I awoke in complete and utter darkness, my disorientation compounded by a hammering ache in my head…touching it gingerly, I felt a sticky wetness of matted hair on one side where the skin had been broken; evidently I had hit (or been hit by) something hard enough to not only render me unconscious, but also to dispel any solid memories of myself or my situation from my waking mind! My name was unknown to me, as unreachable as the stars which faded sickeningly in and out of my vision as my eyes strained against the blackness as well as against my throbbing skull. The lion’s share of the pain seemed to stem from a spot on the side and towards the rear of my head, which my tempestuous memories told me was on the parietal bone of the skull just above the squamosal suture. Hearing myself repeat those arcane names, I felt fairly safe in deducing that I was or had once been a member of the medical profession. That surefire visual test of a surgeon, the rock-like steadiness of one’s hands, was made impossible by the inky blackness but in my current state I doubted it would speak favorably of any skill I might possess…a glass of wine in hand at that moment would have become an airborne menace to clean raiment, of that I was certain.
As my head began to clear a little and the swimming of vertigo began to subside, I reached out and took a few tentative steps with arms outstretched to ascertain my surroundings…after only a few feet I was met with a dank, moist and quite solid resistance which I took to be some manner of cave wall, which I turned and followed until it took a right angle. Slowly and gingerly following the wall around and counting steps, I estimated my enclosure to be a rectangle of perhaps 15 feet by 10 feet, roughly hewn into the earth and at least deeper than my outstretched hands could reach. When I toed up a small pebble from the floor and tossed it aloft I heard it strike a stone surface at a point perhaps 12 feet above my head…not tremendously high but it may as well have been the surface of the moon for all the good it did me. Scrabbling around in the dirt and retrieving my sounding-stone, I repeated the experiment at different points and was met with identical results: I was trapped. Never having suffered from claustrophobia before to my knowledge, I was unprepared for the feeling of oppression and weight which settled upon me, nor the shortness of breath and feeling of nervous anxiety which began to tickle at my brain like a splinter.
I yelled for a time, a number of minutes, perhaps as much as an hour until my voice was a ghost in my rasping throat…my cries seemed to die immediately as they struck the solid cap to my enclosure, surely escaping but little into the chamber above (whatever it may be) but as the loathsome dark pressed in on me I could not help but try. Sinking to my knees in the corner I felt the coolness of the wall start to explore the back of my shirt as the moisture invaded the fabric, bringing an additional chill to my bones with its greedy fingers. My head still throbbed around its wound and I was tempted to press it against the cool moist earth for a time but fear of parasites and bacteria stayed me…moreover, the tomb in which I found myself had a faint but decidedly unpleasant miasma as if the very earth that made up the walls and floor was…diseased…in some way. As I rubbed my hands together for a modicum of warmth I noticed yet another ailment, one that had passed beneath my notice as I processed the shock of my encasement and the insistent thrumming of my head. It seemed that both my wrists felt sore and chafed, and as I touched the skin I knew the wounds they bore could only be the burning remnants of ligature marks. A dim and distant memory bubbled up through the ichor in my head, fragmented and disjointed but carrying a few flashes of clarity…clutching hands upon my person, angry voices, merciless faces…my own hands tied together, raised in supplication…then darkness.
As I sat in silence, huddled in my corner with arms wrapped around knees I felt like a child in his bedchamber, the comforts of family and the reassurance of the world ripped away by a shroud of darkness. Even pulling up the blankets over one’s head could not keep the terrors of the night at bay for long, and in my enclosure I felt no comfort in the clutches of Mother Earth all around me.
It is a well-known phenomenon that when one of our senses is muffled or taken away the others strive to compensate for its loss…the famous Helen Keller, for instance, had a remarkable sense of touch to help her experience a world hidden by her lack of sight and sounds. The speed of the body to put these adaptations into motion is remarkable, and thus after only a few hours with no stimulus to my eyes my sense of hearing became quite acute…as I sat quietly I could hear nothing at first, and then the unmistakable hum of human voices in conversation! I tried to announce my presence but my vocal cords would not obey, emitting only a thin reedy attempt at sound…as my mind raced trying to think of how to make contact I remembered my small stone and, pawing along the ground, I tried to locate it to no avail. By some divine providence, however, the voices grew steadily closer until it seemed, though I could not discern any words whatsoever, that they were just outside the cap to my pit!
As the slab of rock slid aside the light from above was a blinding halo like the light of God upon my countenance and I hid my eyes from its glory with my hands, almost weeping with the thought of rescue or at the very least some reassurance that my presence was known, should it turn out I had kidnapped. There seemed to be two figures above me peering over the edge of my enclosure, and though their voices had quieted to a murmur I thought them to be mere youths, boys of not yet fifteen! Surely these were no kidnappers…parting my fingers to allow only a little light in at a time and sparing my eyes the full brunt of blinding illumination (which was surely only somewhat dim to those accustomed to the light, as there seemed to be only a single bare bulb lighting the room above) I gathered my strength to speak as well as my ravaged throat would allow. Would I need to bargain with these scamps, to convince them I was no threat and to summon the constabulary and secure my release from whatever madman had imprisoned me here? Were they in fact my captors, young as they were, prepared to let me languish until they received whatever ransom they envisioned?
“-sure he’s in there?” one almost whispered to his fellow.
“Sure I’m sure, nitwit, I was standin right ‘ere when Pa helped toss him!” was the reply. “In he went like a sack o’ beans!”
Slowly standing and brushing dirt from my clothing to maintain some semblance of dignity, I managed to feebly croak, “H-hello boys!”, but they paid me no more mind than a fisherman to the gasps of a trout in his pail, continuing to mutter to each other almost imperceptibly as they peered through the opening in the roof of my pit. One of them swung a flashlight over the edge, playing its beam around the bottom of the enclosure… as I squinted up the light shone right over me without pausing, continuing in a wide sweeping arc until it came to rest near the middle of the floor. Their voices grew louder but as I looked where the flashlight beam had come to rest the blood singing in my ears drowned out all but a few words, snatches grasped from the mouth of madness as I stared down at my own lifeless body lying prone on the floor of the pit.
“…right there!”
The mouth of my corpse was open in a screaming rictus, head resting in a pool of blood. From my vantage I could see the wound on the side of the head where my skull had been breached with a sharp blow.
“…the Doctor…”
My hands were bound before me, raised almost in prayer. I could see the rough ropes twisted tautly around the wrists, dug ruthlessly into the flesh and stealing any color from it.
“…patients disappearing, especially the kids…”
The dirt near my feet was scraped and scuffed, and clods of earth clung to the heels and toes of my shoes. The blow to my head had not killed me immediately.
“…parents found him before the police did…”
Images swam into my mind, angry faces surrounding me as I was shuffled down my own basement stairs. I remembered staring at the single burning bulb hanging from the ceiling and seeing it explode into a huge flash of light as something solid and heavy lurched into my head from behind. Looking up at the boys again I recognized the one speaking, I remember seeing him standing uncertainly at one end of the basement as I was brought in, staying clear of the mob around me but glaring into my eyes with an angry, almost awed expression. Now his expression was one of satisfaction as he gazed down with his friend at my mortal remains. My mind was reeling into gibbering madness as I tried to make sense of what my eyes were telling me…I wanted to explain to them, to scream that I did not know who I was or anything I had done, that they were punishing some other person, for what makes up who we are but the knowledge of ourselves, of what we do, of where we have been? When an entire life’s history has been ripped from a body how can one be punished? How can one be penitent for deeds he does not recall? All this I wanted to scream, to beg of them, to convince, to somehow secure my release from this prison. The pleas died on my lips as my traitorous ears gathered the final words spoken from above.
“…this is where he dumped the bodies, after.” I gazed around, seeing for the first time the scratches on the walls from desperately scrabbling hands beyond number, feeling the wails of the past soaking from the earth into my skin and into my soul. God help me, I remembered standing where those boys were now, looking down into the darkness, hearing the cries from the pit. Just as I had done, they began to slide the sheet of stone back into place over the gaping maw…I did not watch as the light above contracted to a slice, then a sliver, then darkness.