There were no bright lights when I died. No heralding trumpets, or parade of family and friends. Just cold, quiet, darkness. I mean, I kind of assumed that’s how it would be. Still, It was a strange experience. I felt a small pang in my chest thinking of Maria and my dad. I guess I really wasn't going to see them again after all.

As I waited for what came next, I coughed out a mouthful of dust and my busted ribs throbbed painfully. Who would have thought being dead would hurt so much?

Wait...

Slowly my senses came back, accompanied by the radiating pain of my many wounds. I coughed again, and my sides spasmed horribly confirming I was very much alive. I tried to open my bleary eyes, but it made no difference, I couldn't see an inch past my nose. Everything was pitch black.

I could smell damp earth, and my tongue was coated in the lingering taste of brick dust. Dazed, I tried to sit up to get my bearings but was held down on my back by a cover of stones.

Oh god. I’d been buried alive.

Fighting down the threat of panic rising in me, I shifted my hips back and forth, wiggling my arms free and pulling them up to my chest. I put my hands flat on a stone slab just inches over my face and heaved, trying to bench-press the rubble. The effort was excruciating. Every muscle in my body strained, my chest burned and I wheezed horribly, but it was useless. The stones wouldn’t budge.

I stopped pushing and let my hands fall on my chest as I tried to catch my breath when I noticed something missing. I could feel torn fabric where the talisman had been. My memory returned in pieces.

That’s right, I gave it to the girl. She got out or, at least I hoped she did. But me? I was left powerless, entombed beneath the wreckage of that hellish dungeon.

“Leo,” I called out, my raspy voice bouncing back in the enclosed space. It was no use, no one was going to hear me down here.

The old familiar pains of anxiety crept up on que, and my lip started to tremble. Claustrophobia set in as my breathing shallowed and I gasped for air. I felt like I was in a shrinking box, a narrowing tunnel... or a sealed coffin. I covered my face with a filthy gloved hand and tried not to break down.

“Alright, John,” I thought, “That’s not going to help.” I wiped my eyes and steeled my nerves. “Ok... get back to work man, c’mon,” I coaxed myself.

I extended my arms back out alongside my body and searched for something, anything that I could use as leverage to pull myself out. Feeling around the edges of the stone, I found gaps under the rocks all around me, wide enough to fit my arms underneath, but too low for me to crawl through. I set to work on the rocks, probing and testing for one that might be loose enough to shift.

After several agonizing minutes, I heard something move and stopped. It was coming from the gaps, and for one wild moment, I thought the rocks were about to collapse and crush me.

Then...

From the unseen depths of the pit came a low, gravelly voice issuing out of the cracks.

“Why you come down here, Johny?” It drawled. “You don't belong in the deep dark.”

I flinched and recoiled. The voice was coming from the gaps directly beside my left ear.

“Who's there?” I asked, startled.

It didn’t answer. Instead, something rustled through the gaps, slithering over rocks and traveling down to my legs where I felt a stirring near my boot. At first, I couldn’t identify what it was. Then, with a fresh wave of horror, I recognized a set of fingers inching their way up my leg. My heart thundered like mad and I tried to pull away from the intrusion, but I was pinned, unable to escape.

The hand pulled itself back into the crack.

“Nobody supposed to see us down here, no.” the voice said. “Friends don't come no, no. We have no friends no more, you see.”

I struggled against the rocks, trying to get away.

“What do you want from me?!” I gasped, my voice cracking. “Let me out!”

More shifting. More shuffling.

“Even daddy didn’t come down here, no,” it said, now from my right. “No good we are. Better dead than with us, yes? Yes, better dead I think.”

My skin prickled and I broke out in a sweat. There was nowhere to go, I was at the mercy of this crawling thing.

“Death is cold and still,” it said at my elbow, “no bother to no one anymore. Yes, better dead in the dark I think. I can help you be dead in the deep dark. You want that, yes?”

It kept moving, circling my trapped body. How was it doing that? Was it another Watcher? My mind raced as I frantically pushed away from the eerie voice.

“Drowning and dying,” it continued, “we like that we do. Shh... We can help you die, just like daddy. Just like her. Sweet, sweet girl. She came too close to the deep dark, yes? Saw us inside and chose a bullet. Chose to die instead, she did.”

I blanched, and turned, trying to face the invisible creature. “What? You... you’re talking about... Maria?”

Something breathed into my ear from under the gap and I convulsed involuntarily.

“Why are you moving?” The voice whispered. “You should be dying, but you wriggle and writhe...”

A cold, clammy hand reached out from the dark cracks and stroked my left cheek. I screamed and jerked my head, trying to shake it off.

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Suddenly, another sound intruded on my nightmare. It was the scrapping of moving rocks growing steadily louder.

The hand withdrew again.

“Not ready to die, no,” it cooed, “Not ready. But we are patient.”

Something slithered away from the cracks as the voice receded into the rumble.

“We are always down here in the deep dark, Johny. We see you soon...”

My tomb fell completely silent but for the beating of my frantic heart and the muffled rumbling above. The air was starting to feel thin as the cramped space between me and the rock began to run out of oxygen. I tried my best to slow my breath, drawing out what little air was left for as long as possible. But I knew I didn’t have much longer. As the debris above shifted, and dust rained on my face, I fought against the fear threatening to swallow me whole. I closed my eyes, bracing to be crushed to death down in this dismal darkness.

But it never came.

Instead, a sudden wave of fresh air washed over me. I opened my hesitant eyes and was blinded by a bright light as the stone over my head lifted away.

“John? Oh, thank god!”

I blinked, adjusting to the light, and a man's face swam into view. It was McKinney.

Grunting, he lifted another large stone off my chest, freeing my arms. I hurriedly crawled out of the rumble and flopped onto the rocks, pulling my legs as far away from the monster's den as I could.

I looked about in confusion trying to piece together how I had been rescued. It took me a full minute to realize we weren't underground as I had assumed. Instead, by the grace of McKinney’s flashlight, I saw we were sitting at the bottom of a giant crater.

The house hadn’t fallen on me, It fell around me.

A gentle rain drizzled on our heads from the open night sky as I turned to take in the full effect. Large chunks of wreckage were piled around us, and clouds of thick dust hung in the air. The remnants of Gambal’s mansion encircled the spot Mckinney had pulled me from, and there, sticking straight out of the ground only a few feet from where I had been buried, was my nightstick.

Head reeling, I turned back to McKinney. He sat with a grunt on a large piece of wall and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

“What... how did you...?” I spluttered.

In answer McKinney pointed up to the edge of the crater. I followed his finger and saw the outline of a woman and child standing above us, watching.

“I got here in time to see Mrs. Gambal running out with the girl,” McKinney said. “Then the house went down. Once things settled, the kid started pointing at the hole and screaming, ‘he's alive’.”

The Chief looked around the crater, “You are either the luckiest son of a bitch I've ever met or someone upstairs really likes you.”

I shook my head, still unable to grasp the fact I had survived. Then, the rest of the day's worries caught up with me. “My Uncle?” I asked hurriedly.

McKinney nodded, “He lost a lot of blood, but he’s alive. He's at the hospital now.”

I let out a sigh and flopped back onto a nearby boulder. Sweet, warm relief poured through my tired body. We made it. We all made it.

I pulled my injured arm into my chest and lay there letting the light rain wash some of the grime off my face.

“Gambal said he sent people to arrest you.”

McKinney barked out a laugh. “Yeah, Enzo tried. Brought a whole swat team with him too. The thing is, there are still lots of good cops on the fore. Plenty of them already knew something was wrong. They did their jobs and interviewed the people we rescued. That's when one of the victims outed Enzo as her attacker. Our boys went to cuff him instead of me, and the bastard tried to make a run for it.”

McKinney looked down and rubbed his red and swollen knuckles. “He didn't get far,” he grinned. “After that, I figured out from the diary where you were headed and came here.”

I watched the Chief in numb amazement.

“Thanks,” I said simply.

“Welcome,” he chuckled again. “Now come on. We can rest when we’re out of the hole.”

I frowned at his word choice, but took the hand he offered and rose unsteadily to my feet, then retrieved my baton and hung it on my belt. The old antique was in amazingly good shape given the circumstances. Much better than I was that's for sure.

The climb out was difficult to manage with a swollen shoulder and a hole in my leg. Every movement elicited pain from one injury or another. Even so, it still wasn't the hardest thing I had done that night.

McKinny reached the top before me. When I finally got to the edge of the hole, he grabbed my elbow to hoist me up while I clawed at the muddy grass. Breathless, I crawled away from the pit, eager to distance myself from the creature I knew was down there.

I had never been so tired in my life, exhausted down to the bone. I lay in the mud watching clouds roll through the dark sky, when a small hand reached down and tapped me on the shoulder. I looked up to see Annabell standing beside me, draped in the Chief's jacket and holding out the talisman.

With difficulty, I pushed up to sit and accepted it. As the relic passed between us, a warm sensation flowed down from her little arm into mine. The blue jewel flicked and the pain of my injuries subsided as my powers returned.

“Thanks, kid,” I said, gently patting her head.

She stood hesitantly beside me for a pause, then hurriedly sat in my lap and curled up against my chest. I froze, taken aback by her abrupt trust. But as I looked down at her tiny body shivering against the cold, I understood. She just needed to feel safe... I relaxed and put an arm around her shoulders to shield her from the elements.

McKinny knelt beside us as the distant sound of sirens floated through the night air. “You should get out of here. They are going to have questions, and I doubt they’ll believe your answers.”

I stayed put on the wet grass, watching the little girl in my arms. “I’m not leaving her.”

Annabell tightened her grip on my coat.

McKinney hung his head and sighed. “You gotta make things difficult don't you.” Reluctantly he dug in his pockets and pulled out a set of keys. “My car is in the driveway. Just get out of here.” he said, tossing them to me.

I caught them clumsily with my bad arm, “you sure?”

He shrugged, “yeah. I’ll stick around and figure out something to tell them. You go on, take the kid home.”

I pushed up shakily to my feet, balancing Annabell in my good arm when I caught a glimpse of Katherine.

She sat away from us at the crater's edge looking down at the pit in total silence, indifferent to the rain or cold. Her dress was in tatters, her face covered in dust, and a trickle of blood ran down her cheek. I could feel her agony... It was intense. It made what she had done all the more impressive, even if I still didn't understand how she did it.

“That womans been through hell,” I told McKinney.

“I’ll see to it she’s looked after,” he assured.

I could hear the officers getting closer. With a last nod to the Chief, I turned my back on the chaotic scene, pulled my mask back over my face and limped down the lawn to his SUV.

By the strength of the talisman’s influence alone, I reached the car despite my perforated leg and secured the girl in the back with shaking arms. As I did, she leaned back in the seat, and her eyelids started to droop. Once she was buckled I climbed into the driver's side with a groan and pulled out of the driveway.

As I drove, I glanced in my rear view mirror in time to see the first patrol cars pull up to the wreckage, feeling grateful for McKinney's help. I really wasn't in the mood to spend the night in a jail cell.

A few minutes down the road I checked on the backseat, surprised to see Annabell was already fast asleep. The kid had the right idea, all I wanted now was to sleep for about a month. Time for that soon enough I suppose.

But for now, I still had one last mission.