A Light in the Dark: The moon

Chapter 12: Disaster

A week later, Etta woke to the smell of cooking bacon. The lights were off in her room, and the sun filtered through her curtains. She lay in bed awhile. There was a clang of pans, a sound that was not unusual when her father was cooking. The smell of bacon turned to burnt, and Etta decided she aught to go help her father. She climbed out of bed, and immediately, the cold temperatures in the air hit her. Had she left her window open? She checked as she quickly slipped on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, shivering. Nothing was open in her room. Maybe her father had opened a door to evacuate the smoke? Etta felt strange. It wasn't the cold, it wasn't that she was tired. It was something else, something she simply could not pin down. Something was not right. She snuck down the stairs, as quiet as she could. It could be a robbery, her dad sometimes kept important focils and documents at home. Going down the stairs, the smoke got thicker. Her father had definitely not tried to let it out, or was there a fire? Why hadn't her dad woken her up? What was he doing? And why the cold air?
The lights downstairs were off, and sunlight couldn't seep through the smoke cloud. Etta couldn't see much. She covered her nose and mouth with her shirt, and kept low, so to avoid breathing in smoke. She quietly crawled to the bottom of the stairs. She saw a leg, most likely her father's, and called out to him. Getting closer, she saw he was not alone. A man had his hands and arms tied, and had a hand on his mouth. He looked at her wild eyed, and struggled. His mouth was temporary free and he yelled:

-"Margretta, run!!!!"

Panic took hold of Etta.

-"I can't leave you here!" She cried.

Her father got his mouth free again, and the man wrestled a little with him.

-"You have to run! There is still hope!" He yelled back.

By now the burning bacon was ablaze, and soon the kitchen began to set fire, the flames licked at the cuppboards, the the roof and crawled over the walls. Suddenly Etta realized that the duffle bag had not been for impromptu paleontologist work; it had been for just this. He had known this would happen. From behind the first man, came a second, dressed in a strange dark cloak, just like the other. Then came a third, and a fourth. At that point, Etta had already turned to run. She clambered up the stairs, and grabbed her bag. She took the horse figurine that Hansengrove had given her last Christmas from her windowsill, and started down the stairs. The men in cloaks were going up them, and Etta let out a scream. They seemed to float instead of walk, and the closer they got, the colder the air was, and some sort of strange, soul-deep fatigue consumed her senses. She ran to her window. She would have to jump. She pulled up the heavy glass, and she looked back to see where the men were. As she pulled her legs over the sill, she heard her father from downstairs.

-"Have courage, be brave! Don't let anything stop you from doing what is right! I love you!!"

And it sent tears to the child's eyes. Tears streaming down her face, Margretta jumped from her window to the shingled roof of her house. From the edge of the roof, she looked down to the ground. It was high up, but she knew she would make it. During breaks with her classmates, she, along with Maddy and the boys would climb trees and dare each other to jump off them. Thanks to this, Etta was comfortable making the jump. She dropped from the roof, comforted for a moment by the familiar rush of adrenaline, relieved that it came from jumping more than the men. Landing gracefully, Etta had no problem in regaining her balance, and no sooner did she hit the ground, she set off at a run, towards the neighbor's house.