Descent

2 - "She paid them no mind"

Clara flew from the window to the door of her bedroom, and she pulled on the handle so hard that she dropped right onto her back when it opened easily. She took a moment to ponder how it had become unlocked, then scrambled to her feet and plunged into the hallway. The house was completely dark, just like her room, the new electric lights had been out since the Red Night and they had been making due with candles, but these too were all dim. There was a thin haze in the air and smoke spiraled up from the candles that sat in the bronze holders around the hallway. Though she had grown accustomed to the darkness in her room, the total blackness of the house was breathtaking and it slowed her down, even as her mind screamed to know what was wrapped up in those packages Father had slung so casually over his shoulder.

She reached the closest candle holder, which rested atop a cabinet in the hallway, and fished inside the drawers for a tinderbox. She sparked the candles alight and was greeted with the familiar colours of her big old house on the hill, the red of the carpet and the blues of the paintings that hung from the walls. She tried to hurry but was cautious of making too much noise as the inside of the house was completely silent. The sounds of the storm battered the walls and she moved through a house that groaned beneath her every footfall.

She passed rows of portraits of family members far distant and long dead, which peered down at her as she passed. She paid them no mind. She reached the big wide staircase that split the house in half and descended down into the main hall, where her bare feet slapped against the shining stone. The dining room was behind the stairs and, unlike the rest of the house, light still pooled in the doorways leading to it.

Clara came to the door of the dining room to the right of the great stairwell and gasped. The room had been completely destroyed. The dishes they had eaten from earlier were smashed, glittering white china scattered all over the Indian carpet. Father's prized silver tankard glowed black-hot in the fireplace, above which hung a portrait of the family that had been spattered with some kind of offal. Each chair had been overturned and smashed to splinters. Most dramatically, the great thick table, made of the same oak that covered their land like fortress walls, had been split right down the middle, so both halves bowed to one another. At the end of the table closest to Clara was a great red wine stain on the carpet, just at the feet of the overturned and obliterated chair. That's where her mother sat.

Clara approached the chair and noticed more wine on the chair itself. The chair's back, a high, leather-covered straight piece of wood, was lying to the side further away from the other parts of the chair. There was something trailing off one corner of it. Clara took a closer look and realized it was a number of thin, wispy hairs stuck to the wood by something sticky and soft.

The table cloth was missing. She looked to the windows. As she noticed the drapery for the window closest to the door was missing, she caught sight of a figure standing just outside. It was Father, watching her, that same smile on his lips.

The packages he had been carrying were gone.

"Come and see." He said, then turned away and vanished into the rain.

Clara crept through the dining room over to the fireplace and picked up one of the heavy iron pokers from the stand. She didn't know what she would do with it, couldn't imagine actually striking her father with it, but she felt a lot better with something heavy in her hand.

The dining room was accessible through a small pantry which had a door to the outside. The outside door was open. The noise of the rain grew louder as she approached the doorway, and as she stepped over the threshold it pounded into her ears as her toes were spattered by the rain falling into the mud. Even in the downpour she could make out several overlapping sets of tracks in the mud, where Father had stomped towards the barn, the weight of his packages causing him to sink even deeper into the mud. She could just make out the horses and the wagon. The animals were still fussing and braying wildly with every crash of thunder, which was somehow even louder than the hammering of the rain.