Identity (Eyes Wide Open) (2 page)

A gurney and two hospital beds were stacked on the wall in front of her. Some old crates full of medical stuff of some kind.

The west side of the storage room had interested Austin more. Another old wooden wheelchair, wiped clean of dust by the seat of Austin’s pants. He liked to balance on two wheels and think. An old writer’s desk hugged the far end, complete with old writing pens and an inkwell supplied by Austin.

He was a writer. The desk had drawn him. Of all the artifacts in the room, she understood this attraction the most because she, too, was a writer of sorts if filling journals counted as writing. Sometimes she thought she was trying to make up for her forgotten childhood by writing down every detail of her life now.

Four old, plain wooden coffins were stacked in pairs along the wall. Yesterday she’d sat on a fifth casket and leaned against the wall for an hour, talking with Austin.

A quick scan of the grime-smeared concrete floor revealed no sign of her locket. She walked over to the desk, searched it quickly, and then crossed to the coffin.

Nothing on its surface, nothing along its base. Her heart began to sink. She was about to turn away and search the floor near the desk—she’d spent some time there, sitting in Austin’s wheelchair, flipping though a medical journal—when she saw the gap between the coffin and the wall.

Christy bent over the casket, supporting herself with one hand. Peered down the crack. Too dark to see, so she pulled out her cell phone.

The tiny battery icon in the corner of the screen glowed red. She’d have to charge it when she got back. Should have plugged it in last night. She thumbed to the flashlight app and brought the bright screen up to the gap.

Her silver locket lay along the base wall, glinting like a tiny star. Her heart soared.

Shoving her phone into her back pocket, she grabbed the wooden box, found that it was quite light, and tugged it back from the wall several feet. It was strange how finding the little $19.99 piece of jewelry affected her. This was her life, caged in a silver heart: a fake picture.

How lame was that?

Christy hurried around the coffin and stepped behind to retrieve her necklace. She was already leaning down with her right arm extended when she planted her foot on the wooden floor.

One minute she was reaching for the locket, the next she was falling. Forward and down. Through a trapdoor in the floor.

But it wasn’t the initial fall that got Christy. It was her survival instincts.

In that first split second, she knew that she was too far off balance to abort her fall, but she impulsively threw both arms wide anyway, grabbing for the coffin on one side and the wall on the other, hoping to stop herself from going through.

Her head slammed into the wooden trapdoor that had opened under her.

The impact elicited another knee-jerk reaction, this one to save her head. If she hadn’t grabbed for her head, she might have stopped her fall.

She free-fell less than a second before landing on hard concrete, this time with her hands and feet first. She grunted and rolled into her right shoulder, still pushed by adrenaline and the basic call for survival.

The trapdoor slammed shut above her, plunging her into darkness. She saw it from the corner of her eye halfway through her roll.

Half up and reeling, she crashed into a wall and dropped hard to her seat.

For a brief moment, Christy didn’t know how to process what had just happened to her. She’d fallen into a basement or hole of some kind.

Then her mind reengaged and started spinning. Thoughts of sewers and broken bottles and snakes scurried through her mind like frightened mice.

Terror set in and flashed down her spine. Ignoring any thought of what the fall might have done to her bones, she scrambled to her feet and backed against a concrete wall, where she stood frozen by dread.

It was too dark to see. The room smelled musky, dry not wet. Not a sewer. No sound of rats. The silence was as thick as the darkness.

“Hello?”

Only silence answered her.

No light through cracks in the wooden floor above her. Austin said the old hospital had once been a hotel in the early 1900s. Maybe this was a part of the old building. But none of that mattered. She had to get out.

She grabbed her back pocket and felt a stab of gratefulness as her hand closed around the familiar square phone. Thumb and forefinger trembling, she jerked it out and blinked when the screen emerged blazing with light. She’d left the light app on.

Christy turned the screen into the darkness and saw that she was in a square room maybe eight feet to a side. Cinderblock walls rose to the wood floor. A hinged, spring-loaded trapdoor rested shut ten feet above her. The old rusted latch that held it closed was broken. As was the rope that had once been used to pull the panel down like an attic access.

There were several six-inch crates along the far wall, a handful of empty bottles, and scattered sections of newspaper that looked as old as the room. Nothing looked remotely useful. Even if she stacked the crates on their ends, she didn’t stand a chance of reaching the trapdoor.

Slowly the nature of her predicament settled into her mind.

Stay calm, Christy. Breathe. It’s all a mistake
.

But the mistake was that she illegally broke into a hospital storage space. For that, she blamed Austin, because Austin didn’t know the first thing about following the law like ordinary people.

Fighting back fear and frustration, she tried to think of a way out short of calling for help. Austin was auditing a class at Harvard this morning, and it would take him an hour to reach her. The idea of spending an hour in this dark pit terrified her.

Only then did Christy see the six-foot plank pressed against the wall at floor level. It was held in place by channel irons that ran a good eighteen inches up the wall on both ends, as if the heavy board was designed to be raised. A two-inch eyehook was screwed into the center of the board.

Why someone would build such a device, she didn’t care—she only wanted to know if it hid a way out.

She tilted her phone up and saw the pulley bolted into wood where the ceiling met the concrete wall. A rope, long gone, had once been used to pull the plank up.

Hope lit her mind, replaced almost immediately with an image of crawling under the hospital in old ducting overrun with rats. Maybe it would be better to call Austin and wait.

But her battery wouldn’t last long, and the thought of waiting in darkness until Austin could get to her was more than unnerving.

She had to move.

Christy stepped over to the board, grabbed the big eyehook, and pulled up. The board budged but was too heavy to move with one hand. So she set her phone on the ground, wrapped both hands around the hook, and tugged.

The heavy plank slid up with grating protest and falling debris on either end. She got her fingers under the wood and dropped to her knees.

An opening just over a foot high and six feet wide gaped to show darkness beyond the board. Too dark to see how deep it ran.

Wedging her knee between the plank and the floor, she reached for her cell phone, shone the light inside, and bent for a better look.

It was a concrete causeway that ran four or five feet in and ended at what looked to be a plywood plank. Maybe a utility room in the basement. That would make sense, right? The room she’d fallen into was probably some kind of abandoned plumbing room or something.

She stared at the opening for a good minute before deciding she would prop the plank open with one of the crates and at least see if the wood on the far side could be pushed out. The passage was dry. No rats. If she got into the basement, she could just exit out of the hospital, come back around for her locket, and be gone as if nothing had happened.

It took her some maneuvering to shove one of the small crates under the plank to brace it open. Sweat had turned the dust on her arms into a brown mess, and the condition of her red blouse would be hard to explain if she got out, but she didn’t care.

She had to get out. That was all. Just out.

Christy lay on her belly, cell held tightly in one hand, stared into the opening for a few seconds, and gathered her courage.

You can do this. It’s not that small of a space. Just five feet, check that wall, and back out if it’s not open. You can do this.

She hesitated.

You have to do this.

She took one last deep breath and scooted forward slowly.

Head to foot, she was just over five feet tall, but with her arm extended she was over six, and she reached the far end with her feet still dangling out next to the crate. The plywood board refused to budge when she pushed with stretched fingers. But she couldn’t get enough leverage to apply any real force.

She glanced back, saw nothing had changed, then scooted in farther, so that her head was up next to the board. A harsh shove still produced no movement.

Maybe if she called out, someone on the far side would hear and come to her rescue.

“Hey!”

Her cry filled the small space and sent a shiver down her spine.

“Anyone there? Hey!”

She listened for the slightest sound but could hear only her own pulse. She was alone. Buried under tons of concrete. She had to get out! Back out where she could at least breathe.

In that last moment before retreating to the larger room, Christy gave the wood plank in front of her one last, grunting shove, using all the leverage she could muster, with more frustration than hope it would pop open.

She wasn’t aware of her feet moving as her body clawed for the leverage.

Didn’t mean to place the sole of her right foot against the crate that supported the plank behind her.

She didn’t know she was in danger until the heavy board struck her shoe as the crate slid free.

Christy did what her body told her to do: she jerked her foot out from under the crushing weight. The board dropped to the concrete with a solid thump that echoed through the narrow passage.

She froze. What had just happened?

But she knew very well what had just happened, and she clawed around to get that board back up, bumping the back of her head as she twisted in the tight space.

The next thirty seconds produced a flurry of frantic activity. She tried to dig her fingers under the board, and when her attempt with one hand failed, she dropped the phone and tried with both. Fingernails, fingers, palms, it didn’t matter. No effort managed to budge the plank. And none would without much more leverage.

She was sealed inside.

Christy slammed the board with her fists, screaming out for help. But the sound of her voice was trapped in that crushing space with her and only pushed her terror deeper.

She stopped screaming and lay sweating, trying to still herself. She had the light, she had the light…

And then she didn’t, because the light on her phone went out, leaving her in utter darkness.

Christy rolled to her back, breathing hard, stabbing the main button with her thumb to get the phone back up. She had to call Austin. She had to. If she couldn’t make the call…

The menu came up in dimmed color. Battery-save mode.
Thank you, thank you
…

She had difficulty navigating to the call log because her fingers were shaking, but she managed. Austin Hartt, 4:35 pm yesterday. It was now 10:36 am. She tapped the screen and brought the phone to her ear.

Ring… Come on, please… Just ring.

It rang.

Pick up, pick up, pick up…

“You’ve reached me. Do what you do.” Click.

Voice mail.
Oh please
…

“Austin…” Her voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. “I’m trapped in your…”

The tone that cut her off might have been a sharp stake that did not stop at her ear. She knew it too well: the descending tone announcing that her phone was now dying.

And then dead.

She dropped her arm to the ground and stared up into pitch darkness, aware of the concrete only inches from her forehead.

No one knew where she was.

No one could hear her.

She was in her grave.

Christy was familiar with panic attacks, but she had never faced the kind of fear that now settled over her like death itself.

She was going to die.