“Not my fault,” Spencer mumbled, the invitation to enter the dungeon popping onto my screen a second later.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, clicking the invite and instantly being transported to the island that we had been trying to conquer for the last few days. We weren’t the only ones it seemed. Three other groups were waiting outside the entrance to the dungeon, queued up as they waited for the entrance to reload.
“Great,” Spence said as we all moved into line, another group zapping into existence right behind us. “It’ll be a miracle if we make it through this in time.”
“Well, we at least have to try,” Rome said with a bit too much of a snap, his character spinning like a top in his boredom. “I traded in my old sword for a new one, just for this, and I would like a chance to try it out…”
“You traded in good ol’ ‘head chop’?” Carl asked, as amazed as I was. Rome loved that damn thing. It was a good ten levels below where his character was, but the skull hilt was rare and someone would probably have to pry it out of his cold dead hands.
“I wouldn’t say traded in so much as put it in my bag for later use.” Rome’s character shifted, pulling out one sword and then another, showcasing them to us like prized possessions.
Everyone chuckled, it was still shocking he wasn’t yielding it, but at least it wasn’t gone for good. His massive goblin just wouldn't look the same without that sword.
“One of these days I’m going to get that sword--” Spencer’s voice cut off as his character froze, the green ‘away’ suddenly displaying below his character tag.
We had heard that rant from Spencer before, but it wasn’t like him to just bail.
“What the hell? Did he get disconnected?” Carl asked, just as the overhead light in my basement flicked off and my backup power supply clicked on. Then, with a slight flicker of the screen, Spencer’s character vanished along with most of the other characters that had been waiting in line.
“What the hell?” I echoed Carl’s confusion as I leaned over, flicking the light on and off as every other idiot does in the situation. Predictably, the light above didn’t so much as flicker. The darkness was everywhere, almost as if the light was sucked from the basement, the golden rays of setting sun had even vanished, as though someone had turned it off. I was just me, sitting in the yellow hewn light of my monitor.
“You guys still there?” Rome’s frightened shake cut through the dark and I jumped, turning back to the monitor and the characters that were just as still as I was. “Did the server go down?”
“I doubt it” Carl responded, just as nervously. “We would be gone too, if it had. My power went out, and I know Spencer didn’t have a backup…”
“Neither did anyone else then,” Rome’s usual bark was an absolute quiver now.
“But why would so many leave? The power can’t have gone out everywhere, and then why is the game still running?” I spun my camera in the game, looking at the other characters that were frozen. If it wasn’t for the explosion of messages in the chat screen I would have assumed they had all gone.
Everyone was just as confused.
‘Does anyone else still have power?’
‘Where did everyone go?’
‘Was there a server outage?’
‘I can’t even get ahold of my buddy. He’s not answering his phone.’
What in the trinity was going on here?
“Owen?” My mom’s voice yelled down the stairs and I nearly jumped, pulling my headset off as I turned.
“Yeah?”
She hadn’t even come downstairs; she was just yelling from the darkness up there.
Darkness.
Had she closed the window? Light wasn’t even coming in from the open windows down here. I was trying to ignore the way my heart was screaming in my chest, an anxious knot tightening in my throat.
The more time that went on, the weirder everything got.
“I’m going to go check the breakers,” she said, her statement followed by the shuffle of her slippers as she moved to the back breezeway where the box was.
“My power has just gone out too,” Rome’s voice echoed through the speaker as I slipped my headset back on, more of the few remaining characters around us vanishing.
“You’re nowhere near us, though,” I said, listening as my mother's footsteps became quicker, harder, more frantic. “How could your power--”
My words were swallowed by a hollow scream, a scream that echoed in the air around me, it echoed in the speakers, it pounded against my soul.
The sound ripped through the air as though it had burst from fear itself; it vibrated in the reptilian scream. High pitched, deadly, and decidedly not human.
“What the--” Carl asked, his voice shuddering as I turned in the dark, turned toward the sound and the two high windows that sat on the other side of my room.
“Did you hear that?” Rome whispered, his panicked voice weak with fear.
Yes, I had. They had.
But I couldn’t find it in myself to answer. I couldn’t bring myself to respond for as I sat there, staring at the windows, someone stepped into view.
No. Not someone. Something.
The legs looked human, if a human had been stabbed with a dozen feather-shaped knives and left to bleed dark blood over their legs.
Human if we were all to grow talon’s the size of Ginsu knives from our toes, and wings from our spines.
These were not human. They were monsters.
“Is this some kind of joke?” I asked to no one, transfixed as the monsters stalked passed my window.
“What’s a joke?” Rome asked, still as nervous as before.
“Owen?” Carl asked, their voices dead in my ears as I stood, half waiting for someone to yell April Fools and reveal all the cameras.
Instead, they all started screaming.
Screams echoed from outside. They echoed through the walls. And my mother’s echoed from the back of the house, right by the window.
Where the breaker box was.
Where the monsters were.
“What the hell?”
“Oh my god.”
“What are those?”
The chatbox on the corner, already full of confused chats from so many having been pulled off the game erupted in shouts and warnings. The same ones buzzing in my ears from Carl and Rome as the screams from outside continued.
‘Do you see this?’
‘I’m in Spain… are you really seeing the same thing?’
‘Where did all these clouds come from?’
‘Stay away! They’re monsters.’
I pulled myself away from the computer, my mind screaming in its own panic. Screaming at me to run, to hide, to cower, to fight. My headphones tugged against my head as I listened to my friends, as I walked closer to the windows, and to those legs.
And to the sobs of my mother.
Sobs that echoed the rippling panic in my mind. But I couldn’t stop, I just stepped forward.
The closer I got, the more I could see. See their blood-streaked backs, the talons that protruded from their fingers, the massive black wings, the glint of gold that lifted and came down, right onto my mother's head.
Her wide eyes bore into the monster as she screamed, as she sobbed, as the golden point of the monsters hand landed right between her eyes.
And she turned to ash.
4
May 8th 2013 6:00 pm
Ash fell to the ground like snow.
Glittering snow that was once my mother.
Her scream was replaced by the screech of those monsters. By the tapping of claws on the floor above me.
I scuttled back, my own scream caught in my throat as I fell over game consoles and couches, the panicked shouts of my friends drowned by the sound of my heart in my ears.
This couldn’t be happening. I couldn’t have just seen that. This had to be a joke. It had to.
Except that I knew it wasn’t. All of the silenced screams. All of the panic, the
sky that was now dark as night right outside my window. It was all real.
And if I had to guess, the light of my still blazing computer monitor was going to bring them right to me.
“Carl? Rome?” I hissed into my microphone, their ragged breathing was the only answer. I had to assume that they could hear me, that they were seeing the same monstrous things that I was.
“Get to the mall,” I hissed as I crawled through the cluttered room to my computer. “Grab any walkie talkies you have and tell people to get to the mall.”
“Owen? This isn’t… What’s…” Carl mumbled through the speaker
“I think they just killed my mom.” Pain and panic flowered over my chest as though I had just been whipped. The pain burned, the admission burned, but I pushed it away, grabbing a backpack and starting to fill it with all of the ‘spy gear’ I had held on to since I was ten. Checking the batteries of the walkie talkie just in case.
“Owen?” It was clear Carl was crying. I was too, even if I was too scared to let the tears really break through.
“Just get to the mall,” I snapped, throwing a headlamp over my head, I was going to need it with how dark it was.
“I’ll see you guys there,” Rome said, with a choked voice and the microphone went quiet, leaving me in the quiet of the dark.
The quiet of the clicking of talons against my kitchen floor.
As they came closer.
Closer.
‘If in Texas meet at Old Court Mall. Fight them.’ I wrote the words quickly, not knowing if that was even possible.
I clicked the monitor off, plunging myself into darkness as the heavy clicks of those talons hit the top of the stairs, tapping a hollow beat before they muffled against the carpet. As they came down the few stairs that were now my only barrier.
Closer.
I backed up, grabbing the old baseball bat I had kept, from little league. The damn thing had always been propped against the wall, even after I had discovered that video games were more fun.
I had no idea if it was going to work. Or if I was even strong enough to take on what was headed right toward me. I had to try.
For my mom.
The massive bulk of the monster formed through the shadows as though it was a demon of smoke and ash itself. Those massive wings smothered the exit so that if I had any intention of racing passed it, it was now just a pipe dream.
Eyes that were dead and black and haunting peered through the room, the claws on its hands and feet gleaming as though they were producing their own light; and its skin, its skin dripped with wet. It was covered with blood so black it looked like oil and tar, the smell nearly as bad.
The monster had turned my mother to ash with a touch of its claws, so that was what I would be avoiding. I had played enough zombie games to know vaguely what to do, and as long as I got passed them I was fairly confident I could run to the mall in less than an hour.
I just had to get passed him.
Blind him with the headlamp, hit him with the bat, and run as fast as I could.
I tightened my backpack straps, gripping the bat as I reached up ready to turn on the powerful headlamp and blind him.
The thing just needed to be a bit closer.
Screams echoed from the outside as he approached, one step, then two, those dark eyes sweeping over the room.
Yelling some kind of battle cry, I turned on the powerful lamp and rushed the thing, bat ready to bash in the guy’s skull, or at least try to.
I didn’t get more than two steps before the creature let out one of those unearthly cries, and then vanished in a cloud of black ash.
“What the hell?” I stopped in place, nearly tripping on my own feet in an effort to avoid the ring of black that was all that was left of the thing.
The screams continued. The screeches of the creatures ringing like hollow deaths through the window. But I stood still, everything frozen as I stared at the ring of ash. Ash that used to be a monster.
Clicking echoed from the kitchen, but I didn’t even move as the creature moved closer to the top of the stairs. I just reached up, turning the light off as the clicks of talons muffled against carpet. As they began their descent.
In one quick motion, I turned into the stairwell and faced the creature. I flicked the light on, not sure what I would do if it didn’t happen a second time.
At least I still had the bat.
But with one flash of light the creature was gone, ash glittering down to the ground.
“Holy--” I could defeat them. Two minutes in to what was clearly meant to be a massacre and I had figured out how to defeat them.
I raced back to the computer, flicking the monitor back on even as I was already typing a message into the chat screen.
‘Light kills them. Shine light on them and they die. Meet at Old Court Mall in south Texas.’
I checked to make sure the message sent, the smattering of confused replies promising it had. It only took seconds for the first real reply to come through:
‘Holy shit, it worked. Light kills them.’
One after another the shocked confirmations continued and I stepped away, holding the baseball bat firm as I pulled my walkie talkie out and spun the dial to channel one.
“Light kills them. Shine light on them. Meet at Old Court Mall in south Texas.” I repeated the same message into the buzzing walkie talkie, going through channel after channel as I ascended the stairs and made my way through our destroyed kitchen.
“Light kills them. Shine light on them. Meet at Old Court Mall in south Texas.” I said again, changing the channel as I walked out my front door and into a war zone.
Ash rings were everywhere, they dotted the lawn, the street, and the sidewalk. It looked as though the world had been covered by a disease. A disease that screamed and wandered through the streets, a pox that flew through the air as they hunted, as they took down people who were running.
Running for safety.
Running for their lives.
Channel five.
“Light kills them. Shine light on them. Meet at Old Court Mall in south Texas,” I repeated the words in channel after channel in the hope that someone would hear.
That someone would live.
Channel six.
“Light kills them. Shine light on them. Meet at Old Court Mall in south Texas.” I yelled a bit too loud that time, and several of the monsters turned to me. Toward the still figure in the dark.
I quickly turned off the headlight and waited as one, two, three landed before me with faces as haunted as the first.
I swallowed, the knot in my stomach growing as I watched them step closer, watched that black blood drip from their mouths and waited.
Please let this work again.
I gasped, lifting my hand as the creature closest to me did, as that golden claw prepared to strike me down. One swipe.
I turned on the light before it could make contact, and all three of them turned to ash.
Gone. Gone in a second.
I turned the walkie to channel seven.
“Light kills them. Shine light on them. Meet at Old Court Mall in south Texas.” I said again, taking off down my street, light blazing before me as I ran.
Ran toward the mall.
Refusing to look at the last place I had seen my mother.
At the ring of ash that was all that was left of her.
That was all that was left of anyone.
5
May 8th 2013 6:59 pm
Monsters exploded before me in clouds of ash, the remains of the twisted creatures falling so quick and fast that for a few minutes I was sure I was running through a snow storm.
A storm of grey and black that didn’t slow as I ran. Every monster the light touched exploded, adding to the blizzard that I raced through, still yelling into the walkie-talkie.
Every scream was like an anchor and I ran towards them, the beacon before me acting like some kind of acid against the beasts.
More ash sparkled to t
he ground, a tear-stained face of a blonde girl younger than me looking up. She was a dark shape in the middle of a dark world, but under the blazing light of my headlamp she was nearly as frightening as the monster I had just destroyed. She was covered in ash, the stuff pouring from her hands as though she had been grabbing at it. Grabbing at who the ash used to be.
“Come on,” I said with a grunt, pushing all of that pain and loss down, down as far as it could go.
She didn’t question, she just silently stood, fingers still curled around the ash as we both ran, ran toward another scream. Another deafening call of the monsters.
“What are we doing?” The girls said between sobs, “we have to get out of here.”
“We are.” I didn’t really feel like explaining myself right then.
“But they will kill you.” She tripped, but I didn’t even try to catch her. I was plowing forward, toward the next scream that was quickly silenced.
The resonating sound echoed over the darkened houses like a twisted memory, pulling at the vile twist in my gut in an attempt to rekindle my panic. My fear.
“How do you think I saved you?” I asked as we skirted around the side of the house that the screams had come from. Pressing my back against the shadowed siding I turned off the headlamp, plunging us into a world that was only shadow.
Darkness was everywhere. Looking around the corner of the house I could scarcely make out the monster from the family it was chasing.
Chasing.
Crap, those beasts were fast.
Before the thing went out of sight I flipped my headlight back on and watched as the thing dissolved, his hunting cry falling to silence as the family stopped, turning in amazement.
The father looked at me as though I was some kind of savior.
Maybe I was, it wasn’t every day a sixteen-year-old nerd saves everyone's asses.
“They can’t stand in the light, it kills them,” I said without introduction. “Do you have any flashlights.”
“Yes, in the camping stuff,” he said with a nod.
“Good, get it, and meet me at the Old Court Mall. Tell as many as you can,” he nodded, his wife now sobbing incoherently into his shoulder. “Oh, and take her with you.”
Owen: A Through Glass Novella Page 2