Entombing him. The thought started a stain of panic spreading up towards his chest from his loins. He could feel now the rough stone beneath his shaven pate. He moved his hand—felt a wall of the same rough stone to the right of him, another to his left. Rough stone was at his feet when he tried to extend his legs. And then, slowly, fearfully—prayerfully—he upstretched his fingers.

There was a slab of rough stone right above him, not six inches above his nose.

Buried alive. The panic swarmed up over him like rats. A chill sweat bathed him from head to toe. His breath grew short, shallow, his pulsebeat quick. A whispery voice spoke over and over in his head: buried alive they’ve buried me alive I’m buried alive …

He had to get the hell out of here.

With a choked cry, he thrust both hands up through the blackness. Instantly, the pain in his skull became excruciating, the veins bulging against his temples like spiked balloons. He pushed against the slab that covered him—pushed and pushed—struggling with all his sinewy might against that unyielding weight.

It was still unyielding. The breath stuttered from him in intermittent grunts. Then he gasped out the rest of it, and his arms collapsed on top of him.

“Help!” he shouted wildly. “Help!”

Then he retched, turning onto his side as best he could to keep the acid spittle off him. Then he plumped onto his back again, staring into the blackness.

Then he began to weep.

Buried alive. Christ, Christ, he didn’t want to die like this.

“Christ,” he whispered, sobbing. “Christ.”

He worked his arm around in the cramped space, reached his trembling hand to his cheek to swipe away the hot tears.

And his heart seized in him like a dry engine.

There was something lying beside him in the blackness.

He had touched it with his knuckles. He could feel it there, an inch from his face. He could feel the smooth, yielding surface of moldering bone. The empty eye sockets. The image formed in his head as if he could see it: a human skull. Gaping at him, grinning at him. He was in a stone coffin—a sarcophagus—with a rotted corpse.

His body bucking with wild terror, he drove his hands against the coffin lid again. The pain was even worse this time. White pinpoints danced before his eyes. He almost lost consciousness. But he poured his strength into his arms, his soul into his arms, a high screek tearing from his throat as he fought to move the slab even a millimeter, even the width of an eyelash.