I had lost any sense of direction in my blind stumbling about; even if I were in the niche that once held King Lazaree’s den, I no longer knew the way forward or back in it.

Still shaking wildly, my arms stretched straight out ahead of me and my fingers stiff and splayed, I began stumbling along the line of biers, sarcophagi, and coffins.

Even with my arms out ahead of me, I managed to run into something with my head that knocked me back on my arse. I felt blood running from the wound in my temple and immediately sent my fingers searching my forehead, uselessly holding my hands in front of my eyes as if I could suddenly see. I could not. I touched again. The cut was shallow; the bleeding was slight.

Rising carefully to my feet again, I waved my arms until I found the obstruction that had almost knocked me out.

Cold metal, so rusted that the empty-space triangles of the open grid were almost closed in.

The iron grille!! Each loculus along the catacomb corridors had been enclosed within an ancient iron grille. If I had found the grille, I had found the corridor—or a corridor—there were scores on different levels down here, most of which I had never seen or explored.

What if the grille is closed and locked? I would never get to the corridor. Someone would find my skeleton in amongst the sarcophagi and coffins in twenty or fifty or a hundred years and merely think that I was another of what the crypt man at Rochester Cathedral, Dradles, had called “the old ’uns.”

Panicked again, I pounded my palms and forearms and knees along the metal grille, feeling the rusted edges scrape skin away, but finally there was—an emptiness. An opening! At the very least, a fissure caused by a vertical segment of the grille rusting away.

It was only ten inches or so wide, and irregular, but I squeezed through, sharp edges of the grille scraping at my ribs and backside and shrunken genitals.

Then I was in a corridor. I was sure of it!

Unless you’ve passed through a grille behind the coffins, in which case you’re more lost than before on some unfathomable deep level of an endless labyrinth.

I dropped to all fours and felt the stone under my palms and knees. No, this was one of the main corridors. All I had to do was follow it to one of the nearly hidden stairways to a higher level, then up the final steps to the crypt where Hatchery was waiting for me.

Which way?? How could I find the stairs in the absolute darkness? Which way??

I crawled to my left, found the grille I had just squeezed through, and rose carefully, not even sure how high the corridor ceiling might be down here. When I had followed Dickens to the river that night two years ago, some of the corridors had been ten feet high—others had been mere tunnels where one had to crouch to avoid bashing one’s brains out. It had all been so simple with a lantern.

Which way???

I turned my face but could sense no movement of air. If I had a candle, perhaps I could sense the draft.…

If I had a God-d— ned candle, I could easily find my way out without sniffing for drafts!! I screamed at myself.

I realised that I had screamed it aloud. Echoes died away in both directions. Dear God, any more of this and I would surely lose my mind.

I decided that I would follow my old instincts and walk just as if I were leaving King Lazaree’s den. My body remembered that return walk I had made so many times, even if my brain—without vision to help—kept insisting that it did not.

Using my left hand as my guide, I began walking along the corridor. I came to other grates, other openings, although none of them had the tattered curtain that separated Lazaree’s den from the corridor. At each opening that was not protected by a grille, I got down on my knees and felt for stairs or another corridor, but there were only collapsed grilles, more coffins, or empty niches in the walls.

I moved on, panting, shivering, my teeth still chattering audibly. My conscious mind told me that I would not freeze to death down here—did not caves stay at some constant temperature, in the fifties? It did not matter. My torn, gouged, shivering body was freezing.

Was the corridor curving slightly to the left? The way to Lazaree’s den had curved slightly to the right as one approached it from the hidden stairs down from the first level of catacombs. If I was on that level and to the right of the stairs, the walls here would have to be curving slightly to my left.

I had no idea. It was impossible to tell. But I knew without doubt that I had gone at least twice as far as it took to walk from the entrance to the second and lower level to the curtained alcove that was King Lazaree’s den.

I continued forward anyway. Twice there were cold draughts from my right. The touch of the colder air on my flesh caused my skin to ripple with revulsion—as if something dead and eyeless were caressing me with long, grub-white, boneless fingers.

I shivered and moved on.

There had been two corridors to the left—my right now—as Dickens and I had first found King Lazaree’s den. I had walked past them without a glance or turn of my lantern so many times since. Down one of them had been the corridor leading past even more loculi to the circular room with the altar and rood screen and hidden stairs down to the deeper levels of Undertown.

Where Drood waited.

But I could already be on one of those lower levels.

Twice I had to stop to vomit. My stomach was already empty—I seemed to remember getting sick in the first loculus, where I had wakened—but still the retching bent me double and made me lean against cold stone until the spasms passed.

I passed another ungrilled opening—nothing but rubble within the niche—and staggered on another twenty paces or so before crashing into a solid wall.

The corridor ended. The wall was solid; behind me, the corridor stretched backward the way I had come.

I screamed then. And kept screaming. The echoes were all behind me.

They had bricked up the corridor they had left me in. Closed it so that no one would even find my bones.

I clawed at the wall, feeling ancient mortar, stones, and bricks fall away, feeling my fingernails tear off and the ends of my flailing fingers rip and shred.

It was no use. Behind the bricks were more bricks. Behind those bricks was heavier stone.

I dropped, gasping and retching, to my knees, then began crawling back the way I had come.

The last opening was on my right now—the rubble-tumbled niche—but this time I crawled into it, lacerating my already-lacerated knees and palms on the jumble of stones.

They were not just stones. They were steps set into cold, loose dirt.

I scrambled up them, heedless of any obstacle that might be waiting to strike me in the face.

I crashed into a wall, almost fell back down the unseen stairs, but grasped at the edge of an opening. There was an opening. I could almost see the jagged masonry on either side.

I tumbled through and scraped my right cheek and temple against rough stone. Another bier. Getting to my feet, I realised there were more coffins stacked on the carved stone or shaped cement. I was in another loculus. Teeth chattering, I looked to my left and seemed to sense a lightening in my vision in that direction.

I crashed into another metal grate, smeared unseen blood on it from my torn fingers as I flailed until I found the opening to it, and staggered out into an emptiness that must have been another corridor.

There was definitely light—a thin, grey ghost of a glow—to my right, not twenty yards away.

My bare feet slapping on the stone or brick floor of this wider corridor, I fairly ran towards the light.

Yes. I could suddenly see my hands and arms in front of me. My fingers were crimson.