Answer:
The story begins at the moment the narrator of "Pit and Pendulum" is sentenced to death at the time of the Catholic Inquisition. The narrator listens to his sentence in a dream-like state, watching the sinister movement of the judges’ lips and the swaying black drapes. Then his senses cut out, and he is filled with a shock-like sensation and the figures around him turn into angel-like ghosts. He faints.
The narrator of "Pit and Pendulum" tries to describe the strange swoon. It is not like sleep or death, it has its own particular sensations which occur in two stages, the first the return of the spirit, then of the body. He believes that if one is able to remember the first stage during the reawakening of the body, then the gulf that the person who fainted has fallen into will be recalled like the details of a dream. He imagines that the inability to recall this dream is what drives many men into madness.
As the "Pit and Pendulum" narrator’s body awakens, he tries to remember his own descent into this dream world, and imagines silent figures carrying him into darkness and then a terrible stillness as they pause. Then, sound and motion returns and the narrator comes back to consciousness and remembers the details of the trial. He lays still, terrified to open his eyes, not knowing what state he is in. His worst fear is realized – he can see nothing when he opens his eyes, everything is pitch black.
The narrator of "Pit and Pendulum" tries to figure out what has happened. He can’t possibly be dead. He knows he is condemned to death but doesn’t think they’ve put him in a cell to await his fate because he knows that the hangings of the auto-da-fees happen swiftly, whenever there is a new victim. He notices the stone floors of the prison and panics suddenly that he has been put in a tomb. He flings his arms and walks around and is relieved to find space and air not befitting a tomb. He remembers the nightmares he has heard about the Toledo dungeons. He knows he will die, but the question of when and how torments him.
