Copyright © 2009 A.J. Townsend
All rights reserved, Wild Child Publishing.
The sound of splitting wood rang in his ears as he plunged through the rotten floorboards, swallowed into the black unknown below. He landed hard on damp soil. Dirt filled his eyes and nose. Pain shot into his neck and back. A numbness spread upward.
My back. Is it broken? God no! That smell. What's that terrible smell? A mixture of rancid salt pork and musty soil. Something fleshy brushed against his aching body.
"Who's there?" he yelled. He dragged himself backward in the dark. "Who's there?" he demanded again. Then he heard it, a voice low and deep.
"Thomasss," it hissed, "Thommmmasss."
"Who are you?" he yelled again.
"Ask me who I was," the voice answered.
He forced himself to move. Animal instincts, the ones that are born into all of us, shouted for him to run . . . to get away from that voice. He groped for a wall, something to claw at, to make his way out. A faint crack of light came from one dark corner. A way out!
Tom scrambled his way to it, digging in the dirt, frantically trying to escape the thing that shared this dark space. He dug until his fingers ached. He pushed a row of crumbling foundation stones out of the way and painfully squeezed his way out of the horrible dark pit, but not before the unknown thing gave him one last message.
"How does it feel Thommmmas? How does it feel? How does it feel to be buried and alone in the dark? How does it feeeeeel?"
He ran to the keeper's house, his legs pumping hard, praying this thing had not followed him. A surge of panic hit him.
Am I losing it?
Tom peeled off his dirty clothes and changed into his sweat suit. His body screamed in protest with every move. He stood shivering in front of the fireplace, with all the lights on and doors locked. Having finally warmed, he fell off into a deep sleep, still tasting the dirt in his teeth and carrying a terrible smell of decay on his flesh. Did an animal die in there? He shuttered. What retched thing lived in that dark place?