air near the floor. The edges of the mortared stones tore her dress and scraped skin off 
her knees.
  To her left, the entire stairwell was burning now, and flames were spreading across the 
wooden ceiling. Refracted and diffused by the smoky air, the firelight glowed on all 
sides of Laura, creating the illusion that she was crawling through a narrow tunnel of 
flames. At the rate the blaze was spreading, the illusion would soon be fact.
  Her eyes were swollen and watery, and she wiped at them as she inched toward escape. 
She couldn't see very much. She used Aunt Rachael's voice as a beacon and otherwise 
relied on instinct.
  "Laura!" The voice was near. Right above her.
  She felt along the wall until she located the setback in the stone. She moved into that 
recess, onto the first step, lifted her head, but could see nothing: the darkness here 
was seamless.
  "Laura, answer me. Baby, are you in there?"
  Rachael was hysterical, screaming so loudly and pounding on the outside doors with such 
persistence that she wouldn't have heard a response even if Laura had been capable of 
making one.
  Where was Mama? Why wasn't Mama pounding on the door, too? Didn't Mama care?
  Crouching in that cramped, hot, lightless space, Laura reached up and put her hand 
against one of the two slant-set doors above her bead. The sturdy barrier quivered and 
rattled under the impact of Rachael's
  small fists. Laura groped blindly for the latch. She put her hand over the warm metal 
fixture-and squarely over something else, too. Something strange and unexpected. 
Something that squirmed and was alive. Small but alive. She jerked convulsively and 
pulled her hand away. But the thing she touched had shifted its grip from the latch to 
her flesh, and it came away from the door when she withdrew her hand. It skittered out of 
her palm and over her thumb and across the back of her hand and along her wrist and under 
the sleeve of her dress before she could brush it away.
  A spider.
  She couldn't see it, but she knew what it was. A spider. One of the really big ones, as 
large as her thumb, a plump black body that glistened like a fat drop of oil, inky black 
and ugly. For a moment she froze, unable even to draw a breath.
  She felt the spider moving up her arm, and its bold advance snapped her into action. 
She slapped at it through the sleeve of her dress, but she missed. The spider bit her 
above the crook of her arm, and she winced at the tiny nip of pain, and the disgusting 
creature scurried into her armpit. It bit her there, too, and suddenly she felt as though 
she was living through her worst nightmare, for she feared spiders more than she feared 
anything else on earth-certainly more than she feared fire, for in her desperate attempt 
to kill the spider, she had forgotten all about the burning house that was dissolving 
into ruin above her- and she flailed in panic, lost her balance, rolled backwards off the 
steps, into the main room of the cellar, cracking one hip on the stone floor. The spider 
tickled its way along the inside of her bodice until it was
  between her breasts. She screamed but could make no sound whatsoever. She put a hand to 
her bosom and pressed hard, and even through the fabric she could feel the spider 
squirming angrily against the palm of her hand, and she could feel its frenzied struggle 
even more directly on her bare breast, to which it was pressed, but she persisted until 
at last she crushed it, and she gagged again, but this time not merely because of the 
smoke.
  For several seconds after killing the spider, she lay on the floor in a tight fetal 
position, shuddering violently and uncontrollably. The repulsive, wet mass of the smashed 
spider slid very slowly down the curve of her breast. She wanted to reach inside her 
bodice and pluck the foul wad from herself, but she hesitated because, irrationally, she 
was afraid it would somehow come to life again and sting her fingers.
  She tasted blood. She had bitten her lip.
  Mama...
  Mama had done this to her. Mama had sent her down here, knowing there were spiders. Why 
was Mama always so quick to deal out punishment, so eager to assign penance?
  Overhead, a beam creaked, sagged. The kitchen floor cracked open. She felt as though 
she were staring up into Hell. Sparks showered down. Her dress caught fire, and she 
scorched her hands putting it out.
  Mama did this to me.
  Because her palms and fingers were blistered and peeling, she couldn't crawl on her 
hands and knees any longer, so she got to her feet, although standing up required more 
strength and determination than she had thought she possessed. She swayed, dizzy and weak.
  Mama sent me down here.
  Laura could see only pulsing, all-encompassing orange luminescence, through which 
amorphous smoke ghosts glided and whirled. She shuffled toward the short flight of steps 
that led to the outside cellar doors, but after she had gone only two yards, she realized 
she was headed in the wrong direction. She turned back the way she had come-or back the 
way she thought she had come-but after a few steps she bumped into the furnace, which was 
nowhere near the outside doors. She was completely disoriented.
  Mama did this to me.
  Laura squeezed her ruined hands into raw, bloody fists. In a rage she pounded on the 
furnace, and with each blow she fervently wished that she were beating her mother.
  The upper reaches of the burning house twisted and rumbled. In the distance, beyond an 
eternity of smoke, Aunt Rachael's voice echoed hauntingly: "Laura... Laura. . ."
  Why wasn't Mama out there helping Rachael break down the cellar doors? Where in God's 
name was she? Throwing coal and lamp oil on the fire?
  Wheezing, gasping, Laura pushed away from the furnace and tried to follow Rachael's 
voice to safety.
  A beam tore loose of its moorings, slammed into her back, and catapulted her into the 
shelves of home canned food. Jars fell, shattered. Laura went down in a rain of glass. 
She could smell pickles, peaches.
  Before she could determine if any bones were broken, before she could even lift her 
face out of the spilled food, another beam crashed down, pinning her legs.
  There was so much pain that her mind simply blanked it out altogether. She was not even 
sixteen years old, and there was only so much she could bear. She sealed the pain in a 
dark corner of her mind; instead of succumbing to it, she twisted and thrashed 
hysterically, raged at her fate, and cursed her mother.
  Her hatred for her mother wasn't rational, but it was so passionately felt that it took 
the place of the pain she could not allow herself to feel. Hate flooded through her, 
filled her with so much demonic energy that she was nearly able to toss the heavy beam 
off her legs.
  Damn you to Hell, Mama.
  The top floor of the house caved in upon the ground floor with a sound like cannons 
blasting.
  Damn you, Mama! Damn you!
  The first two floors of flaming rubble broke through the already weakened cellar 
ceiling.
  Mama-