There were only two possibilities. Either her delusions were getting worse. Or Franz had come back from the hardware store with the winch and the belt he needed and right at this moment was pulling the lid back off the opening to the cadaver pit. It was getting brighter in any case. Much too bright for Nele’s eyes so used to the dark.
Blinded from it, she shut her eyes, and nevertheless it seemed that the beam of light was stabbing at her pupils right through her eyelids.
‘Who’s there?’ she croaked. Not much louder than a fish behind thick aquarium glass. Then she heard the voice again, now much too clear and distraught to be just a dream.
‘Nele, is that you down there?’ it asked.
Nele popped her eyes back open. Blinked the tears away, and along with them the halo above the person who’d arrived to save her, the last person on earth she’d expected.
‘Thank God. Help me, please, save me!’
Her inability to remember the woman’s name proved she still wasn’t thinking clearly, but it had also been a really long time since she’d had anything to do with the person.
Like two hundred years, if not more.
And now she’d just showed up. How was that even possible?
‘Did my father send you?’ she asked, since he was probably the only one who was concerned about her now and was hopefully moving heaven and earth to find her.
Though she wasn’t sure how much time had gone by, or whether he’d even landed yet.
‘Help me!’
Her voice stuck to her throat like sandpaper. Yet she tried again, whispering ‘please’ and sounding just as hopeless as her attempt to raise her hand. She even smiled, or meant to anyway, at least until the moment the impossible happened and the dread inside her reached a whole new dimension.
It was the moment she heard this one final phrase:
‘Just die!’
Then the light was gone again, and the lid to the pit shut over her head again with a loud rasp. Moved by someone who had been her one final hope.
‘Just die!’
Never before had she heard such rage and hate in two small words.
Never before felt such darkness, smothering her like the watery masses of the deep sea.
Never before had Nele been so close to death.