I kept wiggling my fingers and nodding toward it, desperately.
Mrs. S’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. “Fire!” she said abruptly. “There’s a fire right there!”
I nodded frantically.
She lowered the gun and started kicking her way clear of covers and pillows. She wore flannel pajamas, but grabbed at a blue robe in any case and hurried toward the door. “Come on, boy! There’s a fire!”
I struggled desperately to my feet and started hobbling out. She turned to look at me, apparently surprised that she was moving faster than I was. You could hear the fire now, and smoke had begun to thicken the air.
I pointed up at the ceiling and shouted, “The Willoughbys! Willoughbys!”
She looked up. “Lord God almighty!” She turned and hurried down the hall, coming within ten feet of a wall that was already becoming a sheet of flame. She grabbed at something, cursed, then pulled her robe down over her hand and picked up something, using the material as an oven mitt. She hurried over to me with a ring of keys. “Come on! The front door’s already going up! Out the back!”
We both hurried out the back door of the house and into its minuscule little yard, and I saw at once that the entire front side of the house was aflame.
The stairs up to the Willoughbys’ place were already on fire.
I turned to her and shouted, “Ladder! Where’s the ladder? I need to use the ladder!”
“No!” she shouted back. “You need to use the ladder!”
Good grief.
“Okay!” I shouted back, and gave her a thumbs-up.
She hustled back to the little storage shed in the backyard. She picked a key and unlocked it. I swung the door open and seized the metal extending ladder I used to put up and take down Christmas lights every year. I ditched my crutch and used the ladder itself to take some of the weight. I went as fast as I could, but it seemed to take forever to position the ladder under the Willoughbys’ bedroom windows.
Mrs. Spunkelcrief handed me a loose brick from a little flower planter’s wall and said, “Here. I can’t climb this thing. My hip.”
I took the brick and dropped it in my duster pocket. Then I started humping myself up the ladder, taking a grip with both hands, then hopping up with a painful little jump. Repeat, each time growing more painful, more difficult. I clenched my teeth over the screams.
And then there was a window in front of me.
I got the brick out of my pocket, hauled off, and shattered the window.
Black smoke bellowed out, catching me on the inhale. I started coughing viciously, my voice strangled as I tried to shout, “Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby! Fire! You’ve got to get out! Fire! Come to the window and down the ladder!”
I heard two people coughing and choking. They were trying to say, “Help!”
Something, maybe the little propane tank on Mrs. Spunkelcrief’s grill, exploded with a noise like a dinosaur-sized watermelon hitting the ground. The concussion knocked Mrs. S down—and kicked the bottom of the ladder out from under me.
I fell. It was a horrible, helpless feeling, my body twisting uselessly as I tried to land well—but I’d had no warning at all, and it was a futile attempt. The small of my back hit the brick planter, and I achieved a new personal best for pain.
“Oh, God in Heaven,” Mrs. Spunkelcrief said. She knelt beside me. “Harry?”
Somewhere, sirens had begun to wail. They wouldn’t get there in time for the Willoughbys.
“Trapped,” I choked out, as soon as I was able to breathe again. “They’re up there, calling for help.”
The fire roared louder and grew brighter.
Mrs. S stared up at the window. She grabbed the ladder and wrestled it all the way back up into position, though the effort left her panting. Then she tried to put a foot up on the first step. She grasped the ladder, began to shift her weight—and groaned as her leg buckled and she fell to the ground.
She screamed, agony in her quavering voice. “Oh, God in Heaven, help us!”
A young black man in a dark, knee-length coat hurdled the hedges at the back of the yard and bounded onto the ladder. He was built like a professional lineman, moved more quickly than a linebacker, and started up the ladder like it was a broad staircase. The planet’s only Knight of the Cross flashed me a quick grin on the way up. “Dresden!”