Beth booked the trip and only revealed the surprise when it was all paid for. That way all her mom had to do was enjoy it, not worry about how to pay for it. She drove them hundreds of miles north to MacIntyre Hall. She paid for the tickets, bought the guidebook, tried to learn a bit about the MacIntyres as they walked around, tried not to think how frail her mom looked.
“Move back, mom,” she said, crossing the room once again. “I’m going to look out there.”
“Wait,” Janet began but it was too late. Beth turned the handle and as the door opened a wall of flame blew inward, engulfing the pair of them.
Beth felt no pain. She always remembered that afterward. Her lungs should have filled with acrid black smoke as the roaring fire surrounded her but she was left strangely untouched by it. Not even a hint of heat. No sensation at all.
The flames licked past her, swallowing up the centuries old bedframe, running straight up the dark wood panels on the wall, racing across the ceiling but still shying away from her as if afraid to touch her.
She looked back, groping for her mother’s outstretched hand, seeing it for the briefest of moments before it vanished from sight in the thick black smoke. “Mom,” she cried out but there was no answer beyond the roar of the flames.
She couldn’t move. She was too scared. Then there was a blast of wind from behind her. Had Mom somehow managed to get the window open after all?
The wind grew stronger and yet it had no effect on the flames or the smoke. All it did was push her forward through the inferno to the corridor outside the laird’s bedroom.
She was buffeted across the floor, her feet sliding just above the melting carpet. Around her the flames moved aside as if directed by an unseen force. She called out as she was propelled forward. “This way, Mom. Follow me.”
She groped behind her and managed to catch hold of something. She tried to look back but the wind grew stronger, a hurricane blast that sent her hurtling along the corridor to the door at the end which swung open as she approached.
She burst into the open, falling to the ground, coughing and spluttering, fighting to get fresh air into her lungs as the smoke swirled like a tornado around her.
The gale died away as quickly as it had come, leaving her in a daze. She looked back at the burning hall, little more now than a wall of flames. The few parts still standing were crumbling before her eyes.
There would be nothing left when it was over, just a piece of scorched earth to show where Andrew MacIntyre was born.
She was still holding something. She looked at her hand. Her fingers were wrapped around a length of wood, the end on fire. How had she got hold of that? She dropped it to the ground and looked around for her mother.
She felt completely disorientated. She glanced around her, taking less than a second to work out something was very wrong. There were no familiar landmarks around her. She thought she’d come back out the way they’d gone in but she must have got confused. There was no parking lot next to her, no gift shop, no tourists anywhere to be seen other than a couple over by the woods who appeared to be arguing about something. Between them and her were only but green fields divided into strips, the stalks of wheat rippling as if in a light breeze, completely unaffected by the hurricane that had just blown her off her feet.
Beyond the fields and trees jagged mountains rose toward the sky, their peaks covered with snow.
Where was her mother?
“Mom,” she screamed, running toward the hall. “Mom!”
The intense heat stopped her, pushing her back. Shielding her face, she screamed again. “Mom!”
There was a thundering sound behind her and she turned in time to see men on horseback racing her way across the fields.
They were wearing perfect medieval costume. Tartan baldric over one shoulder in the bright red MacIntyre colors, brown or green hose covering their legs, swords that swung back and forth from each baldric as they slowed their horses.
One of the men was clearly in charge of the others. He leapt down and, ignoring her, directed his men, talking in a Scottish accent so broad she couldn’t understand a word he was saying.
All of a sudden he ran straight into the flames. Beth only caught a glimpse of his stern face before he vanished.
He hadn’t hesitated for a second, just sprinted into the inferno. Seconds later he came back out, an unconscious woman in his arms. Other tartan clad men followed him, darting into what was left of the hall. How were they not catching alight?
Beth had no idea how they were doing it. She tried twice to get in there but each time her skin began to singe and her body refused to let her get any closer. She could only watch as more people were dragged out, coughing and spluttering as they came, the remains of their clothes smoking.
She tried shouting again. “Mom, where are you?”
To her left people were throwing buckets of water onto the flames but she knew there was nothing anyone could do to save the place. Where were the fire engines? The hoses? The men in helmets and oxygen masks?
The building was gone. All that history, hundreds and hundreds of years, gone in moments. The stone vaulting had done nothing to protect it. Why not? It should have acted as a firebreak. Something had gone very wrong.
She kicked herself for even caring about that when her mother was still missing.
There was a noise to her right and she looked that way. Some men were running away from the hall toward an untidy row of thatched cottages. She frowned as she looked at them. Their tartan was blue, markedly different to the men who’d first appeared on horseback. Each of the blue group held a flaming torch much like the one on the grass beside her.
