Page 27 of Tenebrous

Earl and Gale cry out, but I no longer see them. My vision goes black, copper floods my tongue, and then I'm falling.

Weightless, crashing through the black, endlessly cold and gasping for air. I can't breathe. I can't move.

Falling, falling, falling…

Part Two

Chapter

Eleven

Benji

Pain slowly wakes me.

It's everywhere, sharp enough to make me dizzy. My entire body feels wrong somehow, like someone took me apart and put all my limbs back together incorrectly.

The darkness around me is absolute and suffocating. It presses against my eyelids even when I force them open, making me wonder if maybe I've gone blind. A groan slips out before I can stop it, but the sound dies in my throat when agony explodes through my ribs.

"Oh, God."

Fragments of memory drift through my head without any sense of order. For several long seconds, I simply stare upward, trying to remember where I am. My thoughts feel sluggish, trapped beneath layers of exhaustion.

Rain. A lantern. Manny bleeding out and Earl's rifle pointed at my face. Gale standing beside that mine shaft with a shovel in his hand.

Then the gunshot.

Carefully, I lift a trembling hand toward my leg. The movement sends fresh waves of pain rolling through me, but I keep going until my fingers find torn, wet fabric.

Blood, my blood, and I'm completely drenched in it.

A bitter laugh almost escapes me. Guess they missed something important when they shot me. Or maybe dying just takes longer than I expected? Either way, I can't seem to get my body to move. All I can do is lie here in the dark and wait to die. Just like Dennis did.

Will they pull my body out in a few days? Tell the next new hire that I lost my mind?

Eventually, time begins to stretch on, losing all meaning. Pain comes and goes in waves. One moment I'm awake, staring at phantoms dancing in my vision. The next, everything dissolves into darkness again.

At one point I wake up shivering violently, every inch of my body soaked and freezing down to my bones. I'm certain I hear my mother calling my name from somewhere deep inside the dark, but her voice follows me into unconsciousness before I can decide if it was real.

The only thing that remains constant is the pain. It burns my body like a torch, searing deeper every time I breathe. When I awake again, I swear I'm back in Kansas, lying in that tub with the shotgun barrel in my mouth. Dad's aftershave floods my nostrils, and relief washes over me because it means none of this happened. There is no Deadfall or mine. No evil sheriff or uncle.

But then the smell changes.

Damp earth, smoke, wet stone. The illusion crumbles, and it takes me far too long to notice that the ground is moving.

At first, I think I'm dreaming. The sensation is subtle enough that my exhausted brain struggles to make sense of it. Stone scrapes beneath me, and my body shifts slightly. Every few seconds, a jolt rattles through my ribs hard enough to send pain shooting through my chest.

Confusion gives way to panic when I realize that the ground isn't moving; I am.

My eyes fly open. A groan escapes me as I attempt to lift my head, but the effort sends a wave of nausea crashing into me. I manage it long enough to catch glimpses of stone sliding past beneath my shoulders just before the movement stops abruptly.

Silence settles into the darkness. Wait, no… That's not entirely true. I can hear breathing. Deep, slow inhales close enough that the sound seems to vibrate through the walls.

Every muscle in my body tenses. I can't turn around. Can't sit up. Can't do much of anything except lie here and listen while my heart tries to beat its way out of my chest. Terror grips me so completely that I would have pissed myself had I not done so already.

Then, to my horror, something large and rough tightens on my wrist.

And with a steady pull, it drags me deeper into the darkness before I can even scream.