Prologue
By Julie
It
was a hot day in the summer of 1938. In
the country outside of the small town of Newbern, Scotland, a little girl
played fetch with her puppy.
"Come
on, Jack, get the stick!" called seven year old Lucy O'Malley, as she
threw a stick to her small black Scottish terrier puppy. Jack raced over to the stick eagerly, but
didn't pick it up. Lucy sighed and wiped
her hand across her forehead.
"Goodness, it's hot today," she said. "Come on, Jack, let's go
inside." She whistled to the dog,
and he followed her across the yard to the large Victorian style house that lay
before them.
Once
inside the house, Lucy lit a lamp and walked carefully down to the basement of
the house, the only place that stayed cool in the summer. She picked up the needlepoint she had been
working on and sat down in a rather dusty old chair.
Meanwhile,
Jack scurried around in the kitchen, looking for a bone or maybe some scraps of
food. He leapt up onto the kitchen
table, knocking over the kerosene lamp that rested upon it. The lamp crashed to the floor, breaking and
spilling kerosene all over. Immediately,
a fire started, quickly spreading across the wooden floor.
Jack
barked, terrified, and hurried to the front door, managing to escape before the
flames consumed him. He immediately
headed for the pasture behind the house, where Lucy's father, Ste O'Malley was
gardening.
"What
is it, boy?" asked Ste, listening to the panicked barks of the frantic
puppy. Suddenly, he smelled smoke and
turned to the house. His eyes widened at
the sight of flames shooting out of the windows and smoke billowing out of the
house. "Oh my God!" he
cried. He tried to calm himself,
remembering that Lucy had been outside playing.
He hurried around to the front of the house, where Lucy had been
playing. His heart almost stopped when
he realized Lucy was not there.
"Lucy!" he screamed, looking around frantically. "Lucy, where are you?!"
Lucy
was all Ste had left. His wife,
Collette, had died years before, and Lucy was his only child. He doted on her and didn't know what he would
do without her.
His
heart pounding, Ste hurried to the house.
He had a gut feeling that Lucy was in the house. Ste ran to the front door and flung it open,
immediately seeing flames. Jack barked
at his heels.
"Lucy!!"
Ste shouted at the top of his lungs. He
cupped his hand to his ear, straining to hear an answer. But none came. "Lucy!!!!!" he screamed again. Suddenly, the flames were all around him, the
smoke so thick he could not see and could barely breathe. Suddenly, he heard the sound of splintering
wood, then Jack's shrill barks, and then everything went black.
***
