* * *
* * *
She dreams of her mother. Arms crossed, warning frown. “I’ve told you, Sadie. It’s not something I can talk about.” A long sickly yellow hospital corridor, a playroom full of childish plastic toys while her mother talks to a little tortoise of a woman behind a blue door covered in peeling posters. “I’m okay, Sadie; I promise you.” “I don’t want you to go, Mum.”
She wakes cold and clammy, the blankets thrown aside. Her heart is pounding as if she’s just heard something terrifying. The lamp is still on, and she half sits, feeling dizzy. Her gaze jumps to the door; it’s still blocked by the mirror. She lets her head fall back to the pillow. Thank God. But there it is again—the noise that woke her: a sharp crack-crack on the window.
Perhaps she’s still dreaming. She slides out of the bed and curls her toes into the soft rug. It feels real.
Crack! Another rattle at the window. And it’s the strangest thing, but she really does think she can hear her mother’s voice calling her.
She drags back the curtains, and by the light from the outside lamps, she can just make out a car on the driveway—a mini. This is good news, isn’t it? Has someone come to check on them?
“Sadie!” There it is again—her name being called, and someone is down there. A woman in a huge coat, standing back, craning her neck to peer at the upstairs windows. Her arm jerks back and upward, and a flurry of stones—gravel?—hits the window of the room next door. Sadie tries to lift the sash window to get a better look at the woman, but it’s locked, so she presses her face closer to the glass and waits for the light to catch the woman full in the face.
It doesn’t seem possible. Sadie rubs her eyes and peers again. It really does look like her mother down there. And then two things happen at the same time. Sadie inhales through her nose and catches a faint scent of smoke. And the woman on the driveway shouts a single word that slices through the glass and sets Sadie’s heart pounding.
“Fire!”
PART 2
Beth
January 2019
Ihurl another handful of gravel at the window.
What am I doing here?
I vowed I’d never come back. It’s painful to remember what happened here thirty years ago. But when Sadie’s dutiful monthly letter arrived at the retreat earlier today, a string of words flew out at me like a flock of panicked geese: I’ve got an amazing job lined up, a sort of game, at a place called Raven Hall . . .
I’ve driven for hours. Too many to count. Red warning lights flashing on the dashboard of the hastily borrowed car, a dreadful grating noise from the engine for the last few miles. I thought Sadie might grow up a bit if I put some distance between us. I never dreamed that in my absence, she’d be in danger from my past.
The doors are locked, as are the downstairs windows. Flames glow menacingly behind the glass above the front door. There’s no response to my hammering. No signal on my phone. I think frantically: There are no other cars on the driveway—might the house be empty after all?
I can’t risk it.
I hurl more stones at the upstairs windows, and I work my way along, shouting my daughter’s name as loudly as I can.
“Sadie! Are you in there? There’s a fire! You have to get out!”
Sadie
Sadie drags the cheval mirror aside and lurches out of her bedroom into a haze of throat-tightening smoke, lit by fierce orange flames somewhere near the stairs. She holds her arm across her face and stumbles closer, her eyes stinging. It’s on the staircase. The fire is on the staircase.
“Fire!” she yells.
She hammers on each door in turn, unable to remember in that moment which guest should be in which room.
“Wake up! There’s a fire!” She opens the door next to hers and finds herself face-to-face with Nazleen.
“What do we do?” Sadie says. “Where’s the fire exit? Where are the—the . . .” She gestures wildly, thinking of smoke alarms and sprinklers and extinguishers. Surely the company has a legal obligation?
“Oh my God,” Nazleen says. “Oh my God, oh my God.”
Sadie swings away and crashes into someone else. It’s a dazed-looking Zach.
“How did this happen?” he says. “We need to get out. What’s Joe doing?”
Sadie turns to watch Joe creeping closer to the flames, as if looking for a way through them. Sparks shoot past his head, and he pats frantically at something on his shoulder and stumbles backward.
Everett’s voice booms over Sadie’s shoulder. “What in the name of all that’s holy . . .”
Sadie tries desperately to think. “My window’s locked. Can any of you get yours open?” She looks from one guest to another. “Where’s Mrs. Shrew?”
For a moment, they stare at one another blankly, and then they all hurry into different rooms, and Sadie’s left feeling dizzy. What should she do first? Look for Mrs. Shrew? Try other windows? Help Joe?
“Sadie!” It’s Joe, right in front of her. She struggles to lift her gaze from a singed patch of fabric on his shoulder. He takes her by the arm and steers her out of the worst of the smoke, into the nearest bedroom—Nazleen’s. He tries the window, but just like in Sadie’s room, it won’t open. Joe peers through the glass, then swivels to face her.
“Who’s the woman out there?”
She stares at him. “I thought it was my mum, but . . .”
He nods, seeming less surprised by the suggestion than she is.
“She’ll go for help,” he says, “won’t she? She’s got a car. She’ll drive to the village and raise the alarm . . .” He sounds as though he’s trying to convince himself more than anything.
Sadie curls her fists, frustrated by the fogginess in her head—she’d blame it on the smoke if it hadn’t started hours earlier, around the dinner table. She feels like she’s been drugged.
“All the windows are locked.” It’s Nazleen, breathless. Sadie turns to look at her, wondering if they’ll all wake up from this nightmare in a minute.
Zach stumbles in, and his words are punctuated by coughing. “I can’t find Mrs. Shrew. Dad won’t stop trying his phone. I keep telling him there’s no signal. Is there another set of stairs up at the far end?”
Sadie remembers the spiral staircase she climbed earlier. She shakes her head.
“It only goes up, to the top of the tower. Not down.”
“Well . . .” Zach looks taken aback. “How do we get out, then?”