Page 75 of The Whisper Place
Kate, where are you?
It was a dream. An echo of a prophet swaying in the belly of a monster. Trying to find me deep inside, past all the light and air. I was afraid to touch the sides. I didn’t want to know how close they were, how far down I’d come. I’d tried to eat the whale, but I was so tired, so hot. I didn’t know where my feet and hands were. But then I heard it: steps pounding away, feet leaving without me. Voices faded as the other one came again, louder.
“Kate!”
I thrashed up and hit my head against the top of the plywood box.
I was Kate. Someone out there knew me and was looking for me. It all came back with tilted and horrifying clarity. What Ted and Theo had done. Where I was. And the fact that I was still alive. My heart thundered in my chest. My lungs pumped hard and fast as desperation clawed its way up my gut.
“I’m here!”
The scream bounced off the edges of the box, smothering me. I sobbed once and choked the rest back, listening. Willing the person to come. To find me. There was no noise now, no reaction to either of our shouts. Or wait. No. There had been. I’d heard footsteps leaving. And the rhythmic thuds of dirt falling on top of me had stopped. Ted and Theo must have gone to find the person calling my name. And if I could hear them, I wasn’t buried very deep yet.
I flipped to my back, lying on my arms which were still tied behind me, and wedged my knees between my torso and the top of the box. A million nerves pinged through my body, asleep limbs screaming back to life. Taking a deep breath, I pushed.
The lid of the box moved.
Barely, but enough that I heard a crumble of something falling inside. Creeping to the edge, I rolled my cheek over pieces of rock and inhaled the rich smell of dirt. I hadn’t imagined it. Ted and Theo hadn’t nailed the box shut before they started burying me and now they’d left before they could finish the job. If dirt could get in, I could get out.
A shot of wild hope seared through me.
I tried to picture exactly where the box had been positioned and how wide the hole was. Which way to push? My whole body shook. Tears leaked steadily down my face as I tried to think. To remember.
“You can do this.”
The whisper came out of nowhere, like warm, broken pieces of pottery, meaningless until I put the sounds together, until I realized it was me. Darcy. Kate. I could do this. I could eat this motherfucking whale.
I
I positioned my knees against the box lid, ignoring the scream of deadened nerves in the arms trapped behind me.
Can
I tensed every muscle in my legs, my stomach, my back. I’d trained for this. All that running, pounding my feet against the pavement, the gravel, the fields. I was strong. I was strong enough.
Do
Grunting, I pushed as hard as I could, shoving my knees against the wood, splinters digging into my skin, everything straining, stretching, screaming inside me.
This.
I rolled hard to the right. The lid scraped. An avalanche of dirt fell into the box, hitting my back and boxing me into an even smaller space, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter at all, because I could see a sliver of light along the entire top-left side. Fresh air seeped inside, cool and full of the promise of more. I gasped and breathed in as much as I could, my chest heaving in relief.
But where were Theo and Ted? They might have heard me. One of their faces could appear in the crack of light at any second. This could all be a game, another way to break me.
No.
No, I’d heard the voice. It wasn’t them. It couldn’t be them. There must be someone else in the woods, someone out there calling me to shore. I had to get to them.
Scrambling, I turned over and repositioned my knees, pushing, rolling, pushing rolling, working the lid as far over as I could. Each tiny shift rained dirt on me, opened the crack an inch wider. My legs burned. My knees grew wet and sticky, slipping when Itried to get traction. More and more dirt filled the box, burying me inside, making it harder to find room. And each second that passed was another chance that a face could appear, that hands could shove the lid back over me and take the light away.
Fighting against the dirt, I moved all the way to the left where the light came in and pushed as hard as I could, feeling the lift of the wood, the slow and steady rise. I braced it, fighting against the weight that wanted to crush me back down, and inched my toes up to get my feet in position. Then I shoved with everything I had left.
With a giant cascade of earth, the lid swung up and slid back down the outside of the box at an angle that let all the light and air flood back into my grave.
I was free.
Max
