She rushed through into the back garden, steeling herself for the sight of the damage she would see and praying she would not find herself searching for bodies amid charred rubble. To her consternation, though, nothing appeared to have been damaged. She could not smell smoke or charred wood, but only the fragrance of rain-washed grass under moonlight. The house was completely dark, but it was clear it had not burned. “Thank god,” she whispered, wondering just which god she might be thanking.
She ran to the kitchen door and peered through the little window. She couldn’t see anything but long patches of moonlight on the floor inside, but she did catch a whiff of kerosene. Apparently, the papers in the room below had not yet been ignited, so maybe she wasn’t too late, after all. She tried the door, but found it locked, and wished the mysterious figure with keys on its belt had stayed a few moments longer.
As she looked around for something with which to smash the window, she saw movement inside the kitchen. A figure ran into the center of the room and stopped beside the work table, looking around before crouching down quickly into the darkness. Cally tried to peer into the moonlit dimness, but the figure’s face was turned away from her. She could not make out who it was, and she had a sudden sick, dizzy feeling she did not want to know who it was. Beyond the kitchen, she heard the cellar door bang open and saw Foster’s face appear in the windows of the swinging doors. She watched it withdraw, and heard his muffled voice shouting “Where the hell are you?” The person beside the work table rose to their feet, putting its wrists to its mouth. Cally instinctively averted her eyes, then, and crouched backward into the shrubbery next to the kitchen door, because now she understood who it was, standing there in the dark kitchen, and she knew what was going to happen next.
She squeezed her eyes shut as someone burst out from the kitchen door, slamming it loudly as they went, and she heard them turn the corner of the house to run down the hill to the pond. She shrank further back into the shrubbery when Foster emerged from the kitchen shortly after. She watched him stand peering into the darkness, turning his head from side to side and muttering profanity. When he made up his mind and turned back toward the house, Cally wrapped her arms around herself to keep from sobbing out loud. She knew she would soon hear herself scream for help from the direction of the pond, and then Foster would run away from there, down the hill himself. The shout came, and Foster headed off into the darkness muttering “When I get my hands on your skinny little neck...”
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Then she tried to stand up, but she could only crouch there against the wall behind the rhododendrons, sobbing softly until a pair of bare brown feet entered her field of vision. She followed denim-clad legs up to a gnarled black face with eyes glittering above a white cloud of beard. “Come now,” said Rum. “It’s not that bad. You’re doing fine. Even though you don’t follow instructions very well.” He reached down and put a knobby hand on her arm, gently urging her to stand.
Cally rose to her feet, and Rum reached up and brushed mulch off her clothes with his long, brown fingers. “You’ve got your two extra minutes, now. Use them wisely, while I go and get the cavalry, ‘kay?” She could only nod down at him, but she did stop crying. “Come on,” he said, “You’ve got this!” Then he shambled off toward Katarina and Ignacio’s cottage. The light was not on, this time, in their cottage window; the electricity being out was the only thing that was different this time. That and the other thing Cally did not want to think about.
“I so do not have this,” she said to Rum’s retreating form, but she stepped out from behind the shrubbery and went into the kitchen anyway, making sure to leave the door open behind her. “That should save Ignacio an extra half minute or so, too,” she thought, daring to hope maybe she was clever enough, after all, to know what to do now.
The back hall was pitch dark, but this time Cally knew the way. She felt along the wall until she found the open cellar doorway, and groped for the thin railing on the right. She knew Foster would still be rummaging around in the Pirate Ship, at this point, so she did not hurry as she felt her way carefully to the bottom in the dark. By the time she reached the bottom, her eyes had adjusted to the darkness enough that she could see a thin line of light coming from under the door to Sofie’s room.
The room reeked of kerosene when Cally pushed open the door, where someone inside was holding a flashlight. The light flickered weakly as someone sobbed softly. Cally called out, “It’s okay, Nell, it’s me. I’m coming!”