But Hellen hadn’t specified how long this ordeal would last. What if she left me here for days … weeks? I was human, not one of their eternal souls to torture! I would starve, die of thirst in this dark cesspit that was rapidly filling with all the horrors my mind could conjure up.

Don’t faint. Do not faint!

Footsteps, as if on stairs.

Was I imagining that sound? Or was this place taking my worst memories and replaying them?

Oh no, oh no, oh no.

I couldn’t relive that night again.

But then …

The swing of an object through air. A grunt of pain. A scuffle. Muffled shouts.

“Get out of my⁠—”

That voice.

Oh God, that voice.

A thump and a pained grunt … my dad’s pained grunt. “Your boss … committed a crime!” he gasped. “People died because of his choices … and it will catch up with you all eventually.”

Silence, then another grunt of pain, more ragged this time.

“You leave my wife out of it!”

The words sent chills through me. Who was he talking to? Why was I hearing this? Were these the last moments of his life? Replayed in the dark to torment me?

Another thump. Something cracked, and I flinched, pressing my head tighter into my knees.

Was this what had happened to Dad that night? Is this what she’d planned to torture me with?

But why could I only hear him? Why couldn’t I hear who he was talking to?

“No … please! Don’t hurt her, don’t⁠—”

A piercing scream turned my skin to ice.

“Mum?” The word tore from my throat, cut short by a wet, gurgling sound from somewhere in the darkness.

“No! No, Elsie!” Dad’s ragged wail drowned out what had to be the sound of my mother choking on her own blood. Joe had never told me what it was like seeing their bodies. No one had told me how they died. But I was a morbidly curious child; I’d hunted down the court documents at fourteen.

Mum’s throat had been slit, ear to ear.

Dad had been beaten, bones broken. And then they’d taken him, still alive, to the place their bodies had been dumped, and that had been where they’d finally crushed his skull with a rock.

Was I about to hear that beating, too? I’d already heard the start of it, I thought.

My cheeks burned with hot tears, and I uncurled my body, crawling desperately. I wasn’t sure whether I was trying to escape the sound or find the source of it in this never-ending blackness. I just had to move, had to do something to end this nightmare.

“Oh God, no, please … Elsie …” Dad’s words trailed into pitiful, gasping sobs.

That decided me. I turned, seeking that sound. Approaching it on hands and knees, my eyes squeezed shut, fending off the dark.