I glanced at Daddy. He was fading fast, slipping between states.
I saw the door behind my sister, open, and from there just a few steps to the front door, then the outside.
I remembered what she had said to me earlier that evening. I remembered my promise.
In a single, smooth motion Cathy flung both bucket and torch into the air on a trajectory towards Mr Price.
As flame and oil converged at the height of their arc I slipped through the open door and threw myself out of the house into the cool evening air. Fire erupted behind me. I could hear it and feel it. I could see its luminous contours on the damp grass at my feet.
I ran. I ran and I ran. I ran through the night and noted nothing that I saw. Not the pools of water lying about the land, nor the dark storm clouds in the sky, nor the droplets of rain shooting sharp and fast, spitting at me then dripping down my face.
I ran as quickly as I could, as quickly as I had ever run before, through this landscape that I knew but did not in this moment see. I might have run for hours. I ran until I fell.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Smoke moved over the water. The shadows were long, thin teeth, and light curled around the trees, between trunks and crooked, clad branches. It made parchment of the leaves. It made dust of the morning dew. The water below shone brighter than the sky above and it illuminated the smoke from beneath like a vivid moon behind papyrus clouds.
There was murky water on my tongue. It flowed into my cheeks and out again and the taste of wet then drying earth lingered with each flushed mouthful. The pool padded against the left side of my face and entered my nostrils and eased down my throat. I sipped on dirt and tasted iron blood.
The fire had been built of many parts. It had been built of gas and light and sparks, of flames and ripples and currents. It had devoured damp air and sapless wood and engulfed a small pocket of the cool night. I had run a long way. I had stopped here and settled. I had stooped for water, any water I could find, and raised it to my lips with two cupped hands, trembling, and I had lain my head on the shore for a while, just for a while, and I had slept, it seems, and woken, before I had noted the place.
I could still smell the fire though I was far away. Resin from the burnt embers stuck at the back of my throat, from the rafters of the roof and the ash floorboards. And the sight of it, too, was stuck somewhere at the back of my head, behind my eyes, the sight of those curling, forked tongues licking familiar figures. And the sound of it still thick in my ears: a hiss, a groan, a beat, as beams bent and broke. My skull was full.
The smoke was mist, not smoke at all. It rose from the reservoir in the morning calor. The reservoir was five miles from the copse, perhaps nearer on a direct path, over hedges, ditches and planted fields. That was the route I had taken, I think. My course had been as straight as a train track. I had not swayed from side to side one bit, I think, though my steps had undulated as I had jumped over banks then down to the boggy parts to trudge through acrid organic tar, the aggregate sludge of every autumn rotting. Either the night had been caught with haze or it had been my memory that had reduced solid shapes to spectres. All was unknown, I recall, though I had trodden those tracks many times before. But the levels look different after dark, and the world is distinct for each individual, and I had been made new as I had walked and I had seen the land like it had been new too.
I must have slept again: my eyes were shut. I must have slept without stirring despite the brightening horizon. I slept until I felt another wetness on my cheeks. Damp bristles moved over my brow and caught on my eyelids. A new smell met the igneous residue. A musk. And lips. These were lips. Coarse, meaty, jagged lips, but kind, somehow inviting. And teeth that knocked at my scalp as the lips drew in lumps of my hair. And a tongue – long, viscous – moved down to my neck and wrapped itself around my jaw.
I opened my eyes. The head of a horse. Two large brown eyes, like snooker balls, rolled to scan my face, then the world around, then my face. The horse snorted and tossed her sooty forelock. The sun was full in the sky now, though not high, and as the horse swayed, her head moved in front of it, making a dark silhouette of her otherwise rusty fur, and a stilted halo around her otherwise silky mane.
‘Who are you?’
It was a question to the horse. In my state of half dream, it was a necessary question.
The horse continued to ruffle my hair. Her rider answered, ‘It’s Vivien, Daniel. It’s Vivien.’
If relief were a thing it was possible to feel when the full gush of dread was still swilling within, casked and stoppered, then I might have felt relief. But as it was, the sight of this friend, without much reason, put fear to boil. She did not dismount.
‘There’s been a fire,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘A fire at your house.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I was there. I ran away.’
‘I had hoped …’
‘How did you find me?’
‘I’ve been riding for two hours,’ she replied. ‘You look ill.’
‘Not ill,’ I said.
Vivien rearranged the reins in her gloved hands. The horse stepped to one side and planted four hooves such that she stood side on, and Vivien turned too to look upon me. I raised myself up out of the dirt with the palms of my hands, then stood up.
‘Have you found anyone else?’ I knew that nobody had made it out, save for me.
‘I saw a figure.’
‘Who?’
‘I saw the fire last night, all the way from my house. At first I thought it was a bonfire and wondered why I hadn’t been told so that I could come up. And then I saw that it was too big. Far too big to be a bonfire. And I put on my coat and left the house and began to walk up the track. The wind was blowing in my face, so the smoke was too. Directly at me. For a while I stopped being able to see the flames, the smoke was so thick. But then I got closer, as close as I could get against heat, and saw your house. It was on fire. And I saw you, what I thought to be you, rushing down the hill away from me, running as fast as you could. I would have followed but, somehow, I couldn’t. I remained. I watched the blaze, I watched as the house fell apart. I thought I saw figures inside, but I couldn’t be sure. I couldn’t see well enough. I think the smoke had scorched my eyes, I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s possible. And when it was almost over, such a long time later, I thought I saw a figure emerge. But it couldn’t have been. But I thought I saw a thin figure emerge. As the dawn was coming up.’
‘Who?’
‘I couldn’t say,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if it was real.’
‘Could it have been my sister?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t really know what I saw. I just had the image, and now just the memory of the image.’
‘But it could have been.’
‘Possibly.’ She peered down at me but I could not seem to hold her gaze. I looked out towards the reservoir.
‘Why did I run?’ I asked.
‘Running was the only thing to do.’