This Was A Bad Idea

chapter 27 - candles

"Sam."

The word comes out of me in a delirious whisper. I say it again, just to feel the letters form and push past my teeth. To give into the name of the girl that I haven't seen in almost a week. She was here the whole time.

I bend down, my entire body shaking. I put a tentative hand on her arm, half-expecting her to disappear again. A vision wrought from the broken depths of my brain. But no. She is solid. I put three fingers to the inside of her wrist. Her skin is cold- yet I can feel blood rushing beneath the surface. I feel my breath stop.

A slow pulse beats against my fingertips and the relief that washes over me comes in dizzying waves. She's alive. Sam is still alive.

"Sam?" I exclaim. The words feel wrong on my tongue, a name that I've used only to refer to someone lost, but never to that person directly. Her eyes don't open, but now I can make out the slow rise and fall of her chest. She's unconscious.

"Elliot!" I practically scream. I'm too scared to move away from the girl crumpled on the ground, scared that the second I take my eyes off her, she'll disappear again. "I found-" a cough rattles its way through my battered lungs. "I found her!"

The scuffled sound of pounding footsteps echoes from behind me. Elliot practically careens into me, face alighting in shock. He stands there, seemingly unable to form words. His skin is flushed with pain and disbelief.

"Shit. No, it's not-" He bends down next to me, breathing hard. "It's not real." He looks at me, mouth agape.

I bring his hand to the inside of her wrist, to the small pulse beating beneath thin skin.

"Sam?" His voice nearly breaks apart, rough on the edges with a thousand different emotions. Hope. Confusion. Disbelief. "Should we try and wake her up?"

"I don't think it'll work. She needs to go to a hospital. She's extremely malnourished. And probably dehydrated. There's seemingly no food down here. But she would have been dead days ago if there wasn't a source of water. So I think she's been drinking at least something."

"She's here," Elliot murmurs. He looks at her face, smudged with dirt and hollowed with hunger.

I look at the thin flames casting shadows on our bodies. A chill runs down my spine. We should not be down here. It isn't safe. I can feel something lurking in the hidden depths, a presence that isn't human. I glance around the nearby walls, the dark corners where more doorways branch off. This is not the time to go exploring. We need to find a way out.

Elliot and I lift Sam up, carrying her to the place where Xen slumps against the wall. I see their eyes widen, their mouth twist open in surprise. A thousand unsaid words pass over their lips. I see them scramble upwards and I have to put a tentative hand on their shoulder to make them sit back down again.

"Sam?" she rasps. "Is- is she alive."

I nod, gravely. "Yeah. She's unconscious I think. She was curled up over there," I point to the niche where the dim light emerges.

I almost want to burst out laughing at this strange scene that has somehow become our reality. Unconscious girl. The boy who did anything to find her. A person marked with broken shadows. And the other person who's only just woken up from the hell that tried to drag them down.

Instead I just glance over at Sam. I don't think she can even hear us.

"What happened to you?" I whisper.

Of course, there's no answer.

Elliot stands up and starts hammering at the wall we came through. His body strains with effort, arms swinging back and letting the sledgehammer batter the walls with all the force of a fear-stained teenager.