Me and a friend were discussing scary stories for Halloween and I was inspired by the REAL LIFE story of the Gelncoe Massacre.
She was woken by smoke forcing its way into her lungs. Before she was even fully conscious, she had rolled off the side of the bed and landed on the hard wood floor. She sucked in clean air that was trapped under the bed and the swallowed a scream as a mouse skittered past her head, squeaking madly, and through the crack under the door. It was only then she realise that the house was on fire.
Flames were poking up between the floorboards in the corner, drifting dangerously close to the bottom of the curtains; it was almost as though they knew where to go to cause the most destruction. The air was fairly clear for about two feet above the floor but at the level of the mattress – where she had been sleeping just a few seconds before - there began a sea of smoke, thicker than any ocean fog or early morning mist. It was thick as night and just as black, apart from where the flames were burning the wood. There, the smoke seemed to be dyed a poisonous, eerie green. Tendrils of fire and smoke twirled together in a hypnotic dance. She knew she needed to move, get to the door, follow the mouse and get out!
…And she would move… in just a few seconds… when the fiery dance had stopped…
Her fingers pushed against the floor, splinters digging under her nails, but somehow she did not feel it. Her hands felt so heavy and her head was soft, like the mattress she had just vacated. It was like her whole body was tied to the floor, like the smoke, which seemed so weightless as it wound about the flames, was pressing down on her like a wool blanket, smothering her in warmth and heat...
Something cold grabbed at her wrists, pulling her. She did not want to go, she wanted to go back to sleep but the cold hands would not let her go. She let herself be dragged from the room and heard the door slam shut behind her. With the bang of door on doorframe, her mind came back to her and she remembered how to breathe again. She coughed like she had swallowed sea water barely noticing the hands of her husband as they pounded on her back.
“We have to keep moving, Lillian,” he choked out. “We have to get the children and get out.”
The children! How could they have left her mind for even a second? They had to get upstairs, to the nursery – No, that wasn’t right. In her home near Edinburgh, the nursery was on the second floor, close to the Nanny’s room, but here, at Glencoe, the MacDonald’s kept the children close on the first floor. Her children, if they were still alive, were just a few paces down the hall.
Using a strength she did not know she had, Lillian pushed herself upwards. She felt her husband grasp her shoulder, pulling her back. She struck out at him several times before she realised that he was trying to press a wet cloth to her mouth and nose. She inhaled deeply through the torn fabric, almost passing out from the pleasure of it.
“Come on,” came her husbands muffled voice as he staggered down the hall, leading her to her children.
At the last few steps, Lillian pushed past her husband, grabbing at the ornate copper door handle. Hearing her husband’s warning too late, Lillian screamed as the red hot metal welded to her skin, burning her nerves so she couldn’t move her fingers. She pressed the wet cloth to her hand, thinking it would help pry her hand away, but the course fabric only irritated her burning skin and she cast it aside. With the cry of a banshee, Lillian wrenched the handle sideways and pulled the door open, tearing her hand away, though the skin of her palm stayed stuck to the carved door handle. Shaking with the pain, she gazed at her palm. The tendons of her hand were visible but if you ignored the blood, you could see the imprint of a carved rose.
Her husband had pushed past her into the nursery and already had their son in his arms. Lillian followed him in and ran straight to the cradle where their daughter, barely a year old, was sleeping. Her baby was not moving and Lillian thanked God that she had managed to stay asleep throughout this horror. Lillian scooped up the tiny body, blanket and all, and held her close to her chest. She cradled the child’s head in her burned hand, smearing blood over her small patch of hair. The cooI skin of her daughter soothed the ruined hand. I f she was lucky, her child would stay asleep until this nightmare had passed.
Now she knew her two children were safe, she turned her attention to the three MacDonald children who were all wailing in their beds. “Come on,” she said. “Everything is going to be fine. We are going to get out of here and then everything will be-” Lillian took a steadying breath and swallowed what felt like half a chimney: the fire was getting closer; “-fine.” She took the hand of the youngest – she didn’t know his name – and led the children to the door where her husband was waiting.
“I’ll go ahead,” he told her, “make sure the way’s clear.” He placed their son by her side. The boy clung to his mother’s night dress. Through the thin fabric, Lillian could feel his tears. “Count to five and follow me.” He kissed her forehead and vanished round the corner. Lillian coughed, staring at the spot where her husband had vanished. The MacDonald boy was tugging at her hand. He was screaming.
The wood holding up the walls was cracking, splintering. It sounded like an army coming to destroy them.
What was the boy screaming? He was crying for his parents. Five seconds had never taken so long. The smoke was getting thicker.
No, he wasn’t screaming for his parents, something had happened to his parents – someone else was in the house, someone who had started the fire.
A new scream sounded, her husband. Shadows were running along the walls with the smoke. The soldiers casting the shadows rounded the corner.
Lillian ran, not up the corridor but back into the nursery dragging the children with her. The smoke was now so thick that she could barely see. It burned her throat and eyes. She knew if they didn’t get out soon, the smoke would kill them all. Soldiers and flames barred the doors so it was to the window that she pushed the children. Lillian pulled the heavy curtains aside, threw the shutters wide and opened the window.
A hard wind ripped the air from their lungs, choking them just as effectively as the smoke. Lillian placed her daughter in her young son’s arms and leant out of window. It was charcoal black outside. Only the flames cast light upon the snow, scarlet shadows that writhed and twisted like demons, luring them to their deaths. A blizzard whipped around the burning house, falling snow mixing with ash. Surely this was hell on earth.
The blizzard was good for one thing, though. In the summer, a jump from the first floor window would have broken bones at the very least, if not proving fatal for the younger children. In the winter however, with the winds as strong as they were, the snow had drifted up the side of the house creating a soft, freezing cushion. She was still reluctant to let the children jump, though, with no one beneath to catch them. And she did not trust that if she jumped first, the rest would follow. If only she had someone else with her, if only her husband-
Shouts and clangs of metal on metal could be heard over the groaning of burning wood and as much as she might wish it, Lillian knew it wasn’t her husband fighting his way back to them. They had to get out. Now.
The eldest MacDonald child would go first, Lillian decided. The girl, aged ten, nearly eleven (Lillian could remember her grinning in excitement as she announced this to every new guest) had tear tracks cutting through the soot smeared on her face. Her eyes, however, were hard, determined, as though she knew what Lillian was about to ask of her.
“I need you to go first,” she told the child, “and catch your brothers as they come out. Can you do that?” Without a word, the girl turned grimly to the window and sat on the ledge. “I’ll lower you down,” said Lillian. “Then it’ll just be a little step, like jumping off your bed.” The girl nodded and Lillian knew that she did not believe the lie.
Lillian took her hands and the girl swung her feet out into the night. When she had lowered her as far as her arms would reach, Lillian looked the girl in the eye and said, “After three.”
“Just like jumping off the bed,” nodded the girl, her first words that night. Lillian nodded back at her.
“One, two -” A beam fell in the nursery behind them. Lillian jumped and let go of the girl’s hands, nearly falling from the window herself. The girl screamed as she plummeted four feet into the snow.
“I’m fine,” she called a second later, though she did not sound it. Lillian didn’t question it and instead turned to the eldest boy, the MacDonald heir, who was seven.
“Your sister will catch you,” assured Lillian. It was clear the boy did not believe her either but went to the window with the same steel as his sister. Just as he was about to climb out, a cry came from the snow below. Leaning out, Lillian saw that the girl was calling not up to the nursery but to somewhere out in the dark. Craning her neck even further, she saw what the girl was waving at.
Figures were appearing from somewhere at the back of the house, near the servants quarters and, while Lillian could only just make them out, she knew they were not soldiers. Her heart pounding in her chest, she joined her voice with the MacDonald girl’s, waving frantically at the small group, who began to move towards them. Lillian gasped, her breath coming in ragged sobs, cold air flooding her lungs and pulling tears of joy from her eyes.
As a few of the figures clambered the snow drift, Lillian could see that they were women, maids who had still been cleaning after the evening’s banquet or else just rising for the day, replacing candles and preparing the fireplaces. They caught the MacDonald heir as Lillian lowered him, and the youngest MacDonald boy after that, the latter screaming in competition with the wind.
Finally, Lillian turned to her own children. Her own son, James, was looking down at his baby sister, tears in his eyes.
“Mama…” he said as Lillian knelt beside him.
“Don’t worry,” interrupted his mother. “We’ll be safe soon. Now hold on to your sister and I’ll lower you down.” The boy looked up, trying to speak but Lillian had lifted him to the window before he could take another breath. When her children were safely down, Lillian sat herself on the window ledge. She took one last look at the nursery, now engulfed in flame and for one mad moment, she thought of going back to find her husband. The nursery door was visible only from the black smoke that was pouring out of it. He could be just there, about to emerge and hold her tight. If she just took a few paces, she would be in his arms again, she was sure…
It was the screaming of the MacDonald boy that brought her to her senses. Her husband was not coming to her aid and if she did not jump now she would leave her children without father and mother. She jumped. The snow rose up to meet her and when she hit it, it kept rising.
She was on fire. Her legs were burning - sparks must have caught her night dress on the way down. Lillian looked frantically for the flames that were sure to be spiralling around her, desperate to devour her. But there was nothing. Nothing but snow, waist deep… Snow!
Lillian laughed. It was the snow that made her feel she was on fire. It was just the deep, bone cutting cold that burned her. Warm relief flooded through her. She would be fine. The maids pulled her out and they slid down the drift to the children who were already waiting at the bottom. Lillian grinned at them, her teeth chattering faster that she could talk.
“We’re safe now,” Lillian told the group. “We just need to find shelter.”
“I know a place,” a maid piped up. “Not far… a sheltered tree where me and Johnny…” She was shivering violently but even through the cold, her cheeks blushed red. Lillian didn’t know who Johnny was but right now she was grateful for whatever scandalous behaviour he had convinced the maid into. She took her daughter in her arms and hoisted James onto her back. “Lead the way.”
Time did not exist in this frozen dark. They had left behind the blazing light of the fire and now it was all they could do to hold on to one another as the maid who loved Johnny steered them to safety. The two MacDonald boys were being carried by a footman who had also escaped. He was the only man among them. The MacDonald girl was ploughing along with a bravery Lillian did not think she had possessed when she was ten, nearly eleven.
Shards of frozen snow cut into their eyes making the darkness even harder to penetrate. The wind seemed to flay their skin and Lillian’s arms felt frozen in place so she could not drop her baby if she tried. In just a few minutes (or maybe it was hours, she couldn’t tell,) they had arrived at Johnny’s tree.
The earth had been moulded by water so that a small alcove was cut into the side of a hill. Lillian could see icicles trickling down the rocks where the water had frozen as it flowed. It was in this alcove, sheltered from the wind, that the tree had taken root. A recent rock fall had left small boulders piled at the base of the hill. Here, they would be protected from both the cold wind and the eyes of the enemy.
The ground beneath the tree was hard with frost but its wide branches had filtered out the worst of the snow. The survivors settled underneath it, huddled in a group with the children and Lady Lillian in the centre. Even in peril, servants kept serving. As her eyes adjusted, the black lumps that surrounded her became visible and individuals, all blue with a corpses blush. But still they were breathing, ragged and shivering but breathing all the same. Some even seemed to smile and settle down to sleep as though they were in their beds in the house.
“Here,” said the footman, passing his jacket to a young maid who was shivering. She pushed him away, confused. “You take it,” the footman insisted. “I’m not cold.” And Lillian thought she understood what he meant. Even though she couldn’t move them, her toes seemed to be warm. In fact, at the centre of the huddle, it was stifling. Around her, women were taking off their shawls and giving them to those who were still shivering. Breathing still came in gasps but a peace was settling over the group. James had fallen asleep by her side, which she counted as a minor miracle. He was normally a terror to get to bed. It was easy to put his sister down for naps. Lillian marvelled at her daughter who was cradled in her arms, still asleep. She kissed her sleeping children, her lips dry and hot against their freezing skin. All was still now. Lillian was glad they had found rest. It was much easier to sleep through the night and be woken by the rescue party that was sure to find them in the morning. Someone should stay awake though, to call when help eventually arrived, and seeing as everyone else had drifted off, it might as well be her.
As she sat under the tree, listening to the howling wind, it almost felt cosy. Her hand was no longer painful either. She prised her fingers open and inspected her palm. The bleeding had stopped long ago and the rose that had been burned onto her skin was clearer. She traced it and giggled. It would make for a pretty scar. She couldn’t wait to show her husband.
Maybe she would close her eyes, for just a few seconds…
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