A Fine Cast of Characters - J. Dane Tyler [8]
She tipped her head back and screamed. All the terror and confusion erupted through her burning vocal chords. When it died in her chest, she laid her head against the hard concrete and sobbed.
Rose opened her eyes. She didn’t know how much time passed. The cramped prison was darker, and cooler. She sniffed and turned toward the door.
It stood open, the massive metal stopped against the wall on the far side of the opening. A rough-hewn passage, as if chipped from solid rock, wound down beyond the portal. The soft, amber glow came from somewhere beyond a bend in the gradual spiral. The spectral shadows folded and leaped against the far, black wall.
Rose quivered. Her fingers slipped down the wall. She took a hesitant step forward, toward the door.
The chopped, carved corridor stretched away from the door, then disappeared to the left, down what appeared to be a winding stairway.
She approached the portal, touched her hand to the door. The warmth of its ancient metal startled her. The rock swallowed the jamb as if it had been embedded there. She leaned forward.
The stillness unnerved her. She edged back through the doorway, and her back pressed against something crowding her into the doorway.
Rose screamed, jolted, and turned, backing through the door jamb.
The wall loomed less than two feet outside the door. She sobbed, her fists clutching large knots of hair at the sides of her head as she sank to her knees, vision blurred with stinging saline. She sobbed and shrieked until only the hoarsest groans escaped her. Exhaustion slumped her against the wall to her right.
Her nose ran and her eyes leaked, so she wiped them with her sleeve, and turned her back to the wall. She tipped her head leftward and the soft, warm glow from beyond the bend danced, swayed and draped over the stony enclosure. She turned to face her right and saw the wall beyond the door now blocked the opening, the outer portion of the jamb entombed to the door stop.
She was sealed in. The portal didn’t exist anymore. She was buried alive.
Rose heard something ... a strange, scraping sound, dry, alien.
She realized the sound was her voice, laughing alone in the dead cavern of carved stairs and useless steel door. She tipped her head back and cackled, her sides convulsing until they ached, her eyes watering. Rose laughed, deep guffaws, belly laughs which blinded her, immobilized her. She couldn’t figure out why she laughed. She just did.
When her breath failed and she gasped for air, she noticed she wasn’t laughing anymore. She sobbed.
She tried to stand, but her leaden limbs made her feel as if she swam through gelatin. She couldn’t manage anything but thick, slow movements. She braced her hand against the wall, and stared into the rocky passage bending away from her. She had nowhere else to go.
She stood upright and pulled the phone out of her pocket again.
When she opened it, the display didn’t light up at all.
She sighed, slipped the phone back in her pocket, and stared down the passage. The flickering, playing light seemed brighter somehow.
Rose drew a deep breath and wondered if she suffered a delusion. She reached out her hand, and the sensation of the rocky, hard-edged wall, warm and dusty, dragged her fingers. There was only one way to go.
She took a halting step forward. Her shallow breath seemed loud, deafening, in the crypt-quiet passage. Another step. She heard the grind of debris—pebbles, grains of concrete and shards of rock—beneath her shoes. Another step.
Then the sounds drifted to her, distant, soft and floating on drafts of hot air, ricocheting off the walls in the narrow corridor.
The moans. The wails. The desperate screams, cries and wails of tormented, agonized suffering. They grew louder, clearer, distinct yet melded, some drifting high above the others, some more baritone. All in terror, all in pain. All in despair.
She tensed, held