Elyse – Chapter 1
The blaze could be seen for some miles as it lit up the night sky; the dense, black smoke spiralling upwards towards the half-moon. Certainly, it was seen from Elmsley but those that were witnessing the fire pretended that it was none of their business and pulled their shutters closed against the atrocity. The screams coming from the small cottage in the distance were carried away on the wind, so nobody needed to feel guilty about those who were perishing in the flames. Galfrid Marsh, his wife Maree and their four children were dying in the fire, locked into their home by wooden shafts hammered across the doors and windows by five men, before they set light to it. Galfrid and Maree had been beaten within an inch of their lives then left on the kitchen floor, their children terrified, hiding in the rooms above. The men knew they were all in the cottage as they calmly went about their business of murder. This time, all of the Shetcliffes would be destroyed. This time, they would all be dealt with and that would be the end of it.
The cottage was an inferno by the time Alfred, Maree’s brother, returned there from his nightly foraging for rabbits in the nearby woods. He screamed as he approached it, knowing his entire family were inside and tore at the wooden shafts nailed across the front door, his hands burning as he ripped them from the frame. Alfred then ran inside, choking and stumbling through the thick, black smoke. He could barely see in the darkness and almost fell over one of the children as she came staggering towards him in the gloom, her eyes half-closed and streaming from the smouldering heat, her lungs bursting with the suffocating, smoke-filled air. Alfred picked up the girl and ran outside, laying her on the cold grass, then he turned to go back inside the cottage. A huge snapping sound suddenly roared out as the entire roof collapsed into the fire below it and the whole building became engulfed in a tower of flames. Alfred screamed again and held his arms across his face to protect it from the heat, still intending to return to the fire and look for more of his family. Then the horrifying realisation hit him that they most certainly would all now be dead. All he could do was watch what was left of the burning cottage crumble into the ground. Alfred fell on his knees, distraught and desperate. How could this have happened?