Chapter One - My Life's Goal
I let a bloodcurdling scream escaped my paled lips as I saw what was in front of me. They were coming, all I can see are their black bodies, and they seem to be digging through the atmosphere just to reach me. I see them growing faster and faster. As soon as my senses return to me, I leap to my feet and run. I’m pushing myself harder, determined to reach my home.
I keep going, the black streets seem to stretch before my ever going feet. I can barely make out my house in the distance; I focus on it as I run. Focusing on anything other than the road in front of me might not have been the best idea; I hold back a scream as I make a face plant on the sidewalk. I feel the gritty concrete scrape my skin as I slide to a stop, bloody and covered in mud, I pick myself up and keep going. Never stopping to look back, I make it to my house, sprinting through the yard desperate to reach the door.
It's locked. Tears begin to stream down my face. I have always hated crying. Not so much because it shows weakness, but because it makes me feel weak. Wiping my cheeks, I run around to the garage and throw myself through the dog door, wriggling widely, pulling my shoulders in. I am half way inside; I suck in my stomach and give it all I’ve got. I make it, taking no time to rejoice in my victory I close up the door. We don't have our German Shepard anymore so I lock it up with the key and then drop the key into my jeans pocket.
Dad likes to try to fix things, and make things and really, collect things. Momma makes him sort through his junk once a years and get rid of so many boxes full. Chains dangling from the ceiling, boxes piled up, giant saws and other painful looking items all around, I jump and squeeze and crawl under it all. Seeing the stairs to the second floor in front of me, soon sprinting up them the best I can.
My dad is off on a business trip, my younger sister left for vacation with some friends a couple of days ago so it's just me and Mom. I lock the doors on this floor as I go the third to wake momma. I find her asleep in her bed. "Wake up! Now! We have to get outta here!" I scream, scaring her to death.
She springs out of the bed. "What! What is it, Arabella?" She shouts back at me.
"Momma we have to go! They are coming!"
"I feared this day would come, explain to me what happened." She says with a long sigh.
"Well, I was at Liz’s house and I saw them coming. They were desperately trying to reach me. I backed up, fell, screamed, and ran home. On the way I tripped and scuffed myself up a little, I squeezed in the old dog door and locked up everything on the way to your room." I explain to her, what confuses me farther is that she seems to know exactly what I'm talking about.
"I hoped you'd never know about them. They have haunted me all my life, and my mother before me, so on and so forth. We called them 'the silhouettes.' They are after our entire family because of the knowledge we possess. If you trace back our family tree far enough you will find an Edward St. Clair. He, by some accident, discovered their existence. They aren't the brightest creatures, once they set their sights on someone there’s nothing that can stop them from going after it.
The creatures are dangerously stupid. They didn't get Edward, he ran from them all his miserable life, wishing he hadn't discovered what he had. When they never found him they got angrier and decided they had to kill all the St. Clair’s. When they go after younger generations like you they expose themselves in the process, you didn't know they existed until they came to get you, correct?" She explains, raising one eyebrow and looking at me.
"Correct. I see what you mean Momma, but what are they?"
"Some goblin hybrid, we don't know where they come from or really what they can do, other than track us down and scare us to death. Maybe kill us, if we let it happen. No one ever stuck around long enough to find out anything, and don't you even think about it Arabella! You'd get yourself killed for nothing!" She says, staring right at me. Knowing what's going through my mind.
I have always been the curious one, not on how things work mechanically but why they do what they do. What powers them and psychology of it. My favorite sentence, question, word, and letter is 'Why?'
"I'm not going to get myself killed, don't worry, getting on the same continent as them is a little too close for comfort for me." I tell her, secretly planning how I could find their weaknesses and use them to my advantages.
"How do we get rid of them?"
"No one has managed to find that out, the rest of us have just run, as far as we can, as fast as we can. Around the world and back if that's what it takes. There’s an old legend of a girl of about fifteen who got captured by them and I won't even tell you what happened. Just know that it's enough to make a full grown adult to run across the world from them." She replies, taking me by the shoulders, looking me in the eyes, only hoping she has scared me enough to discourage any curiosity I might have left. She failed.
"Then what do we do? I think running is out of the question, we need to get rid of them not delay them. We need someplace they cannot enter, like a home base for us to live in. This means installing some pretty serious security in this house without rising suspicion from the neighbors. Tiny camera's passcodes to enter plus a passcode to enter after your inside, maybe even a thumb print scanner to prove we are who we are. All this with a backup battery of its own that will run for a long time if our power should go out for a couple of days. We cannot afford to be exposed. Do we have an emergency fund?" I ask her, hoping it's a yes or we are all doomed.
"Um, yes dear. Of course, we have to, one for a real emergency and one set aside for this situation exactly. They always come so I thought I might as well be ready. Your dad has a gun collection under lock and key in the closet. You know how to use a gun Arabella? Not that I'm giving you one, but if you should need to." She tells me, obviously impressed by my plan.
"Yeah, dad has taken my shooting before. We need to lock up all the doors, barricade them anyway we can, tape black trash bags over the windows and pull the curtains as fast we can, now.
I don't know if they are attached to light but we don't need to risk it and we don't need to be the only house with all the lights on at three o'clock in the morning. We are leaving every light on everywhere, all the time so we can easily see. Let's go get that done." I tell her, I guess she agrees because she obeys.
After we blocked the doors and covered the windows and got the lights, we met back in the living room. "Okay, now that we have that done I feel a little safer. How long do you think this will hold them off?" I ask. "Thankfully the rain will have washed away your blood trail from your fall, they will have to track us down and then find a way in. We should hear that whenever they try something.
I am staying up all night, armed. We should be okay at least until morning. They usually don't show themselves in the daylight, if you should walk into a dark alley, they might be waiting there for you. I don't know if they can appear in the darkness anywhere. So I definitely agree, we will keep every bulb and lamp burning at all times.
Tomorrow I'll a security company over to install everything we need."
"Okay, we can research our options now and have the number ready for the moment they open." I tell her, already getting up grab my laptop from my room.
"Go ahead and start looking, I'm going to get one of your father’s weapons out of the safe and keep it ready. It is off limits Arabella, only in the case of emergency may you even think of touching it!" She shouts and goes up to her and dad's room to get it.
You would think I would be nervous walking around in my house alone, knowing what's coming to kill me. Nope, knowing something has been trying to kill of the St. Clair's for years and I have the chance to stop them. To kill them for all they have done, to save my future relatives from being attacked or killed. It gives me a certain type of rush! Everyone says that's what will get me killed, that I flirt with death on a daily bases. Think! To save all these people from them. The little children, their parents, and others my age, stopping their lives form coming to a torturous end. How amazing! It's how I want to be remembered. If I should die doing it, it's my life's goal to end this.
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