by Jack Jordan
All Finn could do was cry. The pain was rising now, stabbing in his legs, all the way to the bone, pulsing where it had broken through the skin. If he survived this, he might never walk again.
He looked around the barn, blinking away the tears. He had no way of knowing how long he would be left alone.
This was his only chance.
He heaved air into his lungs and clawed at the dirt, pulling until his legs moved behind him. He dragged himself across the barn floor on his elbows and searched amongst the hay for the scattered tools, tears falling. He found a wrench, but it wouldn’t be enough. Birds that had stayed behind flapped above him, cooing quietly. He spotted the shimmer of metal from amongst the hay and crawled for it. He snatched it up and shook away the strands: a screwdriver.
He placed the screwdriver between his teeth and dragged himself back to where Montgomery had left him. Sweat ran into his eyes. Tears lined his jaw and shivered with his movements. He could taste the metal against his tongue. By the time he had arranged himself as he had been before and hidden the tool amongst the hay, he was panting against the ground.
The door burst open.
Montgomery stood in the doorway, rage radiating off him, his face ugly and contorted with it.
A shotgun quivered in his grasp.
He strode across the barn and held the end of the gun to Finn’s face.
Finn stared up the dark barrels. He could smell the metal, the twang of rust.
‘You. . . you don’t. . .’ He tried to speak through the sobs, to beg for his life, but just the sight of the gun stalled the words in his throat. ‘You don’t have to do this.’
With his eyes on Montgomery, he closed his hand around the screwdriver hidden in the hay.
‘You know I do.’
They stared at each other for a long time, the gun shaking between them.
‘You have no idea how much I hate this. . .’ Montgomery said. ‘How I wish that I wasn’t like this. When I look at you I see him, and who you are doesn’t matter any more. I know that’s wrong, that I’m mad. I know I am and I hate it. But I can’t unsee him. I can never let him go.’
Finn launched upwards and stabbed the screwdriver through Montgomery’s shoe, watching it pierce the leather before he yanked it out again. Montgomery screamed and fell, his free hand rushing to his foot. Finn dragged himself up and launched the screwdriver into Montgomery’s thigh next, stopping at the bone. Saliva burst from his mouth as he fell onto his back, but he didn’t scream again. The pain had rendered him speechless.
Finn clambered up the man’s body, straddled his hips, and raised the screwdriver above his head, his broken legs beneath him.
The gun flew up and pressed against his cheek. Montgomery stared at him from the other side of the gun.
‘Open your mouth,’ he said.
A tear slid down Finn’s cheek. The end was there, right in front of him. He had tried and failed.
But I didn’t go down without a fight.
Finn opened his mouth, closing his eyes as the barrels passed his lips. He listened to the cocking of the gun. His teeth clinked against the metal. Tears slid to his jaw.
‘I just wanted to love you,’ Montgomery said. ‘Why wouldn’t you let me?’
Finn sobbed silently, and waited for the blast of the gun that would rip his life away. He waited. And waited.
‘Look at me,’ Montgomery whispered.
Finn opened his eyes and met his gaze.
Montgomery pulled the trigger.
FORTY-TWO
Rose woke to the dark and the cold.
Rubble dug into her back. When she tried to adjust her position, a searing pain shot from the back of her skull and down her spine.
Except that it wasn’t rubble, but bones.
Her breaths were amplified in the confines of the coffin. Dirt crumbled through the planks and dusted over her chest as she clawed at the wood.
‘No! No, no, no, no, no!’
She scratched at the roof until her fingernails cracked. Dirt continued to fall on her face and neck; it stuck to her tongue, nestled between her eyelashes. The small space began to close in around her until the darkness thickened and her lungs shrivelled. She thrashed in panic, knocking her head and limbs against the confines of the coffin. Sharp corners of Johnny’s bones jabbed into the groove of her ribs and cut the backs of her hips and thighs. The fear swelled, crushing every organ within her ribcage. Her head became light.
No.
She couldn’t fall unconscious again. There would only be so much air inside the coffin – the more she panicked, the more she used – and it wouldn’t last for ever. She covered her face with her hands and willed her heart rate to slow, breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth. Every time her heart began to calm, she would hear the tinny echo of her breaths or smell the richness of the dirt slipping between the boards, and her panic would take hold again.
A tear slipped down her temple. Violet would have felt the same fear beneath the water, confined in a metal coffin of her own. She sobbed in the dark. She had left Violet to die just like this, but she had been so much younger, so helpless. The only comfort she had was that her daughter’s death had lasted minutes, not hours like this death that awaited herself.
Don’t think of her, she thought. Breathe.
Slowly, her heart calmed. She uncovered her face and blinked against the darkness. She needed to see what she was up against. She felt the boards with her hands, squinting when dirt fell, and snatching her hands back when splinters lodged into the pads of her fingers.
Her phone.
She fumbled for it at her pocket and squinted against the bright display.
No signal.
She hadn’t expected it to work, but reading No Service in the corner of the screen still made her heart sink. She shone the light around her. Dirt slipped beneath the slats and coated her jeans. Small insects slowly made their way inside, scurrying away from the light and into the shadows. Each time it shone on the bones, she tried to focus on something else, but when she saw the skull, she couldn’t look away from where the eyes should have been and only sockets remained.
Finn was down here too, buried in another coffin somewhere close. The man she had dedicated her days to finding hadn’t needed her help; he had been here the whole time, lying in the silence of the earth. A part of her had hoped he was living in hiding and that the victims who were never found had made it out alive, but the truth was beneath her, each vertebra of Johnny’s spine digging into hers. She thought of his parents, the deathly thin Andrew whose grief had eaten away at him. She had found the answers, but couldn’t give them to him. If she didn’t escape, he would never know.
Had Finn died before he was buried, or had Montgomery put him out of his misery first? Finn had fought for so long, but Montgomery’s perseverance had won in the end. But this hadn’t been for nothing. She might not have saved Finn, but she could still work to put his killer away.
Montgomery couldn’t be left to kill again.
She pushed against the boards with her palms to see if they would give, but all she felt was the earth pushing back at her. The panic rose. She would never get out. This was impossible. But the only alternative was to give up and wait to rot. She imagined the incessant buzz of flies, the wriggle of maggots, worms working their way between the boards. If she wanted to get out, she needed tools. She looked around the coffin.
No, she thought. I can’t.
She eyed the bones. They were all she had that remotely resembled tools. Without them, she wouldn’t have a way out at all. She’d had no idea that one of the men who she had dedicated her life to saving would in fact save her.
She placed her phone on her chest so the light beamed up towards the roof of the coffin, and felt the bones beneath.
Don’t think of them as bones. You can’t lose your mind, not down here.
But even while she told herself this, she felt her hands shaking as they hovered across them, flinching as s
he felt their sharp edges.
The grooves between the planks of wood were fine. She would need a bone thin enough to fit between them but strong enough to break them. She gripped one and brought it up towards her chest, inspecting it with a crooked neck in the tight space. A thigh bone.
Her breaths shortened. Her heart quickened. The coffin began to shrink again.
‘No,’ she said aloud. ‘No!’
She clamped her eyes shut, breathed deeply. She couldn’t lose sight of this now.
She opened her eyes and inspected the bone again. She was surprised by how light it was, how smooth it felt against her palm, but it was far too thick to fit within the grooves. She put it down as gently as she could and searched again with sweat forming in beads on her brow, even though it was cold beneath the earth and she could see her breath. She found something long and thin and brought it up to her chest to inspect it: a collarbone. She placed the end against one of the grooves. The way the end sharpened into a point worked in her favour: it just fit, with enough tension to apply pressure. She wedged the bone between it as much as she could and held it with two hands, cranking it like a crowbar. The boards moved and whined. She spat out dirt and cranked again. The bone snapped in the middle.
‘Shit!’
She covered her face with shaking hands and tried to hold back the tears. This would never work. She was going to die down here, waiting for the air to thin until there was none left.
Christian and Lily had gone, and wouldn’t know or care if she didn’t return home. The police would assume she had stopped looking for answers. Only her father would go looking for her, but he had no idea where to start. She would never be found. Just like Finn.
Like Johnny.
Like Jamie.
She wondered if they had tried to get out just as she was, clawing at the wood with bloodied fingertips, how long it had taken before they gave up.
No, there has to be another way.
She moved to the side and searched down the left of her, pulling back with a wince as splinters poking out of the wall of the coffin scratched her right shoulder. She picked them out, one by one, and stopped.
The sides of the coffin were rough. She could find a strong bone and whittle down the end. She searched frantically for the thigh bone again, her hands shuffling the last remaining parts of Johnny against the sides of the coffin and her own body. She snatched it up and chose the smallest end, where the bone would have met the kneecap, and began to work it against the side of the coffin, clenching her teeth against the sound. It would take hours, but she had no other choice. It was her only way out.
Her phone died suddenly and plunged her into darkness.
FORTY-THREE
As the hours wore on, the air thinned. Each breath wheezed in and out of her lungs. Her muscles shook in a continuous spasm from dragging the bone against the side of the coffin. The space was hot from her rigorous work, her breath and sweat. It was impossible to tell how much time had passed in the dark. All she knew for sure was that the air was running out, and if she didn’t have a drink of water soon, dehydration would kill her first.
She had been ready to give up so many times, but the thought of lying back and waiting for death forced her into action again, raking the bone against the wood, albeit slower than before. And Lily – she couldn’t die without telling her how much she loved her, how much she wished she could take back the words she had spoken on the bank.
She brought the bone to her chest and felt the end with her fingertips. It was blunt in places, sharp in others, but had slimmed significantly. She raised it to the roof of the coffin and felt for one of the grooves with her fingertips. It was so dark she couldn’t even see her hands. She tried the bone between the grooves.
It fitted.
She sighed and dropped it to her chest. A slim tear slipped down her cheek in silent celebration. It was done.
Except this was only the beginning.
She thought of how much work she had left to do: she still had to break through the wood, claw up through the mud and somehow survive with one held breath. That’s if she even got that far.
Her body was broken. The muscles in her arms felt taut and useless, her head was light from lack of oxygen. She had used up all of her energy whittling down the bone, and now she had to muster more to break through the lid of the coffin.
She closed her eyes and almost let sleep take her. Except it wasn’t sleep at all – she was dying. She had been dying for hours, a slow, drawn-out death as she got less and less oxygen. Her body wasn’t just tired. It was shutting down. The air was so sparse she could hear breaths crackling in and out of her lungs. If she was going to survive, she had to get out now.
She fitted the bone between the planks and cranked like she had before, coughing as dirt rained down on her. She bit her lip and carried on until she heard a crack.
She stopped immediately and felt the length of the bone, waiting to find a break in the middle. Nothing. It wasn’t the bone that had cracked. It was the board.
It was working.
She worked quicker than she had before, pushing the last of her strength into it, until the cracking got louder; the earth fell in constant, heavy loads, and the pressure of it filling the coffin was stronger than her. She pressed her hands against the boards to think.
She hadn’t planned this far ahead. Surviving entirely depended on how deep he had buried her. Had he gone for the standard six foot? She couldn’t remember falling that far into the coffin. It had to be shallower. The earth would still be heavy, but she would have more of a chance of escape. If it was deeper than she thought, she would have been dead the moment the earth breached the boards, stealing the last of the air, crushing her beneath its weight. She had to cover her mouth and nose somehow to allow herself to breathe. She tried to bring her knees up to her chest to keep the boards from bowing inwards, but there wasn’t enough room. To cover her mouth and nose, she needed to take off her T-shirt and cover her head with it. The only way to do that was to let go. Either she would have just enough time to act, or it would cave in with the pressure and immediately bury her alive.
There’s only one way to find out.
Slowly, she lowered her hands from the boards. They whined beneath the pressure, cracking deeper and deeper to the centre. She had just seconds to get the job done. She pulled at her T-shirt, struggling in the confined space, bashing her elbows into the sides of the coffin, scratching the backs of her hands against the rough roof. She pulled at the fabric until it tore at the seams. Just as she moved the T-shirt up to her head, she felt the earth fall in heavy clumps on her chest and stomach, ricocheting off the fabric against her face. She worked furiously, tying the sleeves around her neck. It was unbearably hot inside. Her breath moistened her cheeks and lips. She raised her hands in the darkness again and found the bone. She pulled and pushed, pulled and pushed, until the earth poured around the breaking boards, and one plank came free, crashing down against her. She had to manoeuvre herself so she could escape the coffin before the earth filled the inside and flattened her beneath, but there was no space; the bowing roof had stolen the little space she’d had.
Just keep going.
She took the bone again and worked at the wood, listening to the splintering, the shifting of earth, her hot, frightened breaths. The dirt falling inside was heavier now, accompanied by sharp rocks that slammed down on her hip bones. A second board broke free and earth poured in, pinning down her legs. She put both hands out, grappling at the sides of the lid of the coffin to pull herself up. The earth forced her back down. She tried again, shifting her legs to the side and pushing upwards with them, making her way through the moving earth. The further she rose, the more space she left in the coffin for the earth to fill, giving her further leeway as it shifted and filled the space beneath her. Earth flattened the shirt against her face until she could taste it through the fabric and it was almost impossible to draw breath. The pressure was strong, pushing down on her head and sh
oulders, but all she had to do was push up.
She screamed against the pressure in her head as she forced one foot onto the lid of the coffin and then the other. Her hands breached the surface, the cold air above the earth nipping at her fingers. The pressure flattened the fabric against her mouth and nose until she couldn’t breathe at all. She clawed the flat earth above, digging her nails into it. The dirt around her thinned as she got further to the surface, allowing her to move her head and neck. When her head broke the surface, she gasped for air, sucking in the T-shirt until she gagged. She dragged herself up and clawed blindly against the dirt until her shoulders were free, then dug her elbows into the barn floor and army-crawled forwards, freeing her back, her hips, kicking the last of the strength from her legs until she was lying on the barn floor soiled with mud, yanking desperately at the T-shirt over her head. She tore it away and lay on her back, staring up at the roof of the barn, heaving for air.
She was free.
FORTY-FOUR
Lightning flashed through the gaps in the wooden walls. The thunder was seconds behind, blaring down to her eardrums as it clapped overhead.
Rose closed her eyes against the downpour entering through a hole in the roof and opened her mouth to catch the drops. Mud coated her from head to toe where the earth had poured into the coffin before she had managed to fix the T-shirt over her head. The wind whistled around the barn in endless screams. The air was thick with the smell of the rain and earth. She had managed to free herself from the coffin, but the question that followed taunted her from the back of her mind.
What now?
She couldn’t walk home, not in this state. Her ankle was throbbing. She was miles from town, from any neighbouring houses. To get to them, she would have to trek through acres of woodland. Her phone was dead, so she couldn’t call the police. The only way she could do that was if she got inside the farmhouse and used the phone without being seen.