Through the Break in Her Hair

Chapter 17

Oh my God, oh my God, OH MY GOD! I panicked. Full out panic attack as I took step after step down those crickety stairs. What the heck am I doing?!?!

It was a trap. Had to be. Why else would Van not be responding to my call? I knew he was just goading me. But, even then, it didn't stop me from submerging myself deeper into that cellar. I was mad, totally lost my marbles. The old John was way too sensible to be walking willy-nilly into the freaking basement of an old school building. What the heck was wrong with me?!

"Van?" I whispered into the dark space. "Where are you?" But there was still no answer.

On the next step down, my foot dropped out from beneath me, nothing to catch it. My body lurched forward, off balance, and fell through the darkness. My heart raced, stomach plummeted. In between my gasping shriek or horror, I thought, This is it. This is the trap-- a giant pit at the bottom of the stairs. And I'm falling right into it. Pun not intended.

My foot thumped down onto the dusty dirt floor, and my knee buckled. I hit the ground fast, hands making contact first, and let out a hiss. Rocks as sharp as glass sliced through my palms, sandpapered the pads of my fingers down to nubs. I winced, wrestling against my voice to be quiet.

I sprung back from the ground, resting my weight on my haunches, and started to pick blindly at the debris left in my hands. This was a painstakingly long and tedious task. The only light in the entire basement was what could shine through the single open cellar door, and that wasn't that much.

Not to mention that it killed to be both the extractor and the extractee. Every time I would go to remove a chunk of rock from one hand, I would simultaneously and inadvertently shove another piece of rock further into the meaty flesh of the extracting hand. Saying that it sucked was a rude and unthinkable underestimation of the pain that I was going through.

You'd think that the rapid repetition of, "ow, ow, ow's," would get Van's attention, or whoever drug him down here to die, but it didn't. I was left alone and in silence to toil over my own two hands.

It took somewhere between five and fifteen minutes just to free my palms from their rocky constraints, and when I did, it was just to encounter a whole new problem. Some of the rocks had lodged themselves pretty far down, almost bone level in my opinion, and took some effort to dig them back out. Others were just shards of glass hiding, pretending to be rocks. By the time I had finished, my hands were dripping with blood.

My first reflexive response was to wipe them off on my jeans. Thankfully, my brain booted up again, and stopped that command before it could be completed. Could you imagine what my mom would say if I not only came home damaged, but then had the nerve to smear my pants with blood?! She might actually kill me.

So, there I stood, shaking the blood off my hands like a chump. At least I was familiar with air drying. I mean, come on. How many times have you walked into a public restroom with no paper towels? You just had to grin and bear it, much like I was doing at that moment.

"Van, gosh dangit, where are you?!" I had given up whispering by then. I figured that if there were people waiting to ambush me, they would have already done it. It was obvious that no one was coming for me. So, in my mind, yelling for Van was not only smart, but an effective way to release some of my anger.

"I'm not messing around with you anymore," I warned. "Either come out or I'm leaving!" That got his attention.

John...his voice came again, soft and impossibly frail. Then, from somewhere ahead, a bolt unlocked with a thunk and a door creaked opened, mimicking the sound of a cat's low growl.

A dim orange light spilled out from the doorway, illuminating the empty cellar basement around me. I tensed, waiting for an attack, but there was no movement on this side of the door or the other.