The Mirrors of Fate (31 page)

Maria gasped as she was viciously snatched from the ground and forced on to her feet. Her outburst had touched a nerve. She nervously prepared herself for an assault of screaming, raging fury, the kind she saw lit in his brown eyes in the instant he grabbed her. Instead, the way he spoke next with such collected, yet still slightly detached calm terrified her so much her tears froze in their ducts.

“
Don’t question me. Ever. Everything I have done from day one was for her.”

She fought through her fear and challenged him again, gently this time. “Why won’t you answer my question? Don’t go around it. Where did you go that wasn’t White Crest?”

David gave her a parting look of disgust before he let go of his hold on her. He turned away and went back to the table where his red folder lay.

“
I have done what I came to do,” he said, meticulously organizing the articles back in the folder. He closed it with finality. “I am finished with this place.”

Maria stopped within a few feet of him and studied him. He had told her everything else yet he was still hiding something. So much of her was afraid to inquire more into it, and even more afraid of what response she would get.

“
I—I want to know. Where did you really go after the crash happened? And what did you mean when you said you were glad you left this world a long time ago?”

David stopped cold in his movements. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he lied.

“
When you froze everyone, or whatever the hell you did back there, you said you were glad you left this world a long time ago. What do you mean by that? Because if you’re not dead then what—”

When she saw him regain his motions once again she realized she would not get an answer out of him. He tucked the folder underneath the pit of his arm and turned to face her. But as he did, a cold, unearthly night chill entered the room, its source unknown because all the windows were closed.

She thought she could have ignored it, but this wisp of a chill was accompanied by another, then another.

David hadn’t picked up that something was wrong as soon as she did. She knew he was saying something to her because she could see his lips moving, but the words went unnoticed. All she noticed was the room’s chill. Goosebumps raised on her skin and her heart took on a frenzied beat.

Finally he must have noticed the change of expression on her face and her mind’s preoccupation with something else. But what?

Her skin prickled. A temperature change? Quick. Suspicious. Cold.

Maria gasped at the sight of her breath. She could see it float as an icy white mist before her. “What the hell?” she uttered under her breath.

The window suddenly burst open, ferociously hurling in violent, relentless blasts of air that blew her dress up and flung David’s folder from his fingers. Maria grabbed her gown as the gusts of wind, continuous now and uninterrupted, pummeled into them with the force of a hurricane.

“
What’s happening!?” she yelled.

She didn’t hear David respond nor could she see him at first with the intense winds forcing her eyes to remain closed for seconds at a time. Maria finally raised her hand to block the wind and opened her eyes briefly to locate David. He had deserted his original spot and taken a new one by the opened window. She was shocked to see he had even managed to walk. She could barely stand let alone move her entire body against this spontaneous fury.

David stood by the window looking outside. A worried look of foreboding was thick in his features. The sky’s natural nocturnal beauty was replaced by a thick mishmash of ominous dreary gray clouds forming and moving with an unnatural speed.

A lightning bolt struck. Something was coming.

“
Shit!” David hastily slammed the window shut and locked it tight. “Damn it, I’m an idiot! It’s found me already!”

“
What’s going on?”

David quickly began snatching his papers back into his folder. Maria stood watching his feverish actions, incessantly demanding to be told what was happening. He only ignored her. Urgently he advanced to the front door, giving Maria no warning when the assault of wind came again once he flung the door open.

He stepped one foot outside but her hand grasped his shoulder.

“
Stop! Where are you going?”

“
Listen to me!” he shouted above the wind increasing in roaring ferocity. “You say you don’t believe in my curse. Well, it’s come to kill me now. Go to your room! Lock you and your family in.
Do not
leave it!”

“
What do you mean the curse has—”

He put a hand on her chest and shoved her to the floor. “Stop asking questions. Do what I said. Don’t leave that room for any reason!”

The order was given with unyielding finality and an urgency blazing in his eyes. David lingered only for the moment it took to burn his order into her with flaming eyes, and then he ran outside into the screaming night. For long after, she merely stared in blurred, disoriented confusion at the door he had deserted her through. Would he be all right?

But soon she blinked, recovered, then sprang to her feet. Her mad dash for the staircase and skipping over steps in leaps got her to her bedroom faster than she could prepare herself to see the frozen statues of her family and guests once again. She had completely forgotten about their state, but throwing that thought aside and any wonders of when or
if
they would regain animation again, she tried dragging them with all her strength further inside so she could close the door. When she finally accomplished the challenging feat, she slammed the door and locked it with the key.

She pressed her body against the wooden door for more security. She listened for a change in sounds downstairs. The wind was picking up. Soon it could be heard all throughout the upstairs hallway, forcing windows open and closed and tossing hanging pictures from their nails on the wall.

The door began pounding. The wind demanded entry. Maria crouched to the ground, closing her eyes and covering her ears.

Go away! Just go away!
she screamed in her mind.

She tried to occupy her mind as best as she could with soothing words and silly comforting tunes. It worked. The wind died down eventually and a silence pervaded in.

But peace was soon shattered.

What she heard next was loud and vicious. The pandemonium of a drunken bar brawl. When she heard the cracks of furniture, her mind pictured bar stools flying and breaking into pieces against the wall, and men being violently tossed and slid across counters. She heard the loud scraping of the legs of a chair on a wooden floor, hard-to-visualize dull clunks—scattered bangs—deafeningly dull clunks—glass, or was it porcelain, breaking?—and David’s yells.

Oh God, what was happening?

“
Oh please just make it stop!” Maria pleaded. The struggle only grew more intense. Her hands automatically clasped themselves together and she muttered a silent prayer for him. He was all alone down there. She couldn’t see what was happening to him. She couldn’t see what was attacking him.

All she could do, for how long she wasn’t sure, was rock back and forth on her heels and hum a melody to drone out the sounds. He was dying. She knew he was dying.

•

Time elapsed. She wasn’t sure how long. But when this newfound silence entered and stuck for several minutes, she wondered, prayed that it was over.

The wind was still blowing; she could see the tops of trees swaying back and forth from her bedroom window. She stayed crouched on the floor for much time thereafter, just staring at the weak breeze and fearing so intensely that something, anything would break through and attack her. But when she could sit there quietly no longer, she stood up with her back still magnetized to the door and her chest heaving up and down. The peaceful silence would have been more trustworthy if not for the air of eeriness contaminating it.

She fought with her mind now. Should she stay here? Safe? Free from whatever danger was downstairs? But what had happened to David? She couldn’t stay up here forever. It had to be over.

It was time to look through the keyhole. Maria’s watery knees bent after long mental preparation. Her mind terrified her with images of what strange demonic thing she might see. A deformed, puss-filled, sore festering face or burnt skin on a face with green veins and blood dripping down eyes. All she wanted to know was that outside her door was safe. She drew the courage and looked.

Thankfully, there was nothing.

In bloodstained dress and all, she slowly and tremblingly reached for the key. She turned it with as little sound as possible and opened the door. Her steps were gingerly cautious as she came out into the hallway. As she started to inch her way down the stretch from her room, she felt dizzy. Her fear morphed the hallway around her tenfold in size and length with carnival fun house mirror effect.

“
D—David
?” It was only a mere whisper, but she hoped somehow he could answer from wherever he was.

Carefully she took herself to the staircase, leaving her bedroom door open in fear of needing to run back at a moment’s notice. “
D—David
?” she whispered again as she stood at the top of the stairs and debated whether or not to descend. From where she stood she could see the front door. To the left she could barely see the entrance to the living room.

She took a firm grasp of the railing. She stepped robotically down the steps, holding on so her fear would not make her collapse. When she finally got to the bottom, she turned her head toward the living room entrance and looked inside its recesses.

Chaos.

The room was just like she had imagined in her mind’s eye. A struggle had taken place. The first thing that caught her eye was the deep indentation in the wall and a large stain of blood on it. Thick red blood stained the embroidered carpet, soaked and fresh, and also sprinkled in different corners of the room.

One puddle amongst the many red, however, was black.

The oak coffee table that stood between both couches was split down the middle, revealing that—because there was no other explanation for it—a heavy weight had been smacked down upon it and caused it to snap in half. The legs of the two couches were broken as well. They leaned forward lazily, their cushions strewn about. Glass from the windows had been shattered and covered most of the floor. Vase pieces and the smashed remains of her mother’s figurines were all around.

The sight was too much to take in all at once. The only thing missing from the scene was David. She dreaded the mental image of him ripped apart or impaled by something. Instead, neither his body could she see nor his presence could she feel. Whatever happened in the room, she hoped with every fiber of her being David had managed to escape being a part of it.

The front door, open and swinging in the low currents of weakened wind, creaked to call her attention. Maria moved toward it, but not before carefully looking about her a few more times to ensure she was the only person around. When she got to the door she looked outside, hoping to see some sign of David. She was anguished. Only Mr. Singh’s car was visible next to the desolate, lightless sidewalk of her neighborhood. By the looks of it, all the electricity from the other houses except hers had gone. How did that make sense?

A sputtered cough suddenly came from the living room. Her gaze flew in its direction. “David?” she whispered out, but still there was no response. She mustered up enough courage to lead her toward the living room entrance arch again, but with slow, cautious baby steps.

“
Hello?” she said timidly.

She heard another sputtered cough. Her eyes surveyed the room. Another came and she was alerted to look toward her father’s favorite armchair, also soaked with blood. From behind it, a blood-coated arm suddenly stretched out into view.

She jumped. “David?”

The arm responded with a finger twitch.

Urgency flooded into her veins and she dashed across the room without commanding her feet to do so. But at her father’s chair she halted as if an invisible force field had barred her. She was not prepared for whatever gruesome scene she would see, so she took a second to breathe, then slowly went around the chair.

“
David?”

He came into view and she screamed. He lay on his side on the floor in a pool of syrupy thick red blood seeping from several large gashes on his body. She clasped her hands over her mouth in shock. His body was twitching in several places from exposed purple nerves. Suddenly he started choking. He jerked and raised his head to cough out several spouts of blood. Maria dropped to her knees, took hold of him and sat him upright against her chest.

“
It’s okay! Just cough it up! Just try and breathe if you can, just try and breathe.”

David’s eyes were sealed shut as he coughed more violently. Upon closer inspection of him, Maria noticed a heavy swelling on his leg; the bone had been dislocated, twisted, and now jutted against the skin like a bump. Oh God, how much had he been tossed around, thrashed about and beaten mercilessly?

“
Alan, open your eyes. Alan say something! I need you to tell me what to do!” She hadn’t even noticed at first she used his fake name. She bent her head over him and used all her strength to cradle him in her arms. With a tiny gasp his coughing seized, but when David finally was able to open and focus his eyes on hers, she realized he was not dead. Just angry.