Eric hung there, swaying back and forth. He lifted his eyes, peered up toward that small rectangle of sky above him. He could see Stacy's and Amy's faces, and then Jeff's, too.

"Eric?" Jeff called.

"What?"

"It's the end of the rope."

"I'm not at the bottom."

"Can you see him?"

"Pretty much."

"Is he okay?"

"I can't tell."

"How far are you above him?"

Eric looked down, tried to estimate the distance between himself and the bottom. He wasn't very good at this sort of thing; all he could do was pull a number out of the air. It was pointless, like guessing how many pennies someone had in his pocket. If he were right, it would simply be a matter of chance. "Twenty feet?" he said.

"Is he moving?"

Eric stared down again toward the Greek's dim figure. The longer he looked, the more he could make out, not just the shoes and T-shirt but Pablo's arms, too, his face and neck, looking oddly pale in the darkness. Eric's lamp picked up bits of broken glass around the Greek's body, pieces of its shattered cousin. "No," Eric called. "He's just lying there."

There was no response. Eric looked up, and the faces had disappeared from the hole. He could hear them talking, not the words, just the murmur of their voices, which had a back-and-forth feel to them, discursive, strangely unhurried. They sounded even farther away than they actually were, and Eric felt a brief wobble of panic. Maybe they were walking off; maybe they were going to leave him here…

He glanced down just in time to see Pablo lift his hand, hold it out toward him, a slow, underwater gesture, as if even this slight movement were difficult to accomplish.

"He lifted his hand," he called.

"What?" It was Jeff's voice; his head reappeared over the hole. Stacy's did, too, and Amy's, and Mathias's. No one was holding the windlass. No one had to, Eric realized. I'm at the end of my rope, he thought. He couldn't help it: The words were just there inside his head. A joke, but mirthless.

"He lifted his hand," he shouted again.

"We're pulling you up," Jeff called. And all four heads vanished from the hole.

"Wait!" Eric shouted.

Jeff's face reappeared, then Stacy's, then Amy's. They were so tiny, silhouetted against the sky. He couldn't make out their features, but somehow he knew who was who. "We have to figure out a way to make the rope longer," Jeff called.

Eric shook his head. "I want to stay with him. I'm gonna jump."

There was that murmur of voices once more, a consultation far above him. Then Jeff's voice echoed down the shaft. "No-we'll pull you up."

"Why?"

"We might not be able to make it longer. You'd be trapped down there."

Eric couldn't think of anything to say to that. Pablo was already down there. If they couldn't make the rope longer…well, that meant…He glimpsed what followed, shied away from it.

"Eric?" Jeff called.

"What?"

"We're pulling you up."

The heads disappeared once more, and then, a second later, the rope gave a jerk as they began to turn the windlass. Eric looked down. His lamp was swaying again, so it was hard to tell, but it seemed as if Pablo was staring up at him. His hand was no longer raised. Eric started to yank at the sling, kicking his legs. He wasn't thinking; he was being stupid, and he knew it. But he couldn't leave Pablo there. Not alone, not hurt, not in that darkness. He lifted his left arm toward the sky, the sling scraping his skin as it slid upward, over his head. He was still hooked under his other arm, rising slowly, the bottom of the shaft slipping into darkness, and he had to switch the oil lamp from one hand to the other. Then he let go of the rope and dropped into the open air, the flame fluttering out as he fell.

It was farther to the bottom than he'd imagined, yet the bottom seemed to come too soon, materializing out of the darkness, slamming up into him before he had a chance to prepare himself, his legs collapsing, jarring the air from his lungs. He landed to Pablo's left-he'd had the presence of mind to aim for this spot before the lamp blew out-but he wasn't able to hold his balance once he'd hit the bottom. He fell, bounced back off the wall of the shaft, landed on the Greek's chest. Pablo bucked beneath him, began to scream again. Eric struggled to push himself up and away, but it was difficult in the darkness to find his bearings. Nothing was where it seemed it ought to be; he kept reaching out with his hands, expecting to find the ground or one of the walls but hitting open air instead. "I'm sorry," he said. "Oh, Jesus, Jesus Christ, I'm so sorry." Pablo was screaming beneath him, flailing with one arm, while the lower half of his body remained perfectly still. It frightened Eric, this stillness; he could guess what it meant.

He managed to rise to his knees, then pull back into a crouch. There was a wall behind him, and one to his left and another to his right, but across from him, on the far side of Pablo, he could sense open space: another shaft, cutting its way into the earth beneath the hill. Once again, there was a current of cold air pouring forth from it, but something more, too, some sense of pressure, of a presence: watching. Eric spent a moment straining to peer into the darkness, to make out whatever shape or form might be lurking within it, but there was nothing there, of course, just his terror fashioning phantoms, and finally he managed to convince himself of this.

Eric heard Jeff yell something, and he tilted his head back, looking up toward the mouth of the hole. It was far above him now, a tiny window of sky. The rope was swinging gently back and forth in the intervening space, and Jeff was shouting again, but Eric couldn't hear his words, not over Pablo's screaming, which echoed off the shaft's dirt walls, doubling and tripling, until it began to seem as if there were more than one of him lying there, as if Eric were trapped in a cave full of shrieking men.

"I'm okay!" he yelled upward, doubting if they could hear him.

And was he okay? He spent a moment assessing this, tallying up the various pains his body was beginning to announce. He must've banged his chin, because it felt as if he'd been punched there, and his lower back had definitely registered the fall. But it was his right leg that called out most aggressively for attention, a tight, tearing sensation just beneath his kneecap, accompanied by an odd feeling of dampness. Eric groped with his hand, found a large piece of glass embedded there. It was about the size of a playing card-petal-shaped, gently concave-and had sliced neatly through his jeans, burying itself half an inch into his flesh. Eric assumed it was from Pablo's shattered lamp; he must've landed on it when he fell. He girded himself now, clenching his teeth, then pulled the glass free. He could feel blood seeping down his shin, strangely cool-a lot of blood, too-his sock growing spongy with it.

"I cut my leg," he shouted, then waited, listening, but he couldn't tell if there was a response.

It doesn't matter, hethought. I'll be all right. It was the sort of empty reassurance only a child would find comforting, and Eric knew this, yet he kept repeating it to himself nonetheless. It was so dark, and there was that cold air pouring across him from the shaft, that watchful presence, and his right shoe was slowly filling with blood, and Pablo's screaming wouldn't stop. I'm at the end of my rope, Eric thought. And then, again: It doesn't matter. I'll be all right. Just words, his head was full of words.

He was still holding the lamp in his left hand; somehow, he'd managed to keep it from breaking. He set it on the ground beside him, reached out, found the Greek's wrist, grasped it. Then he crouched there in the darkness, saying, "Shh, now, shh. I'm here, I'm right here" as he waited for Pablo to stop screaming.