Chapter 4 - THE SIEGE OF CHARLESTON ESTATEBy the time I reached the top of the wooden pine steps, the heavy iron cellar door slammed shut with a deafening boom.
CLANG!
The heavy brass bolt slid into place from the outside.
"Mother! Open this door!" I slammed my shoulder against the heavy oak and iron frame, but the historic door was reinforced with three-inch steel plates designed to withstand hurricanes.
From the other side of the door, Eleanor’s voice came through muffled and cold.
"I gave you every chance to be a loyal son, David," she said smoothly. "You could have had the estate. You could have married a respectable girl from the club. But you chose them. Now you can stay down there with your dead father while I burn the evidence."
The smell of smoke suddenly drifted beneath the cracks of the door.
My blood ran cold.
She was setting fire to the house.
"David!" Emily called out as she and my father reached the top of the stairs. "Is she locking us in?!"
"She’s burning the house down!" I yelled, kicking the iron door with all my strength, but the frame didn't budge an inch.
"David, listen to me!" Julian said, grabbing my arm. "There’s a secondary ventilation shaft at the far end of the tunnel! It opens into the old carriage house in the backyard! I dug through the brick lining five years ago!"
"Can Emily fit through it?" I asked, looking at her pregnant frame.
"It’s narrow, but it’s open!" Julian urged. "Follow me!"
We turned and sprinted back down the stone passage, the smell of burning wood and old gasoline growing thicker behind us as Eleanor’s fire took hold in the main living room upstairs.
We reached the back chamber. High up on the wall was a circular brick opening covered by rusty iron bars that Julian had pried loose over years of solitary captivity.
I cupped my hands together. "Emily, step on my shoulders! Get out first!"
"David, no! You come with me!" she cried.
"I’m right behind you! Go!" I shouted.
I hoisted Emily up toward the shaft. She grabbed the brick edge, squeezed her slender body through the opening, and tumbled out onto the damp grass of the carriage house garden.
Next, I helped my father, lifting his frail body until he could crawl through the opening into the fresh night air.
Just as I pulled myself up into the narrow shaft, a massive explosion rocked the tunnel beneath us as Eleanor’s fire hit the gas line in the main kitchen upstairs.
Flames roared through the subterranean corridor behind me, but I threw my body forward, bursting out into the cool Charleston air, tumbling onto the lawn right beside Emily and my father.
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Across the courtyard, the grand main mansion was engulfed in towering sheets of orange fire, black smoke billowing into the midnight sky.
And standing on the front porch, watching the house burn with a terrifying smile on her face, was Eleanor.
