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She prayed silently and fervently

Directly overhead, the ceiling groaned and appeared to shift For a few seconds she held her breath, clenched her teeth, and stood with her hands fisted at her sides, waiting to be buried in rubble But then she saw that the ceiling wasn’t going to collapse-- not yet

Tre softly, she scurried to the nearest of the four high-set s, It was rectangular, approxihteen inches from sash to sash, much too small to provide her with a means of escape The other three ere identical to the first; there was no use even taking a closer look at the less breathable by the second Laura’s sinuses ached and burned Her mouth was filled with the revulsive, bitter taste of the s she stood beneath the , staring up in frustration and confusion at the h the dirty pane and through the haze of slass She had the feeling she was overlooking an obvious and convenient escape hatch; in fact she was sure of it There was a way out, and it had nothing to do with the s, but she couldn’t get her mind off the s; she was fixated on the flao The pain in her head and behind her eyes throbbedpulsation, her thoughts beca to die here

A frightening vision flashed through her mind She saw herself afire, her dark hair turned blond by the flaht up on her head as if it were not hair but the wick of a candle In the vision, she saw her face , the features flowing together until her face no longer rese, until it was the hideously twisted countenance of a leering demon with empty eye sockets

No!

She shook her head, dispelling the vision

She was dizzy and getting dizzier She needed a draught of clean air to rinse out her polluted lungs, but with each breath she drew more smoke than she had drawn last ti began; the noise was even louder than her heartbeat, which drummed thunderously in her ears

She turned in a circle, gagging and coughing, searching for the source of the haling hard to think

The ha stopped

‘‘Laura

Above the incessant roar of the tire, she heard so her name

"Laura

"I’m down herein the cellar!" she shouted But the shout ca more than a whispered croak Her throat was constricted and already raw from the harsh smoke and the fiercely hot air

The effort required to stay on her feet becareat for her She sank to her knees on the stone floor, slu on her side

"Laura"

The pounding began again A fist beating on a door

Laura discovered that the air at floor level was cleaner than that which she had been breathing She gasped frantically, grateful for this reprieve fro pain behind her eyes abated, and her thoughts cleared, and she remembered the outside entrance to the cellar, a pair of doors slant-set against the north wall of the house They were locked froet in to rescue her, in the panic and confusion she had forgotten about those doors But now, if she kept her wits about her, she would be able to save herself

"Laura!" It was Aunt Rachael’s voice

Laura crawled to the northwest corner of the rooht of steps She kept her head low, breathing the tainted but adequate air near the floor The edges of the mortared stones tore her dress and scraped skin off her knees

To her left, the entire stairas burning now, and fla Refracted and diffused by the s the illusion that she was crawling through a narrow tunnel of fla, the illusion would soon be fact

Her eyes were swollen and watery, and she wiped at them as she inched toward escape She couldn’t see very much She used Aunt Rachael’s voice as a beacon and otherwise relied on instinct

"Laura!" The voice was near Right above her

She felt along the wall until she located the setback in the stone She moved into that recess, onto the first step, lifted her head, but could see nothing: the darkness here was seamless

"Laura, answer me Baby, are you in there?"

Rachael was hysterical, screa on the outside doors with such persistence that she wouldn’t have heard a response even if Laura had been capable ofone

Where was Ma on the door, too? Didn’t Mahtless space, Laura reached up and put her hand against one of the two slant-set doors above her bead The sturdy barrier quivered and rattled under the iroped blindly for the latch She put her hand over the war else, too So that squirmed and was alive Small but alive She jerked convulsively and pulled her hand away But the thing she touched had shifted its grip from the latch to her flesh, and it came away from the door when she withdrew her hand It skittered out of her pal her wrist and under the sleeve of her dress before she could brush it away

A spider

She couldn’t see it, but she knehat it was A spider One of the really big ones, as large as her thulistened like a fat drop of oil, inky black and ugly For a moment she froze, unable even to draw a breath

She felt the spiderup her arm, and its bold advance snapped her into action She slapped at it through the sleeve of her dress, but she missed The spider bit her above the crook of her ar creature scurried into her arh she was living through her worst night else on earth--certainly more than she feared fire, for in her desperate atteotten all about the burning house that was dissolving into ruin above her-- and she flailed in panic, lost her balance, rolled backwards off the steps, into theone hip on the stone floor The spider tickled its way along the inside of her bodice until it was

between her breasts She screamed but could make no sound whatsoever She put a hand to her bosoh the fabric she could feel the spider squirainst the palle even more directly on her bare breast, to which it was pressed, but she persisted until at last she crushed it, and she gagged again, but this time not merely because of the smoke