Free Long Goodbyes by Scott Hunter Page A

There was nothing else to be done. I placed my trembling hand on the doorknob and, pushing it cautiously open, made my feet carry me forwards. I was greeted by dim candlelight, and encouraged by this small beacon of hope, I stepped fully into the room.
    My hand shot to my mouth to stifle a scream.  
    I had returned to the original bed chamber. Impossible, but the evidence was before me. There was the bed, the dresser, the bowl of fruit. The candle holder.
    Behind me, the door closed with a heavy clunk .
    I wrung my hands, close to despair.  
    I went to the small window and wiped it with the corner of my night dress. I could see very little, the view being obstructed by the irregular crenellations of the roof. The moon had vanished into thick cloud and I could make out very little in the heavy murk except a line of wind-bent trees, their darker silhouettes following the edge of the estate like a ragged palisade. It was as if the house were clothed in its own darkness. I felt panic rising in my breast and took a deep breath to calm myself.  
    Think , I said aloud. Think .
    And then I heard footfalls upon the staircase.
    The dread sound grew closer and closer until I heard the creak of the final step. The handle click-clacked as if brushed by bony fingers and I froze, rooted to the spot in terror.
    The window.
    I lifted a small stool and threw it against the glass. It bounced back and I picked it up again. With a strength born of desperation I battered it against the window frame. Glass shattered and the frame fell away into the darkness. A gust of wind blew into the bedchamber and extinguished the candle. My hands scrabbled for a hold and I felt a sharp pain as a jagged piece of glass cut into my fingers.  
    Behind me, I heard the door close with a sharp report, as though slammed in anger.
    And then, I do not know how, I found myself outside, clinging to the dormer projection of the attic room like a mountaineer who had lost her rope. Below me the roof fell sharply away. A tendril of icy cold egressed from the chamber and crept down my spine as I hung, half-suspended in space. My teeth were chattering uncontrollably and my tongue was dry, cleaving to the roof of my mouth as I looked down into nothingness.
    I felt again the cold, possessive touch upon my flesh and then I was falling, sliding down the sheer angles of the roof, limbs flailing, my mouth open in a silent scream.
    When I came to myself I was lying half in and half out of a wild laurel, the thickness of which had broken my fall. I was dazed, disoriented. I tried to stand but my legs would not support me and I fell onto the gravelled area where once the carriages would have deposited the lords and ladies attending Sir William’s various balls and entertainments. My inability to walk did not deter me from wishing to put distance between myself and that cursed place; I began a slow and painful crawl towards the gateposts. As the gate loomed I felt a strong sense that my progress was being observed, and I raised my head a little to find that indistinct shapes had begun to form in a rough semicircle by the gates. Children, many children, clad in the rags of poverty, had silently congregated, summoned perhaps by that same malevolent presence whose attentions I had avoided only by the slightest margin. One stood apart, a red-haired lad of ten or eleven years, and raised an accusing finger. I had seen him before, I remembered, sitting on the village bench.  
    I watched, transfixed as the first rays of dawn issued above the treetops and fell upon them one by one, dispersing their shades as a fine mist must concede to the inevitability of God’s ordained cycle of darkness and light.  
    As day broke I must have lost consciousness once again for the next thing I clearly remember is coming to in a carriage as it jolted along the lane to the doctor’s house. I heard the reassuring sound of male voices and knew that I was safe. I heard later that I was found several hundred