I fell down a hole, a hole in the attic floor, and it’s done me no good at all. Feeling awfully sleepy, ought to get into bed. Bed must be somewhere nearby, all ready for me, sheets and blankets in order, sheet folded over top of blanket and well tucked in. Pity they don’t have competitions. Always a gifted bedmaker, James Acton reached the semifinals on account of his impeccable hospital corners. Oh, oh, the agony. Maybe if I get my head up I’ll see better. Here we go.

More moths, this time pulsing in time with my heart, and an awful grating inside my head, sick-making noise. Ah for the love, for the love of all that’s holy. What is holy? The beeches in Pipehouse Wood, and the flowers in the turf on Beacon Hill. Don’t think of Beacon Hill. Lay head down again, grating noise, do not be sick. There’s a name for this kind of fracture too. Can’t remember it either.

—

Marching? It is not marching, not in this blizzard. A wincing limping from foot to foot with the foot frozen to the sock frozen to the boot. Day upon day upon day. We come to Luckenwalde, followed in time by others from camps farther east and south. These other men are far, far thinner than us, their eyes wild or utterly blank. There are not as many as there should be: they feel this, searching around for their companions, waiting for a rearguard that never comes. In the spring the Germans flee before the Russian advance. When the Russians arrive, they are not overly keen to liberate us—they make us wait with nothing to eat but heels of stale bread. In the end they relinquish us. We cross the bridge to the Americans.

—

Uh-uh-uh. Strange deep hollow wooden juddering noise, coming from above me, the rattle of a giant’s cough in his coffin.

Aha. The creak that freaked Tom out.

When I was small I had a bedroom door that juddered when it was closed, wooden hinges, you see. The noise reminded me of a lion, a hungry one, growling in a thicket. I didn’t want a lion for a door, so my mother said, This is your friendly lion, he’s letting you know he’s here to guard you from bad dreams and terrors.

This is a big piece of timber. Moving. That ought not to be moving.

Urgent desire to move out of its way.

Turn head with scrupulous care, avoid grating noise. Spread out hands, surrounding surface is smooth, whitish, crisscrossed with strands of fibrous material, perhaps straw. Straw from the barns blowing over snow. Push with one hand, pull with the other, oh, mercy me, my ribs. Engage feet in enterprise. Struggle like upturned beetle. Very sweaty now and vision totally clouded.

No use. Passing out.

—