Chapter 4 - THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD
A blinding, agonizing pain in her ribs and right shoulder was the first thing that dragged Clara back into consciousness.
She tried to inhale, but she immediately choked on a lungful of damp, heavy air that smelled of ancient mud, rotting leaves, and stagnant water. She opened her eyes, but she was met with a pitch-black, absolute darkness. She tried to move her legs, but they were submerged in freezing, muddy water that reached all the way up to her waist.
With a trembling hand, she felt the fabric of her dress. Her beautiful, expensive cream-colored maternity gown was completely ruined, soaked in cold filth, torn to shreds, and clinging heavily to her shivering body.
Clara let out a ragged, terrified sob, her fingers clawing frantically at the rough, slimy stone wall beside her. The cold stone was covered in wet moss and sharp, jagged edges. She realized with a wave of pure horror where she was: they had thrown her down into the deep, abandoned stone well at the edge of the property.
As she tried to shift her weight to stand on a submerged stone, a sharp cry of agony escaped her lips. Her skin was covered in deep, painful purple bruises and long, bloody scratches from where her body had scraped violently against the stone shaft during the forty-foot fall. Her hands were raw and bleeding, her fingernails torn to the quick from her desperate, instinctive attempts to claw at the walls as she fell.
"My baby... please, no, please," Clara wept, her voice echoing hollowly against the narrow stone cylinder of her prison. She frantically pressed her raw, blood-smeared hands against her stomach, holding her breath in a state of absolute terror.
For five agonizing seconds, there was nothing. Then, a sharp, strong kick radiated from within her belly.
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Tears of pure, overwhelming relief mixed with the cold sweat on her cheeks. The baby was still alive. But Clara knew that if she stayed in this freezing, filthy water for much longer, the hypothermia would kill them both.
She looked up. High above her head, forty feet in the air, the circular opening of the well formed a small, distant gray disc against the night sky. The rain began to fall again, the cold drops splattering against her face like tiny needles. She was buried alive, trapped in a watery grave while her husband and mother-in-law slept in silk sheets just a half-mile away.
