71. Whispers in the Dark

I’m fifteen and riding in a convertible with my friends and my tunes surrounding me.

Sophomore year is over and life is ahead of me and nothing really matters. It doesn’t matter that things at home are crumbling or that my father’s filling me with stories about heaven and hell or that I’m starting to do things I shouldn’t be doing or that I have this sinking feeling every now and then that things are suddenly going to get bad.

But on this night they can’t and won’t because the music’s much too loud to let it.

I can block it out with the volume.

The glowing skyline of Chicago in the distance speaks of opportunity.

The bass throbbing against my gut speaks of the wild adult world I want to join.

Yet the shadows still seem to follow even in the dead of night.

For some reason I’m thinking of this summer night when I wake up shivering in the darkness.

My head aches.

My hands feel numb. I find they’re still tied behind me, yet they don’t feel as tight as they were before. I wrangle around my legs and find that they’re free. One of them stomps against the wall—a wall that’s particularly soft.

Feels like dirt.

It not only feels like dirt, but smells like it too. If dirt has a smell.

I feel a sense of déjà vu.

I keep blinking and realize there’s still something covering my eyes, something wrapped all around my head.

I pull, tug, try to bend and slip out of whatever’s holding my arms behind my back.

Breathe in and relax and figure this out, Chris.

So I do that.

I calm down as much as I can. My heart doesn’t exactly cooperate, but at least my mind starts to function.

I slide backward as far as I can, my fingers reaching out like a piano player jamming a tune. Leaning against the wall, I manage to guide myself up so I’m finally standing. Then I keep feeling the wall behind me, a dirt wall in a hole that I must be in.

A hole that seems very familiar.

Something hard and cold brushes against my knuckle and I touch it, realizing it’s a rock. A rock with a sharp edge.

In a matter of a few minutes, I’ve worn out whatever bind is keeping my hands behind my back.

It’s easy. Too easy, in fact. As if whoever tied me up deliberately made sure I could unfasten the rope. With my hands free, I tear off the cloth from my eyes.

It’s still almost pitch black in here, but as I look upward I suddenly recognize this place.

And I wish that I had kept the bandana on.

The cabin.

It’s the same square hole, with the faintest of light coming from the opening above me.

I was always going to come back and check it out, see where the dark opening led to.

A cold breeze seems to whisper at me in response.

I stare in its direction.

Something’s there.

It’s a crazy thought, and I know that I need to get out of here. But my arms are just starting to get some feeling in them, and my head is only slightly out of its foggy hole.

Get out of here now, Chris.

I massage the dirt walls to find that ladder again. I soon lock on to a railing and start to pull myself up.

That’s when I hear the voice.

“Chrisssssssssssss.”

I’m so freaked out that I grab onto the railing above me in the wrong way and then I find I’m not grabbing anything.

My fall back to the ground knocks the wind out of me.

I cough and stand and search for the railings again.

“I see you, Chrisssssssssss.”

The voice is low and soft and sick and evil.

And it sounds like it’s five feet away.

My skin is crawling with bumps and my mind is tearing off in fear and I’m reaching and climbing and slipping and holding and in what seems like an hour I make my way up and out of that hole.

I scramble away from its opening like some tiny animal escaping the jaws of death. I knock over a chair and find myself tumbling again, my body landing on the dull edge of something that scrapes my side.

It’s dark outside, but I can see the windows and slight gray opposed to the black of the hole.

I see the door and open it and scramble outside into the woods, sucking in air and gasping and probably looking like someone possessed.

All I know is that I need to get back to my house.

It’s downhill.

I know I shouldn’t be sprinting through the woods because I might trip and fall onto something really, really sharp, but it’s better than whatever is behind me in that cabin.

Underneath that cabin in that ungodly hole.

I’m back home before I know it, and I’m in my living room for several minutes breathing in and out before I notice the blood on my shirt.

“Mom?” I call out several times.

But she’s not here. Fortunately.

I don’t have to explain something I can’t.

Sooner or later it’s going to hit me how much trouble I’m in.