Bad Glass

It took us a couple of minutes to get ready, to throw on our coats and lace up our shoes. I strapped the camera across my chest and led the way, anxious to find answers, to find the link between this place and the apartment building downtown. And Devon. I needed to know what he was doing over there, what his connection was to this whole thing. To the city. To the face.

Floyd seemed far less eager. “There’s only one set of tracks,” he said, pausing in the middle of the snow-covered street. “Whoever he’s meeting … either they came in another way or they were there before the snow started to fall.”

“Only one way to find out,” I said, glancing up at the house’s now-empty window. “So move your ass.”

The front door was unlocked. I tried to keep it quiet as I eased the door open, but the hinges let out a loud, painful groan. I paused before crossing the threshold, listening for Devon up on the second floor, but couldn’t hear a thing. There were no arguing voices, no pacing footsteps.

We stepped into the foyer, and I shut the door behind us.

The house had been stripped bare. The owners must have moved fast, I thought. From what I’d seen, most of the houses in the area weren’t this clean; most showed signs of life forced to an abrupt stop. The owners must have hired moving trucks and fled the city as soon as the weirdness started, back in July or August, before the mad rush of evacuations had forced people to flee with whatever they could fit in their cars. I started sticking my head in through open doorways. I found an empty living room, an empty dining room. The house had nice hardwood floors. It reminded me of the place my father had bought with his third wife, down in southern California.

As I surveyed the empty rooms, Floyd moved deeper into the house. “Dean,” he hissed after a handful of seconds. “Come here!” I followed him into a bright yellow kitchen.

“Look,” he said, pointing toward a pair of sliding glass doors. He kept his voice low. “There’s nothing in the backyard. Not a single footprint.”

Floyd was right. There was nothing but pristine white snow out there, stretching across the entire yard. Whoever was here had been here for a while. And they hadn’t had time to flee.

Floyd met my eyes, his bottom lip trembling slightly. He pointed up toward the second floor. His expression was easy to read: They’re up there. Waiting.

And, no doubt, they’d already heard us coming.

We returned to the foyer, and I nodded up toward the second-floor landing. “You and Devon are friends, right?” I whispered. “Call up to him. Let him know we aren’t a threat.”

Floyd nodded, his eyes still wide. “Devon?” he called. “You up there, man? What are you doing?”

We both held our breath, waiting for a reply. After a half minute of silence, I gestured toward the stairs. Floyd shook his head and backed away, making me take the lead.

The upstairs hallway was dark. Most of the connecting doors stood wide open, but the windows in each of the rooms had been boarded shut, blocking out the snow-white light. After my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I poked my head into a couple of rooms, finding them just as empty as the rooms downstairs.

Floyd put his hand on my shoulder and pointed to a door up ahead. It was the only closed door on the entire floor, and its position put it even with the downstairs entrance. It was the room we’d been watching from across the street. Devon’s room.

Floyd stepped up to the door and knocked. “Devon?” he called. “Seriously, man, what is this shit? What’s going on?” There was no reply. As the silence started to stretch, I watched the expression on Floyd’s face morph from tentative discomfort all the way to annoyance. “Fuck, man, we know you’re—” Floyd’s voice was cut short as he threw the door open, revealing yet another empty room.

The unshuttered window gave entry to a blinding white light, and I was left momentarily dazzled, trying to blink away the starbursts in my eyes. Floyd stepped into the room, looked left, then right, and immediately stormed out again. I could hear him rushing from room to room along the upstairs hallway, looking for Devon.

For my part, I turned slowly just inside the door, studying the walls, trying to figure out where that eerie blue light had come from. There weren’t any visible problems with the room—no ragged holes punched into the walls, no disembodied limbs—but that didn’t stop my heart from thumping hard inside my chest. I turned to my right and ran trembling fingers along the nearest wall. I didn’t know what I was feeling for. Something horrible. Something I couldn’t see.

“He’s not up here,” Floyd said, rushing back into the room. “There’s nobody up here.”