by Sylvia Nobel
Part of me shouted, who cares? I’m alive! And companion to the relief of having the loathsome bag gone was the thrill of emancipation as I gingerly flexed my unbound hands. So far so good.
I lifted my head and looked around. It appeared that I was lying at the bottom of a crude circular depression, perhaps five or six feet beneath the opening. Feverishly, I fought to re-establish the chain of events that had brought me to this place. What a total dufus I’d been going alone to the cemetery, strolling blithely into a well-laid trap. Sheer horror radiated through me at the memory of Archie’s rough hands on my body. Disgusting predator. I harbored no doubt as to his original intent, so why had the second man aborted his plan? And what had been the point of drugging me?
But when the stranger’s sinister words, “...has to look like an accident,” echoed inside my head, the truth became chillingly obvious. They’d had no intention of allowing me to survive. So...why wasn’t I dead? Why had they made it so easy for me to get up and climb out?
I leaned my head to one side and stared disbelieving at a sheer rock wall. Could the shadowy object attached to the side be a rusted ore bucket? Uh oh.
A pervasive feeling of danger engulfed me. Just as I started to push myself to a sitting position, a sudden whooshing sound arrested my movements. The mind-bending sight of an owl flapping upward past my head—so close we were eyeball to eyeball for a fraction of a second, left my lungs airless. Spellbound, I watched it silhouetted like a dark mirage against the small window of sky before it vanished. That resolved the strange noise. But the presumption that I was lying at the bottom of a shallow hole dissolved with a startling realization. The owl had indeed come from somewhere below me. Below me.
Ragged breath constricted my throat and fear squeezed my heart like vise-grips. My imagination careened wildly in all directions as I eased my palms along the rough surface beneath me. Wood. Splintery planks of wood. I extended my arms out further, perhaps two feet on either side of me until I reached the edges of the boards. Beyond that, my fingertips encountered nothing. Nothing at all.
Cold claws of panic gripped me as the horrifying gravity of my situation began to seep in. I understood the reason for the ore bucket. I wasn’t lying at the bottom of a hole. I was suspended above it. Those bastards. They’d left me in an abandoned mineshaft.
And if that weren’t bad enough, I could feel my chest burning, seizing up at the onset of an asthma attack. Like spent bellows, my lungs seemed to deliver less and less oxygen with each consecutive breath. Without my inhaler, which I hadn’t needed for weeks, the possibility of eventual suffocation threatened. Breathe, damn it, breathe! That’s it. Now another. Relax. A little deeper now. Good. Calm down. Calm down. It took every ounce of determination I could muster to finally regain some measure of self-control.
More clear-headed, I forced myself to look down the length of my body. Mere inches beyond my toes the end of the narrow platform was precariously balanced on a thin rock shelf. Every cell in my body screamed, “Get up! Get out!” But, when I shifted my weight, the ominous crack of splintering wood turned my insides to mush. One of the planks beneath my right elbow suddenly wasn’t there and it seemed an hour passed before I heard the muffled clatter of it hitting bottom.
Horrified, I reached through the gap where the board had been and ran my hand along the underside of the planks beneath my hips. They were all scored, jagged, poised to break. One false move, perhaps any further movement at all could send me plummeting into the inky void. For agonizing minutes, I lay stiff as a flash-frozen carp, unable or unwilling to confront the inevitability. But as time crawled by, reality sunk in. I was going to die. My throat closed. Tears blurred my vision. Would death come quickly from the force of the fall, or would I lie in a crumpled broken heap, a prisoner of the unending darkness, condemned to slow starvation. Or...perhaps I would be here for days broiling in the noonday sun, wracked with hunger and thirst before my flesh was reduced to the consistency of a charcoal briquette. Buzzards would come and peel away my charred skin. Pick my bones clean. And someday, someone would find my bleached skeleton moldering to dust just like the long-ago victims who’d tumbled from the edge of Boneyard Pass.
For no earthly reason, I was seized by sudden glee. Bitter laughter lodged in my throat, almost choking me. If I hadn’t startled the owl, I would probably already be dead, just as they’d planned. How ironic. Saved by an owl. At least temporarily. “Thank you, owl!” I cackled. “Thank you, stupid owl. Thanks for nothing.” The eerie wail of my own hysterical shrieks reverberating around the shaft spooked me almost as much my predicament. “Help!” I screamed. “Help me, somebody, please!”
Clammy with icy sweat, my insides quivering uncontrollably, I surrendered to overwhelming terror. It slammed into me, consuming my senses, impaling my intellect. The whole fabric of my being unraveled like a spool of yarn, leaving me a quaking, sobbing mass of incoherent humanity. For what seemed like hours, I wallowed in misery, crushed under the weight of my own sniveling cowardice. I thought about everything. And nothing. I did some heavy-duty praying, striking all sorts of bargains with God, vowing aloud, “Dear Lord, if you could see your way clear to grant me one small miracle, if you could somehow show me a way out of this mess, I promise I’ll make an honest effort to do the right thing from this day forward. And, I swear I’ll be a better daughter, a better sister, a better friend, better person. I’ll work on my stupid temper and try to be more patient.”
I screamed for help until my vocal chords gave out. Then, a peculiar thing happened. Apparently, abject terror has a life span because all at once, a soothing numbness permeated my psyche and flowed through my veins like a tranquil stream. I fell silent, my trembling stopped and rational thought gradually returned, allowing me to assess my situation with some semblance of calm.
It pained me no end to admit that Archie and his buddy had outfoxed me. They’d devised a brilliant and flawless plan. It was obvious they had not intended for me to die outright. If and when my body was ever found, nothing would appear abnormal. Whatever drug they’d administered would have had plenty of time to filter through my liver leaving no trace for the medical examiner to find.
I still had my watch. My car keys were nestled in the right front pocket of my jeans. I’d simply wandered away from the cemetery and fallen through the rotted timbers that once sealed the mouth of the mine. Happens all the time. And there did not seem to be any possible way for me to escape alive.
The knowledge that I would never see my family again filled me with profound and agonizing sorrow. And then my thoughts came to rest on Tally...my dearest Tally. Knowing that I would never again feel his arms around me or his lips pressed against mine shredded my heart with shards of anguish.
Maybe I should get it over with. Why lie here and suffer? It would be so easy to just roll off. The urge was unexplainable and overwhelming, but fear glued me to the boards as my mind grappled for a solution. Any solution.
Wait a minute. Wait a minute. By tonight, I would be missed. Audrey would call the sheriff. There would be a search, I would be rescued...then my thoughts foundered. Hundreds of these abandoned mines pockmarked the area. How would they ever find me?
Plunged once more into the depths of despair, I cursed my fate as the relentless sun scorched my skin. With each passing moment I could feel myself dehydrating further. I don’t know why it mattered, but suddenly I needed to know what time it was. I lifted my arm very slowly and praying the minuscule shift of weight would not disturb my flimsy platform. Almost five. Good grief. I’d been unconscious over three hours.
The drone of a light plane overhead spiked my pulse, but as it sputtered away into the distance, the heavy silence returned, broken only now and then by the faint whisper of wind rattling the dry timbers above me.
I stared dully at the cheerful patch of blue sky crisscrossed with lacy contrails and decided that it was a mixed blessing when the sun finally moved beyond the lip of the shaft. Cool air wafting up from below s
oothed my sunburn but the onset of night presented the disturbing picture of lying here alone in the dark.
Call it habit, call it my reporter’s mindset, or the simple fact that it was imperative to keep my mind occupied or go mad, but I could not stop myself from slogging through the baffling mishmash of events, beginning with the innocent phone call from my brother last week. Each clue, each incident, each conversation piggy backed upon the next until a startling scenario emerged. Man, oh man. How could I have been so dense? The answer had been in front of me all along, but had made no sense until now.
If one assumed that Ida’s story of the asylum fire was true then there could only be one possible explanation. Grady’s angel of death and the mysterious female caller had to be one and the same. Who else was familiar enough with the house and grounds to pull off such a clever masquerade? And with D.J. and Archie acting as her willing lieutenants, it would have been easy enough to add a little larceny to the role of vengeful murderess. But, of course, the most damning piece of evidence of all was the jeweled barrette, dropped from her hair the night of Grady’s swan dive from the balcony.
No wonder she’d panicked at my persistent questions. They would have eventually revealed the bogus story of abuse inflicted by her cruel ex-husband. And those facial scars—was it any wonder no one in Morgan’s Folly recognized her? Plastic surgery had altered her disfigured face—a face ravaged by fire. “Son-of-a-bitch,” I marveled aloud, “Bitsy Bigelow is Dayln Morgan.”
At the time of her disappearance, Rita Morgan had been unable to successfully carry a child to term, so when Dr. Orcutt dropped his bombshell concerning Audrey, it was little wonder that Dayln concluded that she was a conniving little imposter. So many things seemed clear now. The anonymous phone calls to both Jesse and Audrey and the photos missing from the old albums. But why the complicated ruse? Why not simply come forward and claim her inheritance?
I might never discover the answer to the questions, but the one thing I did know for certain twisted my gut into ten thousand knots. Unless I could perform a miracle and stop her, there was no doubt in my mind that Dayln Morgan intended to kill Audrey.
Chapter 27
It was hell. Absolute hell. Just lying there. Helpless. Defeated. Impotent. And roasting like a chicken on a spit, torturing myself with feelings of resentment and despair as life went on without me. Red-tailed hawks sailed the thermals overhead. Wasps buzzed around my face and an astounding array of lizards effortlessly scaled my walled prison. I felt oddly disconnected knowing all this activity would continue after my death.
I dragged my tongue across sandpaper lips. Water. Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a tall frosty glass filled with clear luscious cubes of ice and garnished with a tantalizing wedge of succulent lime. A sprig of mint, perhaps. The vision danced crazily before my eyes. No wait. Now it was pink lemonade, a whole pitcher of it, a gallon of it. Stop! Was I becoming delirious? I tried to swallow, but it felt like my throat was stuffed with dry flakes of coconut.
The minutes dragged by and for the hundredth time, I berated myself for supreme stupidity. Was Tally right? Did I possess a stubborn compulsion to seek out life-threatening situations?
I could imagine what a psychologist would say. “Well, Miss O’Dell, most likely you are suffering from the middle child syndrome,” or “your fierce sense of competition is most likely manifested in the fact that you spent your childhood trying to emulate your rough and tumble brothers.” My father had his own theory. He laughingly claimed I was the reincarnation of my pugnacious, flame-haired grandmother, fiery temperament and all.
But, I think it was far more likely that I felt driven to succeed. My adolescent dream of becoming an award-winning investigative reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer had crashed and burned when I’d contracted a rare form of asthma caused by a stupid almost unpronounceable fungus that grew only in cool, damp climates. A stupid fungus, that had rendered me practically an invalid and precipitated my abrupt move to Arizona.
My mind whisked back four short months to my very first assignment from Tugg after my arrival. I was to go undercover to investigate the unexplained disappearance of my predecessor. My sleuthing had resulted in the horrifying discovery that he’d been murdered and I had ended up almost getting myself killed in the bargain. Afterwards, my articles had made the national news and catapulted me to the lofty role of minor celebrity. But had the story been worth risking my life?
My shoulder was throbbing again and the muscles in my back ached from lying in one position. Ever so carefully, I shifted my weight. Another board under my left shoulder blade broke away. Renewed panic chilled me. No avoiding the inevitable. My time was running out. And so was Audrey’s.
That somber thought brought a grinding sensation of guilt, overpowering, heart-shriveling guilt. I and I alone would have to shake hands with the grim reaper knowing that I was responsible for this innocent young woman’s death. She would have turned tail and run if I hadn’t convinced her to stay in Morgan’s Folly. Stay so I could get my all-important story. Stay only to be murdered by her own sister. Damn me. Damn me to hell.
I turned and stared dully at the ore bucket fastened to the wall not five feet away, wondering vaguely how long it had been there. It looked solid, enduring, like it had hung in that spot for a thousand years. It was huge, probably six feet high. Big enough to haul tons of rocks and dirt. Big enough to hold several people...holy smoke. All at once, I envisioned myself leaping up, launching myself toward the rim, catching hold and dragging myself to safety. It was a beguiling image. But why torture myself? Why entertain the impossible? The rickety boards could never withstand the strain of my full weight, let alone the stress of me jettisoning into the air. Or would they?
From somewhere in the far regions of my soul, amid the raw carnage that passed for the remnants of courage, a tiny ember of hope flared. What did I have to lose? If I did nothing I was toast. So, why not take the chance? Why not go for it?
I reached my arm through the newly created crevice and walked my fingertips along the underside of the boards again, this time with great care. The two that ran directly beneath my hips seemed a little thicker than the others, the fissures not quite as deep. Could they withstand the pressure for a least a few seconds? That’s all it would take. A few short seconds. But what if I missed? What if the planks gave way before I could jump?
I retreated to indecision. If for once in my life, I practiced patience, instead of rushing headlong into dicey situations in my usual hotheaded fashion, if for once I remained placid, rescue might eventually come. But there was no guarantee the boards would hold until a search party was dispatched. Back and forth I waffled, plumbing the depths of my resolve until I arrived back at square one. I had to do it. I had to do it now. And I would have only one chance.
My heart began to thud erratically. It rattled and knocked against my rib cage like a trapped bird while a surge of adrenaline revitalized my spirits and set my blood racing. I prayed aloud and flexed my stiff arm and leg muscles while my brain screamed, just go for it!
It was decision time. No more time for rational thought. Heart thundering now, a bonfire burning in my belly, I sat up. Boards dropped away with a sickening crack. Hurry! Get up. Get up. I scrambled to my feet and swayed dizzily above the abyss. Don’t look down. Don’t think. Breathe. Breathe. Snap! Another board gone.
I focused all my energy on the rim of the bucket, threw my hands back and jumped. For an instant, it seemed I was suspended in the air, unmoving, before my body slammed against the smooth metal surface. Screaming, I scrabbled for a handhold until my fingers curled around the lip. Dangling above the blackness, I dared not look down. I tried to pull myself up but the pain in my injured shoulder grew so intense, I felt my grip weakening. “I can’t hold on,” I sobbed aloud. “I can’t do it!” Frantic with terror, my fingers aching with the exertion of supporting my weight, I searched blindly for a toehold. “Help!” I yelled to no one. “Help me.” My left hand gave out and slipped off.
I lurched away, my body losing contact with the bucket. It’s over. Numb with fear, I hung there murmuring a final prayer when all at once, my right foot made contact with something protruding from the side of it. I rested my weight on it to relieve the agonizing pressure on my fingers, but sheer terror had me trembling so hard I was in danger of losing my one-handed grip.
I tried to keep panic at bay and draw a calming breath, but suddenly my lungs constricted. Air. I could not get enough air. Aware on some level that panic had triggered my asthma, I counseled myself not to give into it. Concentrate on each breath. That’s it. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Calm down. Try to think rationally.
I eyed the rim again. How was I going to pull myself up with one arm? Ignore the pain, my brain advised. But it seemed an impossible feat. Balancing on my precarious perch, I felt as if every last ounce of stamina had drained from my body. “I can’t do it,” I whimpered in a small voice. “I can’t.”
In rapid succession, indelible images of everyone I’d ever known flashed before my eyes. The last one was Tally. “I’m disappointed in you, Kendall,” his disapproving eyes seemed to say, “I never took you for a quitter. Someone who’d give up. Throw in the towel.”
Then, to my horror his face morphed into a laughing, leering Archie Lawton. “Gotcha, babe! There ain’t no way in hell you’re getting out of this one.”
“Oh, yeah?” I screamed at the repulsive vision. “You bastard. I’m not going to let you beat me!” Good. The anger was good. As if pulled by an invisible rope my left arm swung upward and I folded my fingers over the edge of the bucket. Infused with what seemed a supernatural burst of strength, I hauled myself up with such force I tipped headfirst over the rim, plunging into something murky and wet. Stunned and disoriented, my mind spun out of control. It took a few seconds for the situation to penetrate. I was in water.