CHAPTER THREE

Clara wanted him to carry her, and she thought that had to be the stupidest thing possible for her to want. But the ropes around her knees and wrists and the cloth around her face meant that even if she wasn't blindfolded, her attempts to keep up with almost no mobility past a grotesque shuffle would eventually result in her falling flat on her face.

She had no idea what this man would do to her if she fell. So, as stupid as it sounded, she would have preferred the man carry her to wherever he planned to do whatever he planned to do to her.

When the kidnapper had first started leading her, she felt the occasional wetness of mud or grass against her ankles. The air was warm and light, and she heard what she thought was wind and what she knew were birds.

For some time now, though, she'd felt nothing but hard dirt beneath her feet. Things had become eerily silent, too, except for almost ethereal sounds of creaking or moaning like a haunted house soundtrack low in the background.

She tried to take in as much detail as possible, trying to commit every moment of this terrible experience to memory so that maybe later if she ever managed to get out alive, she could assist the police. In television shows, there was always some brilliant detective who figured it all out because of a tiny detail. But what detail could she describe when she was blindfolded and led God knows where or maybe He doesn't? "I heard birds officer!" "Wonderful. We know you were on planet Earth. We'll start the search there."

It hit her forcefully that it didn't matter whether she remembered anything or not. She'd never have a chance to tell the officers anything. She was never getting out alive.

She might have wept at that thought if not for the way the man jerked her off balance. She stumbled forward, then fell onto hard ground, some sort of rock covered in dirt. There was another useless detail. "Officer, I just remembered! There were rocks and dirt!" "Wonderful, Miss Sharpe. We've narrowed it down to somewhere on land. We'll keep you posted if we learn anything else."

She felt his hands on her body and wondered when her life would flash before her eyes. She had heard that was actually a thing. A week ago, she had watched a documentary with her boyfriend about shark attack survivors. The man in the documentary said that when the shark pulled him under the water, he saw images of his childhood flash through his mind as clearly as though he had gone back in time. She hadn't paid much attention after that. She was too busy enjoying a chance to be alone with her boyfriend.

It hit her suddenly that she would never get married, never have kids, never get to watch them grow, never get to tease them about their own boyfriends. She would die here, Trevor would move on and some other woman would have his children and steal the life that would have been hers if she had just listened to him and gone to California with Gina instead of some stupid bullshit soul-searching cave dive in the mountains just outside of Granger.

She started to sob, but stopped when the kidnapper flipped her onto her back and hissed, "Quiet. Don't move."

He reached down and untied her blindfold. He was so careful and gentle with his movements that she nearly retched. Why bother being gentle? You're just going to hurt me anyway.

It took a moment for her eyes to focus. When they did. She saw she was in some sort of underground cavern. So she was still in the cave. That was good. That was a useful detail.

Again, not that it mattered since this would probably be the last thing she saw.

The cavern was lit by candles whose flickering yellow-orange light lent an ethereal glow. She could make out the figures of several beams placed throughout a dirt tunnel, supporting its overhead walls. Torches ensconced in the beams lit the tunnels. Their light contrasted with the dimness of the candles in the room made it feel as though she lay in a pool of darkness surrounded by light.

At first glance, she couldn't even make out the features of the man standing over her in the deep shadows cast by the light around him. She struggled to focus on any defining feature that might later help identify him, but all remained hidden in darkness.

Why are you even bothering? She thought. You're going to die. Who cares about identifying him?

"I'm going to release you now," the kidnapper said.

His voice was raspy, and his delivery was stilted and oddly inflected. It sounded as though he hadn't spoken in years and wasn't yet comfortable with it.

That was a detail that also might come in handy later, but Clara didn't fixate on his tone. The words were far more interesting to her. "You're… you're letting me go?"

"I'm releasing you," he repeated. "I'm going to take off the bonds holding your wrists and knees together. If you try to hurt me or escape, I'm going to hurt you very badly. Do you understand?"

She shivered. Of course, he wasn't letting her go. That was too much to hope for. "I understand," she said softly.

"Good," he replied.

He lifted her to her feet, and when she saw that he was barely her own height and of slight build, she nearly considered trying to fight him in spite of the threat.

But his hands were as strong as vises, and he moved her as though she were made of cotton. When her hands and legs came free, she didn't fight or run but stood uncertainly, waiting for him to speak again.

He stepped back and nodded. "All right."

"All right, what?" she asked cautiously.

"Run," he said.

The light flickered and shone over his face, revealing enormous, bright blue eyes and ghostly pale skin. He looked barely human. More like some kind of monster from a horror movie. She shrieked and backpedaled but didn't run. Where was she supposed to go?

Perhaps sensing her confusion, the killer explained, "You have to find your way out. That's the game. You have to try to escape."

She sobbed, terror crawling through her veins and crushing her heart. The kidnapper took a step toward her, and she shrieked and sprinted through the tunnels.

The torches showed her that the tunnels were smooth-walled and devoid of stalactites or stalagmites or any other kind of natural formation. It was manmade. That could also prove helpful.

She repeated the details she knew as she ran. Pale skin, huge blue eyes, manmade cave . If she could get out, if she could win this demented game and escape, she could tell the police enough for them to find him and stop him. She could see Trevor again, could have the life she dreamed of.

She fought back panic as she reached a dead end. She looked around wildly and found another tunnel leading off to the left. She sprinted down it, tears streaming from her face as she rushed along. She had no idea where she was going, but she had never had any idea where she was going, so it didn't really make a difference. All that mattered right now was putting distance between herself and that freak.

She reached the end of this tunnel and turned right down another one. She felt as though she was running upward, but she had no idea if that was a fact or just another desperate hope.

She turned another corner and tripped over something wet and sticky. She fell with a cry, then cried out again when her elbows and knees crashed against the ground. She forced herself to her feet, her arms and legs shaking from the force of the impact. She turned to see what she had tripped over.

A sound like a teakettle about to boil escaped her mouth. She lifted her trembling hands to ward off the vision in front of her, but it remained where it was, the perfect and incontrovertible truth that she was right to believe she'd never leave this place alive.

The man in front of her had died maybe a week ago. Enough skin still remained on his face that she could see the terror in his sunken eyes and peeled back lips, but a chunk of his right cheek had sloughed off where her foot had struck it.

Clara screamed then, the sound echoing throughout the walls of the cave and returning to her ears as an echo of demonic laughter.