Being pushed down the basement stairs was like falling in a dream.
Except when I hit the bottom I didn’t wake up.
My nightmare had only just begun.
I tried to breathe but when I opened my mouth a great sucking fear invaded my chest.
It seemed to suck the basement walls inwards with it.
They hurtled towards me.
The ceiling slammed down.
I shrank into a ball, cradled my head, closed my eyes, pressed my back and upper body against the bare brickwork of the walls at the bottom of the stairs, in the corner of the room.
The tiled floor was gritty. The air was stale.
Thousands and thousands of cubic pounds of stone and earth and brick pressed down on top of me.
I was scared to look out from behind my arms because if I looked I’d see where I was. I’d know I was really down here.
So my brain switched to other priorities, carrying out a quick inventory of my body, finding the points that were flaring in pain.
My knees and elbows. My ankle. My chin. The heels of my hands, wet with blood.
I’d put my hands out in front of me as I’d fallen – they were grazed and skinned – and somehow thinking of that was worse because I could remember how I’d pushed against nothing but air.
Pushed through nothing.
Until I landed with a jolt and all that nothing rushed in at me.
Imagine you’re not here.
Pretend you’re anywhere else.
But I couldn’t do that.
I was incapable of it.
Because the realness of what was happening was inescapable to me.
And that’s when I heard it.
Something rooted deep in the marrow of my innermost fears.
—click.
It was the sound of the bolt on the outside of the door to the basement sliding home.