"I don't know if there is a door, but I know there is a way out."
He opens the basement hatch to the dark night sky and the distant sound of—I don't know what the sound is, actually. "What is that noise?"
He locks up the basement door and turns in the direction my shed was in. "You don't want to know."
"No way. Don't pull that bull on me. What is it?" The sound stops. It was almost like the combination of someone crying, mixed with radio static.
"I can just show you if you'd like?" Sin says, continuing on ahead of me.
This time, I don't respond. I have a feeling whether I want to see it or not, I won't have a choice. He gets some sick thrill out of trying to scare the shit out of me, and I'm done letting him think it's working. Whatever it is making that noise will not scare me. I won't allow it to.
We walk past the flattened shed and I stop. I lean down to move some of the smaller broken boards, but now I feel compelled to move more in search of the mattress I slept on for so long. "What are you doing?" Sin asks.
"I need to find it." I'm slinging bigger planks of wood now, getting closer to the bottom of the pile. Surprisingly, Sin doesn't ask any more questions and helps me instead. He breaks through the pile faster, revealing the top of the mattress. I step over the pile he's created and shove the mattress to the side a few inches, finding exactly what I was looking for.
I drop to my knees and sweep my hand over the gravel covering the untouched piece of floor. "May I borrow your flashlight?" I ask.
He hands it over and kneels down beside me. "What is it?"
I click the flashlight on, shining the light on the spot that tracked how many days I survived. "Eleven-hundred-fifteen."
"I don't understand."
"Days." I take a rock from the rubble and scrape it alongside the last line, needing to add in four more. Four days seems like an eternity ago, yet it has only been four days and I'm no closer to escaping than I was eleven-hundred-and-nineteen days ago. Sin's hand gently presses against my back as I create the last line. When I drop the rock, he pulls me into his side and places a kiss on the top of my head. No words are needed at this moment. He gets it. I know he does.
I turn the flashlight off and hand it back to him. "I don't want to waste the battery." Standing up, I step back over the piles of lumber, looking to Sin for the next direction, which I'm assuming is the empty horizon in front of us.
Sin takes my hand and we continue in silence until I hear the sound of cries again. "Is it a person or an animal? Just tell me that much."
"The difference between the two is hard to decipher here, Reese. One is as dumb as another, but we're all trying to escape. And when we try to escape, the consequence causes the sounds you are hearing."
