Preternatural (Worlds & Secrets)

by Lloyd Harry-Davis

  “What’s the matter?” she asked in a more calming tone.

  “The mirror.” Jade trudged over to where I stood with a suspicious look towards me on her face. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  I pointed childishly at the mirror whilst my finger wagged and my hand trembled. I seemed to be facing Jade but my eyes were fixed on the mirror in front of me as I took in heavy breaths with my heart beating disproportionally. Jade shrieked and by reflex stumbled backwards, almost falling into the bathtub. She reflexively lifted a hand to cover her mouth. I looked in the mirror and realized we looked nothing like our previous selves.

  Jade looked somewhat the same, but her brunette hair had grown longer – to the back of her knees. But that was hardly the problem. My bouncy, russet, curly hair seemed to have turned electric blue, slightly wavy (but much straighter than before) and shoulder-length. My brown eyes transformed into the same colour as my hair and I seemed to have identified the culprit of the cuts on my lips. I opened them to reveal two long canines that looked like fangs (only in the sense that they were as sharp). But they didn’t hang out of my mouth like a vampire’s would.

  “I look hideous!” Jade exclaimed.

  “You? Look at me!” I replied hastily and scared.

  “What are these, pranks or something?”

  “No, Jade. I’m done thinking these are jokes. Something’s going on. I fell asleep in the bathtub hours ago and woke up underwater – UNDERWATER, JADE! And I was unharmed!” I said with my heart pounding.

  “We have to find a solution to my bad hair day and your –” Jade gulped “– problem.” We looked back at the mirror, absorbing the aliens that stared back at us.

  “Hang on just a moment, how come I didn’t see you like this when I walked through the door?” Jade asked, trembling as her pixie-like eyes turned to stare at me.

  “I don’t know, but it’s probably the same way I didn’t see you with your long hair when you came to shout at me,” I replied.

  “We never saw each other differently until we saw the mirror,” she suggested. I was paranoid and didn’t know what to think. I stopped in motion and suddenly whispered “mum,” to myself.

  “Aden…I’m scared,” Jade whimpered.

  “Me too,” I replied. Suddenly, amidst our conversation, the pieces of shattered mirror lifted themselves up in the air as if being levitated. The sharp edges of each piece stared directly at Jade and I threateningly. We backed away slowly. The pieces still remained in the air and all of a sudden darted towards us, pinning us against the wall. But one of them pierced my arm, causing me to let out a scream of agony.

  “Aden, are you okay?” my sister shouted supportively.

  “NO!” I yelled back. Two spear-like pieces rose from the ground and were on level height with our eyes. When everything seemed as if they couldn’t get worse, Jaden walked into the bathroom. We turned our heads to him precipitously – why did he have such bad timing?

  “Jaden –” Jade called out. He was stiff, not knowing what he was seeing. He couldn’t decide whether to believe what he was witnessing or whether to give this situation the benefit of the doubt. The two pieces of shattered mirror turned to Jaden, zooming towards him, and I yelled in horror.

  CHAPTER 4.

  Peculiar Metamorphosis

  Jaden treaded backwards and hit the banister. He suddenly raised his arms in front of his face alarmingly but the pieces merely hovered in front of him. Those pinning us to the wall quickly let Jade and me go and flew over to the mirror fragments hovering aggressively a few inches away from Jaden. Jade and I attempted to go and assist him but as soon we took a step forward, the last two pieces of the group of glass fragments turned to face us; their sharp edges centimetres away from our faces.

  After all this, Jaden was still alive. Nothing was happening. The pieces floated in the air so softly, as if they were the softest balls of cotton wool. Suddenly, without warning…they dropped. Jaden let out a sigh of relief, slowly lowering his arms away from his face. I stretched a hand out to him and he ran to us. He moved away from the shattered mirror pieces as Jade hugged him tightly.

  “Wait…” I said to Jaden, taking him and examining his head and his hands.

  “What are you doing?” he asked with a sense of distrust in his words and actions – he was unsteady and kept fidgeting with his hands.

  “Ask Jade,” I replied to him, still examining his hands.

  “Jade?” he asked her.

  “Well,” Jade sighed, “actually I can’t. I can’t explain it.” Jade grasped his arm and dragged him over to the mirror carelessly. Jaden gazed at Jade with a lost look in his eyes.

  “What?” he asked her.

  “Don’t look at me, look in the mirror.” She stepped over to me in the doorway as Jaden turned his head warily.

  Surprisingly, he took the news better than we did. Bewildered, of course, but he remained positive and calm. However, he did show slight signs of timidity. All of a sudden, the view of Jaden that Jade and I saw slowly changed. Jaden’s blonde hair dissolved into a lustrous, thick rich black mane with thin, barely visible white streaks.

  His hair almost fell to shoulder-length; it probably would have if it now wasn’t so haywire as if he had just been electrocuted. His skin seemed to look rougher, freckles dotted themselves on his cheeks and certain parts of his arms and legs grew unnoticeable scales the same complexion as his skin – they were barely noticeable though. Jade and I looked at each other drowsily.

  Jaden took one look at us and immediately recoiled, accidentally knocking things to the floor. His hazel eyes seemed more golden but simultaneously topaz-looking.

  “LOOK AT YOU! YOUR HAIR – IT’S –”

  “– Blue? Yeah, thanks, I figured. Only advantage I can think of this is that it matches the surname,” I said, finishing off his sentence for him with sweet sarcasm.

  Suddenly, a gasp sounded but none of us knew who it was. Jaden bent his head to the side and stared at us with askance.

  “What? It wasn’t me,” I told him.

  “It wasn’t me either,” Jade added non-hesitantly. Jade and I stepped aside and the culprit of the gasp stood behind us.

  “Oh my goodness, what happened?” mum fretted stressfully.

  “Mum, look in the mirror,” I urged.

  “Jade, what’s going on? Why the mess and what’s happened to all of you?” she asked, worried. Mum walked over to the mirror and looked at her reflection as we practically urged her to.

  “Okay…I’m looking in the mirror. What should be happening?”

  “Well…try harder. Oh and stare – it works better if you stare…somehow,” Jaden added.

  “Okay?” mum replied awkwardly, turning back to look at her reflection.

  “So? Do you see it?” I asked.

  “I see a crack; nothing else.”

  “What are you talking about?” Jaden exclaimed.

  “Mum, I’m telling you something’s wrong. It seems as if we’ve advanced through time, we’ve changed physically. I’m just – I’m worried.”

  “Okay. Are any of you hungry?”

  “NO!” we cried unanimously and almost angry.

  Mum looked at us, worried as I exhaled out of frustration.

  “Mum, I don’t know if it’s just me but lately you’ve been very awkward. Whenever I see you smile it’s always pretend and you always seem to be in a hurry. Are you hiding something?” I confronted. Mum put her hands behind her back and fiddled with the tips of her long curls.

  Finally she sighed deeply and let go of her hair. She marched over to a drawer and hastily pulled out a pair of scissors. She strode to Jade and cut her hair to its original length. I looked at mum’s hand as she twitched.

  “I –” mum couldn’t finish her statement. She trotted off to her room nervously and left us in the bathroom.

  “Now, I’m just more curious,” Jaden said plainly.

  “She might have her reasons,” Jade defended. Jaden and I shot Jade a l
ook of obviousness and she instantly saw reason.

  “Okay, I guess mum is hiding something,” she admitted. Our attention was suddenly broken by the shattering glass behind us.

  “What the heck was that?” I jumped, startled.

  Before any of us had the chance to observe what had broken, Jaden all of a sudden began screaming as he rushed his hands to his ears. He fell to the ground, writhing on the floor in uncontrollable spasms of torturous pain whilst Jade fell to her knees to attend to him.

  “Jaden, are you okay? What’s wrong?” Jade asked, distress growing tremendously in her tear-swelling eyes.

  Jaden’s veins gradually began to rise to the surface of his progressively whitening skin. His blue veins created so much contrast to his chalk-white appearance, but they were starting to become darker until they started crawling up his neck and chin. His cheeks were nearly as white as cotton.

  I started trembling in horror. It was pretty obvious this was no joke.

  “MUM! PLEASE HELP! MUM!” Jade yelled. Her face was reddening as she gave in to fear. Mum rushed in, coming to a halt and staring at Jaden’s body stiffly. The only emotion I could read off of mum was surprise – hence her shocked and widely opened eyes. Other than that, she was stiff as a board.

  “Mum!” I called out. She quickly snapped out of her traumatic stupor and rushed to Jaden’s side.

  “What happened?” she asked, sounding as if she were choking.

  “We don’t know, he just fell to the ground when we heard glass breaking. Mum, what’s happening?” I asked, trembling and craving absolute normality again.

  “He might be going into shock. Hang on – did you say, window breaking?” mum asked suspiciously.

  “Yes, but what does that have to do with anything. Mum! DO SOMETHING!” Jade yelled.

  Jaden’s face was whitening by the second as his veins were increasingly spreading like a series of rapidly-growing roots. I would soon be unable to tell the difference between his skin and a plain sheet of A4 paper. Mum stood up and walked out of the bathroom to the banister. I looked above Jaden’s head and noticed the broken window up above.

  Lying innocently, a few inches from Jaden, was a piece of wrinkled stained paper. I gently reached to it as Jade stayed with him. I noticed the sheet was blank whilst slowly turning it around. Suddenly, all the creases that bore themselves in the paper rushed to the centre and mysteriously formed words that seemed handwritten. I read it – but it left me on edge.

  “I called them…” was all it stated.

  “Mum, you might want to look at this,” I called out. Mum marched back in and picked up the mysterious parchment-looking sheet.

  “Called who?” mum wondered aloud. Precipitously and without warning, mum was sent jolting out of the room. She was slammed against the wall behind the banister and was suspended in mid-air.

  “Mum!” I called. I attempted to run to her but as soon as I took a step into the doorway, I was sent sliding back, knocking my head against the tiled bathroom floor.

  Two, dark, shadow-like hands crawled out of the wall and held mum by the neck as she struggled. I could see through the somewhat transparent arms that mum was bruising on her neck. Jade gasped for air as she gradually became overwhelmed by the terror surrounding us.

  I pressed my hand on my sore head but the nightmare terrorising us made me ignore the pain I was inflicted with. Jade attempted to run to mum. She was so keen on helping her, but I stopped her. I grabbed my sister and held her back. She was battling to free herself, punching and hitting me to struggle out of my grip.

  “SHES GOING TO DIE IF WE DONT DO SOMETHING. HELP HER!” she screamed at the top of her lungs.

  “I TRIED! It’s too dangerous,” I panted. My heart was racing and I felt I would collapse at any moment. It was like having a cramp in your heart whilst your chest was caving in. It was too much for me to handle. Mum and Jaden would be dead if Jade and I didn’t act now – but the problem was what to do. Jade was terrified. She looked me in the eyes like she never had before; with desperation. Her eyes were red and swelling with tears as she observed the scene in such horror. I stared back at her with sympathy. What was happening to us?

  Jaden gasped for air. Jade and I turned our heads swiftly to our brother. The veins were slowly starting to creep up to his cheeks. Everything was moving so fast and eerily – but then something happened. His eyes started transforming into a shade of black which was too dark to describe. It was almost as if you could fall through them, into a hollow void from which you could never return.

  “Jaden,” I whispered to myself. I was losing my brother to something I had no idea of.

  I ran to Jaden and knelt down next to him, giving him all the attention I could. I looked back at Jade. But this time I wasn’t confused. I knew exactly what I saw.

  “Jade,” I whispered.

  “What?” she retorted calmly, stress in her quavering voice and tears in her eyes as she looked at me.

  “Your eyes, they’re…purple.” And I knew what I saw this time. I wasn’t delusional. Her large pixie eyes were a magnificent shade of dancing violet with hints of darker and more mystique shades around her pupils. We were interrupted by what sounded like Jaden gagging.

  “MUM! HELP!” Jade shouted.

  “SHE CAN’T HELP US!” I yelled back, through the noise of the quaking objects.

  Then, I heard it.

  It was faint – but it was clear; the whisper. “Let us kill you, you are ours. Your destiny was to die. Give us your lives or watch them be taken forcefully. You have something we WANT.” The voice was aggressive and echoed dissonantly.

  “Did you hear that?” I asked, my voice cracking whilst turning my head to look at Jade.

  “Unfortunately,” she trembled.

  Suddenly, the glass shards we were surrounded with before began to tremble and clink against one another. It was as if there was an earthquake but only the glass seemed to move vigorously. As they vibrated with a high, ringing frequency, they all circled us, trapping us in a ball of shards with their edges aiming at us; the ones at the top were hanging above us directly. The sphere of glass shards rattled around us like rattlesnakes. I pulled Jade closer as we braced ourselves over Jaden’s body.

  “Don’t…move,” I whispered to her. The glass shards all retracted an inch, taking in momentum to charge at us ruthlessly.

  “No,” mum wheezed. Her icy-blue eyes almost turned transparent and she shot her hand out to the banister in front of her with a malicious look encrypted all over her face.

  The rails tore out of their roots and darted towards the wall. Mum was instantly dropped onto the staircase as the railings smashed against her and the hands that were throttling her. The shadow-like hands that strangled her had disappeared. She rushed to us as the glass fragments began to launch themselves towards Jade, Jaden and me. Mum flung her hand out to the shards and what looked like a half-visible current of vibrating air swiftly swept over the fragments like a shockwave, causing them to shatter into minuscule flakes of glass as they floated to the floor.

  All of a sudden Jaden started gasping for air again and Jade rushed to mum.

  “Are you okay?” I quickly asked my brother as I knelt down beside him, slipping my hand underneath his head to cushion it.

  “Ow…my head…my ears are ringing,” Jaden groaned as he slowly sat upright.

  The veins were starting to recede into his skin and slowly lighten back to their original colour, whilst his chalk-white skin was slowly starting to gain its rosy tint back.

  “Are you okay? What happened?”

  “I dunno.’ I just heard glass shattering and then –” Jaden groaned “– then I just felt my ears ringing and felt so much pain. It was like a migraine at its peak. It was extremely –” Jaden groaned louder, waiting for the pain he went through to slowly cease.

  “How are you now?” I asked worriedly.

  “I’m fine…now…I guess. Hey, didn’t mum cut Jade’s hair shorter?”

&
nbsp; “Yeah, why?” Jaden’s eyebrows furrowed into misunderstanding.

  “Then why is it longer again?” He was drowsy, but he was right. Jade’s hair had fallen back to its knee length. I got up speedily and raced to her and mum.

  “Mum, are you okay? How did you do that?” I was throwing questions at her, baffled by what I saw her do. Things were slowly spiralling out of control and the worst part was that I couldn’t even take a time out to sit and absorb the events because they were occurring too fast. Other than that, my emotions and mind were as sorted as a freshly-bought jigsaw puzzle.

  “I’m fine, darling. How’s your brother?” mum coughed, turning her neck and deliberately clicking it to help the pain she endured to subside. She had avoided the question altogether on what sorcery she had just performed. Quite frankly I was ready to wake up at any moment.

  “Yeah, he’s fine…um….Jade we need to talk – urgent,”

  “What is it?”

  Her stare stabbed holes into my eyes. How they all of a sudden turned from an ordinary shade of hazel to a gleaming and sparkly violet shade of purple, I did not know. They were quite numinous, really – like gems embedded in her head reflecting some greater power within her.

  “Well…um…”

  “Stop hesitating! Just inhale, exhale and speak!” she commanded. I took in a deep breath and let it out.

  “Okay, okay – your hair has grown even longer.”

  Jade’s face was wiped of any emotion and a scowl took over. She looked at the back of her feet to see her hair longer then it was before. It was now below her knees. She looked back at me.

  “Mum, is there anything you want to explain to us?” I asked. This was the only thing left to do: confront mum and ask her what was honestly going on. I wouldn’t have suspected her, but seeing how she removed the glass shards and her not reacting to our sudden physical changes gives me strong suspicions that she might be involved in whatever was occurring. Jaden limped towards us and mum nodded softly, smacking her lips as she contemplated our question.

  “You’re right,” she began calmly. She made sure her eyes rested on the ground, unable to look at us directly whilst she tucked her long coils of hair behind her ears. “Would any of you believe me if I told you that…that we weren’t from England?”