So they followed him, backs against the wall, shuffling along sideways, slowly, like a bunch of geriatric crabs. It was a painfully tight squeeze, so constricted that there were times Albert needed to hold his breath just so that he could slide his chest through. The wall was damp and a little slippery against their backs, as if iced with moss, and the whole place smelt of dankness. The floor they stood on was getting narrower and narrower too, almost impossibly so. What was under their feet could only be called a ledge—barely a ledge, it was a thin wedge of rock. It was dark in there, too, so dark Albert could just about make out the outlines of the people nearest to him—the constant, heavy breathing resonating all around the only other reminder that he wasn’t completely alone. And all the while, the walls grew closer and closer, tapering towards each other, as if they were alive and angry and wanted nothing more than to crush these little interlopers who dared enter.

Inching ahead, or to the right, he couldn’t tell which was which, Albert heard a muffled curse behind him, then another. Kieran was finding it more and more difficult with each passing sidestep. Albert glanced at him, wondering what he was thinking. He couldn’t imagine what it must feel like to be the big man right now, knowing that at any point he might find himself trapped, wedged between the walls and abandoned there to die—in that clammy, suffocating, terrible place, alone in the dark, the faint drip-drip sound of water falling somewhere his only companion. Try as he might, Albert couldn’t help feeling a sudden cold grasp at the head of his spine and scuttle downwards, making him shudder.

They moved on and on, slowly and silently. Just when it seemed the walls couldn’t get any closer, he heard a shout up ahead. ‘We’re getting out!’

He saw it soon enough—a sliver of light ahead that widened, but not by much, and the air around it diffused with a white-blue haze. It came from an opening, more a large crack in the walls around them. He squeezed through, the gusts of fresh air blowing into his face sweet as anything he’d ever felt. He took deep breath after deep breath, eyes shut, back still firmly pressed against the wall, and then looked around. And immediately wished he hadn’t.