Smoke.
Curling up through tiny gaps where the floor met the outside wall. Rising invisibly between the floorboards.
Swann had finally made good on his promise, made all those days ago.
Next time we bring petrol and matches.
The carbon monoxide filling this room was also flammable.
I realize something else with a sick jolt of panic. By the time the fire brigade are called, even if they get here in time, if they break down the front door, put out the flames, search the house, it won’t matter.
Because they’ll never find us in here.
They’ll never find the room in time.
This is going to be our tomb.
Our children, orphans.
Unless I can save us both.
I haul myself to my feet, staggering with dizziness, feeling my way to where I think the door must be. Lift the lock and push.
Nothing.
It doesn’t even move a millimeter.
I take a step back and throw myself against it once, twice, pain exploding in my shoulder as I smash against the frame. But it is utterly solid. The old desk pushed up against it, perhaps other heavy furniture too. I feel around on the floor for anything that I can use as a lever or a battering ram, anything to give me purchase on the door.
A jagged pain pierces my hand as a piece of the broken bulb presses into the heel of my palm.
The sting is sharp as I pull out the fragment of glass and it prompts a flare of memory, trying to break the surface of my clouded brain. What is it?Broken glass. But not the only thing broken in this place. The first day we moved in, the day I found the door, the room, the first time I saw the dresser. I was going to break it open, rather than waste time looking for a key. Snapped the blade of that old chisel right off—
The armchair.
Underthe armchair.
I reach out in the dark, feeling my way with a shaky hand through the dust and cobwebs, the old carpet rough beneath my palm.
There.
The tools.
The tools I’d brought up on the first day are still here, where I’d kicked them under the armchair and forgotten about them. The screwdriver. The old chisel with its broken blade. And—please be there—my fingers close around the smooth heavy steel of thecrowbar. A foot long, with its distinctive hook shape and flattened ends.
I climb to my feet, feeling my way in the dark, reaching out toward the wall. Tearing down the rug nailed against it, bloody fingertips groping for the bare brick, finding the distance as more smoke doubles me over with coughing.
With all the strength I have left, I start to batter the wall with the sharp end of the crowbar, wielding it with both hands like a spear in the hope that I can gouge a way through. Looking for a single weakness, a single piece of loose mortar, just one gap to drive the hard steel into the wall as chips of brick are hurled back into my face. Battering and smashing until I feel something start to give—
—hitting it harder, focusing all my anger and fear on that one point until I can pry a single brick loose with bleeding fingers, smashing the crowbar into those around it, breaking another, pulling a third free in a cloud of choking dust. Throwing all my weight against the gap and the wood behind, a shout of pure rage bursting from me as I charge against the gap, agony blooming again in my shoulder, but I can barely feel it, smashing again with the heavy crowbar, levering more bricks out, the steel making a new noise now, a resonating thud of metal against wood.
I smash the blade into it again, feeling the last of my strength start to leave me, acrid smoke from below filling my lungs, the pain in my head as if it’s going to burst, swinging the tool hard against wood with everything I have left. Again, and again, and again.
A splintering of wood, a cracking, and then—
Light.
72
