Chapter 7 - The Balcony Edge
The smoke is so dense that Brennan cannot see the high ceiling of the foyer.
Coughing uncontrollably, he pulls his wet wool collar over his nose and mouth.
He looks for Elliot, but the boy has already slipped out through the broken kitchen terrace.
The stairs are completely impassable, a towering pyramid of raging yellow flames.
The wooden balusters are snapping like dry twigs under the extreme heat.
The heat radiates against Brennan’s skin, blistering his forehead and forearms.
“Sarah!” he screams upward into the swirling vortex of black soot.
From the second-floor gallery, high above the blaze, Sarah’s voice answers in sheer panic.
“Brennan! The hallway is full of smoke! I can’t reach the stairs!”
“Go to the bedroom balcony! Do not open the hallway door!”
Brennan knows the back service stairs behind the pantry are narrow and hidden by brick.
Clara had used them years ago when carrying laundry up from the lower cellar.
He dives through the burning archway into the dining room, shielding his face from falling embers.
A heavy curtain rod crashes to the floor behind him, sending a shower of red sparks flying.
The wallpaper is peeling in sheets, revealing the ancient lath and plaster underneath.
Brennan reaches the service door, turns the brass handle, and kicks it inward.
This corridor is filled with gray haze, but the fire has not reached the stairs yet.
He scrambles up the steep, narrow wooden steps on all fours, gasping for breathable air.
His lungs feel as though they are filled with boiling water and crushed glass.
He bursts through the upper landing door onto the second-floor master wing.
The heat here is rising fast; the floorboards under his bare feet are burning hot.
He sprints toward the master bedroom at the far end of the long hall.
The door is shut tight, smoke curling out from around its edges like white snakes.
He throws the door open and slams it shut behind him to keep the draft from feeding the fire.
Sarah stands outside on the small stone balcony, clutching June beneath her heavy winter coat.
The freezing sleet hits Brennan’s face like tiny needles as he steps out into the open air.
Below them, the stone terrace is twenty-five feet down, slick with ice and freezing water.
There is no soft ground beneath the balcony, only the jagged flagstones of the patio.
June is screaming hoarsely, her tiny face flushed bright red from heat and fear.
“The fire is coming through the floorboards under the bed!” Sarah cries, shaking violently.
Brennan looks down over the stone balustrade into the freezing darkness of the backyard.
Through the swirling sheets of rain and smoke, he sees a lone figure standing by the garden gate.
Elliot is looking up at them from the shadow of the dead wisteria vines.
He has his hands buried deep inside Clara’s trench coat pockets.
He does not look angry, triumphant, or afraid of what he has just done.
He simply watches, waiting for them to make their fatal choice.
The master bedroom behind them groans as the floor near the wardrobe collapses inward.
A blinding column of fire erupts through the doorway, licking the glass of the French doors.
The glass shatters outward onto the balcony with a deafening, violent crash.
Shards of hot glass scatter across Sarah’s boots and the hem of her damp coat.
“We can’t jump, Brennan!” Sarah screams, stepping back against the low stone railing.
“It’s too high! June won't survive the fall!”
Brennan looks at the thick iron drainpipe running along the corner of the brick chimney.
It is slick with freezing rain, rusted at the brackets, but anchored to the masonry.
“I’m going down first, Sarah,” Brennan says, his voice dead, steady, and stripped of fear.
“You drop June to me from the halfway ledge, then I will catch you.”
Sarah stares at the precarious descent into the dark, her lips trembling with horror.
“Brennan, you can’t hold the pipe, it’s covered in ice!”
“We don’t have another choice, Sarah!” Brennan yells, pointing at the burning bedroom behind them.
The ceiling of the bedroom caves in with a deafening roar, sending a firestorm into the sky.
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The heat blows Sarah’s hair forward across her face like a sheet of silk.
Brennan swings his legs over the stone balustrade into the freezing void below.
