“I’ll be fine by the morning,” were his last words before he fell asleep.
I cleaned up, sat and read and waited for the time when I too could go to sleep. I felt lonely and uneasy. Outside an owl hooted and the wind made tree branches around the cottage creak and crack, while the crash of waves on rocks echoed up from the shore. I suppose I have inherited that Irish sense of the fey, of portends, of the thin veil between the natural and supernatural worlds, but I can tell you that I felt very uneasy that night. The weight of something about to happen hung over me. I thought about Colleen and Brian Hannan. I worried about those two little boys whom I hadn’t seen for the whole day.
At last I gave myself permission to go to bed. Daniel was still coughing and tossing in his sleep so I elected to curl up with a rug on the couch again. I drifted off to sleep and was awoken by a loud bump. I was on my feet instantly, heart thumping. My first thought was that Daniel had fallen out of bed. I ran up the stairs and was relieved to see his shape still lying in the bed. Then, of course I wondered if the noise had been someone trying to break into the cottage. I lit a lamp, then went around cautiously from room to room, but everything seemed safe and secure. I was just about to go back to bed, because the night was cold and my bare feet were freezing, when I decided to check on Daniel once more.
The moment I stood over him I knew that something was wrong. His breath was coming in ragged, rasping gasps. I reached for his forehead and he was burning hot. Even as my hand touched him he threw out his arm, making it thump against the wall and he muttered unintelligible words. I ran downstairs to bring up a wet flannel to sponge his face. He knocked me away.
“Keep it away from me,” he moaned. “It’s coming closer.”
“It’s all right, my love,” I said. “You’re just having a bad dream.”
But even as I said it I knew it was more than that. He was hallucinating in his fever. I tried to lift up his head and give him a sip of water, but it was impossible. He fought off my touch. I began to feel frightened. This wasn’t just an ordinary fever such as one might have with a cold or a grippe. It was more serious than that. I felt horribly cut off and alone. I dressed hurriedly and ran across the grounds to the castle. The moon was out, throwing crazy tree shadows across the lawns like long bony fingers reaching out to grab me. I ran up the front steps and hammered on the door.
Nobody came.
I hammered again, louder this time, pounding with my fists. The house had electricity—was there no electric bell? I searched but couldn’t find one in the darkness of the porch. A window, I thought. There must be a window open somewhere. I started to walk around the castle, peering up at the walls in the moonlight. No window that I could see was open. Stark blank walls frowned down at me. I came to the side of the house with the French doors. I tried them, one by one, rattling each door with growing frustration. I reached the back of the house and the back door too was locked. It seemed I had only two options—one was to run all the way into town myself to try and find a doctor, the other was to break a window and wake someone to help me. I remembered how deserted the town had felt when we arrived that wet and windy night. How would I ever find help there?
So instead I went to the nearest flower bed, prized up one of the rocks that bordered it and, after a second’s hesitation, hurled it through a kitchen window. The crash of breaking glass should have been loud enough to wake the dead, but no lights came on upstairs. I punched out enough of the broken glass to reach through and undo the catch. Then I hauled myself inside.
The house was completely dark and still and I groped around the walls for a light switch, eventually locating one. I flipped it down and the room was instantly bathed in harsh light from a naked bulb overhead. I came out of the kitchen, wondering whom to wake. The family slept upstairs and I had no idea where the servants’ bedrooms were. Probably up in the attics. I couldn’t find a light anywhere in the passage and made my way along it by feel until I sensed, rather than saw, the vast emptiness of that front foyer. The telephone, I thought. The telephone must be somewhere around here. Moonlight made narrow stripes on the tiled floor as it came in through thin arched windows over the staircase. It did little to illuminate, rather added to the unreal atmosphere of the place.
Suddenly I couldn’t stand it any longer. There are times when decorum has to go out of the window. “Help!” I shouted. “Wake up! Somebody help me!”
My voice echoed as if in some vast church. For a moment nothing happened, then there was the sound of feet above me and an electric light was turned on in the corridor above.
“What’s going on?” a male voice asked.
“Down here!” I shouted.
Then Mrs. Flannery and Father Patrick appeared at the top of the staircase,