sleep—or was it unconsciousness? Either way, whenever she seemed to be waking up she always found herself in the same nightmare. Her eyelids fluttered open to pitch darkness, each blink as ineffective as the last in penetrating the oppressive black that enveloped her. The air around her had the unmistakable mustiness of an old basement, tinged with the metallic scent of old piping and damp earth.

In this void, she had no reference points, no clues to the passage of days or nights. The darkness remained absolute, although the silence was not complete. Sarah’s ears picked up subtle sounds around her: the faint stir of air that spoke of a space larger than the confines she could feel, the distant drip of moisture that hinted at the earthen walls encasing her; the low, constant hum of a boiler working tirelessly nearby; the relentless ticking of a clock. The sound of the ticking was maddeningly loud, each second punctuated like the beat of a heart.

Earlier during her captivity, Sarah had filled this void with her own voice. She had screamed until her throat rasped raw, until the sound became nothing more than a hoarse gasp. And when no answer came, no sign of another living soul, she ceased her cries. They served no purpose other than to affirm her helplessness.

She tried to shift her position, but the clinking of chains served as a harsh reminder of her captivity. Cold metal hugged her ankles tightly, shackles tethering her to the very source of the humming—the boiler. It radiated a faint warmth, its presence both a comfort against the chill and a reminder of her imprisonment. Sarah closed her eyes—not that it made any difference in the darkness—and willed herself to think clearly despite the fear that threatened to consume her.

She remembered the setting sun in Whispering Pines Forest, painting the trees in various hues of green. She had been hiking, the tranquility of nature a welcome change as always. But twilight had crept up on her, cloaking the forest in uncertain light, and with it came a sense of unease. Sarah chastised herself now, wondering how she could have ignored the encroaching darkness, how she could have missed the signs that she was not alone.

Her thoughts spiraled back to that moment—an ambush that was both swift and violent. The pain had been immediate and terrifying.

“Idiot,” she muttered under her breath, a word swallowed by the dark. Her self-reproach was pointless, but it was all she had left—a way to punish herself for the decisions that led to this nightmare. If only she had turned back earlier, if only she had listened to that small voice of caution instead of the stubborn pride that urged her to press on. But there was no changing the past, no altering the choices that brought her here.

Sarah’s mind drifted, a thin stream of meandering consciousness. She thought of Gildner, the tiny town that had been a cradle for her earliest years, now seeming like a distant planet from her current prison. The image of the farm near the outskirts surfaced unbidden. She remembered the way the sun would rise over the cornfields, the rooster’s crow that was a call to relentless toil; the soil under her fingernails a never-ending reminder of days spent in servitude to the earth and her father’s expectations. Her mother, Evelyn, once vibrant and full of dreams, had withered like the neglected rows of their kitchen garden, bitterness seeping into the lines on her face.

“Escape,” Sarah complained to the darkness, recalling the word that had pulsed in her veins back in those days. Escape from the crushing weight of an unhappy childhood, from parents who could never understand her need for more than the simple life they cherished. Ralph, her father, content with the cycle of planting and harvesting, had no room for her aspirations. The television flickering in the corner of their living room offered him all the excitement he desired, and her dreams were met with silent indifference or cold disdain.

The darkness there had been different, born from regret and misunderstanding—a prison she thought she had left behind. But here she was, ensnared in a new shade of black. The irony was not lost on her, even as her spirit waned. She was back in a place without horizons, without the freedom she’d so fiercely sought. And now the estrangement from her parents seemed trivial, a foolish squabble over unmet expectations and harsh words that could never be taken back.

A door creaked open somewhere above her, shattering the silence but admitting no light. Footsteps descended, slow and deliberate, each thud against the wooden steps an echo in the cavernous space of her fear. Sarah stiffened, her heart pounding against her ribcage as though seeking escape from the confines of her chest. She knew this routine well by now—the opening of the heavy door signaling another round of silent interaction, another reminder of her helplessness.

The sound approached closer, the rhythm of footsteps growing louder. Sarah’s breath caught in her throat as she squinted, trying to discern any change that might reveal the figure’s form. “Please,” she wanted to say, “tell me why.” But the words lodged in her dry throat, unspoken prayers to something that seemed less human with each passing encounter. Instead, she watched, listened, and waited, knowing that any plea for mercy would fall on deaf ears.

As it had twice before, a penlight pierced the darkness, a sharp lance of white that stabbed at Sarah’s eyes. She flinched, her pupils contracting painfully as she turned her head away from the blinding beam. Each visit began this way, a reminder that her captor controlled even the simple mercy of light. The footsteps halted, and then came the soft clink of ceramic on concrete. The beam tilted downward, illuminating a plate with a slice of bread and a piece of cheese.

No words had ever been exchanged, no explanation offered. This silence was another shackle, one that bound her mind as surely as the iron clasped her ankles. Yet the delivery of sustenance seemed like a confirmation that she had not been abandoned to die. The plate lay before her, a meager feast set by a ghost.

Sarah’s fingers trembled as they brushed against the coarse texture of the bread, her senses heightened by the gnawing ache in her stomach. The cheese seemed like a luxury she hadn’t been afforded in what seemed like eons. She brought the bread to her lips, the musty scent of it filling her nostrils and promising a momentary reprieve from her hunger.

But when she tried to swallow, her throat seized up, a desiccated passage too dry to allow even the softest morsel passage. The bread turned to ash in her mouth.

She reached for the cheese with desperate hope, thinking perhaps its moisture would help. But as the texture crumbled between her fingers, it became clear that it would only exacerbate her parched state. A bitter laugh bubbled up from her chest, the sound raspy and foreign to her own ears. How ironic that she could be surrounded by food yet tormented by thirst, an anguish she remembered well from the sweltering summers on the farm near Gildner, where water was as precious as gold during droughts.

“Water,” she croaked, the word barely audible, more air than voice. It was an instinctive plea, not really expecting an answer from the barely seen figure that had delivered her meager meal. Once, her voice had carried across classrooms, crisp and clear, imparting knowledge to eager young minds in Trentville’s elementary school. Now it was reduced to a hoarse whimper, a testament to the hours she had spent screaming into the void, hoping someone would hear her plight.

“Please,” she tried again, the effort sending a jolt of pain through her raw throat. She swallowed hard, her tongue feeling like sandpaper against the roof of her mouth. In these moments, the memory of cool well water from her childhood home taunted her, a cruel reminder of what she once took for granted.

The figure remained motionless, a specter whose presence offered neither comfort nor terror—simply indifference. Sarah’s plea hung in the air, unanswered. Her body slumped against the boiler, the iron cuffs around her ankles clinking softly—a discordant lullaby for the weary and the broken.

The figure’s hand withdrew, and the penlight snapped off, plunging Sarah back into darkness.

She felt the air shift as the figure moved, the sound of footsteps echoing hollowly against the earthen walls. The door creaked open, and before it closed again, she heard a faint raspy chuckle. Then the door closed, and Sarah was alone again in the awful dark.