“CHLOE?!” I SHOUT. “Chloe, is that you?!”
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Penny cries. “It’s Chloe. Oh, my sweet Jesus.”
She separates herself from the wall, plants herself foursquare in the center of the pit.
“Chloe, sweetheart?” she goes on. “Can you hear me?”
“Daddy!” Chloe says. “Mommy? Is that really you?”
“Yes, Chloe,” I say. “It’s us. We’ve come for you, sweetheart. Where are you?”
“I’m in a hole,” she says. “It smells in here, like they use it for storing meat. Susan is with me.”
A pit for storing venison, I imagine. For smoking fish, maybe.
Turning to Penny. “Susan. Who is Susan?”
Her eyes grow wide. “My God, that’s the Stevenses’ daughter. The little girl Chloe was playing with when she disappeared.” Hesitating. “Could it be … ?” her thought drifts off.
“Either Walton and this creep Gary stole her from the Stevenses, or she was never theirs to begin with,” I point out. “But that’s not what’s important at the moment. Right now, we gotta figure a way out of here. A way out for everybody. Do it now.”
“Daddy?” Chloe says. “Can we go home now?”
I can tell by the sound of her voice that she’s shivering. It’s maybe seventy-five degrees in here, but if she’s been wet for far too long, and dehydrated, she could be experiencing the effects of hypothermia. Shivering, slow, shallow breathing, confusion. I’ve got to get her out of here now.
I about-face, make a three-hundred-sixty-degree scan of the pit, like a ladder or even a rope is suddenly going to emerge from out of the clay walls. I look up. I’m guessing the pit is about twelve feet deep. I’m five feet nine inches. Penny is about five feet four inches. If I put her up on my shoulders, it’s possible she can reach over the side, shimmy herself up and over the top. She can then find something like a rope or an electrical cord, which she can tie off onto something sturdy like a structural bearing beam. I can use the rope or cord to climb my way to freedom. From inside the depths of this pit, it sounds like a bit of a bridge too far, but it’s our only hope. Gary will be back soon, or so I can only assume, and who the hell knows what he’s got planned for us.
I tell Penny I’m going to put her on my shoulders.
She nods in agreement. No need to explain the plan. She already knows what to do. Bending at the knees, she climbs up onto my back. Then pressing my body up against the moist clay wall, she slowly, carefully, climbs up onto my shoulders. Penny can’t weigh more than a buck twenty wet, but I feel my knees wobbling a bit, unsteady. It’s not the lack of strength so much as the exhaustion. It tells me we need to succeed at this, or we’re doomed.
“How are you doing, Pen?” I say through grinding teeth, through the strain.
“I can get my hands over the edge,” she explains. Then, tiptoeing on my shoulders, reaching, extending herself, “If I … can manage … to get ahold of something … something to give me more leverage. Something on the floor maybe.”
I feel my load lighten a little.
“You able to catch hold of something?” I beg.
“There’s nothing … to grab,” she says, voice stressing, straining. “But if I can manage to press my palms flat on the floor, I can then lift myself up, if you help me.” She braces herself. “Give me a jump, Doc.”
“Here we go,” I say. “Get ready.”
Bending at the knees, I then spring up, sending her off my shoulder and farther up onto the pit’s edge. From there she shimmies herself out of the pit, rolls over onto her side on the floor. My heart fills with absolute sunlight.