I CLOSE MY EYES AS we plummet, preparing for the moment when we will hit the ground. But that moment never comes. All at once a strange heaviness surrounds me, like the air is pressing inward, squeezing me into an impossibly small lump of barely alive flesh. Until the pressure becomes so strong that I want to die. But still I don’t.
Then almost as quickly as the pressure started, it’s gone, leaving me breathless and shaking from the force of it. Little by little, the darkness eases, and as my eyes adjust, I realize this is not the same unnatural darkness that flooded the bedroom. Instead, it’s simply night. A night so brilliant with stars, I can’t stop myself from gasping at their unexpected beauty.
Though we are no longer falling, the air continues to stream past at a dizzying speed. It takes a minute for me to understand why—I’m flying. Or rather, whoever or whatever it is that has me slung over its shoulder is flying.
My head feels muddled, and pain pounds behind my eyes, and I’m still not exactly sure what happened. But the sharp bite of the claw-tipped fingers holding me steady tells me that I’m not dreaming. And if I can feel pain like this, I know I’m not dead.
That single thought bubbles up, dangerously hopeful in its promise. If I’m not dead, I still have a chance.
I’ve barely started to figure out how to use that chance, when light begins to break over the horizon. It starts soft, a glow just barely illuminating the edge of the night, but as it grows and the sky begins to ease into a dawn, I realize I’m surrounded by a swarm of dark beings, each one like the intruder that has me. They are so dense, I cannot see the ground below us, and though they are shaped like men, that’s where the similarities end.
Each of the beings has inky skin covering their well-muscled limbs. Some have wild manes of ebony hair that whip about like small whirlwinds, and each has a pair of massive wings that move like liquid against the rushing wind. They look like dark angels or, maybe, like nightmares come to life.
But they are faceless nightmares. Where eyes and noses should be, there is nothing but a gaping black emptiness on each of their faces. They don’t have mouths—at least not that I can see—but I can sense their hunger as they fly on, determined, toward some unknown destination.
A thought slices through me: maybe I’m dreaming and can’t wake up. Or maybe I’ve been drugged, and this is just one horrifying hallucination. But if not—if I’m really seeing what I think I am seeing—I was wrong. I’ve always been wrong.
All those times I told my mom that the monsters weren’t real. All those times I thought she was crazy—the times I treated her like she was crazy—for believing something was after us. For trying to protect me. I’d been wrong.
The danger was out there.
The monsters are real.
I think of the window I opened, the lamp I put out, and I know that this is all my fault.
I don’t know how long we have been flying when chaos erupts. Out of nowhere, a ball of flame bursts up from below, and the dark creatures begin darting around in a disordered panic. The next burst comes so close, I can feel the flash of heat on my skin. My attacker dodges sharply left to avoid it, and my heart races as I realize what’s happening—they’re under attack.
We’re under attack.
The once-rhythmic flapping of the creatures’ wings becomes a confusion of frantic, uneven bursts. The fireballs continue to come quickly, with hardly a break. One hits a creature nearby. It tears through the broad, dark chest and leaves a gaping hole that doesn’t close. The creature wails a rusted, inhuman screech of pain before its wings jerk with a body-shaking convulsion and fold, leaving the heavy body to plummet gracelessly to whatever waits below.
But even with the chaos around us, the creature that has me never falters. He—it—tightens its hold as we dart through the confused swarm, deftly maneuvering around falling bodies and the panic that surrounds us.
The farther it flies, the thinner the swarm around us becomes. The creature’s huge wings pump powerfully, and for a moment I think we might actually make it. For a moment, I’m almost happy that we’ll escape. But just as I see the blue of the sky beyond the edge of the swarm, my attacker jerks like a top that’s gone off course. A thick, heady stench like the smell of burning leaves overwhelms me, and we both begin to fall, plummeting through the sky, past the other dark bodies to whatever waits below.
The monster clings to me at first, its claws digging into my leg in a desperate hold, but then the pain stops. And it’s gone.
And then I’m falling, tumbling into the bright blue of daybreak. I’m weightless. Boneless. And for a moment I think I’m flying too. For the space of a heartbeat, I imagine the impossible.
But mortal hearts aren’t meant for flight, and human bodies are made to break. In one breath I’m falling through the night, and in the next I’m in the blinding brightness of the day. And when my body shatters the icy surface of the water below with a skin-splitting crash, it knocks every last bit of breath from my chest.