Out of the Dark (Light & Dark #1) Page 21

  Mary sticks her head around the door, her eyes wide and her breathing erratic.

  “They’ve found us,” she says simply, her eyes wide and frightened.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven.

  #27. Jigsaw pieces.

  Mary stares at Peter, her chin trembling. He nods and moves toward her, and they both move back into the main room. I turn and stare at the little door behind the shelving, where Lilly is hiding. Of course I can’t see it, but I know it is there. I only hope that if the monsters get in, that they won’t know it is there.

  I follow after Peter and Mary, finding them both moving around the room, lighting candles everywhere, attempting to make the room as brightly lit as possible. He hands me a bag of one hundred small candles—the pathetically tiny tea lights that only burn for half an hour so. This isn’t going to work—not with these. We need bright lights, streetlamps, the glow of the sun. Not these simple things. They won’t burn for long enough. They’ll buy us some time, but not enough, of that I am certain.

  Yet still we light them, placing them all around the room. Peter drags a tub over to us and pops the lid open. My eyes go wide, seeing two more flare guns and plenty of flares inside. These will help, I decide. These will definitely help. He moves off again, dragging a tall metal bin to the bottom of the stairs. The sound of claws on metal is beginning to drown out every other sound around us—even the sound of furniture being overturned and torn apart above our heads. Peter looks up nervously toward the door, and then quickly begins throwing in paper and books, bits of wood—anything that will burn. Mary and I grab things and throw them in, too, and then we step back, arming ourselves with flashlights and knives, ready to wait it out.

  We stand in a small line, waiting for them to break through the door. I look across at Peter, seeing his face still hard and unchanged, and then I look at Mary. She is frightened but calm, her breathing steady and even. Her hands are her only real giveaway—the slight tremble of the light.

  “How do we get out?” I ask, feeling panicked. “In the morning, if we make it to morning. How do we get out?”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Peter says.

  The door seems to bow under the pressure from the monsters behind it. The metal groans, the sound almost lost behind a frenzied scream of anger. The hinges snap simultaneously, finally giving way, and the door explodes inwards, sliding down the concrete stairs. Mary gasps but stays firm, her flashlight still turned off and hanging by her side.

  Two monsters tumble down the stairs, falling into the small flickering flames of the tea lights, effectively snuffing several of them out. They scream in agony, their red eyes bulging in their skulls as the light caresses their skin. They try to back up, but another two burst through the open door straight after them and charge down the stairs. They can’t slow their descent in time to stop themselves from barreling straight into the bin at the bottom. One sits shaking its head in surprise before standing back up. Peter raises his flare gun and fires it directly into the bin, and it immediately erupts into flames of red light. The two monsters screech and back away, moving up the stairs and away from the light. They look half blinded, rubbing at their eyes as if there were grit in them. The two that fell down have finally made it to the top, licking their open wounds and glaring down at us with hatred.

  A large shadow passes behind the small group, and the four of them part, allowing space for another of their brethren to slip between.

  My throat squeezes shut, the air refusing to make its descent into my lungs. I am suffocating from the lack of air, but more so from the truth that now stares down at me with venomous eyes. This is the same one I have seen several times now. Its clothes are tattered and worn, its head free from hair, and in many ways it looks just like the others do: nondescript, simple, deadly. But this one stands out to me like no other has, the simple pearl necklace that hangs from its neck almost like its calling card. There is no doubt in my mind: this abomination has been tracking us. And now here we are, trapped and at its mercy.

  Why me? Why Lilly? But I know why if I think about it: I had let her suffer, and now she wanted that same suffering for me. This was all my fault. It has its demonic red eyes fixed on us, and it is unrelenting in its cause. It snaps its jaws at us three, scouring the room for what I think is a way down to us, a way to get to us without touching the light that was our protection, but then it hits me that it’s looking for Lilly. Rage fills my belly, anger coursing through my veins as strong as the infection.

  “You can’t have her,” I murmur. “You can’t have her!” The words explode from my lips just as the air finally gushes in and allows me to breathe.

  It snaps its jaws again, letting me see its rows of razor sharp teeth. The others look up at it with obvious respect in their gazes. It doesn’t want me; it wanted Lilly. It had wanted her all along. Mary places a hand on my forearm and I flinch and pull away, my knife slicing into the soft, fleshy part of her arm minutely. But it is enough.

  Enough for her to cry out, enough for a single drop of blood to escape, and enough to send them into a frenzy. She pulls away from me in shock as Peter steps forward and the monsters scream for our blood. He raises his knife up, and I wonder if he will try to sacrifice me for the sakes of him and Mary. I know I would if the roles were reversed. He couldn’t possibly know that they are after Lilly—my Honeybee.

  He glowers down at me, and resentment burns from him in waves. He blames me for this, for bringing the monsters here, and I can’t blame him. I am to blame—both me Lilly. The monsters were tracking us, and we have come here and brought death down on everyone’s heads.

  “The candles won’t burn for long,” Peter says beneath his bristles. “We need to keep them lit for as long as we can.”

  I nod, not sure what else to say.

  “She must live,” he says, and I nod again. Because in that I am in total agreement: she must live. I demanded it.

  Only I’m not sure if he is talking about Lilly or Mary.

  Our eyes meet, connecting like no others have before, and I nod again, understanding. We turn back to the monsters, waiting, patiently waiting for the lights to wane and our blood to flow.

  Time passes quite quickly when you’re waiting for death. I had heard otherwise, read in books how time should slow down and you could see the most important moments of your life flash before your eyes in a blur of memories and happiness. How each second was a minute and each hour a lifetime. But that does not happen. At least, not for me.

  The night passes quickly. The monsters sacrifice many in an attempt to reach us, and the screams of them will be forever burned into my memory. The stench of their burning flesh makes my stomach curdle. The entire time, the pearl-necklaced monster stands at the top of the stairs, waiting, watching, and biding its time. Morning will be coming soon, and time is running out. The candles are gone; only the light from the flares now remains. The room is becoming thick with smoke, practically debilitating now as the room fills with it, making us choke and cough, desperate for fresh clean air. Most of the smoke is billowing upward toward them—toward the world outside—yet still enough remains to make my lungs burn.

  I light my last flare, firing it into the bin at the base of the stairs again as the current one flickers and then extinguishes. The monsters take two steps forward as the light dies out, and then scream in pain when the new one bursts to life. We are tired, frightened, exhausted beyond anything. Adrenaline long worn off. The monsters are halfway down the stairs when it happens: when they put their pieces in place, and an idea forming for them. The cogs almost visibly turn when they work out what they can do—how they can get to us.

  I had realized it about an hour before. Another monster had slipped down the stairs, the hard stone steps made slippy by their putrid flesh melting and burning where the light had licked them. It slipped, dragging another with it. As it hit the bin at the bottom, its body received the full force of the light and began melting across the face and chest. The m
onster behind cowered for several moments, untouched and unharmed by the light, before quickly scampering back up the stairs with a high-pitched scream of what was quite possibly gratefulness.

  Peter and I had exchanged a look, both of us realizing what they hadn’t and both of us praying that they wouldn’t.

  The small tea lights have long ago burned away and there are no more left to light. The only thing between the monsters and us are the metal bin full of flares and our three flashlights, which we have kept as our last resort—our final line of defense. I just used my last flare, but Peter still has one remaining. It’s enough to get us through until daylight, I think, which surely can’t be much longer. And I’m glad that I calculated so wrong when I assumed it wouldn’t be enough. We just need to keep them at bay for a little longer, until daylight comes to be our savior once again and we can push our way out of this house and into freedom. The monsters can follow and burn or stay and hide.

  But now it’s too late as they slowly creep down the stairs, their tiny brains figuring out what we had known all along. One of the monsters clutches, with clumsy, clawed hands, the sheet of metal that Peter had sealed across the door earlier. The dull metal slips from its fingers and another monster comes to help it. Between them, they come down the stairs, the light blocked from their path. Their bodies stay unharmed while their fingers, rounded over the edge of the metal and clutching it tightly, begin to sizzle and pop as the light licks away at their sensitive flesh.

  They reach the bin, the monsters at the top of the stairs watching warily, and then they place the metal over the top of the bin, snuffing out the light and plunging us into an almost pitch black nightmare.

  “No!” Mary cries out.

  I suck in a sharp breath as the sounds of clawed feet scamper down the stairs. Peter fires his gun into the center of the room, the flare hitting one of them directly in the chest and exploding the room back into an eerie red light. Mary cries next to me, frozen in fear, her sobs obnoxiously loud even with the backdrop of monster screams.

  I pull out my flashlight and shine it directly in front of me, catching the full face of one of them. It squeals and scrambles backwards, its hands clawing at its eyes, scraping at the skin that sizzles and burns. In those few seconds I see more pain and anguish than I may have ever seen before. The light hits its eyes and I see its humanness for a split second before its head bursts into flames.

  “Your flashlight!” I yell at Mary, who was still yet to move.

  Somewhere within her fear she must hear me, because her light joins mine and the room grows brighter still. Beneath the chorus of screams and squeals I know Peter is inserting another flare, and then his own flashlight comes on, creating one block of solid light in front of us—a wall of light to protect us all. The monsters back up another step, their skin bubbling in pain. In their panic and frenzy they have forgotten the trick of blocking the light, but they will remember it soon enough, of that I have no doubt.

  “I need to get Lilly. We need to get out of here,” I yell over to Peter. I hate saying her name out loud, knowing that they are so close—that the one that has been hunting us is so close and will hear me say her name. It shouldn’t matter; they don’t understand us. Yet it feels dirty, saying Lilly’s name in front of these beasts that want to harm her—kill her.

  I see his head move, but can’t see his expression. I’m not sure if it was a shake of the head or a nod. However, seconds later his shape moves in the smoke and I can’t make him out anymore. I trust that he has gone to get her for me. I have to trust her life with his.

  I cough and wheeze, the smoke becoming unbearable and making me gag and want to vomit. Flares weren’t designed for small spaces like this, and it’s only a matter of time now before we suffocate in it. The smoke is no longer escaping up the stairs, but is trapped down here with us. I lift my shirt up, trying to pull it over my mouth and nose to stop some of the smoke getting to my lungs before I suffocate. My eyes burn and stream with painful hot tears as the red smoke continues to billow around us.

  A muffled cry to my left makes me turn, and I see shadows moving amongst my tears and choking. But I would know her cry anywhere.

  “Lilly!” I cry out, coughing and choking on the thick smoke.

  “Mama!” she screams back.

  We shine our flashlights as a collective, making one block of light as we force our way toward where the stairs should be.

  My foot hits the metal bin and I pushed the sheet of metal off the top of it. Light and smoke begin escaping once more, and I turn and drag the bin in place behind us, blocking the path behind us so they can’t follow us out. I keep my flashlight aimed down at them, my burning eyes searching the smoke-filled room, seeing only the flash of teeth and the glow of red eyes.

  Somewhere above me I hear things banging, and I stumble blindly up and out into the kitchen. The door is gone, torn off the hinges completely and lying across the kitchen floor in pieces. I look around for Peter, for Mary, but mostly for Lilly, and I see the shape of a body moving across the kitchen. I stumble half blind after them, the screaming echoing around me, the crashing of tables and cupboards as monsters fling themselves against things in a bid to rid their bodies of the light and flames that we’d cast upon them with our flashlights.

  I catch up to Peter and Mary, seeing the small shape of Lilly clinging onto his back. She never look up, but keeps her face buried into his shirt, her arms tight around him like she does with me, and I hope with everything I am that I can trust him. We move through the house, looking for a way to escape but finding almost every exit blocked with monsters. Our flashlights only do so much. Most of them are willing to sacrifice themselves for each other. Finally we make it to a downstairs bathroom, and Peter swings the door open and steps inside, dragging Mary in with him. They wait for me, and I step backwards into the small space, pulling the door shut behind me.

  There is one small window, and through it I see the light of morning, the early caress of the sun on the world. I outwardly sob as Peter smashes his elbow through the window, letting in the fresh air. There isn’t enough time to wait; the monsters are too desperate and angry now, and they will sacrifice themselves just to take us down with them.

  Peter lifts Lilly from his back, pushing her through the window and dropping her gently outside. Mary is next, and when she lands on the ground, Lilly scrambled into her lap, her bloodshot eyes staring up at me. Peter helps me up to the window and I lower my legs outside, and then he looks at me.

  Somewhere beneath his beard, I think he may have smiled.

  “Protect her.” His voice is rough and broken from the flare smoke—or perhaps emotion—and he chokes on the words.

  Mary stands up, still clutching Lilly to her. “Peter, come on, get out.” She pushes me to one side, thrusting Lilly into my eager and waiting arms.

  Peter shakes his head. “No way I’m getting through this window.” He hits the frame to prove a point that it couldn’t be broken and made wide enough either.

  “No, no, you have to,” Mary wails, reaching through into the hole and clutching at it.

  Peter pries her arms away from him and I know that he definitely smiles this time. His eyes flit to behind us, to the sun slowly rising in the sky, casting a protective blanket over the three of us. Banging and screaming echoes out to us, and he looks toward the door, his eyes never once showing any fear.

  He aims his flashlight at the door, not looking at us anymore. “Go on now, get going. Get away from here. I don’t want you seeing this.”

  I turn and walk away, definitely not wanting Lilly to see it.

  “You look after her,” he calls after me, but I’m still unsure if he means Lilly or Mary.

  The sound of wood cracking and splintering inwards follows seconds after his words, and then I hear Mary scream as a gun goes off. Her sobbing follows me as I round the corner, feeling Lilly’s nails digging into my arms. And like an anchor, I hold onto the pain of her sharp nails, needing it to keep me her
e, keep me grounded. Because without it, without her, I would be lost in the insanity of it all.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight.

  #28. Misfortune lights my way.

  We walk around the side of the house until we reach the front yard, and then I sit down heavily on the small porch swing, the wood already warming beneath me. Lilly clings to me, whimpering softly. I rest my head back, staving off a cough, though I can feel it tickling in my chest, burning in my throat. I close my eyes and let my skin absorb the sun, the heat, the brightness. I let it all soak into me, letting it burrow down deep and head straight to my heart.

  The soft crunch of gravel makes me open my eyes, and a distraught-looking Mary comes from around the side of the old farmhouse. Her eyes stay down as she comes toward us, and I stop swinging long enough for her to sit down next to us. We stay in silence for several long minutes, all of us taking soothing lungful’s of fresh, clean air, absorbing the sun, embracing the silence.

  I break the silence first, my eyes still shut, my face still tipped toward the burning disc in the sky. I don’t want to, but we don’t have time to relax—not really. A handful of minutes, just grains of sand in the timer, really. The sun will pass, and night will fall, and then they will come again. I know it now. I am certain of it.

  “What will you do?” I ask, my voice sounding croaky and unsure.

  I feel guilty. This is our fault—my fault, really. If we hadn’t stumbled across this place, they would have been fine. Peter would still be alive and Mary would be with him. They would be weeding the vegetable patch, jarring food, preparing for the inevitable. An inevitable that hadn’t touched them yet—at least, not like the rest of the world.