Alone stood I, in a foreign place, in a foreign world, on a foreign plane. I looked around and saw the room - magnolia white, with pictures, one on every wall, and photographs on every surface; and for an instant - a happy second - I felt a glow inside my heart: it seemed such a pleasant room, somehow. Ripley's chair was beside me, exactly where I had guessed it would be, brown and rough and worn. I ran my hand across the back, tracing its texture, feeling its history.

And what history did it know? Or rather, since I had been transported to a time before the fire, what history would it know? What would it witness before it turned to ash? And with that thought, the spell broke. A blast of fear assailed me: something terrible had happened here, something wicked, and for some reason I was caught up in it.

Alone stood I, as nature burned,

As time was lost, convention spurned.

Transported through forgotten years

To baneful days;

Beholding dreams give way to fears:

Mephisto's blaze...

Suddenly, I felt physically sick. Mephisto's blaze, Mephisto's blaze 3; Terror was lurching in the back of my throat and my agitated pulse reverberated around my body, a persistent, throbbing memento mori; I could hear it in my ears and feel it in my fingers, and my chest felt raw, as though an ice-cold blanket had been draped around my heart, scratching across it with every distressed heartbeat. I was rooted to the spot, my mind so frantically trying to assimilate the impossible data being transmitted by my eyes that it had no spare capacity for trivia like the motor senses.

Outside, a storm was brewing, the air bristling with activity in high contrast to the indolence of the autumn afternoon we had enjoyed just minutes before. A hard and charmless wind was imposing itself, streaming through the hollow and buffeting the house. The long, straggling branches of the larch trees which lined the roadway arced through the air, looping up and back and whipping down at high speed, like a fisherman repeatedly casting for the perfect line. The few remaining leaves bristled helplessly as the branches abruptly snapped backwards again, resting high and still, a despairing pause before being plunged once more into a dance of violent elegance. And as the wind gathered in strength, the boughs were pushed further and further back, all the time fighting, pressing, struggling to maintain their natural poise. They looked impossibly spindly as they tried to outface the wind, weak and unavailing, like a small child being held at arms length by a bully and flailing helplessly with his arms, unable to touch his assailant. Finally the wind relented and the trees slammed forward, diving towards the earth as though out of control and reining back at the last moment, braking and retreating, regaining their normal poise for a second, calm and recovering, before the wind once more took them for its own and the uneven battle resumed. Below the larches, a beech hedge was bunched protectively, trying to hold its line against the advancing elements. The wind slithered through the still dense but fast faltering leaves, snaking round the boughs and between the branches, gathering them in its maw, twisting them this way and that, shaking them, agitating, leaving them reeling, helpless in the grip of a greater god.

The window shook in its frame as though trying to attract attention. The sky was darkening, a pregnant cloud pulsing overhead, ready to expel its contents. I wanted to cry, I wanted to scream, I wanted to run away. This isn't my place, I wanted to shout, I don't belong, I don't relate.

This wasn't my time, this wasn't my life, but I knew I was trapped and alone.

And I knew this because it had happened to me before.

I turned to the door before it opened and knew before she entered who would appear. I knew the words she would say and the confusion those words would sow in me. I knew the way we would circle one another, observing and seeking, like artists pacing around their subjects in search of meaning. I knew it all and yet I understood none of it.

The door handle turned and the door swung open and there, in the frame, as I knew she would, stood Mary Ripley. She was a beautiful woman, just as I remembered her: young and slender, with a fragile, almost childish mien and a glimpse of vulnerability in the cagy restlessness of her eyes. She caught sight of me and started, a girlish whoop rising from her throat.

"Oh," she said. "You startled me." She quickly regained her composure, but even so she seemed terribly ill-at-ease. That, of course, was perfectly understandable - I was, after all, a stranger in her house - and yet it seemed not quite right, as though the source of her discomfort was not me, but something else, something not even in this room. My confusion gathered.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

What are you doing here? It seemed a most odd question: what are you doing here? More pertinent, surely, would have been "Who are you?" She walked to the centre of the room and I moved towards the fire, edging away from her, my eyes fixed on her face. I could think of nothing to say.

What was I doing here? I wished to God I knew.

She looked at me impatiently, and I saw the unmistakable sadness of lost opportunity in her eyes. They were round and hazel but the lustre had gone. She was trapped, every bit as much as I was. In her accusatory glare impatience was overlayed with resignation, restlessness with deference, hope with experience. I looked into her eyes and saw despair. I pitied Mary Ripley.

But also, and this was a truth as undeniable as it was inexplicable, I knew that I loved Mary Ripley.

Her curtness stabbed at me, the undisguised contempt in her voice cutting through my self esteem and the dismissive curl of her lip leaving me cold with disappointment. I shivered.

"Well, don't just stand there," she said, turning towards the door. "Do something useful. Light the fire. Can't you see there's a storm coming?" Without waiting for a reply, she swept out of the living room, slamming the door behind her, and I was left alone, uncomprehending.

I knew every breath of this drama. Who knows how often I had replayed it in my head - ten thousand times? - since that day, eighteen years ago, when I first slid out of reality and back in time into the Ripley House. And I understood it as little now as I had then. I turned to the fire, knowing that I would light it, knowing that I would screw up a copy of the local newspaper to help the fire catch, knowing that I would place a few pieces of kindling on the advancing flames and gently blow on them until they, too, fell under the thrall of the invincible fire. And I tried to do it as slowly as I could.

Because I knew, when I stood up and turned round, what I would see.

I had already heard the door open, the listless creak of its hinge echoing low beneath the crackle of the kindling. Flames were beginning to jig in the grate and I swung the coal bucket, toppling a layer of coal onto the fire, dousing the flames in a sleek blanket. For a couple of seconds it looked as if it had gone out, until a pale tongue of fire slithered through the cracks in the coal and a trail of smoke, cold and heavy, began to rise in the chimney. I had done my work; and I had delayed as long as I could. It was time to turn round.

So I did.

And there, standing full square in front of me, a shotgun draped menacingly across his arm, was James Ripley.

"Who the fuck are you?" The lack of emotion in his voice was chilling.

"I'm Harriet," I said. "I wish I could explain..."

"Jesus Christ, don't even fucking try. God, I've seen it all now. All this time, there was me thinking it was a man."

"What?"

"Tell me you aren't?" he shouted.

"I'm not!" I had no idea what he was talking about.

"It's disgusting! You're a witch!"

"I'm not!" His eyes were unblinking, the pupils small and intense, blazing with an overpowering hatred. He was breathing heavily, his cheeks sucking and blowing, and I wondered if he was going to pass out. We faced one another like two punch-drunk prize fighters. His shotgun, cradled in his arm, dropped down and he caught the barrel in his left hand, holding it as though ready to swing and aim it at me. I'm dead, I thought. He stared at me for three or four seconds, a vision of almost passive fury. He seemed to be in a torment of indecision.

"Please," I said.

He made no reply, but with awesome deliberation he swung the barrel of the shotgun to face me, its fatal eye pointed at my stomach. I could taste cold metal in my throat as I waited for death. A clearly visible sweep of anger blazed across his eyes, terrifying in its intensity. He took a step to my left, lowered the gun and swivelled his hips; with one flashing movement he swung it towards me and cracked the barrel hard against my shin. A blast of pain erupted through my leg, the suddenness of the impact intensifying the shock. I fell to my knees, clutching my injured leg, clasping it as tightly as I could, as though attempting to squeeze out the pain. Ripley was above me, the gun barrel poised inches from my face. I looked up at him, tears in my eyes, and awaited my fate.

And the door opened.

Ripley and I turned as Mary Ripley walked in, her head cocked curiously, clearly alerted by the noise. She stood in the doorway and looked at her husband, then at me, and then at her husband again.

And she screamed. The most piercing, shocking scream I have ever heard. And the world went black.

On to part four