Through the Glass (A Storybook Novel 1)

by Kira Moericke

  “Wait for it . . .” Maxwell is silent for a moment as we listen to the footsteps above us. “Three . . . Two . . . One . . .”

  As if on cue, the light in the middle of the room flickers out, casting the room into complete darkness.

  Chapter 3

  Day Two

  I can’t remember when I had fallen asleep, just that I had sank into a nightmare abyss when the light from the floor above us went out, drowning the room in darkness. I remember that my breathing became so ragged that Maxwell had to tell me to shut up several times, and I remember growing stiff because I was too scared to move.

  During the night, bad dreams had raged wildly in my sleep. The nightmare of being trapped in the windowless room without food and water, made me toss and turn. In my bad dream, the door had opened at one point and a man, dressed head-to-toe in black, strode in. The man had icy blue eyes and smiled as Lynne, Maxwell, and I scrambled to a corner, frightened. Then he went over to me, pulled out the knife, and aimed it at me.

  Now, I can feel Lynne beside me, poking my face.

  “Sarwa,” Lynne says, poking me in the cheek again. “Sarwa, I’m hungwy.”

  I let my eyes flutter open, seeing the light in the hole of the mirrored-ceiling. I had slept with my mouth open, drying out my throat. Sitting up, I swallow hard, getting dust inside my mouth. Wrenching coughs make me choke. The noise seems too loud in the quiet room. I cover my mouth with my fist, trying to muffle the noise.

  “Loud enough?” Maxwell turns on his cot and glares at me, his dark eyes burning with hatred.

  “Sorry,” I cough. Leaning over, my eyes start to water, and my throat becomes raw.

  “Sarwa, I’m hungwy,” Lynne repeats, brushing hair from her face.

  “I know.” I heave in a mouthful of air and turn to Maxwell. “How do we get food?”

  Max sits up and swings his legs over the cot so that his feet touch the floor. He raises his arms up in the air, stretching. “The bastard usually brings it.”

  “Hey!” I quickly cover Lynne’s ears, trying to protect her from Maxwell’s bad mouth. “Can you please try not to use those words around her?”

  Max turns his head and looks at Lynne. “Why does it matter? If we get out of here, Short Stuff here is going to learn those words anyway.”

  “Yeah, when she’s older.” I let go of Lynne who squirms. “She’s not even three.”

  “So?” Maxwell gets up and starts to walk across the room to a little doorway on the opposite side of the room.

  “What are you doing?” I call out, afraid of him leaving the room. I don’t want him to leave Lynne and me. What if something bad happens while he’s in that room?

  “None of your business.” He disappears through the darkened doorway and shuts the door after him.

  Lynne wiggles until she’s on her hands and knees, then crawls to the edge of the cot, and climbs down. She waddles to the door that leads to the hallway and reaches up for the door handle. Stretching her fingers, she strains to touch the dusty brass knob. A whimpering sound comes from her when she realizes she can’t reach it.

  “Lynne, come here.” I get up and head to where Lynne is struggling. “Stay away from the door.”

  “Why?” Lynne looks up at me with wide, wondering eyes.

  “It’s bad.” I don’t want to tell her the real reason. Saying that someone could come in here and hurt us would be like telling her that monsters hide under our cots.

  “Why?” she repeats.

  “Just because, okay?” I pull Lynne away from the door and look around, wanting to find something to entertain her. There is nothing in the room besides dust-covered junk that is shoved to the sides of the room. My eyes scan past a bookshelf covered with thick, dusty hardcovers to a bunch of scrunched-up boxes tucked in a corner.

  Curiosity swells inside me as I hurry across the room to the corner where I can get a better look at them. The boxes are big, soggy, and musty-smelling. There’s also a TV behind all of them, tucked against the wall. Ignoring the TV, I grab the two flaps of one of the boxes and pull them open, revealing denim.

  “What are you doing?” Maxwell asks, coming out of the room. He looks at me with his eyes furrowed.

  “I’m checking what’s in these boxes,” I reply, not looking at him. Reaching inside, I grab the denim and hold them up. They unfold, showing off as male blue jeans.

  “They’re just a bunch of old clothes,” Max says. He looks around the room as if searching for something. “It’s still not here yet?”

  “What’s not here yet?” I toss the jeans aside. Digging back around in the box, I pull out a velvety, purple, mushroom-top-looking hat with tiny, ugly, pink flowers studding the rim.

  “The food.” Maxwell walks up to the door and kicks it. “Come on!” He backs up and tilts his head up to the hole in the mirror. He stares up at it for a moment before he looks at me. His eyes are hard. So hard that I that I think they’re going to shatter. And behind those hard, glassy surfaces, hatred towards me brews. “You,” he spits out.

  “What?” I turn myself around so I can look at him better.

  “It’s because of you two!” he shouts.

  “What’s because of us?” Again I’m confused. How is this our fault?

  “The food!” he roars. “It’s because of you two being down here that they aren’t bringing the food!”

  “What? How?!” He’s blaming us?! I hardly know what’s going on!

  “It’s because of them, isn’t it?” Maxwell shouts to whoever is watching us, staring up at the mirrored-ceiling. “It’s because you brought them here!”

  I watch, frightened, as Maxwell jumps up, slamming his hands against the glass.

  “Come on!” he yells. He jumps again.

  “Here, Lynne.” I focus back on the ugly little hat, walk over to Lynne, who is standing near the cots, staring at Maxwell as if he was speaking a foreign language, and place it on top of her head. “You can play dress up.”

  She turns her attention away from Maxwell, reaches for the hat on top of her head, and pulls it off. She looks at it curiously then places it back on her head.

  “Come on.” Maxwell starts for the door again and slams his fists against it.

  “Relax, okay?” I say as I head back to the boxes. I try to keep my mind off the fact that the food isn’t coming–just like in my nightmare–and focus back on the clothes in the old cardboard boxes.

  “Relax?” he spits out, turning to glare daggers at me. “Do you want to starve?”

  “They might bring it later?” I suggest weakly, trying to push back some fear that is tiptoeing into my mind.

  “No.” He walks backward until he is in the center of the room and looks up at the hole. “Ever since I was brought here, they’ve always delivered food at this time.”

  “How do you know what time it is?” I ask.

  “Just shut up, Big Mouth,” he snaps.

  “It’s Sara.”

  “No . . . I think Big Mouth suits you a lot better.” He turns and frowns at me.

  I stand up to be more eyelevel with him. “Why are you so mean?” I’m getting fed up with his anger towards me. I mean, what did I ever do to him except somehow ruin his chance to escape?

  “Just shut up and keep Short Stuff from crying.”

  “Dick.” I turn my attention back to the boxes. In the first box I look through, all I find are old shirts with little moth holes in them and dirty, worn out sneakers. I place the jeans I had dragged out back into the box and take it down off the pile, moving onto the next box. I open it, finding a bunch of dresses inside. “Lynne, come here.”

  “What?” Lynne asks as she hurries over. When she looks into the box, her face brightens into a smile.

  “Do you want to wear a dress?” I ask, shuffling through the dresses, trying to find the shortest one for her to wear so that she won’t trip over the hem.

  “Yeah.”

  “Shit!” Maxwell yells, giving the door a final kick before collapsin
g onto his cot.

  “Hey!” I whip my head around and glare at him. “Really?”

  “Really,” he growls.

  I exhale loudly and lift up a rose and white speckled dress with lace on the neckline. There are pearl-like buttons aligning one after another along the back, starting from neckline to the waistline. There are some small holes in it, but they aren’t too bad.

  “What about this one?” I ask, holding the floral dress towards Lynne.

  “That one,” she confirms, reaching out towards it.

  I sit on my knees, pull the ends of the dress apart, and slip it over my sister’s head. The dress is really big on her and falls into a rose puddle around her feet. The sleeves are too long and covers her hands, and neckline hangs down near her chest. Even with the dress being too big, Lynne smiles and scrunches up the sleeves so she can swipe her face with her hands.

  “You look beautiful,” I say, taking her in.

  Lynne picks up the ends of her dress and spins around, showing off all her angles before dawdling back to our cot.

  I turn back to the boxes and start digging through them. All the clothes I find look like they belong to the 80’s. There are some dresses with shoulder pads and big, ugly floral or velvet designs. Disgusted with each, I toss them back into the box and get up onto my feet.

  “Done playing dress up?” Max asks grumpily from his cot.

  “What is your problem?” I ask him, my voice thick with irritation and frustration.

  “My what?”

  “Your problem.” I stand, brush my jeans off, and glare at him. “You’ve been rude to us ever since Lynne and I arrived.”

  “I don’t have a problem.” He looks at me, his eyes back to daggers.

  “See!” I point at him. “You’re glaring at me right now!”

  Confusion, for the first time, comes to Maxwell’s face. He glances around nervously, as if trying to come up with a comeback. Which he didn’t have.

  “Ha! You don’t have anything to say now, do you?” I say triumphantly.

  “Shut up, Big Mouth,” he growls, rolling onto his side so he doesn’t have to look at me.

  “Sarwa, I’m hungwy,” Lynne says, dawdling over to me.

  I look down at her and see that she is staring up at me expectantly.

  “I know.” I sigh. “Why don’t you try to play?”

  “With what?” Lynne asks.

  “Um . . .” I look around the room. There’s an old dresser a few feet away, cluttered with a bunch of antique-y things. I walk over and look at the junk. There are a few glass animal figurines that look good enough to play with. I pick up the glass dog, elephant, cat, and bird and carefully place them on the floor. Lynne comes over and sits beside me. “You can play with these,” I say. “Just be careful.”

  Lynne sits down, her dress flowing around her, and picks up the dog figurine. She smiles and makes imitation dog noises.

  “Hopefully that will keep her mind off of food for a little while,” I say to myself as I make my way to my cot. I lay down and look up at my reflection. Lynne’s happy voice sounds throughout the room as she makes the little figurines talk to one another.

  After what feels like long, tedious minutes, I finally find the nerve to ask Max a question. “What do you usually do to pass the time?”

  He’s silent for a moment before answering, “I try to take my mind off things and read the books.”

  “Are any of them good?”

  “Read one and see for yourself,” he says in his angry demeanor.

  I sigh and stare at my reflection for a little longer before growing bored. Without being able to stand it anymore, I sit up and drag myself off the cot and walk across the room to the dusty bookshelf. Big hardcovers fill the shelves from top to bottom, all showing their plain bindings. I bend down, trying to read their bindings in the dimness. Gulliver’s Travel, Nightmare Abbey, Cinderella, Wuthering Heights, and Jane Eyre are all here. Whoever kidnapped us is a collector.

  After a moment of reading the bindings, I finally settle on The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. I don’t know if it’s the same book they based the movies off of, but I want to read it either way. Brushing the dust off the cover, I wander back over to the cot, and sprawl down on my stomach, opening to the first chapter.

  “What are you reading?” Maxwell asks, actually curious of what I’m doing for the first time. He rises up on his elbows and cranes his neck so he can look at me.

  “The Lord of the Rings.”

  “It’s the same as the movie,” he says, relaxing back on his cot.

  “Lucky for me, I’ve never seen the movie.”

  “The ending isn’t good.”

  “What?”

  Maxwell twists to lay on his stomach. He stuffs his pillow under his chest and looks at me. “The elves leave the Middle-Earth, or whatever it’s called, because they lose their power. Then this Frodon dude is at peace for some reason, and there is a lot of evil or something.”

  “Seriously?” I pinch my finger between the pages as I slam the cover closed. It hurts, but I try not to show it.

  Maxwell smiles with satisfaction and rolls back over to look at his reflection.

  Opening the cover page, I quickly read the summary.

  “For your information, the main character’s name is Frodo,” I say.

  “Close enough.”

  “Jerk.” I open back to the page I have my finger pinched between and start to read.

  I’ve busied myself by reading for what feels like hours until my stomach makes awful grumbling noises. At first, Max had laughed and picked on me until my face turned bright red with embarrassment, but then after a while, he had lost his patience and demanded for me to stop.

  “Will you be quiet already?” he asks, annoyed. He doesn’t look at me when he says it.

  “Sorry, but it’s not like I can make my stomach stop,” I say.

  “Well do something,” he says loudly, on the verge of yelling at me. It isn’t like I can control the noises my stomach makes, though.

  Grr . . .

  “Ugh, be quiet!” he shouts.

  “Sorry!” I shout back.

  “Sarwa, I’m hungwy!” Lynne says from her spot on the floor. She has the figurines spread out on the floor.

  “I know, I’m hungry too,” I tell her, my voice softer then the edge I used with Maxwell.

  “I’m thirsty,” she says.

  “I know.”

  “I want some juice.”

  “We don’t have any juice right now,” I say.

  “Juice!” she shouts.

  “Lynne . . .” I am hungry, irritated, afraid, and tired. I don’t want to deal with her now.

  “Juice!” Lynne shouts again. She stands up and wobbles to the door, reaching for the handle again, carrying the elephant figurine in her other hand.

  “Lynne, get away from the door.” I place the book down–dog earring the page–and hurry over to her. “We have to stay away.”

  “Ahh!” As soon as I wrap my hands around Lynne, she starts to scream. Her little arms and legs start flailing as soon as I lift her off the ground. I watch the little elephant slip through her fingers and fly a few feet away.

  “Be quiet,” Max says with his eyes closed.

  “Lynne,” I hiss, bringing my lips close to her ears. I don’t want Maxwell to yell at me anymore today. “You have to be quiet. Bad guys are going to come if you keep crying.”

  “Bad guys?” Her bottom lip quivers.

  “Bad guys,” I repeat. I point to the door that seems to loom dangerously close to us. “They’ll come down here and take bad little girls.”

  “Me?”

  I nod and whisper to her, “So you have to be quiet.”

  “But I’m hungwy,” she whispers back.

  “I know. I am too.”

  “Where’s Mamma?” Lynne asks, her voice fading more and more.

  “She’s on her way.” I hope it’s true.

  My sister looks at me with w
orry as her lips continue to tremble. Her fingers ball into fists as she buries her face into my dirty clothes.

  “I’m scawed, Sarwa,” she says.

  “I know. I am too.”

  “Are they going to hurwt us?” she asks.

  “I don’t know,” I reply honestly.

  In my shirt, Lynne starts to sob. Her tears are filled with so much more emotion then the ones she cried out when we were first brought here. She makes me want to cry.

  Emotion swells in my own chest, so painful that death seems to appease me. I can feel tears spring into my own eyes, even though I try hard to keep them at bay. Without control, my arms tighten around Lynne, holding her close to me. A rebellious tear slips down my dirty cheek, leaving a clean streak in its wake. I don’t want to cry. I can’t cry. I have to be strong for Lynne and myself.

  “I just don’t know.” I feel like that’s the only answer I know.

  Maxwell gets up from the cot and walks over to us. From the corner of my eyes, I can see him coming nearer, but then he stops. After a moment of hesitation, he walks away from us and heads towards the broken elephant figurine that Lynne had thrown. I lift my head away from Lynne and watch as Max kneels down and picks up the broken pieces of glass. He holds them carefully as if handling them too carelessly would shatter the pieces even more.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, my voice sounding weak and tired.

  Max looks up at me, startled. He is silent for a moment before he replies, “We should probably keep these pieces off the floor so no one gets hurt.”

  “Oh.” I cling onto Lynne until she starts to calm down and drifts off into another nap. As soon as her little eyelids falls over her eyes, I lay her down on the cot and cover her up.

  “She’s asleep again?” Maxwell asks, placing the broken fragments of the elephant on the dresser.

  “Yeah.” I tuck the blanket around her then brush some wispy hair off her face.

  “Little kids sleep a lot,” Max notes mostly to himself.

  “It’s better than having her being awake and crying,” I state, crawling off the cot.

  “What?” He turns to look at me.

  “Nothing.” I take a few steps towards the center of the room before I stop. The sudden need to pee makes my bladder feel heavy. “Maxwell?”