How long had I been there?

  My mouth had gone completely dry. I’d never been thirstier.

  Hours? More than a day? Several days?

  I think I slept, at least for a little while. But my brain wasn’t working right.

  Could have been the drug in that syringe.

  But I also read about studies, done on prisoners in solitary confinement. Being locked up in darkness commonly led to peduncular hallucinosis. Images so vivid they were indistinguishable from reality. In the absence of sensory input, your brain creates its own.

  Am I actually going to an escape room in a few weeks with my family, or is that some mental metaphor for my current situation? Is it my brain trying to deal with this horrible reality?

  What is reality? What was it that Harry said in the bar?

  He said that our conversation couldn’t happen in reality.

  What if that conversation never happened? What if I imagined it?

  I was supposed to have a video call with Val to talk about something important. Was that coming up, or did it already happen?

  I had memories of it happening. But I couldn’t recall what was said. It was like trying to remember a dream. The more I focused on it, the more out of focus it became.

  So maybe it hadn’t happened. Yet.

  Or maybe it would never happen.

  Or maybe none of this was happening.

  Harry talked—in real life or in my imagination—about dreams and clichés.

  It would be the ultimate cliché if this whole thing turned out to be a bad dream.

  That would be a really badly written story. Like Harry had said.

  Or like I imagined he had said.

  Or dreamt he had said.

  It was so ridiculous I erupted with laughter.

  The laughter became sobbing.

  I kept pushing on the ceiling of my tomb.

  I kept sobbing/laughing until I no longer made any noise but my body kept shaking like I was.

  Then the audible hallucinations began.

  It made a mad sort of sense. If I was seeing things, I should also be hearing things.

  This sounded like scratching. Or cracking.

  A rat?

  I had a few hysterical moments of adrenaline-spiked panic, thinking I was trapped in the dark with a rabid rodent, feeling its clammy pink feet crawl over my legs and belly, anticipating its sharp little teeth tearing into my bare skin.

  But that didn’t happen. There was no rat.

  There was scratching, though. For sure. To my left.

  I put my hand on the concrete block and then pulled away because I felt it shift.

  A rescue!

  Or…

  That crazy old man who buried me, coming back to see if I was dead yet.

  Or…

  My imagined rat, but not imagined and actually digging its way in, clawing through the concrete.

  Or…

  CRACK!

  Something broke through, and I cried out and tried to move my legs away as I swatted at it, and it was hard and definitely not human except that it had fingers and made a mechanical, whirring sound.

  In my head, where nothing was familiar anymore, this was something I could always recognize.

  “Harry?”

  He pulled his prosthetic hand away. “Hiya, Jackie. Are you out there, trying to rescue me?”

  “No. I’m walled in. I’m guessing you aren’t here to rescue me?”

  “Nope. Trying to break out. Looks like we’re both idiots.”

  Mutual idiocy aside, I was ridiculously relieved to see him.

  The relief was short-lived.

  “Is that really you?” I asked.

  “It’s me.”

  If this McGlade was a figment of my imagination, I needed to hear something from him that I didn’t know, something new to me, so I could be sure I wasn’t making all of this up in my own brain.

  “Prove it. Tell me stupid a joke.”

  “You know what I like about you, Jackie?”

  “What?”

  “So you don’t know either?”

  Funny. But I might have heard that before, and my subconscious might be bringing it back, just to make me think I was no longer alone.

  “Say something Harry McGlade would say. Something new.”

  “You want a brand new McGladeism?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How about I stick my prehistoric cockasaurus through this hole and you play strangle the dinosaur.”

  It was Harry. I did not have anything close to cockasaurus in my mental dictionary.

  Using his artificial hand, he’d broken through half of the concrete block. This type of block was hollow in the middle, with an inch of concrete support running down the center. We were each able to get a good grip on the edge and managed to wiggle the rest of it free of the mortar. I pulled it into my area and shoved it across the rock salt, down by my feet.

  Another block came out next, and it was easier than the first. After an unknown amount of time we managed to break down most of the wall between us, and I knew I had to be certifiably out of my mind because I reached for McGlade and hugged him.

  “I thought I was going crazy in here.”

  “When did they grab you?”

  “They? There’s more than one?”

  “It was those four assholes at the bar,” Harry said. “Toddy drugged my toilet shot. They were all in on it.”

  “Someone else grabbed me. Really old guy.”

  “Holy stinky shitballs! You met Granddad?”

  “He injected something into my neck. He was hiding in the attic. Dropped down like a bat.”

  “I knew it! Crazy hillbilly family of psychos hiding their insane relative in the attic. He’s killed a crazy amount of people, wrapped them in concrete. They’ve been covering for him for over fifty years.”

  “Harry… are you wet?”

  “It’s okay. Urine is sterile.”

  I pushed him back. “Hug is over.”

  “You didn’t go pee-pee yet?”

  “I’m dehydrated.”

  “Did you make a boom-boom?”

  “No.”

  “Then let’s work from your area. I made a boom-boom all over the opposite wall.”

  He wormed his way into my space, and with the extra room, leverage, and his robot hand, we got the block out from under my head that had been giving me back pain the whole time.

  “I got a weird, contorted space in my cell too, with blocks that forced me to bend,” Harry said. “They’re torturing us?”

  “I think Granddad wants us to die in certain positions before he turns us into statues.”

  “You see? This is why we need to pay more attention to the elderly. They’re a national treasure. Remember when that old guy hung us upside down in body bags and beat us with a bat?”

  “He beat you with a bat.”

  “Old people. So much wisdom to share. They warm my heart.”

  “I know I’m not thinking clearly, and you’re never thinking clearly—”

  “It’s a defense mechanism to protect myself from my own thoughts,” Harry explained.

  “That makes no sense. But nothing makes sense. These things keep happening to me. To us. Druggings. Abductions. Attempted murders. What’s the probability these same situations keep occurring to the same people?”

  “You’re making it all about you, Jack. Things happen. They happen to everybody. And everybody feels like it’s unfair. Everyone whines about why it’s happening to them, why they’re so unlucky. But here’s the thing; it wouldn’t be a good story if nothing happened. So let’s roll with it and count our blessings. First blessing; I’m no longer trapped alone, with my boom-boom.”

  “You’re being unusually brave, McGlade.”

  “I pissed and shit myself and spent hours screaming and sobbing. I’m not brave. I’m just exhausted.”

  The smell from McGlade’s space finally wafted over, and I choked back some bile.

  “Cheese curds went right through me,” Harry said.

  “It’s… horrible…”

  “So hold your breath. You’re hogging all the oxygen anyway. Which way do you want to go?”

  “The opposite way… from the smell…”

  “Then bad news. We gotta switch sides so I can get at that wall with my mechanical hand.”

  I didn’t like that idea. But just a little while ago I thought I was going to die alone, being eaten by rats.

  McGlade’s boom-boom was the lesser of those two evils.

  But, it turned out, not by much.

  As Harry carved his way through the concrete, I kept my robe up over my nose and mouth and tried not to vomit.

  “Can you stop making that gagging sound, Jack? It’s making me gag.”

  “How’s it going over there?”

  “Not good. I had a full battery charge this morning, but I don’t think I have much power left.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Well, I wasted some of the battery earlier, when I thought I was going to die. I had the hand on vibrate mode.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about.

  And then I knew.

  “So you were screaming and sobbing and jerking off?”

  “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. I found it oddly liberating.”

  “Jesus, Harry, so you have any bodily fluids left?”

  “I haven’t puked yet. But I will if you keep making that gag noise. It’s triggering me.”

  “Well your boom-boom is triggering my gag noise.”

  He began to laugh.

  “You really think this is funny?”

  “Unrelated. I was thinking about our vacation plans in a few weeks.”

  “What’s funny about that?”

  “Well, we were planning on going to an escape room. This is a literal escape room.”

  I found that ironic, but not laugh aloud funny.

  Then a memory came back, from out of nowhere, which I did find funny.

  “Remember when we found that DV perp hiding in the fridge, a million years ago?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Do you remember what you said when we found him?”

  “I don’t. What did I say?”

  “You said, ‘We got you cold.’“

  Harry laughed. “I’m pretty damn clever.”

  “You have your moments. But what you said at the bar was freaking me out. About us being in a story. I was beginning to doubt reality.”

  “What bar?”

  “That local bar. With all the logging stuff on the walls.” What was that place called? “I can’t remember the name of it.”

  “When?” Harry asked. “When did this happen?”

  “Are you messing with me?”

  “Is who messing with you? Are you sure I’m even here?”

  “You’re here. I can smell the proof.”

  “I’m telling you, Jackie, you have all the traits of an unreliable narrator.”

  I knew that term. It was from fiction, when the person telling the story wasn’t telling the truth. A literary trick used to mislead the reader.

  Was that what was happening?

  Was I deluded? Telling myself lies to prevent insanity?

  Or could I be already insane?

  I was so awestruck by the possibility that I couldn’t even speak.

  Maybe I couldn’t speak because I wasn’t even there.

  “Holy underwear, Jackie!” He cackled. “I was just messing with you!”

  Dammit, Harry. “You’re such a dick, McGlade.”

  “Guilty. But I tell you what; pretending we’re in a bad book is what we need right now.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because,” Harry said, pausing like he was ready to tell a dad joke. “We need to break the fourth wall…”

  THE WITCH

  Interesting.

  The witch wondered if her memories were tainted. Or just flat-out false.

  She’d remembered Jack Daniels, and even Harry McGlade, as worthy adversaries. Formidable. Competent. Challenging.

  But it seemed like a bunch of Northwoods hicks had captured them both without much difficulty.

  Have my enemies gone soft with age?

  Or is my mind gone?

  I’m partially right. My mind is partially gone.

  In fact, I’m the poster girl for losing your mind.

  Jack, drugged or knocked out, had been hauled out of the house, limp over the shoulder of the old, wildman stalker who’d been spying on her earlier. He carried her into the woods, and the witch followed at a safe distance.

  The witch had seen this disappearing trick before, after the tavern yokels brought McGlade to the property. They parked a mile away and hauled him, in a wheelbarrow, to a pole barn in the woods behind the house.

  Their secret entrance was clever. Practically impossible to see unless you knew what to look for.

  And now, Jack’s soldier girl buddy was skulking through the backyard, her Beretta PX4 Storm at the ready, heading for the statue that crazy guy had tractor-dumped into place after abducting Jack.

  The witch’s admiration for the soldier girl had lapsed greatly since last night.

  Obviously I overestimated her training. I assumed the crazy guy had killed her when he went into the house. But the fact that she was still alive meant she wasn’t as competent as I expected.

  Had she slept through it all? Through shots fired and a tractor on the property?

  Had she been knocked out by the crazy guy?

  Has she allowed herself to be drugged, like Harry and Jack had?

  Pure amateur hour.

  The witch, and the paladin, would never have been so incompetent.

  I should end her right now.

  Two hundred meters. Five kilometer an hour breeze coming from the northeast.

  The witch did some quick math, zeroed out her rifle scope, and put the reticle on the soldier’s head.

  X marks the spot.

  I’m about to shoot your last thought right out of your skull, soldier girl.

  The witch breathed in deep, then exhaled.

  She put her finger on the trigger.

  She fought the vivid imagery of carnage flashing in her head.

  She fought the arousal building between her legs.

  She breathed in deep, then exhaled.

  Next exhale, the soldier girl is history.

  She breathed in deep—

  And the satellite phone on her nearby vehicle rang.

  The ring was silent so it wouldn’t be heard by anyone walking past, and the witch had it synched via Bluetooth to a haptic tap on her digital watch.

  Only two people had her number, and they both knew they shouldn’t be calling her while she was in the field.

  The witch rested the butt of the rifle on the ground and dug into her backpack, camouflaged in Midwest ghillie the same as all of her gear, and squinted at the text.

  The wizard.

  JUST MAKING SURE YOU ARE STICKING TO THE PLAN. SURVEILLANCE ONLY. NO ENGAGING TARGETS UNLESS THERE IS A THREAT.

  She wondered, not for the first time, if the doctor was somehow surveilling her. A listening device or a remote camera.

  Or maybe, beyond his powers of science, he could actually do magic.

  Rather than get into some text war about how she was perfectly capable of cleaning up a murder scene because she’d done it dozens of times, the witch replied with a simple:

  GOT IT.

  The soldier girl just got real lucky.

  And it’s probably for the best, anyway.

  I can’t allow Jack and Harry to die by someone else’s hand.

  If they can’t save themselves, the soldier girl will have to rescue them.

  And if she doesn’t…

  The witch smiled a crooked smile.

  How funny would it be if I had to save Jack and Harry just so I could torture them to death later?

  That would be funny. And cold.

  And revenge was best when it was cold. During the heat of anger, things were in danger of ending too quickly.

  The witch didn’t want a quick death for these two and their families.

  The wizard was a medical doctor. One with particular expertise in keeping people alive.

  If I have to, I’ll save them from a merciful death.

  So I can be unmerciful.

  I’ll drag it out so long, their deaths will take weeks.

  SAM

  Mom? You okay?”

  “Samantha?”

  “Mom? I’m worried. Is there something wrong with you?”

  “There is, Sam.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “This is my story. Not your story.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not dead yet. This isn’t your story.”

  “Mom, you’re dreaming. Wake up.”

  “It’s my story, Sam.”

  “Wake up!”

  JACK

  Wake up!”

  Someone was shaking Sam, but it wasn’t Sam it was actually me, because I was just dreaming I was Sam, and I opened my eyes and couldn’t see anything and a scream began to build up and then from the recesses of the darkness Harry said, “Easy, Jackie. You took a nap.”

  “I passed out.”

  “Don’t say that in court. Always tell them you were taking a nap. The judge gets uppity.”

  I coughed a dry cough, then rubbed my pounding temples. “How long was I, uh, napping?”

  “Only a few minutes. Or maybe days. Time has no meaning anymore. But when it comes down to it, let’s be clear that I’m eating you, not the other way around.”

  “I’d let you gnaw on my leg if you traded for a cold beer.”

  “Let’s revisit that thought when we break out of here.”

  “Are you through the wall?” I asked.

  “Good news and bad news. What do you want to hear first?”

  Ugh. I hated the good news/bad news question. It was so overused.

  “Is the bad news that you have to make another boom-boom?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Then give me the good news first.”

  “The good news is I’m almost through the wall.”

  That was great. But obviously we weren’t ready to celebrate.

  “What’s the bad news?” I asked.

  “My prosthetic battery finally died. I can’t pinch through the concrete anymore.”