Young Writers Society

Evelyn

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“Eva!”

“What’s happening?” the girl cried.

“Eva, what’re you doin’ – get up-”

“Wh-why’s-”

“Hush, little miss,” Damian says. “Don’t talk. Come on, get up.”

The footman helps her up onto the windowsill. Dangling over the ledge is a rope, hastily made up of curtain tie-backs and a blanket, fixed to a bedpost.

“Eva! Eva, c’mon-”

“Now, hold onto the rope. Okay?” The girl obeys, uncertainly looking down. The ground is three storeys away. The end of the rope is barely visible in the moonlight, dangling just above the grass.

“What’s happening?” she asks again, and Damian smiles. “Why do I have to go down?”

“Always with the questions. Don’t worry about it, miss – just go. You’re a strong girl – I know you won’t fall.”

“EVA!”

“What – what about you? Why can’t you come with me?”

“Ah, you know I can’t fit through the window,” Damian says.

Her bottom lip trembles. “Y-yes you can.”

“You’re too smart for your own good, miss-” The footman’s cut off by a loud banging at the door.

“EVA, PLEASE!”

“Come with me!” the girl pleads. “I don’t want to go by myself.”

“Did you forget already, miss? Don’t worry.” The banging gets louder. She can hear voices. “Your mum and dad are gonna meet you outside – just down the road. I promise. Just go.”

Crying now, she listens. The air outside is cold. The rope is cold. Her feet are cold. 

Dirt. Cobbles. Shaking.

“What are you going to do?”

“What I always do for you, miss,” Damian says. “My job.”

Then he goes out of sight, and all she can see is the brick from the mansion wall. Down. Down. Down. It was really cold. Above her, the loud banging comes to a climax – she can hear something breaking, metal striking against metal. She keeps blindly moving, trusting Damian’s words, because that was all she had.

Shaking. Someone was shaking her.

“EVA!”

She reaches the second-storey window, and what the girl sees through it almost makes her freeze in place. Andretta, her maid – what were those people doing? They were hurting her. Why? Andretta hadn’t done anything wrong.

The girl’s cold, cold hands keep going, keep going down the rope that Damian made. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. This was a dream. She was in an adventure book. She wasn’t hearing those things, not really.

“Eva – why – why aren’t you moving?”

Lucas.

The metallic clanging from above is still there. The girl focuses on it, not wanting to hear anything else. She looks down. Just a little bit more. There’s a first storey window just below her. She doesn’t want to see what’s inside that one.

Lucas was shaking her.

“Eva, please-”

The girl closes her eyes as she passes the first storey window, but something is wrong. The clanging – the metal sound is gone. She strains her ears, wanting it to come back, but it doesn’t. Something had happened. Something was happening. Her rope – it was shaking. The girl cries out in fear and suddenly there’s nothing supporting her, she’s floating through the air, and then she lands. Grass. Ground. What had happened? The rope comes flying down from the third storey window, frayed at the end.

“Eva, come on – move-”

The dirt and cobbles were moving. No, she was moving. Someone was moving her. Lucas. She didn’t want to move.

Damian said Mother and Father would be down the road. The girl’s feet hurt, but she knows she has to go and find them. When she does, it would be fine. It would all be fine. She’d wake up from this horrible nightmare and they’d be waiting for her in the real world.

Voices. New ones. Not Lucas. They sounded so far away.

“Oh, thank God-”

“What is wrong with her? Why is she lying down like that?”

“Help me – she doesn’t wanna move-”

There’s voices. New ones. Not Damian. They’re speaking, but she can’t understand what they’re saying. They sound angry. Instinctively, she knows they mean her harm. The girl runs across the gardens, bursting through the hedges, heading for the trees, away from her home. Away from whatever was happening.

“I’ll – I’ll carry her.”

“Where? Where do we go?”

“I don’t bloody know, just – help me, here-”

“Home,” Eva managed to say. “I wanna go home.”

Running, running. Through the brambles and twigs and dead leaves. More than once, the darkness throws a tree at her, and the girl narrowly avoids each one. It was cold. So cold. But the road is there, in sight – just a little longer. Damian wouldn’t lie. They’d be there.

There was a pounding inside her head, like someone was smashing a hammer into her skull. It was bad. She was crying. Everything was a blur. And it was hot. Why was it hot?

“Don’t worry, Evelyn – I’ve got you now.”

“Is she hurt?”

“No - we were close t’ the warehouses an’ when they exploded she just dropped like that.”

Cold. Cold, cold, cold. She finally makes it, bursting out of the forest, down the hill onto the road. She calls out for her parents. Why weren’t they there yet?

She was being carried.

“Are they the militia? Fuck, hide your crow sign-”

She’s seen this place in the past. Only brief glance of it, before she’d hop into her carriage to school. It’s where the lower-class people lived. The ones who sat in the streets and begged for money.

“Who are you, boy?”

“I’m – I’m Lucas. Her friend. Do… d’you know why she-”

The girl stands alone on the cobbles, shivering. Her hands and legs were numb. They’d be here soon they had to be. She looks again down the dark road, but there’s nobody there. Was she too slow? Would they have been there if she wasn’t so scared, hadn’t gone through the trees?

Suddenly, all of the coldness goes away and the silence of the night is shattered, her ears filling with an unimaginable noise-

Hot. Why?

Evelyn opened her eyes, looked up to see-

Fire.

Fire.

The foundations of her home being blasted apart, rubble flying everywhere.

The warehouse, the one which had kept her safe for so long, burning, crumbling down.

It was real.

The girl – the one in the past and the one in the present – screamed. Screamed and screamed until her voice tore and she choked up with sobs and she couldn’t scream any more.