Long lost

Desperate, I grabbed a timber and dragged it free, about to shove it behind me, when I heard a crack and gaped up at a huge plug of debris snapping loose. I tried to scramble back, but a jumble of scorched timbers and boards crashed down on me. The force took my breath away, knocking me toward the water. I didn't dare let the flashlight get soaked! Deafened by the reverberating rumble, I fought to raise myself, to keep the knapsack from filling with water. I pushed at the timbers weighing against me. I thrust the boards away. I grabbed something that didn't feel like wood. It was round and soft.

I screamed when I realized that I was holding the snake, its severed body drooping in my hands, the fangs of its crushed head close to my arm. As I hurled it away, a floating timber knocked against me. I fell. The foul water went over my head. It rushed into my ears, crammed my nostrils, and filled my mouth. Gasping, I bolted to the surface, coughing, spitting out soot-tasting water, struggling to breathe. I wiped at my eyes, frantically realizing that my lack of vision had nothing to do with water in them.

The flashlight had gone out.

9

In absolute darkness, my other senses strained to fill the void: the echo of waves splashing and wood thudding against the walls; the feel of my wet clothes clinging to me; the taste of soot and dirt; the stench of the water making me gag. My most extreme sense, though, was terror. Afraid to move lest I touch the fangs of the dead snake floating around me, I stood rigidly, trying to keep balanced in the darkness while I listened to the lapping of the waves slowly subsiding. Soon, all I heard was water streaming from the roof and through the debris in the stairwell.

My wet knapsack was heavy on my back. Blind, I took it off, looped its straps over a shoulder, and carefully took out the flashlight. I shook it. I pressed its on/off button. Nothing. I unscrewed its cap, removed the batteries, dumped the water from the cylinder, and blew on the poles of the batteries to attempt to dry them. After reinserting the batteries, I pressed the button. The darkness remained total. No, I was wrong. My eyes, straining to adapt to the blackness, became sensitive to a slight glow on my left wrist- the luminous coating on the hour marks of my watch. The speckled circle floated, disembodied.

I poured water from the knapsack, put the flashlight in it (and my pistol, which had dug deeper into the skin under my belt). Then I made sure that the pack's zippers were tightly closed and strapped it to my back. Meanwhile, the cold water rose above my knees.

Move! Wading, I groped ahead. I flinched from a chill, clammy, pitted surface, belatedly identifying it as a concrete wall. When I'd lost my balance and fallen, I must have gotten turned around. Now I had to make a choice: right or left. One direction led to the door, the other to the choked stairwell.

I eased to the left, pawing through the darkness. Something pricked my hand. Oh Jesus, I'd touched the snake's fangs. Jerking my hand back, grabbing where I'd been stung, I felt an object stuck in my palm. No. A splinter. Only a splinter. I'd scraped against a board.

I'd found the stairwell. As my watch's luminous dial zigzagged ghostlike in the darkness, I tugged at boards. I yanked at timbers. I pulled and heaved, shoving debris behind me. My hands were in pain, cut and gouged, but I didn't care. I had to clear more space before the water rose fatally higher. My shoulders ached, and my back throbbed. My mouth became dry. I had trouble getting air down my throat and finally had to pause to take my canteen from the knapsack and gulp water, making my mouth and throat feel less swollen, able to get more air.

But the brief rest didn't give me energy. I felt light-headed and realized that carbon dioxide was accumulating in the tu

With a greater frenzy, I grabbed sightlessly for debris and hurled it behind me. I freed one step after another, working higher, but the water followed, tugging at my hips. I felt unsteady. My mind whirled. Even though I couldn't see, spots wavered in front of my eyes.

The air thickened. My movements slowed. Debris floated against me. When a timber broke in my hands, I jerked backward, almost falling into the water. Then I pulled a chunk of wreckage, releasing not only it but a pool that had gathered in the ruins above me. With the force of a broken dam, it rushed onto me, so strong that it swept me off the steps, knocking me against floating timbers. I was dazed, barely able to keep my head above the surface. I flopped one arm and then the other against the water, trying to swim but remaining in place.

I was so weak, struggling not to sink, that it took me a moment to notice that the air had a hint of sweetness. I stared toward the stairwell and feared that my mind was tricking me, because the darkness was shaded. I saw vague contours of the wreckage. Gray filtered down. Bolstered by the fresh air seeping in, I found the strength to swim to the stairwell. I wavered up the steps and pulled at timbers, the gray beckoning, urging me upward.

When I finally squirmed up through an ooze of soot, squeezing past the jumbled skeleton of the collapsed house, the sky was thick with clouds. The air turned grayer, making me think that the hidden sun was setting and that in my delirium it had taken me all day to burrow up from the stairwell.

The cold rain persisted. It pelted me, but the grime that covered me was like grease and wouldn't come off. I clawed up through wreckage. I strained and dragged myself higher. Several times, boards snapped in my hands, threatening to hurtle me back into the pit. My blood-smeared fingers hooked onto the top of a foundation wall. I pulled myself over, flopping onto mushy ground. It took me several minutes before I could stand. As I plodded through mud, I wondered if I'd have the strength to reach my car.

10

Steam rose around me, but I couldn't get the bathwater hot enough. The cold penetrated to my bones. To my soul.

What use had the chamber served? I kept asking myself. Why had Orval, who'd possessed construction skills, not built the roof with concrete? What had been the purpose of the two ducts that had gone along the roof of the tu

"Where they kept me a prisoner was an underground room," the man who'd claimed to be my brother had said. Not Petey, God help me, but Lester Dant. Why would Orval and Eunice Dant have kept their only child in an underground room? The horror of it made my mind swirl.

The puzzle of the roof's poor construction now became clear. By working after dark, using no more than the lights from the house, Orval could have dug the space for the tu

But the ceiling would have been a problem. To construct it properly, he would have needed to make concrete slabs. Once the slabs were ready, however, he would have needed a small crane to hoist them into place: precision work that would have required more than just standard illumination from the house. Outsiders would have noticed and been curious about so much light in back of his house after dark. Better to be cautious by using wooden beams for the roof, easily and quickly installed. Or maybe there'd been a deadline. Maybe Orval had been forced to compromise with the roof's construction because a timetable was hurrying him.