Moorland Hall (FIRST DRAFT)

from 7 November 2010: Burning Beds

Weeks passed by, one day at a time. Spring came for real, golden dandelions starting to peek through the soil. Easter came and passed, and still, Mr. Harrington was in residence without any signs of leaving, even though Mrs. Deacon reminded her that if he went, he was likely to do so without prior warning.

Julia continued to explore the grounds for spring signs together with Odelia and there were plenty of places to explore. One that they never ventured into, however, was the coach house. Mrs. Deacon had explained that the upstairs of the coach house had been converted to an apartment, in which some sort of artist lived, because the light was so good, or something like that. The artist was in fact a woman, Mary Nearsby, and was also drafted in on occasion to help with things around the house that needed sorting. Mostly, she kept to herself and the alleged sculptures she made, and she had once startled Odelia by giving up rather a strange laugh. They preferred staying away and leaving her to herself. Occasionally, she would be seen through a window, but she rarely seemed to leave her apartment.

Evenings were mostly spent in the library together with Mr. Harrington, who was a keen chess player, and as that was one of Julia’s favourite games, she enjoyed playing it with him. It seemed to relax him, and even though his moods seemed to shift, for the most part, he was nice and actually quite charming.

Late one night in early April, Julia had only just fallen asleep, but slept restless, moon shining in through a slit in between the curtains. It felt as if she had only just drifted off when she was awoken by a noise at the door. This time, it was more of a scraping kind of noise rather than the pitter patter of tiny feet. Opening the door, she found the dog outside, padding around restlessly. Sometimes he preferred sleeping outside his master’s bedroom door, and this seemed to be one of those nights.

‘Oh, go to sleep, Pilot.’

The dog looked up at her with big, black eyes, accepted a quick stroke and padded off down the corridor. Smiling, Julia closed the door and went back to bed, but sleep still wouldn’t embrace her. A strange laugh could be heard, the kind that would have spooked Odelia, but why would it be heard in the house? Surely Mary Nearsby didn’t have a key? The sound went away as soon as it had come, and she figured it was just a figment of her imagination, caused by tiredness and lack of sleep.

Tossing and turning in bed for another few minutes, she heard a noise outside the door again, and this time she decided it was not an aural hallucination. Oh, couldn’t the dog just be kept in the kitchen or be let in the room and settle down?

‘Oh, go to bed---!’

The corridor lay empty – there was no dog whining at her. The only difference was a small box on the floor a few doors down that she didn’t remember having been there before. Julia went to pick it up to see what it was. It was a matchbox, and as she picked it up, she realised one of the doors were open, and lights flickered inside the room. Lights … no, not lights, flames!

Julia ran into the room where a shape was asleep fully clothed on the bed, oblivious to the danger he was in, curtains of the four poster bed ablaze.

‘Mr. Harrington, wake up!’

The curtains were too heavy for her to shift, so she shook him in a bid to get him to wake up, but he was slow to wake up. A vase with fresh flowers on the side was removed of its floral contents, rose thorns stinging her hands but she ignored them and threw the water on the curtains, but the water just fizzled and the fire refused to go out.

‘Oh for heaven’s sake, wake up!’

She shook him again, this time, he finally opened his eyes.

‘What’s going on?’

Moments later, he was on his feet, pulling the curtains down, stamping on them with Julia’s help until they were all put out. He lit a bedside lamp and opened a window to let the smoke out.