Saving Chloe

Chapter Four

Taciturnity. There's no longer any movement, no footsteps, and all in the house is noiseless. Stagnant. All I hear is the sound of Gram's ragged breathing, Chloe's quiet snores, and Joshua's movement as he strains to keep his eyes open. Mom's asleep next to Calen, who's still holding Chloe. I'm still awake though, and Grams hasn't moved. Her wrinkled brown eyes blink slowly, like she's in a whole different universe. Maybe as if she was bored. Or blind. Her small nose starts crinkling as if she's Samantha Stevens from Bewitched. And that's when it happened. Movement. Her head sluggishly turns towards me; her eyes will never be the same. There's a red tinge to them now, and as she cries without so much as a whimper, there's a trail of blood streaking down from her cheeks.

I almost scream, I almost do, I swear. But she continues to blink and the stream of blood stops flowing, and her tiny arm stretches up to wipe her cheek. Her eyes widen as she squints down at her blood hand. Her mouth opens quickly and she's crying normal tears again. The blood starts lacing with the real tears as it continues to smear over her cheeks. She's turning into a wretched mess very quickly.

"W-What happened?" Her voice is too deep. Too throaty. It's not her voice. Not shrill. Not high pitched. It's not her voice. But by her next sentence, she's completely back to normal. Her tears stop. The only remaining evidence anything particular happened is her cheeks and hands, which are still smeared with blood. "What are we doing down here?" Her eyes search the room, looking for an answer.

My voice is too tight, too estranged to sound slightly normal. "We're hiding, Grams."

"Hiding?" Her voice is high pitched again, common. An inexplicable look crosses her face as she stares over at me.

"From what?" She doesn't seem to notice my state of distress. Or how I'm afraid by the tiny old woman I've known my entire life.

"Crazies." The rumors are true. The evidence: highly qualified. I believe it now. I seek that estranged man's forgiveness for bad mouthing him.

"Crazies?" Grams asks, rather loudly. Calen starts moving, he's exhausted but not enough to not be exceedingly alert to his surroundings. His eyes explore the room for any danger, he's unsure of himself for falling asleep. We share a look, automatically knowing what the other is thinking. No, we're not twins, but sometimes we get these moments of clarity where we automatically understand each other. He's carefully lifting Chloe off of him, setting her back down on the floor gently. As he walks over to the small table, his eyes land on Grams. The light is dim enough that he probably hadn't seen the blood on her face until he was close enough. Now, now it was in perfect view. His eyes widened, alarmed. He stopped walking, fear.

"Hey, Calen?" I ask, as calm as I could possibly manage to try and break his attention away from the old lady in the chair Grams had once sat in. She gave him a confused look, no idea what was going on at all. "Calen!" I said a little louder this time.

Joshua came down the stairs just then, stealing everyone's attention. His eyes surveyed the scene, stopping once he saw Grams. "Are you alright?" She gave him a filthy look.

"I'm fine."

"Why are you-"

"Joshua!" I say loudly, capturing everyone's attention. "You came back down for a reason?" Joshua spared one last glance at Grams, got my message not to further his interrogation, and then turned towards Calen.

"Let's go search the house." Calen nodded, picked up his gun and followed Joshua out. Before Calen was completely out of view, he turned back towards me and gave me this look which meant we were having a serious conversation later. I nodded because I understood, not because I wanted to. Hell, I knew as much as he did! I didn't know what happened, or why she can't remember what just happened!