I took another breath. I stood up off the bed. I moved to the wall and crouched down by the wainscoting.
The bedsprings squeaked at my back as Samantha climbed down off her bed too. She moved across the room to stand next to me. She crouched down too and watched, her eyes gleaming eagerly, as I worked my fingernails in behind the panel. I got a grip and pried the wainscoting off. It came away easily. White bits of plaster, glowing in the dark, sprinkled to the floor.
I reached my fingers into the hole. Felt the tinfoil. Drew it out. I tried to unwrap the little package but I was so nervous it fell from my shaking fingers. I made a noise of frustration.
Samantha put her hand on my shoulder. I heard her whisper.
“Go on, Danny. You can do it.”
I nodded. I took a breath. I rubbed my sweating palms dry on my thighs. I tried again to unwrap the foil, leaving it on the floor this time where I could keep it steady. I got it open. The thin disc of wax, all that was left of Alexander’s candle, seemed to gleam in the twilight. I picked up the book of matches to get a better look at it. Three matches left. That was all.
I put the book of matches down—tossed it down so Samantha wouldn’t see how violently my hands were trembling now. I lay down on the floor again, listened again. I could still hear the Fat Woman moving around beneath us. I could still hear the bathwater running.
I pushed to my feet and glanced at Samantha. She looked as terror-stricken as I felt. A liquid came into my throat, sharp and metallic. The taste of fear. I swallowed it.
“Okay,” I said. “Be very quiet.”
We had discussed my plan. We both knew what to do. I went to one of the beds. Samantha went to another. Working quickly and in silence, we began stripping off the blankets and the sheets. We gathered bunches of them in our arms and carried them over to a spot on the floor about two yards in from the door. We piled them up there and went back for more.
All the while we worked, I was telling myself:
There’s still time to stop, there’s still time to call it off.
But we didn’t stop. We went on, the two of us, back and forth from the beds to the pile of sheets. We added blankets and pillows too. And soon it was done—all the sheets were in a pile and the pillows were piled up near them—and there was no time left. This was the point of decision. We had to call it off now or do it, one way or the other.
I stood, trying to swallow, hardly able to draw breath. I looked at Samantha, at her face, so pale now that it seemed spotlit in the dark. I barely heard her gasping whisper:
“I’m so scared!”
She reached out to me and I grabbed hold of her shaking hands and clutched them with mine. That helped to calm us both a little. I nodded to her. She nodded back.
Then I let go of her and went to fetch the candle and matches.
Samantha waited by the piled blankets and sheets. I returned to her and knelt down. She knelt down next to me. I set the candle on the floor. I pinched the matchbook between my fingers. I was careful to keep the matches away from my palms so they wouldn’t be ruined by sweat.
One more time, I hesitated. One more time, I looked at Samantha in the dark. One more time, the whispers passed between us.
“Maybe
. . .
” I began.
“No, Danny. Go ahead.”
“Right. Right,” I said. “Okay.”
My trembling breath was loud in the dark room as I leaned over the candle stub with the matchbook in my two hands. I tried to pull out a match. It resisted—or maybe the fear had just weakened me to the point I simply didn’t have the strength to get it free. Frustrated, I tore it out forcefully, grunting with the effort.
My hand was shaking so hard, I could barely bring match and flint together. When I did, I had to press the match head hard against the flint strip in order to steady it. I pressed too hard: When I struck the match, its head sizzled and crumbled and went out. The fragments dropped to the floor without so much as a spark.
“Damn it!” I said.
I threw the useless paper stem of the match away. I shook my head. I wiped my palm on my pants and resolved to try again.
Then Samantha clutched my arm. “Danny! Listen!”
I went stiff and still. I listened. The water downstairs had stopped running. The bath was full. Samantha and I knelt there, frozen, peering at one another.
I heard a floorboard creak. A footstep. Then another. The unmistakable laboring tread of the Fat Woman. She was moving out of the room below us. Moving toward the winding tower stairs.
“She’s coming up to check on us!” Samantha hissed.
I shook my head no, but I knew she was right. Samantha’s grip tightened on me. In her desperation, her whisper grew dangerously loud.
“There won’t be time!”
Somehow, the danger sent a new determination through me. Somehow it steadied me. I pushed Samantha’s hand off my arm. I plucked the second match out of the book. I set its head against the flint more carefully. I knew if I hesitated, my hand would begin to shake again. So I struck it at once. The match sizzled and fumed. Then it died.
Then it flared. An ever-so-small, so-weak blue flame. It quivered at the end of the matchstick, threatening to go out at any second. I held the stick upside down, hoping the fire would feed on the paper stem, hoping it would burn higher.
But I knew there was no time to wait for it. Because now there was a loud, prolonged groan of wood from the bottom of the tower staircase. The Fat Woman had started coming up.
Holding the barely burning match, I let the matchbook fall to the floor. I grabbed my wrist with my free hand. Tried to hold myself steady as I lowered the small, dying flame to the wick of the candle on its tinfoil bed.
Another stair creaked loudly. Another footstep—higher, closer.
I touched the match to the wick. The flame seemed to retract into itself like a frightened animal. The darkness swarmed in around the trembling fire, about to smother it. I could see—Samantha and I staring through the darkness could both see—that we were about to lose the fire, it was about to go out.
And it did. The match-flame died in a little stream of black smoke—but before it was gone, the candle wick caught and a new flame rose, small but steady, slowly becoming yellow, bright.
“Hurry, Danny!”
Another heavy footstep on the stairs—then a pause. I remembered how we had followed the Fat Woman up here. I remembered how she’d had to stop every few steps to catch her breath. I was focused now, the way boys can be, my mind so completely trained on the task before me that nothing else seemed to exist. My hand was still shaky, but the candle flame was strong enough. I lifted the disk of wax in one hand. With the other, I pulled out a corner of a bedsheet at the bottom of the pile.
I held the flame to the fabric. A moment passed.
There was another footstep on the stairs. She must have been halfway up by now.
Then the end of the sheet browned, blackened, charred. A little crescent of material was eaten away—but there was no fire. My stomach dropped like a stone. Somehow I had thought this would be easy. I had thought the sheet would just burst into wild flames. When it didn’t, I didn’t know what to do. I nearly despaired
. . .
Another footstep. An acid flash of panic went through me. She was going to catch us. I knew it. Our plan wasn’t going to work.
Then the sheet ignited. The fire started.
I heard Samantha catch her breath. I glanced at her and saw the flame-light starting to dance in her startled, anxious eyes.
Once the cloth was burning, the fire spread fast. It raced along the edges of the sheet, then ate into the body of it, then started to flicker and rise up the other sheets and blankets piled on top of it.
Another footstep sounded on the stairs. The Fat Woman was near the tower landing, only another step or two away.
But now the pile of sheets was ablaze. The fire rose shockingly fast, shockingly hot and bright. I threw a pillow on it to keep it going, and then another, but when I went to grab a third pillow, the heat of the flames pushed me back and I had to toss it onto the pile from a distance.
A groan came from outside the door. The Fat Woman. She was very close to the top of the stairs, maybe on the landing already. It sounded like she had stopped, like she was resting again.
The fire, meanwhile, grew bigger, brighter. Samantha and I, crouching, stared up awestruck at the rising flames.
Now smoke too was pouring out of the pile of sheets and blankets and pillows. It mingled blackly with the threatening red flames. It clogged the air. It made my throat sore. It stung my lungs. I took Samantha by the arm. I pulled her away from the fire until we were pressed against the room’s curving wall. I wanted to go even farther, get farther away from the heat and smoke. But I had to stay close to the door.
I cupped my hand and pressed my lips against Samantha’s ear—but when I tried to whisper to her, I began to cough. I tried to pull another breath but the smoke swirled around me, making it impossible. Coughing, I knelt down, tugging at Samantha’s arm to bring her down with me. The air was a little better nearer the floor. I caught a breath and hissed at her.
“When I squeeze your wrist
. . .
go
. . .
don’t look back no matter what.”
She was coughing too but she nodded. We both turned in the glow of the firelight and stared at the door. We waited for the Fat Woman to come in to check on us. As soon as she opened the door, we would make our break.
The smoke thickened over and around us. The fire—eerily silent until now—began to snicker and sough.
A long moment passed. Then we heard a riser creak again under the Fat Woman’s heavy step. And then another stair creaked right after that—and another—quickly
. . .
And I realized: She was going back down! She had come up to listen for any trouble. Had heard nothing. Hadn’t smelled the smoke. Was satisfied we were not making trouble. Was returning downstairs to take her bath.
I had to stop her. What could I do? Shout for help. I had to start shouting for help. That would bring her back. I drew a breath—but the smoke rushed into my lungs and the shout broke into a hacking cough that doubled me over. Samantha caught on. She tried to shout—and she started coughing too. The smoke grew thicker, the flames brighter. And I heard the Fat Woman’s thumping steps descending, getting farther and farther away.
“Fire! Fire! Fire! Help!”
Somehow I managed to force out the strangled cry. Samantha joined in. We both started screaming—screaming and coughing at once.
“Fire! Help!”
But our broken voices seemed to be swept away by the growing roar of the flames. I didn’t think the Fat Woman would hear us. Even I could hardly hear us. I could hardly hear anything but the fire. And I could not hear the Fat Woman’s movements at all anymore.
Below the burning bedding, the rotten wood of the floor was beginning to darken and spark and send up smoke. Above, the flames were striving toward the high rafters.
Samantha and I both managed to let out one more round of broken shouts.
“Fire!”
“Fire! Help!”
But then—like the arms of some great dark ogre—the smoke closed over us where we knelt together. Our screams dissolved into fits of deep, harsh hacking. Our bodies bent almost to the floor, racked by the force of the spasms.
The fire rose above us, its roar triumphant, its crackle like laughter. My head began to feel light and distant. I felt as if the smoke were wafting my mind away in slow undulations to some other place, some far place. I was losing consciousness.
But then, without warning, the door to the tower room came swinging open.
There stood the Fat Woman. The gross, enormous shape of her all but blotted out the light from the landing. The glow of the flames danced hellishly on her shocked, twisted, bloated features. Her mouth opened in a large, black O—and out came a string of hoarse, furious curses.
“Shit! You fucking cockroaches! What the fuck did you do?”
Bent over, coughing, clutching my throat with one hand, I was still clinging to Samantha’s wrist with the other. The smoke seemed to fill my head. My mind and the smoke seemed to unify into one swirling mass of blackness and confusion. I strained to straighten my body against the spasms, to lift my eyes to see what was happening.