Dark Secrets (Dark Secrets #1)(193)
Author: A.M. Hudson

“David!” I bent my knee to the highest angle it could achieve and jammed my foot against the floor, pushing on the lid of this coffin, thrashing about like a beetle caught on its back. “Ahh!”

“Ara,” a muffled voice came gloriously through the wood then, thick with grief.

“I’m in here!” I screamed. “Mike. Get me out. I’m in here.” I banged on the roof, making the dirt pile grow. But I didn’t care. Mike was there. He’d get me out. He’d—

“Just squeeze my hand,” he said, cutting off my thought. “Please. Just once. That’s all I need.”

“Mike. I can’t,” I screamed. “I can’t get out. I’m in a box.”

I waited, listening, but this container seemed to be soundproofed—from the inside. I tried to sit up, to move, to struggle against the pine confines, but the dirt formed a mound under my head as I lifted it, pushing my nose closer to the lid, arching my neck at an awkward, unnatural angle. And panic returned with a layer of sweat, turning the dirt to mud around my temples and nose. “Oh God.” I looked up, shutting my eyes tight. “Please. Please get me out of here.”

“No change?”

My thoughts halted at the sound of another voice.

“Hello?” I called.

“No. Doc says her heart’s not coping,” Mike said.

“Time will tell.” The other voice sounded void of all emotion.

“Where are you going?” Mike’s tone peaked with incredulity.

“She needs rest, and my being here is….” There was a long pause. “Pointless.”

Only a sigh followed that, leaving me by myself again, confined in a space made for those not living. I shut my eyes tight and took slow, deep breaths through my mouth, tasting the raw, almost freshly-cut pine against my lips. I tried to imagine pretty things—butterflies, the sun—not the crawly and possibly undead creatures that might be buried beneath me. I would run out of air soon if I didn’t calm down.

And strangely, as my belly lifted and fell with each breath, the air trembling out of my tight lungs, so too did the panic.

I looked around the dark box for what felt like the first time, and instead of pitch black staring back at me, I could make out the ridges in the panels and the oddly-angled nail sticking out beside my eyebrow.

They’d put me in a box—not a coffin—just a pine box; laid me down, closed me in and nailed it shut. But I would find a way out of here. Come Hell or high water. This would not be my death, and if it was already my death, I’d be damned if I’d let it be my eternity.

* * *

“How is she?” The voice echoed through my endless night, resonating from somewhere behind me.

My eyes shot open and space, cool and airy, greeted me. I brushed my arms, feeling as though there’d be dirt there. But I was clean. I couldn’t remember where I’d been or why I’d be so dirty, but I felt dirty and starved for air.

“No change,” said a woman suddenly.

“Pardon?” I said, looking up, searching the empty room for a crack of light to mark my position.

“Can she hear us?” a man said.

“Who?” I asked.

“Her monitor changes when I speak. See?” he said, and I got the sense then that they weren’t talking to me.

“It’s just static.” As soon as that man spoke, I knew it was Mike. The other one sounded almost too smooth to be Mike; liquid, if that was the right word.

“It’s not static. Look, she can hear me.”

“You wish.”

“Mike,” the woman whispered. “Be nice.”

“Fine,” Mike said in a tone that indicated a set of folded arms to go with it. “From what I know, the doc says she can.”

“Ara? My love.” Mr Smooth sounded closer than before. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “Please? Please come back to me?”

“Excuse me. Are…I’m sorry, are you talking to me?” I called.

He didn’t answer.

I blinked a few times, noticing only as I looked down at my feet, that my feet weren’t actually there. I held my arm out and ran my fingers over it, feeling the soft skin, but couldn’t see it. There was nothing there to identify me; no nails, no skin colour, no age spots or bracelets. Not even a bed or a surface to show what kind of room this was; maybe it was a prison, a hospital, a bedroom—a padded cell, perhaps even a ballroom with no people. Could even be the White House, for all I knew. But that word, Ara, rang a bell somehow.

I dropped my arms to my sides, quickly yanking my hand back when it touched something cold. It stung, like dry ice, sticking to me even as I shook my fingers.

“Did you see that?” the stranger said. “I think…I think she just squeezed my hand!”

“It was probably just a flinch. She does that from time to time.” I heard the silky pages of a magazine turn.

“Maybe,” the smooth voice said, dejected. “It just seemed almost like she was shaking me off. Do you think she…?”

“She what? Knows you’re here? Hates you?” The pages flicked again, and it sounded as though a metal-legged chair scraped along vinyl. “Chances are, she was shaking you off. Maybe you should stop touching her.”

I frowned, looking down at where my fingers were supposed to be. And, like a puppet master, I focused on them, closed them tightly and squeezed the nothing, letting go when that voice laughed, cheering with praise again.

“She did. She squeezed my hand. Look.”

“What do you mean she squeezed your hand?” Mike’s voice came from closer than before and, though it was still dark, I felt space around me—felt him near me. The echoing mist of eternity flowed out through the cracks in my subconscious, leaving me solid, heavy. Really heavy. I didn’t remember being this heavy. I didn’t remember having laid down, on my back, but when I tried to get up, my chest stayed stuck, glued to my spine against this flat surface.

“Ara.” The smooth stranger interrupted my moment of confusion.

“What is it?” I called, irritated.

“Ara,” he said again, as if I hadn’t answered him.

And now I was getting cranky. It had been God knows how long since I’d eaten, felt the sun, slept, or even seen my own toes, and now this person was talking at me and not answering. I just wanted to get out of here—wherever here was. I just wanted to go home to Mike and lay in his arms. I was tired of the dark—of the black. I couldn’t even remember where I’d been all this time or even why Mike was important to me.