Wishful Thinking

Bad Memories

As Sarah screamed, dropping backward down the shaft, with Stephanie just behind her, the two girls realized that their fall was being slightly impeded by things brushing against them. Large, thick leaves they might be, or some sort of tough fungus sprouting from the walls of this pit. Whatever they were, the girls tried to grab hold of some, to save themselves from the terrible smash they expected every instant. They were falling too fast.

Then, by blind chance, Sarah's wrist landed  smack in one of the things, which at once closed firmly, and she, in turn, grabbed Stephanie with her free hand when she smacked into her. With a jolt that nearly disjointed her, Sarah found herself dangling by  one arm and holding onto one of Stephanie's wrists with the other. "Oh!" she gasped in relief, while Stephanie silently thanked their lucky stars, and they both found themselves heaving for breath. Falling like that was a terrifying experience.

They looked down the shaft, to see how close they had been to breaking every bone. All they could see was a long tunnel, lined with the things that had broken their fall. They looked up. The doorway through which they had entered the shaft was very high above them.

As their eyes adjusted to the gloomy light, the girls saw what it was that had caught hold of Sarah: a hand. All around them, protruding from sides of the shaft, hands were groping the  air, like reeds under water.

Sarah's relief gave way to a sick feeling: she was in the grip of a hand with no arm or body attached to it, and she had no apparent means of ever releasing herself. Perhaps they were carnivorous hands, or like those spiders that simply dissolved you away over a long period of time.

Stephanie was also suspicious of the hands, but she could feel herself slipping a little from her sister's grip. It was a real strain on Sarah to keep holding her up. She looked nervously up and down the shaft again, this time to see if there were any skeletons dangling there, as in a jungle trap. She saw none. Stephanie decided to relieve her sister of her burden and let one of the hands grab her free arm.

Sarah was surprised by this, and little concerned, but at least she didn't have to worry so much about dropping her anymore.

And now they felt other hands reaching for them and finding them, taking hold of them by their legs and their bodies. There were hands on their thighs, their ankles, their necks. The sisters shuddered, and Sarah shouted, "Stop that!" Knowing it was futile, she called, "Help! Help!" The girls writhed, trying to shake them all off, and with their free hands reached out for a hold and each other, in a despairing attempt to climb away together. All they could see to grasp hold of was yet another hand. Hesitantly, Stephanie put hers in it, and it responded immediately, grasping her hand firmly. With the idea of perhaps climbing up the hands as though on a ladder, she tried to free her wrist from the first hand. It was no good. Now she was more tightly held than ever, stuck in a web of hands.

"Help!" Sarah whimpered.

Each girl felt a tap on their shoulder, and they turned their heads to see what it was. To their bewilderment, they saw that hands to one side of them contrived to form themselves into a face of sorts, with finger-and-thumb circles for eyes and two hands working together to fashion a mouth. And the mouth spoke to them.

"What do you mean, 'Help'?" it said. "We are helping. We're the Helping Hands."

'Well,' Stephanie reflected, 'I suppose they did help us by stopping our fall...'

"You're hurting," Sarah told them. It was not quite true. Fear, rather than pain, was what afflicted her.

Now there were several more faces of hands around them.

"Would you like us to let go?" one of them asked.

The girls glanced down the shaft. "Uh... no," Sarah said, while Stephanie shook her head emphatically in the negative.