“I will tell you,” I said, “if you leave this man and walk me home.” Dimmesdale had already suffered so greatly at Chillingworth’s hands. His resemblance to Gray made me all the more anxious to spare him any more pain.
Chillingworth agreed to my terms, and I yielded myself to him, letting him lead me and Pearl away from the scaffold and into the woods. I glanced back briefly at Dimmesdale—Gray—and felt such longing and regret that it nearly knocked the breath from me.
The three of us walked in silence through the forest until we’d reached the cottage. My conscious mind was still lucid, taking all of this in, yet Hester’s spirit was controlling me, prompting me to move and speak. Her voice came from my mouth, deep and rich.
“It has been seven years since you returned here and bound yourself to Dimmesdale in this sordid pact,” I said. “Since that day, no man is so near to him as you. You tread behind his every footstep. You are beside him, sleeping and waking. You search his thoughts. You burrow and rankle in his heart. Your clutch is on his life, and you cause him to die daily a living death, and still he knows you not. In permitting this, I have surely acted a false part by the only man to whom the power was left me to be true. Has he not paid enough for his sins?”
“No,” Chillingworth said. “He has only increased the debt.” He placed his hand on Pearl’s back and told her to run along. Pearl regarded him with fear and mistrust, then scuttled away at his command. Hester’s maternal instinct must have manifested itself in me, as I suddenly wanted Pearl nearby. I felt vulnerable without her.
“I wish to speak plain,” he said. “Let us go inside where children’s ears cannot hear.”
Reluctantly, I found the door to the cottage and we entered into the darkness within. I took a seat by Hester’s sewing table and Chillingworth stood over me, pacing. “Do you remember how I was nine years ago?” he said. “Was I not a man thoughtful for others, craving little for himself—only kind, true, and constant affections from my wife? Was I not all this?”
“All this and more,” I said, speaking Hester’s words.
“And what am I now?” he demanded. “A fiend! But who made me so?”
“I did,” I said. “So why have you not avenged yourself on me instead of Dimmesdale?”
“I have left you to your scarlet letter,” Chillingworth said. “If that has not avenged me, I can do no more.” He laid his finger on the letter with a leer.
I plucked a needle from Hester’s sewing basket and stood up, brandishing my weapon. Hester’s powerful voice erupted from me. “It has avenged you. And now you must end this torture. Dimmesdale must know your true character. What may be the result, I know not. But I must save him.”
“I pity you, Hester Prynne,” he said. “You pine for this man, yet he has banished you from society. Why do you weep for him when he does not weep for you?”
Immediately, I thought of Gray, of all the time I had lost pining for him, not knowing if he even returned my affections.
Chillingworth sighed in disgust. “I pity you for the good that has been wasted.”
“And I pity you,” I shouted, using Hester’s words to repel him, “for the hatred that has transformed a wise and just man into a fiend!”
“The minister’s destruction is his own doing. As is yours,” he said, coming toward me. I backed into the wall, fearful of his power. He seemed suddenly capable of great evil and sorcery. “He chose to hide his sins behind a mask of righteousness. And yet I am reviled as evil, and he is respected. I asked before what you thought of a man who buries his secrets, and you told me you would answer me true.”
“We all bury our secrets,” I said. “We hide what we don’t want people to see, those parts of ourselves we think others may not understand. It is human nature to bury one’s secrets.”
“It is also human nature to bury the dead,” he said.
And then the scene departed from
The Scarlet Letter
entirely, taking on nightmarish qualities. Chillingworth pushed me with great force, pressing me into the confined space of the hearth. I sat, stunned, in a pile of ashes as he poured the contents of his basket over me, which seemed to multiply as they fell. Dead flowers and torrents of earth showered over me until dirt covered my hair, my eyes, my ears, until it entered my mouth, stopping my lungs. He meant to bury me alive.
I recalled the way he had cast Pearl out and left me alone without my ti-bon-ange, my little angel. Pearl was now outside these walls, helpless and vulnerable. He was going to leave me here to die and take her—rob me of my conscience. Make a zombie of me. Terror raked through my body.
After he’d poured the last of the dirt on me, he reached in his basket and pulled out one last red rose, which turned black in his hands. He threw it onto my makeshift grave and laughed. “This is your fate,” he said. “Let the black flower blossom as it may.”
“No!” I tried to scream, but my throat was filled with dirt and he was already gone—absorbed into the night like a phantom.
My blood curdled in panic. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move.
And then a lucid thought saved me. None of this was real. This was only a dream. A nightmare, yes, but still a dream.
And I was not powerless.
As a dream, everything in it could be controlled and changed—the rules, rewritten. I remembered the knitting needle I’d grabbed, and I grasped it firmly now, slicing through my earthen grave with a feverish intensity. Chillingworth’s last words echoed in my head: “This is your fate.”
“No!” I screamed through the dirt mound covering me. “This is just a dream. We make our own fate. We make our own reality.”
I continued clawing until I’d freed my limbs, then brushed myself off and tried to crawl toward the door. But my limbs were weak, my breathing shallow. I didn’t think I had the strength to do this on my own.
I knew I had to escape and get back to the bridge if I wanted to be released from the spell. But what would happen if I couldn’t get out? Would I be stuck in Hester’s world forever? Was I as much a prisoner to my fate as she was?
I felt myself fading, losing strength. And even though I knew it was foolish, I called out to Gray. I said his name again and again, repeating it like mantra.
Once upon a time, Gray had called out to me in his time of need, and I had heard him because of the strength of our connection. I hoped that the link hadn’t been severed entirely, that my voice was still strong enough to reach him now. With every fiber of faith I had, I made a wish to keep on moving. I made a wish for a second chance.
C
HAPTER
18
I
woke from my nightmare into a terrifying reality. Darkness. Bitter cold. Isolation.
The inside of my head felt thick and slow like it had been stuffed with cotton, and my temples throbbed painfully. I rolled around, feeling dirt under my hands, feeling a fresh burst of terror. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. Was I still in the hearth? Had I been buried alive?
But I soon realized the dirt was only beneath me; my limbs were free. I could move. Which meant I could leave.
Relief surged through me, only to be replaced with fear again.
Where am I?
It was too dark to see. And despite the gloom, I knew very well that I wasn’t in my bed. I shivered and tried to use my other senses, feeling around the dank dirt floor and inhaling the mineral scent of the earth. I said Gray’s name aloud just to assure myself it was my voice coming out and not Hester’s. His name echoed softly against the walls.
And suddenly I knew exactly where I was.
I was inside one of the witch caves.
Claustrophobic fear sent me groping for the walls.
Calm down, Emma. Just find the exit, and in no time, you’ll be back on campus.
I carefully made my way around the cave until I felt cold rock give way to an even colder surface. I rubbed my hand back and forth, and my palm came away wet. It was a layer of ice.
Panic bubbled up inside me. I recalled going for a run during the beginning of a snowstorm. How long had I been out here? My excursions had been lasting longer and longer. What if I had spent the entire night in the cave while it had snowed outside? There could be several feet of snow out there! And I had nothing with me—no coat, no cell phone, no food or water.
Frantic, I crept back to the wall of ice and began digging away at it, trying to get a sense of how deep it was and how densely packed. In less than a minute, my fingertips were burning with cold. I pulled my sweatshirt sleeves down over my fingers and tried again, but the icy water soaked through the cotton, leaving my fingers wet and numb as before.
Despite the cold, I was sweating from the effort and from fear. The frigid air only chilled the sweat, making me even colder. But I knew I couldn’t stop moving. I carved away madly at the packed snow, losing feeling in both hands, but persisting, clawing, even shoving against it as if I could physically move the wall of ice by sheer force of will. Foolishly, I began screaming—shrieking really—calling for help, making as much noise as I could, feeling like my lungs might burst from the effort.
I kept yelling for at least ten more minutes, until my throat was raw and I tasted blood. I lay down on the hard ground and pounded my fists, out of desperation and hope that it might get the blood flowing back to my fingertips. But I knew I’d freeze to death if I stopped.
So I kept going. I stood up and made a slow circuit of the cave to get my bearings. When I returned to the icy doorway, I tried another round of digging until my hands stung. Something warm and thick leaked from my knuckles. Lifting a hand to my mouth, I licked the surface and tasted salt and iron. Blood. At least I was alive.
How did people survive in jail cells, or worse, in solitary confinement? How did they not go mad within hours? I estimated that I’d only been awake for about twenty-five minutes or so, and it had already felt like an eternity.
My only hope was finding a sharp stone that I could use as a pickax or shovel. I crawled along the ground, trying to be systematic in my search to make sure I didn’t miss a single square inch, a single stray rock.
No stone unturned,
I thought, laughing absurdly. That platitude had never meant so much.
Eventually, I found a jagged rock, about five inches long with a sharp pointed edge. The other side was wide and blunt, perfect for scraping away snow. Scrabbling back to the opening, I resumed my attempt at excavation.
Excavation. What they do to dead bodies. Quasimodo and Esmeralda. Skeletons.
Stop it, Emma. Calm down. Just work.
The panic subsided a little, but only because I kept busy. I must have worked away at that wall for half an hour, my shoulders burning from the repetitive motion. It was hard not to despair when I surveyed the wall with my hands and discovered I’d only eaten away at a few inches of ice at most.
My head throbbed with heat, and my body felt weightless and insubstantial, like when one falls off a cliff in a dream. They say if you die in your dream, you really die. Was that true? Or was it impossible to die in a dream?
I resumed my digging, working and resting for short periods, occasionally crying, sometimes screaming. I kept my mind occupied with every survival story I’d ever heard.
The Shawshank Redemption,
in which a man carves his way out of prison with nothing but a miniature pickax. Mountain climber Aron Ralston, who cut off his own arm to escape being trapped in a canyon.
Eventually I slept, if fitfully, and woke to the sound of voices. And boots crunching and shovels digging. I thought I must have been imagining things. But the sounds kept getting closer and louder. Once I’d convinced myself I wasn’t dreaming, I began shouting, only I’d worn out my vocal cords so hardly any sound came out.
The voices and noises seemed to amplify. Relief and gratitude flooded my body. Someone knew I was here, and they were trying to reach me. I called out again and continued digging, trying to meet them halfway. I shook with adrenaline and joy when the voices sounded like they were right outside the wall, a few feet, maybe inches away from me.
Finally, a crack of light burst through the wall of snow. I saw an eyeball as if through a keyhole. I howled with relief as the hole widened, and then I saw hands, chest, a face, a man. Several men. One burrowed his way through the opening, and I fell into his arms, a heap of rubber limbs and frostbitten extremities.
He dragged me out of the cave and hoisted me up in his arms as I shielded my eyes from the harsh light of day. Bodies crowded around me at the mouth of the cave, voicing concern for my health. The man holding me began to walk, and I felt my body thumping up and down as he carried me to a snowmobile, set me down, and wrapped me in layers of blankets.
“Who are you?” I managed to say.
“Bill Sturgess. Fire chief.”
“You’re a fireman?”
“Thank God your friend knew where you were.”
“My friend?”
I looked up and saw Michelle walking toward me, bundled in a dark blue parka. I wriggled weakly out of my cocoon of blankets to reach for her.
“Nice scarf,” she said.
I tried to laugh. “Thanks.”
“How did you get stuck here?”
“Long story,” I said. “How did you know where to find me?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Equally long story.”
I was desperate to hear it, but Chief Sturgess was anxious to get me to the hospital. The rides, first in the snowmobile and then in the ambulance, were a blur as I tried unsuccessfully to stave off sleep. When we reached Hopkins General, an ER nurse helped me into a wheelchair and took me to an examination room. I kept trying to convince everyone I was fine, but they were keen to make sure I had no frostbite, no trauma, no permanent damage.
First they stripped me of my damp clothing and dressed me in a flannel hospital gown and a cap for my head to prevent me from losing any more heat. They applied warm compresses to my chest, neck, and stomach, gave me intravenous fluids, and covered me with blankets until I had stopped shivering and was actually sweating. Then they checked all my vitals: breathing, heartbeat, blood pressure.