Through Glass: Episode Four (4 page)

Suddenly, the reason we had come to
this store made sense. It wasn’t for the possibility of a lone can
of green beans. It was for the larger possibility of product
placement that marketing had once brought to the middle class.
Stuff the Tar would have missed.

There would be food here.

That didn’t help the ripple of fear
that moved up my spine when he suggested that we go into the
shadowed passageways separately, however.

I wasn’t scared to be alone. I had
been alone for years, living in silence. But, since I had left my
house, I had only found danger in tight, enclosed spaces—places
where you couldn’t see what lurked on the other side of
doors.

“
You want me to go in
there?” I asked as I fought the shiver that moved up my
spine.

“
Yes, Alexis. You’re not
scared, are you?”

“
No!” My voice came way too
loud as I turned to him. The parental scowl that Travis gave
frustrating me. “I’m not scared,
Tee
,” I mocked, using his silly
nickname against him, “I just haven’t had much luck with dark,
enclosed spaces.”

Travis glowered at me as I spat his
nickname so rudely, the disdain on his face quickly smoothing into
a low bearing concern that made me uncomfortable. He didn’t look at
me as if he was upset; it was more as if he was concerned for
me.

I swallowed and straightened my spine
at that look. I didn’t want him to worry. I didn’t want him to
think I was weak. As it was, the fact that I was getting so worked
up about simple shadows was kind of embarrassing.

I clenched my teeth and met the look
in Travis’s eyes with a hard look of my own, needing him to
understand that I was strong enough to take care of myself. That I
wasn’t afraid.

Even though I was.

“
It’s okay. We are going to
be quick. Just keep your light up, and if you want, we can talk, or
sing ‘In the Meadow There was a Lamb’.”

I tried not to cringe at the mention
of the lullaby Mom had sung to us. Instead, I settled for scowling
at Travis and moving into the darkness, the thump of fear covering
up the painful pulse that the mention of the family we had lost was
giving me.

“
Three aisles over, then
meet back here.” Travis’s voice echoed behind me before I heard the
soft pads of his feet as they moved through the dust, the bright
light he held fading away and leaving me in the somewhat dim glow
of the one I held.

Three aisles.
I repeated the instructions to myself as my
muscles tensed, my hands clenching around the gun and light that I
held in each of my hands.

I knew at once that this wasn’t going
to work.

The boxes and displays stretched a
good three feet above me, and with my hands full, there was no way
I was going to be able to reach them all, let alone one. Being
short never had its benefits—I don’t care what anyone
said.

I sighed and set the light down on the
shelf in front of me, the sounds of boxes rubbing against metal
shelving echoing from somewhere far behind me as Travis scoured his
own aisles. I tucked my gun into my pocket in an attempt to regain
use of at least one hand. It probably wasn’t the best place to put
it, but it was all I had for now. I was going to need to find a
holster or something. I’ll have to put it on my shopping list.
Right next to dusty waffle irons.

With one hand free, I began to shift
boxes around, scanning the aged containers for some form on content
label, or cheesy ‘also included’ advertising. I had been bombarded
by that type of product placement for years, my mind becoming so
used to it that I barely noticed it. Of course, now that I was
looking, I couldn’t find it anywhere. All I saw were promises of
Teflon and dishwasher capable, both things that meant very little
to me. Well, to anyone really.

I wiped away the dust that covered the
boxes, the thick layer gritty under my hand as it stuck to my skin
and flew into the air. The tiny particles erupted into little
clouds that got into my nose and mouth, making it hard to breathe.
My throat tickled and burned as I moved away from the ever growing
wall of dust I was surrounded by, my lungs aching as they fought
for air, desperate to be rid of the gunk that I had accidentally
swallowed. It was all I could do not to cough.

I moved quickly to the next aisle,
desperate to escape the poisonous curtain I had created, even
though I hadn’t checked all the boxes. I knew at once I needed to
either move slower, or I would have to retrace my steps. Neither of
which I was really interested in doing. I was already feeling far
to jumpy from being in the claustrophobic space the high selves
provided, my eyes darting around wildly as if I expected something
to be there.

As if I wanted it to be.

I moved to the next aisle, this one
full of a vast array of what I was sure had once been top of the
line cookware, now it only looked like blobs of grey in differing
shapes and sizes.

I held the light before me as I
walked, the long beam casting over the dust covered relics, the
layers of dust sparkling and shining. In some ways, it looked like
a layer of snow. Well, the snow you see in movies anyway. I had
never actually seen snow, and unless the black world suddenly
decided moisture was a good thing, I never would.

I knelt down to inspect the boxes that
were lined up below the displays, sure I was wasting my time when
the rhythmic noises of Travis moving boxes around stopped. All
there was, was silence. A void that rippled through the air and
tensed in my chest in cold, hard fear.

My hand froze in front of me as my
breath caught, the sound of my heart in my ears increasing as I
waited for the sound to return.

Click.

The noise shot through me like a
million volts of energy, the memory of the sound of talons against
wood stitching my heart together in fear and pain. I didn’t dare
move. I only froze in place, my focus on the light I held in my
hands, praying it would be enough as I waited.

Click.

My head jolted toward the echo of
sound that ricocheted through the dark, my heart tensing and
pulsing until it pulled at my lungs, making it hard to
breathe.

Click.

This one was closer. So much closer. I
fought the need to call out to Travis, fought the fear that I
didn’t want to accept was so prevalent in me. My body uncoiled
slowly as I pulled myself to standing, my free hand twitching as it
slowly moved toward the gun I had tucked in my pocket.

Click.

Closer still. I couldn’t pull my eyes
from the blackness at the end of aisle where the sound was coming
from, the abyss that swallowed up the light.

I didn’t dare breathe as my fingers
tensed around the handle of the gun, waiting for the sound to come
again, to echo through the dark, waiting for the sound to become
something more.

Waiting to attack.

Time seemed to stretch on, a second
turning into an hour, when, instead of moving, everything stood
still. My whole body tensed in raw fear in a strength that I had
never felt before.

My breath picked up all on its own,
fearful and heaving, as a grey mass shifted into the shadow at the
end of the aisle. It moved into the edge of grey and black where my
light barely touched, where the shadows lived. It was a mass that
moved and shifted through the light and the dark, in a blur of
shadow and smoke, yet somehow dense like fabric. Like the strips of
black I had watched fall from the sky so many years before. It
didn’t dance like those had, though; this one only seeped into the
light, the color so much deeper than the darkness that lived just
beyond where the light could touch.

A scream swelled in my throat, the
sound fighting to escape the tense coil of fear that held it there.
The sound grew inside of me, only to have the murderous sound
stolen into silence as the shadow seemed to grow, a dark mass that
moved closer to me, swallowing up the light that I held. The sound
of fear and blood flowed through my ears as I tried to look away,
tried to run, tried to scream.

Anything.

“
Lex!”

The shadow moved as the voice rocked
through the dark, leaving me panting, gasping in frantic breaths
that poured out of me.

“
Lex!” Travis’s voice was a
yell of panic as it shot through the dark behind me. The fear, the
depth of it, sounding so unfamiliar that I jumped. The painful
tension that had grown through me rocked my joints
painfully.

My eyes darted away from the now empty
darkness that stood before me as I looked toward the sound, seeing
only darkness before Travis bolted down the aisle toward me, his
eyes wild as he grabbed at me, his hands pressing awkwardly against
my body as if he was checking for injuries or weapons.

The brightness of Travis’s light
pulsed through my head as I looked at him. The fear on his face was
as bright and apparent as I was sure mine was. The haunted look in
his eyes almost scared me. He looked at me like he had expected me
to be dead, the pale look on his face haunting as he
panted.

“
Are you okay?” he asked as
he held me in front of him, his chest heaving. “I heard you
scream.”

Had I screamed? I had felt like I was
going to, but I had never heard the sound.

Not the sound of a scream.

“
I heard clicks…” The words
were dead on my tongue, the look on Travis’s face making it clear
he hadn’t heard what I had.

“
Lex?” he asked, his hands
shaking me a bit as his panic seemed to grow.

“
I’m all right.” I could
barely get the words out, the fear that still raged through me
closing up my throat.

The words didn’t seem to calm him,
however; he only swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he looked
away from me toward the light I still held in my hand.

“
Your light is
out.”

The words quaked through me as I
looked down to the now dead disk in my hand, the once warm light
cold against my fingers.

It had obviously been out a
while.

My heart thundered painfully as I
slowly turned, the pressurized fear that ruled me growing as I
faced the blackness behind me.

The space where the shadow had
been.

The expanse of space stretched before
me with nothing more than the dust covered relics of a once
pristine world.

A world that, I was sure, was full of
more than just the Tar.

The fire sparked and flared as it ate
away at the old bookshelves and dining sets that we had
meticulously ripped apart and dragged from different corners of the
department store. The store that had once looked like an old,
untouched, relic; now looked just like everything else in the dark
world.

Destroyed.

Travis had carefully placed several
metal filing cabinets in a triangle, moving everything around it
away in the hopes of giving enough of a barrier that the flames
couldn’t spread over the dozens of dust covered mattresses we were
surrounded by. The makeshift fire pit had seemed like it wasn’t
going to be enough after we loaded it with shards of wood and
paper, but the stuff was so dry that it burned down to nothing
before Travis had finished arranging it. We kept loading and
organizing the wood and tinder until it built itself into a blaze,
leaving us with a low, simmering fire. The flames were still high
enough to illuminate everything around us, keeping us
safe.

Or so was the belief I clung
to.

I could still see the rolling movement
of the way that thing had moved. I could still feel the ice that
ran down my skin. It was enough to make everything feel dangerous,
not that anything was safe.

I clung to the gun in my hand as I
stared into the flames, letting the bright red and yellow light
burn through me, my eyes aching. I felt the pain, felt the heat
that seemed so unfamiliar against my skin, but I didn’t look away.
I didn’t move closer to the shadows. I was almost too scared
to.

Scared of what I would see.

It was different than being afraid of
what was hidden behind doors, or afraid of monsters that would do
anything to kill you, to take you. This was the fear of the
unknown, and in a world ruled by creatures that were more myth that
anything else, it almost seemed silly.

Yet it was there.

I blinked my eyes to get rid of the
pain, and finally pulled myself away from the fire, moving toward
the dusty beds we would sleep on once Travis returned from his
bedding search. The tired springs of the mattress collapsed under
my weight as I sat, sinking me into the soft pad. Even though I had
cleaned off much of the dust, a small plume of it still erupted
around me, the tiny motes glistening in the firelight as they
became air born. I watched them fall for a moment, the tiny things
glistening like fireworks and fireflies. Things that didn’t exist
anymore. I listened to the crackle of the fire as it ate its way
through the wood, the sound loud and somehow relaxing.