Stefan! Stefan!” I had literally screamed myself hoarse. With a supernatural energy born of sheer terror, I lunged upward, trying to grab the lantern that swung overhead in a desperate attempt to pull myself out of the well with its appalling occupant.
Instantly the lantern moved up with one swift jerk, out of range of my flailing hands. Whoever was holding the cord it was attached to was reeling it in. The light was receding, and the shadows were racing in from all sides.
“Noooooo!” Threshing and kicking, I felt my boot come into contact with something in the water, a thing that bobbed and spun away from me in the darkness. Something seemed to implode inside me. I could not even scream anymore. A tiny croak, a squeak, forced its way out, and then all I could hear was the sound of my own ragged breathing sawing painfully through the air. I would go mad; I was going mad.
I could no longer feel the thing that had bobbed away from me in the dark, but I knew it was there, spinning around in the black water an arm’s reach away from me. How many of the things were there in the well with me? Katharina Linden. Marion Voss… but even if I had been lucid enough to count, it would have been meaningless. These things floating like sodden logs in the inky water with me had nothing to do with the missing girls-they had become something else altogether.
Far above me, where a dim circle of yellow light was still faintly discernible, there came a curious grinding sound. Grinding-or scraping. Someone was lugging something heavy across the stone floor.
“Hilfe.” I tried to yell for help but the sound came out flat and tiny, as though the darkness had muffled it. “Hilfe.”
There was no answering call, but I heard someone make a grunt, as though with exertion. The next second there was a dull thump as a flagstone fell into place over the top of the well, cutting off the last of the light and sealing me in the darkness.