“Jesus!” Tommy yelled, jumping to his feet immediately. His eyes went wide with panic as he searched the darkness for any sign of movement.
There was none, just the shadowy grey of the room and the imprint of the bulbs last bright flash on his retinas.
He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple throbbing up and down as he tried hard to catch his breath. “Sud, man, you okay?” he asked when he finally found his voice, turning in the direction he’d last seen his friend.
There was no response. Not even a grunt of recognition, just the calm, stale sound of the wind blowing its way up from an open window downstairs, its draft making him break out in gooseflesh.
“Dude,” Tommy said, forcing a nervous chuckle. “I can’t see you nod your head in the dark, you idiot.”
Still there was nothing but the darkness.
Biting his lower lip, he took a step forward and waved his hand around the air where Sud had been. It passed through the thick, dusty air unabated. Frowning, he let his hand drop back to his side as he looked around the darkness of the room again.
He thought he saw something move out of the corner of his eye, turning toward it quickly. He sighed and almost laughed when he looked at his own shadowed reflection in his mirror, his features black and obscured.
Behind his mirror-image, two red eyes opened.
They were large and catlike, their rims glowing and shimmering like thousands of tiny chinks of scaly armor. They curled up at both the outside edges and down on the inside ones, unlike anything Tommy had ever seen before in his life. The shadows seemed like they passed right through it, as though it were just two eyes hanging in the air on their own.
Until he saw the mouth open.
Tommy went rigid, closing his eyes tight for a moment and wishing for it to go away. When he opened them it was still there, standing less than a foot behind him in the mirror. He couldn’t feel it behind him at all, and that somehow made it even worse. If there were even a hint of its presence; an exhaled breath, a small sound; he could convince himself that he could get out of this.
Steeling his jaw, Tommy spun around on his heels.
Again, there was nothing but the darkness.
Shivering, even though sweat was now pouring off him, he looked around the room once more. There were no eyes or mouths looking back at him, not even a hint to where they might be. He swallowed hard, then took two quick steps forward again until his knee hit the dresser. Fumbling clumsily and letting out a long string of small whines, his fingers found the lamp on the top of it and switched it on. He spun around quickly, eyes open and ready to face whatever was there.
The room was empty. The drawer he had thrown onto the floor had been shoved back into place without his knowing and without a sound, all of the clothes shoved back in. The necklace that Sud had pocketed lay in a small, coiled heap on the vanity in the centre of the row of boxes, each one of which were spaced and lined perfectly against the mirror. There were no monsters with glowing red eyes.
There was also no Sud.
“Man?” Tommy called weakly, then cleared his throat and tried again. “Hey, Sud?”
He frowned, then started tip-toeing his way to the door. He stopped when he got to the bedroom window, squinting as he turned to face it. Across the pathway was Xander’s bedroom window, dark and vacant. It looked so black that the windows might as well have been painted, but he still thought he could make out a figure there looking back at him. Gears started to turn in his head as he stepped closer to the open window, bending over and poking his head out to try and get a better view.
There was an enormous pressure on his neck as something grabbed him. Something sharp touched his neck but didn’t cut him, but was only there for a moment before it hauled him out through the window, leaving his shoe behind in the room.
There was a brief feeling of weightlessness, followed by a sharp tug as gravity took hold and flung him to earth where he landed gut-first onto Sud’s leg, the air rushing out of him as his face smacked into the lawn.
Pulling himself back up onto the ledge, Xander squinted at them on the ground below through the Womb’s eyes as both men scrambled to their feet and took off for the road. Frowning, he turned back toward the bedroom and looked the mess that still remained. Sara’s room had once stood as a silent memorial to the beautiful person she had been. It was tidier than they would have left it, but a few things had been broken. He made a note to himself to sneak back in and try to fix them before Sara’s mother came in and found them that way.
He opened the dresser drawer that Tommy had pulled out, the bras and underpants inside forced in un-glamorously. Glancing out the window briefly, he started picking through it and folding it neatly back the way it had been, until it looked at least a little closer to the way she would have left it. “Best I can do,” he said, as much to Sara as to himself.
He opened the top dresser to make sure nothing was too out of place there as well, noticing a tiny chunk of wood along the edge that was a slightly lighter tint than the rest. Curious, he placed one of his claws against it to try and pry it loose. It separated from the rest of the drawer easily,
