Chapter Thirteen

Walkers Corner, May 1999

The girl grabbed at her mother’s coat and shook her gently. “Mama! Wake up. Please, Mama, we have to get out of here.”

Mama made a tiny moaning sound. She must be hurt. The girl tugged at Mama’s coat. Her mother made another sound, like the end of a breath. “Mama, okay, you just rest. I’m going to get help.”

The darkness was strange. And the air smelled funny. Where was she? She stood slowly, waving her hands above and around herself, trying to understand what had happened, how they’d gotten here. Her hand passed by her face. Oh, dim light in the distance. She bumped her head on the ceiling. It was rough rock, sloping down to form a wall.

She crouched and crept toward the light, her hands probing the darkness around her. She stumbled and fell. She cried out when she gashed her hands and knees on jagged rocks. She sobbed and pulled herself up. Her hands probed the shadows as she forced herself toward the hazy glow.

It was a lantern, hung from a hook in the ceiling. She stretched as tall as she could, but it was well out of her reach. She jumped and barely touched its bottom. She jumped again, and shrieked and collapsed when her ankle twisted and gave out.

The lantern swayed, casting its feeble light in a wide circle to reveal a flat, gleaming section of wall. She crawled to it.

It was colder than the rock around it. A door. She ran her fingers over it, as high as she could, and all the way to its bottom. No handle or opening.

She pounded it and screamed, “Help! Open the door! My mama needs help!” She screamed and pounded until she sank to her knees, exhausted. The shadows swallowed the sound of her sobbing. Was she going to die?

“Oh, wake up, please wake up, Mama.”