Edgar Allan Poe 
Pit and the Pendulum and Other Stories Level 2 Oxford Bookworms Library 

A level 2 Oxford Bookworms Library graded reader. Retold for Learners of English by John Escott. Everybody has bad dreams. Horrible things move towards you in the dark, things you can hear but not see. Then you wake up, in your own warm bed, and turn over to go back to sleep. But imagine that you wake up on a hard floor, in a darkness blacker than the blackest night. You listen to the silence, and smell a wet dead smell. Death is all around you, waiting . . .In these stories by Edgar Allan Poe, death whispers at you from every dark corner, and fear can send you mad . . .