House of Glass

by Jen Christie

  “I met you a long time ago,” I said. He tried to pull his hand away but I clutched it and wouldn’t let go. I was screaming to be heard. “When I was a child. You showed me kindness.” I looked away with tears biting at my eyes. “Somehow I lost myself here…with the glass house. I changed, but in my heart I’m still the same. An island girl. And I hope you still have kindness.”

  His eyes were cold, bluer than I had ever seen them. He pried off my fingers and shoved my hand away. “I don’t remember.” The necklace slid across the floor and hung up on the leg of the dining room table.

  It felt as if I was struggling to grasp all of the threads that made up my life. I longed for my father, for his knowing words and calming presence. I remembered the fateful day that we sat next to each other and he guided me as I untangled the nets. He always knew what to do, how to guide me. But I was all alone.

  Chapter Twelve

  The door flew open, and banged against the wall. The wind had grabbed it. We turned to see Mrs. Amber standing in the doorway. Her hair was mussed and she had an almost wild look to her. She stood for a moment, taking in our evening clothes, still worn in the morning, the stance of our bodies, and then her eyes swept to the glass floor, now just an open wound in the house.

  I felt cold fear when I saw her face. I had seen that look before, when the men came and knocked on our door to tell me that my father was lost at sea. It was a panicked look.

  She said only four words, and those words changed everything. “A storm is coming.”

  Lucas and I pulled away and faced her.

  “What did you say?” he asked. He was practically shouting in order to be heard.

  “The sheriff is here. There’s a hurricane coming. A huge storm that already destroyed many islands and it’s headed directly toward us.”

  At that moment, the clock on the wall began to toll, and I shall always remember that sound, the bells gonging, the wind blowing, the look in our eyes as the danger of the situation settled over us. On and on the bell tolled, twelve times in all and my life has been split ever since, into two distinct lives. Before the storm and after the storm. Lucas jumped into action and sped by me in a blur, pausing only for a moment at the door.

  The sheriff waited in the great room. Servants mingled together, milling about in small groups with Mrs. Amber at the lead. The sheriff was a tall man with a wide girth and a serious expression on his face. When everyone saw Lucas and I walk into the room it burst into motion and the sheriff called out in his booming voice for everyone to quiet down.

  “Tell us what you can.” Lucas was a different man, determined and grim and completely in control.

  “The wireless telegraphs have all gone down. But before they did, the last contact we had…”

  “Go on,” said Lucas.

  “I’m trying to be delicate. The last contact with the outer islands was very grim. A wall of water, higher than a two-story building, swept over the islands. And those aren’t as mountainous as this one. Many lives have already been lost.”

  “The barrier islands around St. Claire are flat, flatter than any other islands,” I said.

  The sheriff shot me a grim look. A horrid, sinking feeling overcame me.

  An image played over and over in my mind. The stone marker, so very high on the hill, its terrible warning etched for all eternity. “We have to evacuate the low-lying areas of the island.”

  “That’s why I came here ma’am. To see if we can bring the islanders up here. To Devlin Manor.”

  “Of course,” said Lucas.

  The sheriff spoke again. “Thank you. We’ll start right away.”

  “Fine,” said Lucas. “We’ll start making preparations. Tell us if you need anything at all.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said the sheriff, and he strode from the house.

  A calmness swept over me, a certainty of things that must be done. I turned to Mrs. Amber, “Follow me,” I said to her, and I realized for the first time that I had issued an order to Mrs. Amber, instead of the other way around.

  We readied the house as best we could. Rushing from room to room, pulling blankets and sheets from the closets, pushing furniture aside to make room for more people. For the first time since coming to the manor, I felt essential, as if I belonged, as if I were in control.

  When the first islanders arrived, with distant, shocked looks on their faces, we were mostly prepared. One of the first people through the door was a father, holding the hand of a little girl. I could see no mother.

  I went and gave her a blanket and a pillow, and she looked at me with eyes as big as saucers, no longer filled with fear, but with awe. I realized that she would probably remember this experience for a long time to come. Is that how I looked to Lucas?

  Thinking of him, I turned and searched until I found his familiar dark hair all the way across the great room. He met my eyes briefly, but it was with a distant, cold look. I could wait. I would wait ten years if I had to. I reached to touch my necklace, but it was not there.

  I had forgotten it when Mrs. Amber stormed into the glass house. It was still there. I hoped it was still there. I had to get it before it fell into the open hole.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I would only be gone a moment, I reasoned, and I slipped from the manor.

  Long smears of black clouds roiled across the sky, and though it had not yet rained it would soon. The wind tossed the trees about, twisting their branches so that the silvery undersides of the leaves flashed. The surf was higher than I ever thought possible. The beach was already gone, replaced by churning, angry water. The cottage was perilously close to the waves below it.

  When I reached the door and turned the handle, it flew open.. The wind rushing through the hole in the floor made it impossible to shut the door, so I left it open. I had to lean into the wind to enter the house.

  It was the last time I would ever enter the glass house.

  The windows were rattling and the floor underneath my hands shook in the wind. There was a whistle, a horrible shriek with each gust, and I realized that it was a shard of the broken floor that made the shrill noise.

  The house seemed afraid, like it was shaking with fear and clutching the cliff, holding on for dear life. I walked across the remaining panel of the glass floor and the wind burst through the broken pane and hit me like a wall. I careened sideways and then righted myself. I reached the decorative vase filled with seashells and plucked my own simple necklace from the top. I quickly tied it on and felt a calmness come over me as I did.

  I have often dwelled on what happened next, returning to it again and again, as I try to make sense of it. The moment I tied the necklace on, before my very eyes, the front doors of the house wavered for a moment, and then slammed shut with a force that shook me from my feet.

  For a moment I was completely shocked and it took a while before I could respond. But when I did, I ran to the front doors and pulled on them frantically, screaming and yelling and banging on them. The doors would not budge. I was trapped, and the only thing I could think of was that I was headed to a crystal grave.

  Then, I was alone with the storm.

  I understand now, all these years later, the nature of storms. Storms are a force, a life all their own. They listen to no one and brutally ravage their waiting victims.

  But I didn’t know that then. I only knew that a rage of fear exploded inside me. I roared and threw the dining chairs, one after the other, against the covered door. It didn’t budge, but I continued until I was so exhausted that I couldn’t breathe. There was no way out. The only windows were over the cliff, and the only door barred shut. There was no way I could survive the drop to the rocks below.

  I leaned against the wall and sank to the floor. What would Celeste do, I wondered, faced with death? For once, there was no clear answer waiting in my head. I couldn’t know what she would do. I only knew what I would do.

  I would fight.

  In a rage, I rose and went to her bedroom. I swept my
hand across the vanity, sending everything into the air. I shoved her mirror to the ground, shattering it into a million pieces. Without stopping, I stormed to the closet and grabbed her clothes and ran to the gaping hole in the floor. I tossed them through and the wind caught them and scattered them in all directions, like a flock of birds set free.

  When it turned dark the first rains came. Sheets of it pelted against the walls in brief explosions. The wind followed, whistling as it circled the house, faster and faster, until the only thing to hear was a throaty howl that never ceased. The house shuddered, and I realized that in the storm, the glass house was a different thing. It was battened down and hiding, without any strength or defense.

  I knew that it was too late to hide. The storm had taken notice and as I listened to the wind and rain, it almost seemed as if the storm had begun to toy with us. It was pitch black, so I had only my ears, but I knew the soul of that storm, and it was evil.

  The winds were low and rumbling, shaking the foundation of the house. Then, a gust would roll over everything, wild, screaming in glee, going round and round in a frenzy. The whole structure groaned as if someone were leaning against it. A new sound came, a sound I recognized, and it brought me right to my feet.

  It was a sloshing, slapping noise.

  Water.

  Beneath the house, already pushing at the floorboards, the waves crested through the hole in the glass floor. When the water hit my feet, rolling over them like a warm caress, I screamed. Then, another noise came. It was a roaring, hissing noise, and with a bang, and a crack, the house split open and water came roaring over me, bubbling up everywhere and sweeping me into it.

  I heard the windows bursting apart, and more water, now black as blood beneath the now visible night sky, poured in. The house was barely together, splitting open and filling with foamy, hungry water. I righted myself, and half-swam through the madness, to where the house had cracked open. I clutched the wooden frame and watched as items, ghostlike, bounced and collided against one another.

  I screamed again, as long and hard as I could, not with fear, but with a passion. I might die at the cold hand of a watery death, but I would not die silently. When I was done, I whispered to myself, “I have no choice.” I let go of the house.

  I was in the ocean, nothing more than a piece of flotsam, pushed here and there. The water was moving, pushing, forcing me inland and I tumbled along with it, bumping into things that I could not see, grabbing frantically at anything that had substance.

  The moment I crashed into the cliff my body exploded into pain. The water rose higher still, and swamped over me, but the pressure of it kept me crushed against the stone. I feared that I would die, crushed and trapped.

  I heard in my mind Lucas’s voice from the day that we went sailing and I fell into the water. “Don’t fight it, just float.” I knew what to do. I dragged my hands above me until they caught a hold and then I pulled with all my might until my face broke free of the water. I held onto the stone, floating, rising higher and higher. The rain lashed against my face like a thousand needles and I was blind. All I could do was rise.

  The wind stopped abruptly. The skies were clear. The moon was even visible, a half-crest, a blinking eye. Everything was perfectly still. I could see the poor house, broken into bits, great white chunks floating in the darkness. It was difficult to see where I was; the stone steps were gone, the torches gone. I looked up. The rock above me jutted out. I kicked off of the wall and shot upward, out of the water. I was only able to get a hand on the shelf before falling into the water again, but it was enough for me to know that it was a sturdy shelf.

  I knew what was coming, that I needed a safe place. I tried over and over, but couldn’t reach it, and it was only when the storm picked up again and the winds exploded out of nowhere that the ocean rose again, and I was finally able to grab hold and pull myself up.

  As soon as I heaved forward and felt a bed of stone underneath me, I collapsed upon it, my body wrecked, my soul completely spent, and my heart full of relief because there was a chance that I might live.

  There was not long to celebrate or recoup, because the wind blew mercilessly and on my naked skin it felt colder than ice. My teeth began to chatter and I huddled as best I could, with my head tucked between my knees, my arms wrapped around my legs and my breath the only warm and life-affirming proof I had.

  It was still night, and it seemed to stretch on forever. I marked time by the gusts of wind and the rhythm of the waves. The water moved higher still and I could hear the waves coming, foaming, sloshing, rising up the rocks. When a wave finally crested the stone it made a sound like a gurgle of delight before flooding over me. Strange as it sounds, the waves felt deliciously warm, coating my body in a brief blanket before slithering away, back into the ocean.

  That was my darkest moment. I confess that the water, which I had feared so much just a short time before, was now seductive to me. Instead of wishing for it to go away, I found myself anticipating each wave, its warm shroud over my shoulders all too brief.

  A huge wave came, pushed even larger by a screaming gale, and I am ashamed to say that I broke my protective stance of warmth, and I cried out for the wave as it retreated. I crawled across the ledge, sobbing, pleading for the water to come back to me. I went right to the edge. It would be so easy, I thought, to slip back into that warm water. To stop this madness, hanging on to rocks, clinging to the small slip of life that I had left. The water would be warm, embracing to me.

  At that moment, I heard a wave approaching, rumbling up the side of the cliff and coming to me as fast as a nightmare. I put one foot out, over the cliff, and closed my eyes. The water bubbled up around my feet.

  Then, as if from a great distance away, I heard my name. It was Lucas. I turned, searching for him, for the source of the sound, but I could see nothing in the fierce rain, only the rock behind me. I knew it was bad, to be hallucinating like that, but when I heard the voice again, calling to me, the only thing that I could do was follow it.

  I moved away from the edge just as the water crested violently, slapping against me, and swelling over the rocks and about my feet. I didn’t care, because I lived only for that voice, to hear it again. Then again, faint, far away. I stumbled backward, pushed even harder by the wind, and where I thought my body would crash into stone, I fell into an opening in the rock. I had found a cave.

  There was nothing but blackness in the cave and the howling wind outside, and I lay still for a long time, panting and shaking with fear and shock. The wind roared, and I could feel the anger of the storm, but it could not enter the cave, not fully, at least. Every once in a while a gust would burst in, but I was protected at last. Now I only needed to pray that the water would not rise any higher.

  I ran my hands over my body. The rain had pelted against me as hard as stones for so long that I could feel my skin swelling and bruising beneath my fingers. Even so, I was filled with hope for the first time since the storm started. I crawled along until I felt a wall, and I curled up against it. Somehow, I still wore my necklace and my ring, and I held the shell tight for comfort, and somehow, in the midst of all that fury, I slept.

  The sound of gulls crying out to each other woke me. When I opened my eyes and stood, I could see no blue in the sky, only gray clouds that raced along, but the storm had clearly moved on. The skin on my fingers and toes was white and puckered and shredded, and I could see the pink flesh exposed in the worst cuts. When I moved my body cried out in pain, and I could see the bruises painted over every piece of skin. I walked out onto the ledge that I had almost stepped off last night, and was humbled to see the sheer drop to the rocky beach below. The glass cottage was completely gone, wiped away as if it had never even existed.

  A mixture of sadness and relief swept over me. The pang of loss was acute; the house had been so beautiful, such a powerful place to be in. I would only possess a pale memory of its greatness.

  A gust of wind rushed the cliff and blew my hair
around, and remembering the power of the wind, I stepped away. The floor of the ledge sloped so deeply downward that this cave would never, ever be noticed from the ground, and unless I figured out some way to get out, I would be trapped until I died of starvation or water deprivation.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I went back into the cave and looked around, trying to see exactly what my situation was. There was nothing I could use, but I discovered that people had been in the cave. I found a torch that was long ago blackened by fire and I saw bullet casings littered here and there along the floor. I bent down to look at the spent bullets, trying to determine if perhaps there was a year or some other identifier etched upon them. It was right then, as I was reaching down, that I heard cries. They were coming from somewhere inside the cave, and they were high-pitched pleading noises that came one on top of another.

  I moved toward the sound, trying to locate it. Perhaps it was a trick of the ear, maybe of the wind angling just right into the cave. But the longer I listened the more certain I became. I walked to the back wall, which seemed sheer to the ceiling, and waited. When cries came again, I hurried to the spot they originated from and could just barely make out another opening. What a strange cave this was.

  It was not hard to climb; there were large flakes and bumps on the wall that I put my hands and feet on. I climbed to the top and then I learned how deep the cave really was. The opening was another cave, of sorts, and on my hands and knees I was able to traverse across it. I could still hear the sounds—birds, or small animals perhaps. When the floor began to slope downward and the sunlight from the mouth of the cave disappeared, I grew a bit scared and used small, shuffling steps to move ahead. The cries had stopped, and there were only the sounds of my movement echoing out into the darkness.

  I moved still upward, and then the darkness morphed into a dull shade of gray and I knew for certain that there was another way out. Eventually I could see a faint yellow column of light and I made my way toward it. The space opened up to a cavern, completely covered with only one small hole in the roof, all the way at the edge of the cavern, and I could see blue sky above.