“What sort of messages?”
“What you’d expect.” She swallowed and looked away. “You know, to the local murderess.”
He took a step toward her. “You know who’s doing it?”
“I told myself it was just — just some kids. But kids, they wouldn’t set fire to my house….”
Chase glanced down at the brick, then up at the shattered window. “It’s a crazy way to burn down a house,” he said. He went to her, took her by the shoulders, gently rubbed her arms. She felt warmth in his touch, and strength. Courage. He framed her face with his hands and said quietly, “I’m going to call the police.”
She nodded. Together they started up the steps to the kitchen. They were halfway up the stairs when the door above them suddenly slammed shut. An instant later the bolt squealed home.
“They’ve shut us in!” cried Miranda.
He dashed past her up the stairs and began pounding on the door. In frustration he threw himself against it. His shoulder slammed into the wood.
“It’s solid!” said Miranda. “You can’t break it down.”
Chase groaned. “I think I just found that out.”
Footsteps creaked across the floor overhead. Miranda froze, tracing with her gaze the intruder’s movements.
“What’s he doing?” she whispered.
As if in answer to her question, the single light bulb suddenly went out. The basement was plunged into darkness.
“Chase?” she cried.
“I’m here! Right here. Give me your hand.”
She reached up blindly toward him; at once he found her wrist. “It’s all right,” he murmured, pulling her toward him, gathering her tightly against his chest. Just the unyielding support of that embrace was enough to take the edge off her panic. “We’ll be okay,” he murmured. “We just have to find a way out. We can’t make it through the window. You have a cellar door? A coal hatch?”
“There’s — there’s an old loading hatch near the furnace. It opens to the side yard.”
“All right. Let’s see if we can get it open. Just move us in the right direction.”
Together they felt their way down the steps, to the cellar floor. Shards of glass skittered before their feet as they inched their way through the darkness. It seemed like a journey across eternity, through a blackness so thick it might have been firm to the touch. At last Miranda’s extended hand touched pipes, then the cold, damp granite of the cellar wall.
“Which way to the hatch?” asked Chase.
“I think it’s to the left.”
Upstairs, the creaking moved across the floor, then a door slammed shut.
“I found the oil tank!” said Chase.
“Then the coal hatch should be just above. There are some steps—”
“Right here.” He released her hand. Though she knew he was right beside her, that break in contact left her hovering at the edge of panic. If only she could see something, anything! She could hear Chase shoving up against the wood, could hear the crack and groan of the hatch as he struggled to swing it open. Straining to see through the darkness, she could make out, little by little, the vague outline of his head, then the gleam of sweat on his face. More details seemed to emerge out of darkness: the hulking shadow of the furnace, the oil tank, the reddish glint of the copper pipes. It was all visible now.
Too visible. Where was the light coming from?
With new apprehension she turned and stared up at the basement window. Reflected in the shattered glass was a flickering dance of orange light. Firelight. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. “Chase…”
He turned and stared.
Even as they watched, the glow in the window shards leaped to a new and horrifying brilliance.
“We have to get out of here!” she cried.
He shoved against the hatch. “I can’t get it open!”
“Here, let me help you!”
They both pushed up against the wood, pounded it with their bare fists. Already, smoke was swirling in through the broken window. Overhead, through the cracks in the floorboards, they could see the terrible glow of flames consuming the house above. Most of the heat was funneled up, toward the roof, but soon the timbers would give way. They would be trapped beneath falling debris.
The hatch was immovable.
Chase snatched up the fire extinguisher and began to pound it against the wood. “I’ll keep trying to break through!” he yelled. “You get to the window — yell for help!”
Miranda scrambled over to the window. Smoke was billowing in, a thick, suffocating black cloud. She could barely reach the opening. She glanced around in panic for a crate, a chair, something to stand on. Nothing was in sight.
She screamed louder than she had ever screamed in her life.
Even then, she knew help wouldn’t reach them in time. The basement window faced the back of the house, toward the garden. She was too far below the opening for her voice to carry any distance. She glanced up, at the floor beams. Already, the evil glow of heat shone through. She could hear the groan of the wood as it sagged. How long before those beams gave way? How long before she and Chase collapsed under that smothering blackness of smoke? The air had grown unbearably close.
Eight
Chase pounded desperately at the hatch. A board splintered, but the barrier held. “Someone’s nailed it shut!” he yelled. “Keep calling for help!”
She screamed, again and again, until her voice cracked, until she had almost no voice left.
She heard, in the distance, the sound of a dog barking, and Mr. Lanzo’s far-off shouts. She tried to shout back. All she could manage was a pitifully weak cry. There was no answering call. Had she imagined the voice? Or couldn’t he hear her?
Even if he did, would he track her screams to this small opening facing the garden? Safety lay so close, yet was so unreachable. If she stood on tiptoe she could actually poke her hand through the shards of broken glass, could feel the soil beneath her fingertips. Just inches away would be her beloved delphiniums, her newly planted violas….
An image of her garden, of rich, moist earth and a freshly tilled flower bed suddenly flashed into her mind. Hadn’t she just expanded that bed? Hadn’t she used a pickax to break up the sod? The pickax — where did she leave it? She remembered laying it against the side of the house—
Near the cellar window.
With her bare fist she broke away the last shards of glass. Something warm ran down her arm. Blood, she thought with a strange sense of detachment. But no pain — she was too panicked to feel anything but the desperate need to escape the flames. She reached through the open window and ran her fingers along the outside wall. Nothing on the right, just the rough clapboard shingles above a granite foundation. She shifted to the left side of the window, swept her hand along the outside frame and touched warm metal. The pickax head!
She gripped it so tightly her fingers cramped. Painfully she managed to slide the heavy iron head sideways, in front of the window. With a little wriggling she maneuvered first the sharp point, then the blade end, through the window opening.
The pick landed with a hard clang on the concrete floor.
