But I’m not moving.

I take a deep breath.

My grandfather once told me about doing a similar escape from a packing case in the Hudson River. It got stuck in the mud and a vacuum formed, keeping him from pulling the box free after he exited through the secret panel.

I throw my weight against the side of the coffin to rock it back and forth. It’s hard with all the water inside. It sloshes around in the darkness.

I’m afraid I’m already too heavy. I’m exhausted and just want to wait it out. I feel the water coming in through a gap in the lid and wonder if I can use a stocking to plug the crack. Maybe it could give me another few minutes of air.

I reach down to rip it off my leg and bump my back into the side of the coffin. I feel everything tip to the side. The coffin keeps turning.

I’m floating up! It’s a gradual ascent, but definitely in the right direction. An eternity later I hear shouting. Men pull the coffin from the water and drag it to the shore. Crowbars pry open the top. I see my grandfather and uncle looking down at me. Their faces are white.

“I’m okay,” I tell them.

Grandfather doesn’t miss a beat. He turns to the camera, still several yards away, and shouts, “She’s gone!” He runs to the edge of the water and pretends to look for me.

When the bright light on the camera is pointed at him in the lake, frantically looking for me, my uncle uses the lid of the coffin to conceal me as I hide in the bushes. The television crew never sees me leave.

My uncle drives me back to the hotel while my dad and grandfather make a big show of the fact that I’ve vanished.

He gives me a sad look as he lets me out of the car. We both know they love me, but that’s the kind of people they are. Never ones to let a potential tragedy go to waste as publicity. I thank him for the knife and book a flight out of Mexico that night.

It is the last time I speak to my family face-to-face.

Now I realize that may have been my last chance.

61

MY FAMILY ISN’T WAITING on the other side to spring me free. There is no secret escape hatch. I’m in a trunk of a car. Every few hours my captor stops the car and sprays me with a canister of a chemical that sends me into a lucid dream state. I retrace memories of childhood and occasionally feel like I’m flying. The FBI chemist explained that the chemical the Warlock used was similar to a drug that witches in the Middle Ages used to use to create the sensation that they were levitating.

I experience that feeling when I go in and out of the sleep. My head is numb; my mind is a television set turned to an empty channel. It’s hard to focus on anything for very long. I remember the coffin and my uncle’s knife. I try to find it on my body, but it’s not there.