Chapter 1 - THE PHONE IN THE DARK.
Hannah woke because something hard was pressing against her nose.
For several seconds, she couldn’t understand what it was. She could hear herself breathing, too fast and too loud, but she couldn’t see anything. Her body felt heavy. Not sleepy. Heavy in a way that frightened her before she even knew why.
Then something cold rested against her fingers.
Her phone.
Hannah pressed the side button.
The cracked screen came alive in her hand, and a weak blue glow filled a space so small her mind refused to recognize it.
Wood.
Raw wooden boards were inches above her face.
Burgundy velvet pressed against her shoulder.
And beside her, wedged so tightly against her body that she could barely turn, was Mason.
Her twelve-year-old son wasn’t moving.
His khaki suit was wrinkled beneath him. The red rose pinned to his lapel was crushed sideways against Hannah’s white lace dress. His face looked pale in the blue light.
Hannah stared at him.
Then she looked at the wood above them.
And understood.
“Oh God,” she whispered.
Her voice sounded wrong inside the enclosed box.
“We’re buried.”
She hit the boards above her with both hands.
The first blow hurt.
The second tore skin near one fingernail.
By the fourth, she was screaming Mason’s name while clawing at wood she couldn’t move.
“Mason. Mason, wake up. Baby, please. Wake up.”
Nothing.
She pushed against the lid with both palms.
It didn’t shift.
Not even an inch.
Hannah’s breathing became so fast she began making small choking sounds between breaths.
She forced herself to stop hitting the lid.
Think.
The phone.
She lifted it closer.
Three percent battery.
“No.”
She tapped the emergency-call screen.
No signal.
She tried again.
One bar appeared.
Vanished.
Appeared again.
She dialed 911.
The call failed.
She tried once more.
Failed.
“Mason.” She shook his shoulder. “Come on. Come on, sweetheart.”
His arm moved only because she moved it.
Hannah pressed two trembling fingers against the side of his neck.
For one terrible second, she felt nothing.
Then—
A pulse.
Weak.
But there.
Hannah made a sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh.
“You’re here.”
She leaned her forehead against his.
“You’re still here.”
That was when her memory broke open.
Sunlight.
The cemetery.
The brightness had been almost painful.
She remembered looking upward.
Not from beside a grave.
From inside something.
A coffin.
Beatrice had been above her.
Her mother wore black.
Perfect black.
The kind of mourning dress that looked selected by a stylist rather than pulled from a closet during grief.
Hannah remembered trying to move.
She couldn’t.
Her eyes had worked.
Her ears had worked.
But her hands had not.
Beatrice had looked straight down at her.
And smiled.
Not a grieving smile.
Not shock.
Something small and cold.
Then her mother’s voice.
“Bury them all in one casket. Today.”
Hannah remembered the wooden lid moving.
She remembered wanting to scream.
She remembered nothing coming out.
Then the violent thud.
Darkness.
Now she was underneath that darkness.
Actually underneath it.
Hannah struck the ceiling again.
“HELP!”
The sound died inches from her face.
“PLEASE!”
Nothing answered.
She looked toward Mason again.
He had been at the cemetery too.
Why?
Memory came in fragments.
Mason beside her.
The khaki suit Beatrice had insisted he wear.
The red rose.
Her mother fastening it herself.
“You look presentable now,” Beatrice had said.
Presentable.
Beatrice used that word for everything.
Clothes.
Homes.
Jobs.
People.
The phone chimed.
Hannah nearly screamed.
A message notification.
For half a second, relief swept through her.
Signal.
Someone could reach her.
She looked at the screen.
BEATRICE (MOM).
Hannah froze.
A message appeared.
The poison was too weak. She’s only paralyzed.
Hannah read it once.
Then again.
Her hand began shaking so badly the letters blurred.
Poison.
She’s only paralyzed.
Hannah touched her own leg.
She could move it now, barely.
Earlier, she couldn’t.
The message wasn’t describing somebody else.
It was describing her.
Another notification sounded.
Did you nail the lid shut?
Hannah stopped breathing.
She stared at the words.
Not because she didn’t understand them.
Because she did.
Her mother had not buried her believing she was dead.
Beatrice knew she was alive.
Hannah tried to take a screenshot.
The screen lagged.
“No, no, no.”
She pressed again.
A spinning wheel appeared.
“Come on.”
The battery indicator flickered.
Two percent.
Then one.
Hannah held the phone against Mason’s face.
“Mason, wake up.”
She slapped his cheek gently.
“Mason.”
His eyelids didn’t move.
The phone glitched.
The screen darkened.
“No.”
Hannah pressed the side button.
Nothing.
“No, no, no, no.”
She held it harder, as though pressure could force electricity back into it.
Nothing.
Complete blackness swallowed them.
Hannah’s composure broke.
“NO!”
The scream exploded inside the coffin and came back at her.
She began pounding overhead with both fists.
She didn’t care about the pain now.
“HELP US!”
Her nails scraped wood.
Splinters drove into her palms.
“MY SON IS IN HERE!”
She screamed until her throat burned.
“PLEASE!”
Then she stopped.
There had been a sound.
Not inside.
Outside.
Hannah held completely still.
At first she heard only her own breathing.
Then—
Thump.
Far above them.
She looked upward although there was nothing to see.
Another sound.
Scraping.
Not wood.
Earth.
Someone was above the grave.
Hannah hit the lid with everything she had left.
“HELP!”
Silence.
Then a muffled male voice reached through layers of wood and soil.
Hannah couldn’t make out the words.
She pounded again.
“WE’RE ALIVE!”
The voice stopped.
Hannah waited.
Seconds stretched.
Then another voice answered above them.
This one clearer.
Nervous.
“We’re not supposed to touch this grave.”
Hannah’s stomach dropped.
A second man said something she couldn’t hear.
Then the first voice came again.
“Mrs. Whitmore gave direct instructions.”
Whitmore.
Her mother’s last name.
Hannah pressed both palms to the lid.
“PLEASE!”
Nothing happened.
For one awful moment, she thought they were leaving.
Then came the sound that changed everything.
Metal cut into dirt.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
Someone had started digging.
Hannah put her mouth against the wood.
“My son is alive!”
The digging stopped.
A heavy object struck the top of the casket.
Mason suddenly inhaled beside her.
A thin, broken gasp.
Hannah turned toward him in the darkness.
“Mason?”
His fingers moved against hers.
“Mom?”
She grabbed his hand.
“I’m here.”
His voice was barely audible.
“Why did Grandma put us in the box?”
Before Hannah could answer, something scraped across the outside of the lid.
Then came three sharp metallic sounds.
Not dirt.
Not shovels.
Nails.
May you like
And from directly above them, one of the men whispered:
“Oh my God. Somebody nailed this thing shut.”
