Page 45 of Trapped: Until The Darkest Of Night

Secure! Lou is safe!

This sudden realization brings me back to reality for a few seconds.

Did I just smile? I shake my head before I feel sweat running down my back like a flood. “Louisa?” I spot her sitting on the side of the RV, her face as white as it was a few days ago when she felt so bad from the drugs.

She looks at me and presses against the wall of the RV, shaking. I have to tell her, maybe not everything, but at least something to take away her greatest fear. I try with all my might to concentrate on speaking, forcing the words into the right order before I say them.

“Whatever happens, don’t be scared, nothing bad can happen to you.” With brute force, I jerk at my bonds. “See?” They’re holding me! They must hold me!

Her answer is lost in the chaos inside me. I feel something pulling me down, down, toward the boy. Panic surges through my veins. “Everything’s dark!” I run toward Lou as if she can hold me so I don’t fall. After several feet, a hard tug on the chain stops me and a sharp burning pain runs through my wrists like a butcher’s knife.

I hear her voice again, but I don’t get the meaning of the words as if she speaks another language.

“Lou!” I can barely see her. I blink frantically against the heavy veil in front of me. “Lou… Promise me something…” I put my hand in my pocket and, with shaky fingers, pull out the key ring. “But first, take this.” I hold the key in front of me, hoping she can see it. “You have to take it.” Otherwise, the monster can break free and I wouldn’t even know it.

“How?” Her voice sounds distant and tinny, but at least I can make out what she’s saying.

I reach out as far as I can in the bonds and toss the ring of keys in the direction of her words. “Keep it safe.” I vaguely see a bright shape moving forward. Hands grabbing something.

I wipe the dripping sweat from my forehead with my forearm. “Now listen!” The feeling that the ground is going to give way and that I’m going to fall into the darkness grows stronger by the second. “The key only unlocks my handcuffs, not yours. I want you to…hide underneath the RV.”

So dark, Mom, where are you? Mom?

The childlike voice comes from all sides. A red mist is suddenly between Lou and me. Step aside!

“What’s wrong?” I hear Lou ask.

I breathe against the panic and put my hands on my thighs. “Hide under the RV,” I blurt out quickly. “You should…be able to do that with the handcuffs on.” Am I already gone? I don’t know, but speaking is becoming more and more strenuous, like shouting out of a well. I blink a few times and see Lou shake her head.

“Why should I hide?”

“Just do it! In the morning, you’ll throw the key back to me. Understand? Tomorrow morning…not before!”

“Why? Brendan, what’s wrong?”

I can’t see anymore. A stone-cold horror wells up inside me, reaching for my consciousness like hands from a grave. “It’s getting dark,” I hear myself saying, “and when it gets dark, death comes.”

Step by step, I walk backward away from Lou. “Keep the key safe, otherwise, we’ll never get out of here.” This occurs to me as the darkness pulls me down to a place my sanity can’t access. I fall into an endless deep maelstrom like a black hole in space that swallows everything and leaves nothing. And yet there is more.

Images flash before me in the blackness, disjointed fragments of a kaleidoscope. Lou spinning in place, her hair blowing in the wind, showing sparks of light like a reflection from a thousand mirrors, sunlight refracted forever.

A part of me clings to it, and when I hit the ground with a hard smack, I feel like I’m still there. Inside me.

I straighten up, disturbed. Tree trunks paint themselves in the room without light. Who am I? Where am I? Am I in the forest or in the basement? I want to stretch out my hands, feel, but they no longer obey me, they don’t belong to me.

One, two, three, four… I’m not really here anymore …

Someone’s there, I’m not alone. Something comes out of me like a ghost.

Stay here!

It’s the boy’s voice. Suddenly, he’s standing before me in his dirty pants and gray shirt. He’s skinny like a prisoner of war, his eyes deep-set, revealing nothing. He looks at me, his gaze timeless as if he is not looking at me now but always has been.

You can’t come with me, I hear him say without his lips moving. Then, he turns and walks into the darkness.

Wait! I call after him.

He turns to me. You must stay here. His voice is high like a child’s but heavy with sadness. It is too dangerous…

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