It was no good. The stone wouldn’t budge. Bernard lay gasping, sobbing, trembling. Buried alive I’m in the earth in a grave I’m buried alive … He could feel his mind trying to tear free of its tether, trying to careen out of his control. He was about to start shrieking …

No. He set his teeth. No, no. He pressed his fists against his mouth, gnawed at the skin on his knuckles to force the scream down into his throat. Once he started that, there would be no end of it. He had to hold on. Hold on—by main force—there was no other way.

He summoned his will. He shoved the whispery voice of panic down, down. His breath. He focused all his concentration on his abdomen, on his breath.

He lay still. There was the dark, and the inner frenzy of his helplessness, the smell, the damp, the terrible pain. And yet he lay still, focusing on his breath.

He came down from the panic in notches, bit by bit. After a time—he didn’t know how long—he became aware that he was whimpering, and forced himself to stop. His muscles began to relax. His fists sank down from his mouth, sank slowly over the length of him. He kept his hands directly above him, kept his elbows pressed close to his side to avoid touching that horror just next to him, that gaping horror.

“Help! Help me! Help!” Bernard shouted, not wildly this time, but as loudly as he could.

Then he lay very still, trying to control his breath so he could hear. Lay with his eyes wide against the impenetrable blackness. Listening, listening.

“Help!”

Each time his voice ceased, the silence that followed seemed deeper than the silence before. It seemed to flutter down over him like a shroud and swaddle him round. A man could suffocate in such a silence. He could almost hear the worms crawling in it. He could almost hear the skull beside him speaking, whispering, buried alive buried alive buried alive …

“Help! Help!”

A high note of hysteria entered his voice and he clamped his mouth shut, clamped his eyes shut. Clamped his hands together over his belly, clamped his elbows to his sides. Hearing his breath, hearing his heartbeat, hearing the whispering skull beside him: buried alive …

And then—possibly—he heard something else. A noise. Possibly. Outside.

Bernard’s eyes sprang open. His body, taut as it was, went tauter still. He stopped breathing altogether, and there was only the throb of his pulse, the throb of his head.

And, yes, something else. Definitely now. Rattle, crank, creak, thud. The sound of a door, he thought. A heavy door with a metal latch. Opening, then swinging shut again.

“Oh!” he said. Fresh tears surged from his eyes, tears of relief and gratitude. He wasn’t under the earth, not buried, not yet.

“Help me!” he shouted.