Inch by inch, Vincent lowered me from above. For one frightening moment, I pictured Jonathan and Molly Smith waiting in the darkness for me. I looked down and gasped. Was that their pale, white hands reaching out of the darkness? Their fingers snapping at my heels, desperate to pull me down into the black? I closed my eyes momentarily, then opened them again. There were no hands, just darkness and the sound of the rain water running down the walls which surrounded me.
Witch! I suddenly heard someone whisper.
Stop it! I told myself. But still my heart raced frantically in my chest and my mouth went dry. My tongue felt suddenly thick and swollen, as if I were suffocating. The deeper Vincent lowered me into the well, the closer the walls seemed to be all around me. I had to fight the urge to scream out to Vincent. To tell him that I couldn’t bear it anymore – that I couldn’t breathe – that I was suffocating. I closed my eyes again and drew in several lungfuls of damp, cold air. I felt my heart slow, just a little as I fought desperately to keep myself from totally freaking out. I opened my eyes again, but I might as well have just kept them closed. The darkness which now surrounded me was thick, suffocating, and impenetrable. I wondered what it must have been like for Molly and that police officer named Lee to have died in this blackness. It must have been like falling into hell.
Suddenly, I felt the toes of my boots brush against something solid. My boots came to rest and I realised I had reached the bottom of the well. Knowing now that I was so deep below ground that I could have some light, I fumbled in my coat pocket for my torch. I held it in my hands and they began to tremble. Even though I was desperate for some light, I suddenly became fearful of switching it on. I was suddenly petrified of what I might see, of what might be waiting for me in the darkness. Would Jonathan and Molly Smith be waiting for me, just like they had been in my nightmares? Would the old guy come stumbling – twitching and jerking – out of the darkness at me? Would I be able to hear the sound of that flap of flesh slapping wetly against the side of his face as he whispered, Witch! Witch! Witch! over and over again?
With my heart racing, hands trembling, and my legs threatening to buckle beneath me at any moment, I switched on my torch.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The sudden light was so bright in the dark, at first it was blinding. I closed my eyes and saw a mass of bright white spots on the inside of my eyelids. Slowly, I opened them again peered about the well. The walls were charcoal grey and slimy-looking. Rainwater ran down them in glistening rivulets. Once my eyes had grown accustomed to the light, I span around in the confined enclosure to make sure that I was truly alone. There was no one in the well with me. This fact didn’t stop my heart from racing. To be at the bottom of the well was like reliving my nightmare again. It was the exact same well. The smell, the damp, the Plink! Plink! Plink! sound of dripping water.
“Water!” I gasped.
I looked down to see that I was standing in a foot of it. Just like in my nightmare, it was black, like a deep pool of ink. I flashed the light of my torch over it, in search of the bottle.
“Where is it?” I groaned, unable to see it, fearing that I had put myself at risk for nothing.
The torchlight made sparkling patterns over the water as I splashed about, the feeling that the walls were closing in on me again. I saw something winking back at me from just a few feet away in the water. I waded forwards, plucking the bottle from the water like I was grabbing some kind of prize. I held the old Coke bottle up in the torchlight. The red and white logo had almost come totally away, and what was left had faded to a pale pinkie colour through age. I shone the light on the bottle, and there, sealed inside, was a folded piece of a paper. Holding the end of the torch between my front teeth, and with a pair of trembling hands, I unscrewed the cap. I placed the empty bottle in my coat pocket, then unfolded the piece of paper. It had turned yellow in places and the corners had curled up. With my free hand, I took the torch from between my front teeth, and held it over the sheet of paper.
At once my heart almost stopped, and I drew a deep, agonising breath as I read what was written in a spidery scrawl across it. To read that note was like being repeatedly punched in the stomach. I felt winded, as if unable to fill my lungs with air. I reached for the wall of the well to support me as my legs gave way beneath. I dropped into the water, as it splashed darkly about me.
“No,” I cried out. “No!”
I didn’t want to believe what was written on the note I had discovered. But in my heart I knew that it was true. It was the only thing that made any sense.
“No!” I screamed, rocking my head back against the wall. “No!”