Julia Spencer-Fleming - Out Of The Deep I Cry

“No!” she cried. “Don’t!”

“I’m sorry,” Allan Rouse said. Then he dropped the door.

The darkness clapped shut over them like the lid on a coffin. There was a thunk as the bolt slid home, locking them in. The raw horror-story sound of it pulled an involuntary whimper out of her throat. Then Rouse’s footsteps crossed the floor overhead.

The other stairway. She exploded out of the water, seeing, now, with precious seconds wasted gaping at the dark, the pale rectangle that was the other overhead door. She ran for the other stairs as if running in a nightmare, legs dragging through shin-deep water, damp cobwebs curling across her face, barely outlined brick support columns looming in her way. She was halfway to the stairs, splashing and gasping, when she heard the complaint of rust-eaten hinges.

“Dr. Rouse!” she screamed. “Don’t do this! Don’t leave us down here!”

“I’ll send someone,” he said, his voice hollow. “When it’s safe.”

“For God’s sake!” The door kachunked closed, and the pressure wave flattened the air around her, thinning her voice, pushing it into the far, unseen corners of the cellar.

For the love of God, Montresor!

She shivered violently, hot and cold all at the same time.

“Clare?” Russ’s voice, rough and waterlogged, brought her back to herself. He coughed and retched, and stirred in the water.

She slogged toward the sound. “Keep talking,” she said. “I can’t see anything.”

“Are you all right?” His words induced another round of coughing.

“I think so.” She slammed into a brick column and reeled backward. “Or I will be if I don’t knock myself out,” she wheezed. She slowed down and let her outstretched hands take the lead. “You sound terrible. How’s your leg?”

“I just swallowed some water when I fell.” He coughed. “So much for avoiding showers to keep my cast dry.”

Her hand touched his hair. She knelt in the water beside him, wincing at its bite, and touched his face, his chest, his arms. He was soaking. “You’re okay? What else did you hit?”

He was touching her, as well, the pat-pat-patting of fingers asking, Are you here? Are you whole? He folded one of his hands over hers. His fingers were cold. “I twisted when I fell. I knocked my arm pretty good, but at least I didn’t break my head open. How about you?”

She rotated her arm, and a steady throb in her shoulder sizzled into a cramp of pain. She sucked in her breath. “I think I banged up my shoulder a little. Everything else is working fine.” She stood up, holding on to his hand. “Let’s get out of this water.” She found his other hand, clasped it, and hauled. He was taller than she, and heavier, and she had to lean backward to get the leverage. When he was upright, she wrapped her arm around his waist, he slung his arm over her shoulder, and they hobbled toward the stairs.

She could hear him every time he had to step on his broken leg. He breathed in through his nose, hard, and held it. “I’m sorry,” she said. “This hurts, doesn’t it?”

“I’ll be fine.” He clipped his words.

The back of her outstretched hand banged against wood. “Ouch,” she said. “Okay, let’s get on the stairs.”

She waited until Russ had sat on one of the steps and pulled himself up out of the water. Then she crept up the stairs, bent over, one hand touching the edge of the wooden planks so she wouldn’t fall off, the other held over her head. Her fingers hit something solid. The trapdoor. “I’m going to try to open it,” she said. For a second, she thought of the stuff she had seen on it, the mouse pellets and the dirt and God knew what else. It’ll shower off . She braced her shoulders and upper back against the door and pushed. Nothing.

She went up another step so that she was folded tight beneath the door, and pushed again. This time she felt something giving way, the ripping sound of wood splitting. Her feet slid inward. She heard a crack.

“Holy crow!” She scrambled to a lower rung just in time to avoid breaking through the step. She reached down. She had splintered it into two pieces.

“What happened?” Russ said.

“I’ve discovered the stairs are weaker than the door.” She made her way hand and foot back down the steps. He took up most of one rung, so she sat above him. “I suppose I should try the other one.”

“Bolted shut?”

“Yeah.”

“Then the other one probably is as well. Give it a rest before you try it.” They sat for a moment. “Was that who I thought it was?” he asked.

“Allan Rouse.” She was seized with another spasm of shivering. “Showing some flexibility on that ‘First, do no harm’ thing. At least he promised to send help back for us.”

“Oh yeah?”

“She could tell from his voice that he was shivering, too. “He didn’t provide a timeline for our rescue, by any chance?”

“No.”

“ ’Cause whether it’s before or after we die of hypothermia will make a difference.”

She hunched over, trying to find some core of warmth in her sopping clothes. “Yeah.”

“What do you have on under that coat?”

She rasped a laugh. “Are we back to that again?”

His voice was patient. “Just answer the question.”

“One of my clerical blouses.”

“Take off your coat and move down here next to me. Keep hold of it.” She could hear the zipper on his jacket, and the plank creaking and bumping as he repositioned himself. She struggled out of her clinging coat before carefully feeling her way to the next lower rung, touching wood and then a damp jeans-covered thigh.

“Excuse me,” she said. She swept her hand back and forth and realized he had straddled the step, jamming his good leg between this rung and the next, resting his cast on the step below them.

“Sit with your back toward me.” He had taken his arms out of his parka, leaving it hanging from his shoulders. She did as directed, drawing her knees up, draping her coat over them like the proverbial wet blanket. He wrapped his arms around her. “Better?”

“A little, yeah.”

“It won’t keep us in the long run. It’d take our clothes three days to dry out in this humidity, and the temperature can’t be much above forty degrees. But I’ve always found it’s easier to think when you’re warm.”

“This isn’t exactly warm.”

“Give it some time.”

She let her head tip back. He rested his cheek against her hair. She could feel the rise and fall of his chest as he sighed. “I should have made you stay in the car,” he said.

“Darn right, you should have.”

He laughed, and she joined him, laughing helplessly and shivering and clutching at her coat so it didn’t fall.

Eventually, they fell silent. Where their bodies met, wet shirts crumpling between them, she began to feel warm. Even the damp underside of her coat didn’t seem as frigid as it had a few minutes ago. “I think we’re throwing off heat,” she said.

“It wouldn’t surprise me.” His voice was dry.

She opened her mouth to make a joke and was amazed to hear herself say, “I’ve thought about this.” He was quiet. The darkness, the anonymity of it let her go on. “About you holding me, I mean. Not about being stuck in a wet, freezing cellar. In fact, when I imagine it, it’s usually in a much warmer place. With fewer clothes on. And, of course, none of those inconvenient moral issues hanging over us. So it’s pretty much a fantasy. Free-floating. Please stop me before I make more of an ass of myself than I already have.” Her cheeks were so hot she could have steamed her coat dry with them. “Sorry. I tend to babble when I’m nervous.”