Through Glass: Episode Four (8 page)

Travis only smiled in an attempt to
restrain his laugh before moving down the last of the stairs and
into the large family room, his steps careful as we began to move
past the wooden shards of what used to be a pool table. It seemed
darker down here. Perhaps it was the fact that the ceiling was so
much lower than upstairs, but I felt like the whole house was going
to come down on us at any minute.

I gripped the gun tighter, fully aware
that, if the house did cave in, it wouldn’t make any difference how
many light-based bullets I had. I walked to where Travis was, his
body mostly hidden behind a large, white door.

“
This will work,” he
announced before he moved back into the room, his pace quick as he
progressed from window to window, pulling the heavy curtains closed
in an attempt to keep the light we would create hidden from the
outside world, and in turn, keep us safe as we slept.

I followed his lead without
hesitation, pillows of dust falling off the limp fabric as I closed
each curtain. The strength of the lights we held seemed to grow as
we pulled the last of the curtains closed, leaving us standing in
the large space, surrounded by the gentle yellow glow of
security.

Travis pulled a spotlight the size of
a dinner plate out of his backpack and placed it near a door on the
far side of the room, the beam facing toward the hall we had just
come from. The light flared in a brilliant blaze that burned
through my skull in a pleasant fire. It illuminated the hall,
turning black to white as the glow floodlit the space more than the
small LED lights we carried. While the light was enough to keep us
safe from the Tar, it wouldn’t keep Abran’s men away.

“
Nice light,” I said
offhandedly.

Travis’s head shot up to look at me
before going back to his work. “Yeah, it’s a Carson Light. It has a
motion sensor too, but I figure, for what we need it for, the more
light the better.”

My body seemed to relax a bit in the
flood of light, the shadows of fear that I had grown used to
evaporating into air as I looked into the room. The shadows that I
had been so ingrained to fear were all but gone.

“
Get the pillows off the
couch, Lex,” Travis commanded, his voice low as he fished through
his large backpack, searching for some other deterrent I was sure
he would place.

I moved the second he asked, tucking
the gun into the small loop of fabric at my hip that I had
fashioned into a crude holster. While the strange gun sling was a
little odd, it was better than my pocket. I would probably end up
shooting myself in the leg either way, yet at least this way the
chance had been lessened.

The dust didn’t seem to be as bad down
here; everything still had a faded memory of color, and not the
all-encompassing grey that had blanketed the upstairs.

“
How many do we want,
Travis?” I didn’t dare talk too loud, the ingrained necessity to
stay quiet at all times making it difficult to speak to someone in
the first place.

Travis didn’t even turn at my
question, so I shrugged and continued toward the couch, figuring
four would be enough, although I was sure I couldn’t carry all of
them at one time thanks to my petite form brought on by years of
starvation.

A plume of dirt erupted into the air
as I grabbed the first one, the heavy dirt flavor embedding itself
in my nose and mouth. I gasped and covered my face with my hands,
trying not to let the mass of dust into my body, but it was too
late. I could already feel my lungs restrict with the disgusting
air I had just inhaled, the muscles seizing as they tried to cough
it out of me again, only to leave me with an uncomfortable burn
when I wouldn’t let it.

I made sure to inhale before grabbing
the next one, only to freeze at the picture that looked up at me
the second I had moved the pillow, the smiling faces of a family
that had been hidden underneath the disheveled couch since the
beginning.

It was one of those pictures that had
been taken in a photographers garden, the flowers a little too
perfect, the family a little too happy to be wearing matching
shades of salmon and denim. They sat together on a log, looking at
the camera with giant smiles on their face, the youngest boy’s eyes
crinkled in a giant grin, just like my youngest brother used to
have.

Tyler.

I could still hear his laugh if I
focused. I glanced toward where Travis still sat, his bulking frame
so much older than the fourteen-year-old boy he had been before the
night came, the fourteen-year-old boy that Tyler would be
now.

I stared at the little boy in the
picture for much longer than I should have, the pillows forgotten
even though I could still hear Travis shuffling around with who
knows what near the pantry door.

Creeeeeeak.

I jumped when I heard it, every muscle
in my back tensing in an uncomfortable pressure that rippled
through me, sending my heart into a thick beat as it jumped into my
throat, my mind running wild with fear. The shuffling sounds of
Travis’s movement had ended with the sound.

It was the same as before, when I had
been standing between the aisles.

My heart thundered against my chest as
I looked toward Travis, almost expecting the same grey shadows.
Instead, it was only my brother, his eyes wide with fear as he
looked toward where the sound had come from.

I wanted to find comfort in
the fact that he had heard it, too, but I couldn’t because
he
had
heard it.
It wasn’t the same haunting sound that only I had heard, it was
real.

My eyes met Travis’s as my breath
caught in my throat, my fear thundering as he held my gaze. As we
waited. Waited for another one to come. Waited to know where the
danger was.

And who had followed us
inside.

Creak.

The sound came again, and I jumped,
turning toward the place in the ceiling that the sound had echoed
from. I was sure I had heard the last moan of old floorboards from
another side of the house. The sound of what was unmistakably a
step echoing around us. These were not the Talons of the monsters;
these were the steps of men, the assassins sent to finish us
off.

The picture I had held was now nothing
more than a crumpled piece of paper in my fist, my body tight as I
tried to remember how to breathe. I stood still as I waited for
another one, knowing it would come, even though I didn’t want it
to.

Creak.

Click.

The moan of the old wood flared at the
step of whatever was above us, the sound immediately followed by
the high, sharp click that haunted my dreams. The click of talons
against hard wood. Each noise sounded against the floor in two
different locations above us, each one belonging to someone
different. Two different things that searched for us.

My jaw clenched together in a tight
line as the sounds came. My eyes darted toward where Travis sat,
his hands frozen as he stared at me, his eyes unwavering from
mine.

I could tell he had thought the same
thing—that Abran’s men had found us—but the sounds said anything
but. The sounds belonged to the long, golden talons of the Tar, not
of Abran’s men.

Or so I desperately hoped.

Click.

Another one, closer to the staircase
than the last, the sound loud and angry as it echoed down the
stairwell toward us.

Travis looked toward the noise, his
body slowly uncurling to a stand as he pulled his gun out, his
hands holding onto the cold steel as he lifted it toward the dark
mouth of the stairs, toward the echoes of sound that were moving
down toward us.

Click.

The sounds kept coming; the clicks of
talons, the long groan of a step against wood. They came so fast I
couldn’t tell if they were people, or monsters, or both. I knew
what they wanted, though.

The sound of the tap of the creatures’
talons jumped through my blood. My chest heaved as my heart pulsed
heavily through me. I moved toward Travis slowly, the picture of
the family still wadded in my hand as I carefully stepped around
the broken room to reach my brother. His muscles were swelling as
he kept his aim on the only door in front of us. The only way for
us to get out, and for them to get in.

“
What is it?” I asked, my
voice shaking as I spoke, hoping that Travis would catch my
meaning. It wasn’t so much what they were, but who they were
with.

“
I have the light. If it is
the Tar, it should be enough.” His voice was deep and distorted
through his teeth, the growl of the words not helping to ease my
panic.

“
And if it’s
not?”

I had only barely asked the question
when the clicks changed, the slow, paused sound that jerked through
my nerves mutating into a torrent of clicks and taps, the stampede
of talons against the floor echoing down to us in an avalanche of
noise.

I fought the scream that rose up in my
chest, the fear that threatened to incapacitate me as it rippled
through my body.

“
Travis?” I asked, the
question lost as the noise kept coming, the talons of what my fear
could only process as hundreds of Tar, circling above us like birds
of prey.

I reached out and grabbed Travis’s arm
on instinct, only to be met with a wall of tense muscle, his hand
reaching over to wrap around my wrist.

His hand was a vice around mine as he
pulled me into the darkness of the storage room, the sound of the
talons turning into white noise as he closed the door behind us,
trapping us in the ebony darkness of the musty space.

I didn’t dare ask the question because
I already knew. If they were Tar, the light would turn them to ash
before they even reached us. And if not, if they were Abran’s
men…

Then there wasn’t much we could do
anyway.

Except to fight.

The light that I had hoped would be
our salvation dimmed to a thin glowing line, the only light that
could escape through the doorframe as Travis closed the door with a
soft click. A click that was barely audible over the torrent of
sound that stampeded through the upstairs. The noise grew and
ebbed, clicks and thumps moving in a circular wave that moved
closer and closer to the center of the house.

Closer to the stairs that would take
them down to us.

My heart thundered as the sound grew,
drowning out my frantic breaths and the sound of my heart as it
moved into my ears. I reached up toward Travis, my hand shaking as
the sound increased, as it centered over the epicenter of the
house.

Then it stopped.

All we heard was silence.

My breath caught at the absence of
noise, my heart thundering in my chest as I waited, my body still
and stiff against my brother’s.

I didn’t dare move into the large,
dark space behind us. I didn’t dare remove my hand from my
brother’s back, from the deep, heaving breaths that moved his chest
and promised me he was alive.

I waited, not daring to breathe, for
the sound to return, for something to happen. Anything. My muscles
tightened the more we waited, the fear that ran through my blood
making it hard to breathe. I knew they were coming, whether they
waited upstairs in the maze of a house that we had become trapped
in or not, they were coming.

We were going to have to fight
them.

My free hand reached up at the
thought, my stiff fingers stretching as I moved to remove the gun
out of its holster.

Click.

My head jerked up at the sound, my
fingers frozen in place as both Travis and I looked into the dark
slab of wood that separated us from the sound that was just beyond
it.

Click.

It came again and it was all I could
do not to jump as my heart jack hammered in my chest so fast that
it ached, the pressure of my fear radiating out and freezing me in
place.

Travis stiffened under my touch, his
heaving breaths of fear all but leaving as he held the breath in,
fearing as much as I was that we would be found, that we would be
heard. My hand left Travis’s back as he began to lean forward, his
motions slow and controlled as he moved toward the thin beam of
light that escaped from the doorframe and trailed over us. I
watched as the dark mass of his head blocked out the ray, his back
arching as he tried to see what was waiting for us on the other
side, if a monster actually stood in the light.

Click.

The light went out with a shatter of
glass at the click of a talon. The sound echoed through the silence
before the high pitched shriek of the monsters echoed through the
derelict house. The sound was loud and abrasive as it rippled
through the cement walls of the cold storage room we hid in, heaved
through my spine and tightened through me in a wave of
panic.

Something was in the room we had just
vacated. Something stood just on the other side of the door we hid
behind. Something that was intent to kill us. And what was more,
that something had stood in the light. A light it had
broken.