Sharp Like Shadow: Book 1 of A Wrath Unseen

Chapter 6

Alice expected the house to be dark at this time of night, but the darkness was a little too complete for her liking. Normally Grandma left a hallway light on, and occasionally a low light in the kitchen. Alice should have been able to see at least a dim glow from the street outside her house.

    But tonight there was nothing.

    Any other night she could have excused the absence of light, thinking maybe Grandma had forgotten to turn the light on before she went to bed, but tonight the timing seemed too coincidental. Alice hoped Grandma hadn't gone upstairs and found her missing from her room. If Royce had discovered her missing, she was pretty sure he would cover for her, but if Grandma found her gone she would freak. She might even call the police. But there were no cars on the street; no police presence or neighborhood watch searching the neighborhood for a wayward high school junior. Alice felt certain that if Grandma had discovered her missing, there would be some evidence of her panic visible from the street. Maybe she'd simply forgotten the light after all. Whatever had happened at the house while she was away, Alice had no choice but to go inside and see for herself.

    She knew something was wrong when the door knob turned a little too easily. It was unlocked. In fact, it wasn't even latched. The door was sitting partially open as if someone had walked out and hadn't bothered to pull it all the way closed behind them. Alice paused before entering, her pulse rising and her breath quickening in response to the familiar fear that built inside her chest. Any desire she had to go inside vanished into the ether.

    She stayed frozen in the doorway for a very long sixty seconds.

    Everything about the house now seemed scary and alien. This had been her home since she was six years old, and it had always seemed warm and inviting, but now the entire place felt like a deathtrap waiting to be sprung. She knew she had to go inside, and she told her legs to move, but they weren't listening to her at the moment. Her feet were blocks of lead, weighted to the worn wooden slats of Grandma's front porch.

    Alice closed her eyes and pictured Grandma's face, kind and understanding, with just the right amount of stern defiance to put a grown man in his place if he was acting like a fool. She saw that stupid grin on Royce's face as he spun his basketball on one finger and quoted lines from Star Trek. Her family needed her, and Alice would be damned if she was gonna let them down.

    Just breathe, Alice. We have each other.

    She swallowed her fear, filled her lungs with night air, and opened her eyes.

    Alice nudged the door open and stepped inside the house.

    At first she thought the living room was empty. The lights were off and in the dark everything looked the same as it always did. Then she became aware of a sound that she hadn't noticed before: a slow inhalation followed by the thin rasp of air escaping lungs. Someone was breathing in the dark.

    Alice made her way over to the wall, trying to move silently, but failing as she tripped and nearly fell on some obstacle that shouldn't have been there. She caught herself on the wall, fumbling for the light switch. After a tense moment of flailing around, her shoulders pinched and waiting for an attack from whoever was waiting in the dark behind her, she finally managed to hit the switch. Two table lamps and single floor lamp flared to life. The sudden light blinded Alice for half a second, and she threw her arms up in front of her face, both to shield it from the light and to ward off any incoming knives or claws or hand grenades. None came, and after a moment her vision returned. What she saw froze the blood in her veins.

    The living room carpet was shredded.

    The center of the floor was in tatters, bits of cloth and fiber ripped and scattered in all directions as if something had torn its way up through it from underneath. Below the carpet, the wooded slats of the floor were untouched. The armchair that Grandma spent most of her time in was overturned. It leaned on its side near the damaged wall behind it, as if to call attention to the hole it had made in the plaster. Alice could see into the kitchen through the ragged edges of the hole. Against another wall, the entertainment center had been crushed by something heavy and the TV screen shattered. On the opposite side of the room sat a worn but comfortable couch, its cushions now shorn in half-a-dozen places by slices that looked far too similar to the cuts on Alice's forearms.