Through Glass: Episode Four (3 page)

I didn’t see Cohen anymore.

I saw a monster.

“
He’s gone,” I said, trying
to keep the break out of my voice and failing.

“
And yet, you saw Sarah,”
Travis whispered, his voice soft as he tiptoed around my heart
break. “You saw those men walk and talk and interact before you
revealed what they really are. You saw hope.”

My head snapped up to look at him at
those words, my wrist still frozen before me as I tried to process
what had been said.

“
I need to find him, Lex.
He may be the only person who can help us figure out the extent of
what Abran has done. Of what the Tar really are. And what Abran is
planning. Will you help me?”

I could only nod.

An old department store was not the
place I would have thought to search when Travis had announced we
needed to look for food. I would have gone right to a grocery
store, someplace where they actually sold food and not an endless
array of dusty clothing that I would have seen Cohen’s grandmother
wear.

In fact, I didn’t hold onto much hope
of finding anything here at all. Except for a little dust, it all
looked too perfect. The clothes still hung on rows of racks, cash
registers were un-touched with partially packaged purchases laid
beside them. Faceless mannequins posed in moth eaten clothing that
hung from their dust covered bodies, the vacant spaces of their
eyes leering at us as we walked in front of them.

I tried not to look at them as we
strode past, but I couldn’t help it. My heart thundered in my chest
as I waited for the blank eyes to flash black, the motionless
bodies to spring to life. It was a thought wrought by years of old
horror movies, the possibility only made more real by the terror of
the world we were currently living in.

I tightened the grip on the gun I held
before me and moved closer to Travis while the loud slaps of my
shoes against the dust covered linoleum jolted through the silence,
making my spine tense and curl.

I said nothing as we walked side by
side, his strained breathing echoing through the general stillness
of the expansive room, making it uncomfortable to say much. It was
almost as if someone was waiting in the black that surrounded us,
just beyond the grey line of light, hidden behind doorframes and
the endless racks that were suddenly beginning to feel more like a
hazard.

I had quickly learned to fear open
spaces, and the sheer enormity of this one was somehow only
heightening my fear. It wasn’t like a street that held the tight
corners that you could hide in, here it was simply open.

I knew I shouldn’t look into the
massive black space that surrounded us, but I couldn’t stop myself
from peering into the endless nothing. My heart pounded in my ears
like a drum, the enormity of the space somehow making it feel like
it was caving in, the sky falling and shattering.

“
Stay close,” Travis
whispered the unneeded instruction to me, his voice tense and
strained as he changed course, plunging off the angular linoleum
path and onto the dusty carpet that stretched between the
racks.

I picked up my pace and moved right
behind him, the pulse that echoed in my ears escalating as the
clear sightlines began to disappear, covered by dusty clothing
racks and faded and torn advertisements for sales that had never
happened.

I wished we could go back to the
seemingly safe footing the main path had provided us, to the open
space that, while haunting, had given us warning to what was around
us. Here anything could be lurking. It was a forest of clothes and
lifeless figures, the haunted wood that would take us to the witch
instead of the yellow brick road that would lead us right to the
wizard. Besides, didn’t Glenda—the good witch—say to stay on the
path?

I swallowed heavily and banished the
thought, my muscles tensing the farther we moved away from what I
perceived as relative safety. The expanse of this space was feeling
more and more like a prison the farther we moved into
it.

The farther we moved away from the
only exit I knew of.

Our steps were shallow thuds in the
thick layer of dust as we moved amongst the old relics, the heavy
thunder of my heart pounding against my chest painfully. I kept
close to my brother as I tried to keep the fear at a gentle simmer,
the emotion just enough to keep me alert, a feeling that was all
too necessary.

The silence made everything seem more
desolate, more dangerous, it made every sound that much louder in
my ears. The reverberation of the thunder in my heart loud enough
that I was sure Travis could hear it.

The deep, heaving breaths of my fear
caught as we moved past yet another pair of forgotten plastic
people, the light Travis held reflecting against the grainy texture
of their skin. I glanced at them, only to feel my heart dive to my
toes, my stomach twisting in horror at something that I wasn’t even
sure I had seen.

A dark shape had moved behind them,
something had darted out of my line of sight the second I turned
toward it. It was black like the world that surrounded us, but too
close to be a part of the shadows that threatened to swallow us
up.

My heart screamed the word ‘Tar’, my
grip on my gun digging into my hand as a ripple of fear devoured
me. I stepped toward it wildly, desperate to see, desperate to
fight. However, whatever had been there was gone, just a shadow
that had sparked out of the corner of my eye.

At least that was what I tried to tell
myself.

Even though I knew it was a
lie.

My heart beat heavy against my chest
as another icy sliver of fear ran up my spine. My body frozen in
place as I continued in my attempt to convince myself that it had
only been a shadow, but I knew at once that was wrong. The motion
had been too quick. It had looked like more than a silhouette cast
by Travis’s light. It had been as though the darkness itself had
gotten too close to the light and was trying to get
away.

Travis’s light flickered as he moved
away from me, obscuring the area with long strips of light and dark
over the clothing racks. It sparked against the once reflective
metal. It stretched the mannequins of the people to inhuman sizes.
Still, they didn’t move.

Not like what I had seen.

My fingers clenched around the gun as
if I expected to have to use it, expected a monster to rise up into
the light, but nothing happened. Only the steady movement of the
lines of light and dark. Only the steady beat of my heart as it
sounded in my ears.

I stared ahead of me, my breathing
picking up as Travis’s light began to dim, but still I remained
motionless. I could only stand still as I stared into the dark,
waiting for another shadow to move on its own.

“
Lex?” Travis whispered
through the dark, the bright light growing as he rushed back to me.
“What is it? Did you hear something?”

“
I don’t know,” I answered
slowly, still unable to look away from the darkness in front of
me.

Travis’s breathing seemed to pick up
from beside me, as if something in my answer disturbed him. I don’t
know why, but his reaction flared inside of me, and I inhaled,
finally pulling my focus from the space off in the
distance.

My nerves must be shot.

My heart continued to pound in my
chest as I looked into the wide eyes of my brother, his own fear
hidden behind the dark brown shade of his eyes.

“
Come on,” Travis growled,
his temper rumbling through his voice.

He didn’t wait for an answer, he only
continued down the small aisle we walked through, the light fading
until I finally pulled myself away from the spot I had been stuck
in, my body feeling heavy as I moved. It felt as if something was
keeping me there.

Dust clouded around my feet as I
caught up with Travis, his pace still slow as he reached the end of
the aisle and came to another main walkway, this one even more dust
covered than the last.

It was times like these that I was
grateful for the heavy work boots I had taken from my father’s
closet, the leather thick enough that I couldn’t feel the waves of
dust that settled and flowed around our feet. It was already bad
enough that I could smell it.

I had gotten used to the smell of dust
in the house I had been trapped in for so long. I had gotten used
to the way it stuck to everything in the world, even the stagnant
air outside couldn’t take it away. It was simply always
there.

This dust smelled different, though.
It was sweet and acrid and hung in my nose heavy and unwanted.
Perhaps it was the smell of old clothes, the moth eaten cottons
that hung limp and lifeless around us mixing with the dust. My body
rebelled against it, my stomach twisting uncomfortably, as though
it was an allergy or a poison.

I almost ran into Travis as he came to
a stop half way down the wider aisle, his bulking frame tense as he
slowly lifted his hand above his head. The bright light he held
seemed to stretch further into the darkness as he lifted it above
him, the beams stretching over rows of clothes, casting the blank
faces of the mannequins into shadows that made my skin
crawl.

I gripped the gun, needing to hold
onto something that felt safe, looking away from the haunted lines
on the dust covered forms, only to be met by another shapeless grey
mass. It looked like a shadow, hidden behind a towering display,
just as the one had before, but this one moved differently; it
seemed to float in front of me before it darted into the dark, the
movements so quick that I almost missed it.

Just a grey silhouette out of the
corner of my eye. Except I could have sworn that this one had a
shape. Like a man.

My body froze in horror as I blinked;
part of me desperate for the thing to return while another part was
horrified that it would. Everything was tense and tight as I stared
into the darkness it had disappeared into.

My chest moved in slow, pained inhales
as I tried to control the frantic fear that I wanted so much to let
rule me.

“
Do you see a sign that
says ‘Kitchens’?” Travis asked from beside me, his voice making me
jump as I finally pulled my focus away from the nothing before me
to face the light and shadow world that Travis’s lantern had
created.

I knew at once what he was talking
about; we had obviously come to the main thorough fare of the
store. Large metallic signs hung from the ceiling, some dangling
wildly from rusted wire, each one identifying the aisle.

Men’s, woman’s, children, electronics,
and there at the end, kitchens.

I turned toward Travis and lifted my
brow. He still stood next to me, squinting into the darkness,
trying to find the sign that, to me, was as clear as
day.

I wanted to make fun of him for not
having seen it, to say some quip about him needing glasses, but I
already knew why I could see it and he could not. I lived in the
dark for eight years; he had lived in light. I guess in some ways,
living so long in a grey tinted world had changed me enough that I
could see through it.

Maybe that’s why I was seeing specters
in the dark.

I moved forward without saying
anything, walking toward the sign that still hung perfectly level
from the ceiling. Travis followed behind me until he could see the
sign, his pace quickening as he bee-lined to the tall shelves that
had begun to spring up around us.

My heart clenched at seeing them
there, the fear I had just tried to banish coming back full score.
These were not like the low lying clothing racks we had just come
from; these were high, towering shelving units that were still full
of boxes containing kitchen mixers, pots and pans.

Not only did they not have food, they
also didn’t have a clear sight line.

One step inside of those and you might
as well be a sitting duck.

Normally, I would have considered
these safe. Normally, I would bask in the relative security that
the hiding place would provide. But one look into the towering
shelves and my heart rate seemed to accelerate, my eyes darting
around for shadows that I desperately hoped would not be there. I
couldn’t stop the fear and the shiver from running through me, a
warning that I didn’t quite understand.

The shelves stretched into the black
above us as we came to a stop before them, Travis’s light snaking
down the aisles in thin beams of yellow.

“
Here,” Travis growled as
he handed me the light he had been holding onto for the past few
hours. I took it from him quickly, the surface hot and painful
against my hand, waiting for him to explain when he removed another
light from his pocket and clicked it, the small disk erupting in
light as bright as the one I held, the two beams joining together
until it almost seemed as bright as a summer day. At least the
summer days I could remember.

“
You take those three
aisles. I’ll take these ones.” Travis motioned to the shadowed
alleyways before us. “Look for anything that might have cans—waffle
irons with blueberry waffle mix or some such nonsense. There is
always something.”