Page 21 of The First Lost Boy (The Shadows of Neverland Duet #2)

Hudson

I come to with rain pelting my skin, sluicing down my face and neck, and soaking into my clothes. My back aches and my neck burns like I’ve pulled something vital when I try to sit up. Unfortunately, there’s not enough room, and I hit my forehead on one of the metal bars that stretches across the muddy, earthen hole I’m in… one that is slowly but determinedly filling with water as the sky opens up and unleashes sheets of rain.

A tight shackle attached to the bars holds my wrist so I can’t fully lower my hand to the ground beneath me. I grip a bar with my hand and twist so I can use my other one, reaching out only to find that my left hand is gone. In its place is an intricately etched, silver hook.

My heart races. I don’t remember who I am or how I got here.

Jerking at the bars with hook and hand, I shout. “Where am I? Let me out of here!”

I push against each wall to see what they are made of and discover it’s just earth when my hook comes away covered in mud and grit. A few pebbles and pieces of stringy, rotten roots fall free, splashing into the dirty rainwater that fills the space with each passing minute.

Panic flares.

My chest feels too tight, my mind too foggy.

This space is too small and my body too big.

It’s getting dark, and not just from the rainstorm.

When the metal of my hook strikes another piece of metal as I claw through the water, it takes a moment to understand what it is. Without my fingers, my hook keeps losing the item in the water. Finally, I drag it up the muddy wall and by luck alone manage to thread the tip of my hook through a small hole in a wooden end…

Blinking water from my eyes, I see a small handsaw. Its handle is smooth like it’s been used often, and the saw blade is rusted. The tool is too long for me to use with my shackled hand, and no matter how I try to use my hook, I can’t clench the tool hard enough to saw through the bars with it.

I lean my head back and curse.

I have to find a way out of here.

This would be a hell of a place to drown.