AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What do we do? What do we do?”
The rolling ship slams us against the walls, back and forth like pinballs as we stumble down the hall.
My parents’ door is shut and locked. I knock and then I pound.
I’m banging, shouting…Jude keens like an animal, cringing against my leg. The smoke makes him hack and gag.
At last, the door bursts open, frame ripped off, leaving splinters and jagged metal points…
Dad hangs on the doorknob, reeling…
His eyes are dazed, unfocused. When he talks, he slurs…
“W-whas happenin…”
“There’s a fire, Dad!”
I’m screaming, but he hardly seems to hear…
“Get Mom!”
He blinks, slowly, so slow…
“I tried, but she won’t—“
I waketo a crashing of keys.
It’s the piano again but not a few notes—a wretched, howling sound, like someone pounding the ivories with both hands.
I’m out of bed and halfway across the room before I’m fully awake, hopping on one foot while I try to yank on a pair of pants.
I snatch up my phone, sending the charging block and everything else I had stacked on the dresser scattering across the floor. The piano still booms and clangs downstairs.
The noise halts abruptly as I sprint down the staircase, though the echoes hang in the air, confusing me as I finally reach the landing—is that muffled sound coming from the kitchen or someone moving down the hall?
I take the latter route because it’s closer to the dining room where I just heard the piano. I slow down, creeping cautiously, phone light half-shielded with my hand.
The house is quiet once more but not silent. The wind still moans against the windows, groaning then dying down then revving up again, like a fitful patient who can’t find rest. Blackleaf creaks with each blast, ticking and groaning as it resettles.
I’m holding my breath, listening for any noise out of rhythm, anything that sounds human. Or animal.
A sudden explosion of glass and porcelain makes me shriek. I bolt away from the noise, halfway back up the stairs before I force myself to stop, cringing on the risers, clinging to the railing with one hand, phone light jittering madly in the other, creating a strobe effect around the entryway.
“Come on, you chickenshit…”
I force myself back across the marble tiles, where water pools once more—where the fuck does it keep coming from? My pale reflection tracks me across the floor, wavering in the ripples from my bare feet.
From the kitchen comes an irregular dripping, like a gutter overflowing. Did it start to rain outside? I thought it was only windy?
My feet slosh through an inch of cold water, not just puddles. I enter a kitchen that’s become a shallow lake, the sink plugged and overflowing. When I raise my phone, the light glitters off shattered plates and glassware.
“What the fuck?” Jude says behind me.
His lantern light swings across the kitchen, illuminating in chaotic detail the mini-Niagara Falls pouring out of our sink and the mounds of broken dishes piled beneath the half-empty cabinet with its doors hanging open.
“Did you do this?”
“No!” I cry, heart still galloping in my chest. “Why would I break the dishes?”
