Through Glass: Episode Four

by Rebecca Ethington

  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 f
or 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.

  I tried not to panic, not to think of the army that had surrounded us, but the fear came anyway.

  The Tar could not stand in the light, but I had seen Abran’s men do so. I had seen them disappear into a ring of ash. I had only seen men, though, not the monsters who made the call that broke the silence, not the creatures whose talons filled the space with a dark click that turned my blood to ice.

  Click.

  The sound came again, but this time it was the click of Travis’s gun, the sound of the archaic hammer being pulled back in preparation of attack.

  My fingers shook as I lifted them, the aching joints mere inches from the holster, from the gun that I still had not mastered, the gun that I knew I would have to use to face the creatures on the other side. The creatures we had no choice other than to face now.

  Click.

  My hand inched closer, my breath caught in my chest as I forgot how to breathe, my muscles aching with fear and pain as I held the breath in. Everything was constricted as I felt the cold metal of the gun against my fingertips.

  Click.

  I wrapped my fingers over the cold steel, the gun feeling damp underneath the sweat that lined the palm of my hand. I gripped the gun tightly, the thick layer of perspiration making it hard to hold onto, letting it slip from my hand to fall against the cold cement floor with a clatter. The sound of the metal falling on cement erupted with a hollow sound, it ricocheted through the dark, it screamed in my ears.

  The sound of the gun falling was the key the creature had been waiting for, the frantic scream of the monster exploded the silence. The sound rippled through me in a terror that I had almost forgotten I could feel.

  I barely registered Travis’s arm as he swept me to the side, my feet sliding against the dust that covered the floor before my back slammed into the hard wall of the storage room. A bright yellow light flared through the darkness as Travis turned on yet another of his small, disk flashlights.

  The light was blinding after the dark of the storage room, the intensity of it sending a sharp pain through my skull, but I didn’t close my eyes, even through the desperate pain. They only opened wide in fear, my heart pumping ferociously as I focused on the light and what was about to walk into it. The light ran up the grey cement walls, the layers of dust twinkling in the drifts. It should have been beautiful, but not then, not like this.

  Travis leaned down and scooped my gun from where it lay, half hidden in the layers of dust that rest around our feet. I only caught a glimpse of the green metal as it flew through the air toward me, my hands reaching toward the weapon I knew I would need in only seconds.

  My hand wrapped around the gritty surface as the screech of the creatures who had hunted us sounded again. One after another they came, ripping through the air. The sound echoed in our ears as the room just on the other side of the door began to fill with the sounds of our deaths, their battle cry. They knew we were coming to face them.

  Everything tightened at the sound, my heart turning into a lump of pain in my throat. There were too many. I wasn’t even sure I had enough rounds in my gun.

  Travis’s jaw was a hard line of determination as he moved toward the door, his eyes flickering to mine as he reached toward the door knob, his hand frozen against the metal as we stared at one another.

  Knowing what was about happen.

  “I love you, Travis,” I whispered, but he could only nod before he threw the door open.

  July 24th 2021

  Travis

  We had left the store only minutes before. It was supposed to be a place that was safe, that perhaps we could rest. But then I had seen the marks, the dust dragged across the floor. I recognized the marks at once, the way shins and hands slid through dirt and ash in a pattern that was all to familiar, familiar because I had taught them how to do it. How to move in the dark with only the crude night-vision specs Carson had made. I had taught them how to kill.

  The black team.

  I wanted to say that we were safe—safe because they hadn’t found us,—but I knew how wrong that was. Because, if they were this close, they would find us.

  So we ran, desperate for a head start I knew we could never find.

  I squinted through the dark as we ran, my eyes straining as they tried to see through the pitch black that shrouded the world. I held the light out in an attempt to make the beams spread wider—keep us safe, light the way—but it didn’t help much. I was still merely running into a black darkness that the Tar had brought on that very first day, a blackness I couldn’t see into.

  I had spent an entire life in light, an entire life protected by the monsters that ruled us. I was still human—my body unchanged. Not like my sister, whose emaciated body should have died by now, whose eyes could peer into the darkness and see things that were all but hidden from me.

  I could hear Lex as she walked beside me, her deep breaths heavy and long as she pushed her tiny body beyond what I would have assumed her capable of. Her wild red hair was like a flame as we moved side by side, my subconscious mind careful to keep myself close to her until I could see again, until the light had something to reflect off and not just the endless field of bare dirt we were running through.

  We needed to find a place soon, preferably an older home with a dry storage, something without windows that I could set the Carson light outside of and keep us safe long enough to sleep.

  It was only luck that I had grabbed a few of the lights. I had built an audible motion detection into them years ago, now I guess I would find out if it worked.

  “We need to find a place with a basement,” I panted as we ran, my legs aching as I continued to push them.

  “There is a subdivision ahead. There should be something there.”

  I should have found a calm in the words, it was the first neighborhood we had found since we had left the compound, it should provide safety. But it also provided something else, knowledge I didn’t want to accept. I tried not to cringe as she said it, the words an affirmation of what I already knew to be true.

  She could see.

  A pain tightened around my heart, joining the all-encompassing loss that Bridget’s missing piece filled me with. I tried to push it away, but it only seemed to grow. It took over as the memory of those last few days with Jason took over, the way he would stare into the dark and tell me that they were coming closer.

  The way he had seen things that weren’t there.

  I saw the same things in Lex now. I recognized it when she stood in the dark, her scream echoing around us, even though she didn’t remember producing the sound. I saw it as she stared into the black, her body swaying like she was being pulled into it.

  As if it was calling her to it.

  The pain in my chest swelled until it pressed against my throat, the unwanted emotion growing until I clenched my teeth and pushed it away.

  I had risked everything to get her out of Abran’s hands, something I hadn’t been able to do for Jason. I had let Abran take my brother, but I wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

  Now I was beginning to wonder if I had made the right decision, and if Lex would be strong enough to fight the poison that ran through her before we could get to Blood Rose and into the bright light that could protect her.

  At least that was my hope. Owen would know for sure.

  We just needed to get there
before anyone found us.

  This Novella is part of an ongoing Novella publication.

  A new episode of The Through Glass Series is released in timed intervals throughout the year.

  You can discuss the stories, cast your vote for what happens next and stay up to date on release schedules by joining our Through Glass Based Discussion group: http://

  on.fb.me/1krnvM1

  Other Books by Rebecca Ethington

  The Imdalind Series

  Book One: Kiss of Fire

  Book Two: Eyes of Ember

  Book Three: Scorched Treachery

  Book Four: Soul of Flame

  The Through Glass Novella Series

  Episode One: The Beginning

  Episode Two: The Darkness

  Episode Three: The Blue

  Episode Four: The Drip

  About the Author

  Rebecca Ethington has been telling stories since she was small. First, with writing crude scripts, and then on stage with years of theatrical performances. The Imdalind Series has been her first stint into the world of literary writing, and the Through Glass Series her next journey.

  Rebecca is a mother to two, and wife to her best friend of 14 years. She was born and raised in the mountains of Salt Lake City, and hasn’t found the desire to leave yet. Her days are spent writing, running, and enjoying life with her amazing family.

  After years of writing scripts for children’s theatre company’s across the country, Rebecca is happy to be making her debut into the world of fiction with Kiss of Fire, the first in The Imdalind Series.

  Eyes of Ember, the second book in The Imdalind Series, Book Three, Scorched Treachery, and Book Four, Soul of Flame are out now.

  Coming Soon From Rebecca Ethington