Harrowing

by S. E. Amadis

  I felt about for the hole.

  Unobtrusive. Minuscule.

  I wondered how I’d missed it so many times.

  I stuck my finger out through this almost undetectable tunnel – and felt someone grab a hold of it.

  A jolt of shock coursed through me. Then I recovered my senses.

  “Help!” I screamed. “Can you hear me?”

  I heard a muffled reply, faint but unmistakeable.

  “I’m here!” I screamed. “Help me! I’m going to drown.”

  I heard a clatter. A battering against the canvas roof, at the opposite end of the canoe thing. A minute later a shaft of light flooded in.

  I snatched my finger out of the hole and swished towards the opening as speedily as the water would let me, grappling against the slimy sides and slipping on the floor in my desperation. The entire vessel was inches away from being filled to the brim.

  I reached the hole in the roof, stuck my fingers through it with infinite gratitude and pressed my lips against the opening. My eyes were covered by the roof, and I heaved in a deep breath and moved an eye over the hole so I could see who my saviour was.

  It was Calvin.

  “Move back, Annasuya,” he said. “I’m going to hit the roof again.”

  I slid to one side and the blade of an axe hacked through the roof next to the opening, widening it. I dashed over right away, because I needed more oxygen.

  Calvin let me catch another breath, then made me stand back again while he carved at the canvas a third time.

  It took several more whacks before he managed to open a space large enough for me to crawl through.

  I was trembling so hard I was barely capable of pushing my way through the hole. I felt like a baby trying to worm itself out of the womb.

  My knees failed me and I didn’t have the strength to stand up. Calvin grabbed me by the shoulders as I started to fall backwards. Exhausted, I leaned back into his arms with my legs still inside the vessel and just let him cradle me.

  He lay me down on the canvas roof and I just drooped there with my eyes closed, extenuated, melting into a shapeless morass next to him. He reached over and pulled my legs out through the hole.

  I felt my chest heaving. All I wanted to do was to sleep for a thousand years. Calvin stroked a finger gently along my cheek.

  “Annasuya, love, I know you’d like to stay here and grow roots. But we’ve got to get out,” he whispered.

  I opened my eyes and glanced around for the first time. I saw that I was in a sort of spacious wooden shed or boathouse, now filled with sunlight. The monumental pendulum was still there, gouging its way through the dirt. I saw double doors cast wide open on one side of the shed.

  A figure approached me as I looked around. It was Ursula. I gaped at her in surprise. Before I could say anything, Calvin yanked at my arm.

  “Come on, Annasuya,” he cried. “We have to get out of here. Hugh could be back at any minute.”

  “Hugh?” I muttered in a daze. “You haven’t caught him yet?”

  Calvin scowled.

  “We’ll leave that to the police – when we’re at a safe distance. Come on.”

  I tried to pull myself up. I felt like a rubber doormat, as if under the influence of some powerful drugs. In the end Calvin hitched me up in his arms and carted me out of there and onto the beach.

  Fresh air rushed over me, reviving me. At last I felt strong enough to stand on my own. Calvin dropped me to the ground, but my knees started wobbling and in the end I tumbled back to the ground again.

  Ursula threw her hands up in the air.

  “Well, why not?” she said, and settled on the sand next to me.

  Calvin grumbled, studied the two of us and then caved too.

  “Feels like a picnic,” Ursula said, giggling.

  I looked from one to the other.

  “Okay, Calv. Maybe you feel like telling me what happened now? How did you find me?” I breathed.

  Chapter 39

  Calvin gestured at Ursula.

  “It was Lindsay,” Ursula explained. “I was on my way here and I bumped into Lindsay.”

  “Wait, wait. On your way here? Why? How did you know I was here?”

  Ursula shrugged, spread her hands out on her knees and glanced down at them.

  “Okay,” she said with a sigh. “Confession time. I was in cahoots with Hugh, okay? But I didn’t know what he meant to do with you,” she hastened to add before I could say anything. “He just asked me to, like, to sorta keep tabs on you, you know.”

  I opened my eyes in astonishment.

  “Why?” I demanded.

  Ursula waved her hands about.

  “It was totally innocent. He told me he was sweet on you, like. And he just sorta like wanted to know where you were and what you were doing and all that stuff. So I told him.”

  I stared at her.

  “But, you knew I was with Calvin. I think I mentioned it at the office.”

  Ursula nodded.

  “I knew. But I thought, well, Hugh had the right to fight for what he wanted too, you know. You know, like, get to know you and may the best man win kinda thing.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  “Anyways,” Ursula rushed to get in, “last night, when I bumped into you at the pub – I’m sure by now you’ve probably figured out I didn’t bump into you by chance, by the way. Even though you’re not at the office anymore, I was still sorta keeping tabs on you. Like, following you around and such, you know.”

  “Thought as much.”

  “Anyways, so last night, when you opened your purse, I stuck in a little tracking chip. Remember? When I asked you for a quarter?”

  My mouth flew open.

  “Ursula whatever-your-last-name-is, I’ll never, ever in my life trust you ever again,” I exclaimed, furious.

  “I wouldn’t blame you.” Ursula shook her head from side to side, contrite. “Whatever you feel like doing to me, I deserve it. But I had no idea Hugh wanted to hurt you. I thought he’d just approach you and take a walk with you, or invite you to a drink or something.

  “So I was coming out here, following that tracking chip. As you’ve probably already figured, Hugh had already taken off after you ages ago – because both of us had the software to track that chip in our phones, you know—”

  “Good thing you did follow her too,” Calvin cut in sharply.

  Ursula surveyed him for a minute, taken aback, then continued.

  “As I was saying, I was coming out here, following the chip, and I bumped into Lindsay. And she told me what had happened.

  “To say I was stunned out of my mind is putting it lightly. But when we backtracked to look for you, you’d disappeared.”

  I glanced at her and Calvin.

  “So how did you find me?”

  “I remembered the boathouse, here on the beach. I remembered Hugh had shown it to me once. Before he’d set up all those weird – gadgets – in it. When it was just a boathouse with a metal canoe in it.

  “First Lindsay and I went to Hugh’s house in my car. But he wasn’t there. Then I remembered the boathouse. Those were the only two properties of his that I knew about. I was sure he’d brought you to the boathouse then, because it’s right next to the beach.”

  “How come you knew all these things about him? Are you good friends?”

  Ursula shook her head.

  “Not anymore, obviously. We were good friends for many years, though. In fact, we met at the temp agency, the same one you work for. They placed me at that company years ago. But I swear I never, ever, ever in a million years expected he’d do such a thing to you,” she hastened to add. “I’m not a criminal, you know. I’d never have helped him if I’d known.”

  My head was spinning. I was chilled to the marrow, in spite of the cheery sunshine. I started trembling hard and stuck my hands deep into the pockets of my dripping jacket, clamping my arms tight against my sides.

  “We came to the boathouse, but
there was a chain on the door and a padlock. We heard noises inside... Anyways, I got suspicious, but we couldn’t see any way to break into it.”

  “What time was this?” I asked sharply.

  Ursula squinted.

  “I dunno. Maybe a li’l after dawn.”

  “After dawn?” I shrilled. “You knew I was in there since dawn, and you waited so many hours to come and save me? You fucking shithead. I almost died!”

  I remembered the light paling through the chinks between the wooden boards as I lay underneath the pendulum. At that time Ursula was already there, knew I was in there?

  Ursula held up her hands, palms towards me, placating.

  “I didn’t know you were in there. And I certainly wasn’t aware of what was happening to you,” she said defensively. “I only suspected maybe you could have been in there. Anyways, we didn’t have any way to break in, and Lindsay thought to call Calvin up and ask him if he could bring some tools or something.”

  Good old Lindsay. Trust it to her to come up with the solutions. I’d always admired her keen mind.

  Suddenly I noticed that Lindsay wasn’t here.

  “Where is Lindsay?” I asked.

  “She took a taxi to our place to stay with Romeo,” Calvin replied. “With crazies like Hugh running around loose I couldn’t leave Romeo all by himself.”

  I nodded.

  “Anyways, so Ursula called me up, and I had to zip to my parents’ home first for a toolbox and some stuff, like the axe.” Calvin took over the explanation. “Cos we thought we could break the chain with the axe. Which is exactly what we ended up doing.”

  “So...” I stuck out a fingertip and traced a circle on the sand. “Then Hugh still doesn’t know what’s happened? He could come back here and... and do something to us, still?”

  Calvin clenched his fists.

  “Just let him try,” he growled.

  He pulled out his mobile phone and dialled a number.

  “This time we are calling the police,” he said. “What we should have done when Romeo first went missing. If we’d called the police then, probably you wouldn’ta ended up locked up in that basement, and then you wouldn’ta almost died.”

  The next few hours were a blur as a whole troop of agents came around and began trampling the sand down, taking declarations from everyone and cordoning off the site. A female officer – I couldn’t quite catch her name – came and wrapped her arms around me and then finally took me home in her car.

  “You must be exhausted, Annasuya,” she said.

  I barely had the strength to nod.

  She left me at home with Romeo and Lindsay, telling me she’d come by the next day so I could go down to the station with her to make a statement.

  “Get some rest, Annasuya,” she said. “It’s over now.”

  She gave me a comforting smile before she left.

  *

  Anyways, so my name is still Annasuya Rose Adler. I’m still just a normal person, like you and your friends. I like to go out on the town, have a great time, go drinking with my chums and dance the night away on Fridays. I live in a one-bedroom apartment with my boyfriend and son outside the centre of a large North American city.

  But probably unlike you and your friends, I almost died three times. I often get up at night and pad over to my son’s cot and gaze down on my son’s sleeping form. I remember how he lay dying of thirst on the mucky floor of a basement not so long ago. I stroke his hair and I swear, swear, swear that if I ever had to give my life for him again, I would do it over, and over, and over again...

  - - - F I N I S - - -

  Don’t leave yet! Get your Bonus Chapters from Book 1 of the “Carrie Anne’s Quest” series, THE DEPTHS OF SORDIDNESS: “WHEN I WAS A SHAMAN APPRENTICE” at the end of this book.

  Acknowledgements

  This book is dedicated:

  To my dear friend, Netta

  Because it’s high time I finally got around to gifting something to you haha

  No man is an island and there is no way I would be here today, writing books, if it hadn’t been for the help and support of a number of people, whom I want to thank and acknowledge here.

  First I want to thank my mother, who will surely be reading this up in the Spirit World. She always believed I would be a writer one day. Her own dream was to become a writer, and the fact that she never fulfilled it only gave me greater incentive and motivation to not let that happen to me.

  Next, a humungous hug to Helen Boyce and Tracy Fenton and your incredible reviewers at The Book Club (TBC). Thank you so much for taking the time to help me. You are the most awesome bunch ever! Thank you all SO much! You totally rock!

  A gigantic thank you and hug to my two sons. I want to thank you for putting up with so many hours when you wanted to go out for a walk around town, but you couldn’t because I was too busy pounding away at the keyboard. Or when you wanted to play videogames with me, but you couldn’t because I was too busy pounding away at the keyboard. And most especially for putting up with semi-starvation because I chose to live on welfare instead of working so I would have the time to write these books.

  So many hugs and hearts for my critique partner and life support, Netta Newbound, there is no way I would be here if it hadn’t been for you!! Not only did/do you help me in every way possible on the professional terrain, you were also always there for me so I could rant and rage and talk about all the people who made me feel bad or who I felt had let me down throughout the years. The only person I had in my life who encouraged me to keep going and to keep writing and to have the courage to put that writing out there. Words are not enough. Thank you, Netta!

  Although perhaps it’s a bit belated, I also want to thank the first person who ever believed in me. The first mentor I ever had, who literally taught me how to write when I was in high school. Who took me under her wing and gave me her time even after she retired. Thank you, Ms. Eglantine Rogers.

  And finally to YOU, my beloved reader! I would be nowhere without you. THANK YOU!

  Other Books by S.E. Amadis

  PATRICIA

  IN THE PRISON OF OUR GRIEF

  THE DEPTHS OF SORDIDNESS: “WHEN I WAS A SHAMAN APPRENTICE”

  Available on Amazon.com

  And on Amazon.co.uk

  About The Author

  “I write novels in order not to forget, because I’ve never been capable of writing memoirs.”

  The inspiration for this story comes from when I was sent one day recently to work as a temp for a certain, definitely very creepy individual (who shall, of course, remain unnamed).

  I could never write about a happy, conventional couple living in a happy, conventional, suburban neighbourhood with two cars and one and a half children, a dog and a pet bird, working at happy, conventional, uneventful jobs.

  My heroes and heroines have to walk through fire (or rather, crawl through fire), get strangled, beaten, shot at, drowned, poisoned, get caught in tornados or earthquakes or get attacked by mutant gnats. Or, they have to strangle, beat, shoot, drown and poison other people.

  A story with anything less than these dramatic, hair-raising elements was always too boring for me to even consider telling.

  I believe in magic. I believe that the world is full of mystery, and that there are more things in heaven and earth than could ever be dreamt of in our conventional, logic-based philosophies.

  It’s very important to me to write stories that are impeccable and free of grammatical mistakes and typos. I also do my research to be sure that I get all my facts straight haha! Several people have read through this book before it was published. But if you do spot anything amiss, I’d feel so chuffed if you could send me an email at info@SEAmadis.com and point it out to me. I probably won’t give you any free gifts for that haha, but you’ll get my eternal thanks!

  Outside of that, as a dry, mundane list of facts about me, I’m a single parent from a village near Montreal, Canada, who now enjoys the freaking great good fortune to live
happily with my two sons on the almost-tropical south coast of Spain, basking in summer eight months of the year. Typical activities include running a marathon with the kids to school every morning and cooking frequently for an Always Hungry teenaged son with four stomachs.

  As a curiosity, you can read about my own personal experience with a psychic medium on my psychic website, here:

  http://www.seasofmintaka.com/my-experience-with-a-psychic-medium.html

  Drop by my author website to read juicy tidbits of trivia about the books that I write, quirky facts related to these books that no one knows about, musings about how I write and more. You can find me at:

  www.SEAmadis.com

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  If you subscribe to my newsletter, if I make major revisions or rewrites of any of my novels, if you can prove to me that you have bought the original novel (don’t eliminate that proof of purchase from your email!), I will gladly send you the new edition of the novel for free.

  I might also sometimes send free excerpts (minimum one chapter, sometimes more) from new books as I publish them, exclusive for my beloved Subscribers. I might occasionally offer delicious freebies as well, as the mood strikes me, so do sign up and stay tuned!

  To see more books that I write as they get published, visit my Amazon page at:

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  As long as you keep reading them, I’ll keep writing more books, because I LURRVE to make up stories more than anything!