Through Glass (21 page)

“We are all mad here…” I whispered to myself, my mind stringing the words together on their own. The parallels screamed themselves inside my head, the warning loud and terrifying.

I wanted to believe that the words made no sense, that they were simply the mad ramblings of someone left too long in loneliness.

I couldn’t. The connection I had made when I saw that first message still rang clear. I could feel my pulse beat faster, no matter how hard I tried to deny it.

The Tar. Each of the desperate warnings talked about The Tar, mentioned them like they were living things, but I already knew they were living things. I still had dried specks of their blood on my skin. Seeing the Tar referred to so many times only confirmed it in my mind. The Tar were the Ulama.

With that one piece in place they no longer played out like the ramblings of a haunted man, the deranged warnings of a schizophrenic. The jagged writing on the wall was nothing more than an instruction manual.

I wasn’t sure that made it better. I didn’t want to accept them as instructions. If I did, it only made the danger that I had willingly walked into more real. My choice to run more dangerous.

I looked from word to word, phrase to phrase. My heart beat faster in panic with each word—each warning—until I faced the final message. The one that was painted into the back of the door with bright red paint and a bloody handprint right below it. The last word of the painted message had been crossed out with a jagged X that had been carved into the wood.

My jaw dropped as my body began to shake. The bright red of the author’s blood had been sprayed over the back of the door. The red, bright and glistening in the fire light. It wasn’t the arc of blood that remained that was sending the sliver of panic right into my heart. The words weren’t written in paint as I had first thought; they were bright and glistening as someone had written in their own blood, their fingerprints still visible in the bright red surface.

My eyes slowly opened to the flicker of the fire, dim light illuminating the room. The flames that I had placed in the large frying pan I had found amongst the garbage of the room were just beginning to die. I had thought I had put enough paper and wood in the pan to last more than one night, but I guess not. I hadn’t really had to rely on a fire for anything before, so obviously my calculations were way off.

The glow of the dying flames was just enough to give a nice orange glow to the room. Hopefully, it was still enough to keep the Ulama at bay. Seeing as I hadn’t been attacked in my sleep, I was going to assume that it was in fact enough.

I was actually surprised I had been able to get any sleep at all, even though my body was exhausted, the fear of another attack had stayed with me, tensing my muscles until they ached. I had lain still, Cohen’s picture against my chest as I tried to relax. However, the sounds of the Ulama’s screech still ran through my head, making me jump at odd intervals and always when my tired bones had just begun to relax. The sound of death played over and over, haunting me as I stared at the writing on the walls. I ran over the words, trying to figure out the ones that were missing, trying not to let it freak me out more than it already had.

But now, with the dull light of the fire illuminating the disjointed writing, it was harder to ignore. My mind put words into place; haunted warnings becoming clearer with each word I figured out.

I looked away and slid off the bit of the broken mattress I had been sleeping on then threw a few more pieces of broken dresser onto the fire.

“Thanks for helping me sleep, Cohen,” I whispered to the picture, fully aware I was talking to a slip of chemical covered paper. I hadn’t been out of my house for that long, so I didn’t think I had gone that crazy, but then again, I had been talking to a spider for the last six months. Anything was possible. I laid the picture on the ground by my knee, Cohen’s smiling face peering up at me.

I looked at him in the silence, not really wanting to look away, even though I needed to. I could already feel my heart pinch together and my eyes burn in threat of tears. I don’t think I had fully accepted him as being dead yet. I had seen him carried away, saw his hand fall limply down. Yet, deep down inside of me, he was still alive. I shook the thought from my head and pulled my eyes away from the picture that I had memorized years ago. Letting emotions like that continually cloud me was only going to get me killed.

I pulled the backpack to me and then pulled out one of the few ballpoint pens from the front, running it over the skin on my ankle in large circles before the ink began to flow.

I ran the ink over the skin on my right wrist, the black of the ink seeping into my dry skin like it was moisturizer. The pen followed the same lines it had for the past two years; my own face looking back up at me the same way it had since that very first day Cohen had placed it there.

“One of these days, Cohen, I am going to find a tattoo parlor.” My voice was quiet as I spoke to him, the sound disjointed in the quiet room. “Then I can make this permanent.”

I’d had the thought before, the idea foreign to a straight-lined eighteen-year-old, but I wasn’t sure who I was anymore. Right now, the idea was welcome.

I wanted to make this permanent.

I wanted to always carry the memory of him on my body.

I ran my dirty fingers over the skin as I finished, the dry ink staying still on my skin. Part of me wondered if years of tracing the same lines had made it permanent, but I wasn’t going to wash it away to find out.

I couldn’t risk losing it, so a tattoo it would be. That was if there were any tattoo parlors left in the world I was trapped in. Maybe a group of survivors would have one. That was if I found anyone. I guess, worst case scenario, I could ask the Ulama to do it.

Yet, someone had drawn rules on these walls. Someone had survived the Ulama’s attack and knew enough about them to write the rules down. To warn me. To warn others.

Somewhere, someone might be alive. I looked from word to word, almost expecting the Tar to burst through the door at any minute.

I hadn’t heard a sound since the ones who had tried to attack me yesterday fled from the light. Everything had been quiet, even the usual crackle of the fire seemed quieter than I would have expected. The darkness swallowed up the sound since it couldn’t steal the light away.