Harpies

Chapter 4

I looked around for a flashlight and found one in the closet. I grabbed my jacket, slipped it on, and started carefully up the steps. The stairs were wooden, with those same glowing carvings on each one. I tried to count them but I was tired so I'm not sure if there were ten or twelve of them or maybe even more. 

I came to what I had thought was the dead end, but instead, there, at the end of the stairs was another door, already slightly cracked. I quietly turned off the flashlight and peeked through the door. Frowning and seeing nothing, I opened it just a little more and freaked out a little when the it creaked. Alread nervous, I squatted down and looked through the door.

I could see five people. There was an older boy and an older girl in the middle of the room arguing. The boy was shirtless and the girl was wearing a tight minidress. They were whispering; I looked around the room and noticed a young girl lying asleep on a small couch- I understood that they must not have wanted to wake her. The girl turned away and was ignoring him, and now I could see her better.

She beautiful and exotic looking, with a curvy body, long graceful limbs, and long black hair. She drifted into the light a little and I caught a glimpse of her face; I had to cover my mouth as I felt my breath leave. She was the most gorgeous creature I had ever seen. She had tan skin and ice blue eyes. She had perfect cheekbones, a thin nose, and full lips. There was something in her face, some strength and pride and something else. Something exactly like what I saw in Nana.

Just then the boy reached out to grab her arm and I gasped in shock. His hand looked something from a horror film. Where his finger nails should have been he had terrible looking claws- odd things that jutted out 4 inches from his fingers and were solid black. That same color was spreading up his fingers and into his hands, moving quicker and quicker with every pulse of his blood. I could see the veins flowing through his arm, a bright gold like a thread throughout his whole body. I covered my mouth quickly and tried to quiet my breathing, terrified that he had heard me. 

What I saw next was even more horrific. As he stepped closer to the girl, anger and resentment clear in every move and sound he made, I saw his face. It was beautiful and horrific and terrible and frightening all at the same time. His cheekbones were raised and they stretched all the way down his face in a slightly diagonal line. His lips were small and thin, and his teeth were bared, all with sharpened points that looked as if they could easily rip apart raw meat. His nose was small and thin, practically the only normal thing about him. His eyebrows were dark as night- then I saw his eyes. His eyes were red with fury, sunk backwards into his skull just enough to be terrifying and haunting. Passionate rage burned in them, and it showed in his every move. Suddenly they turned solid black as she turned around and faced him. 

Seeing that, I lost my balance and fell forward into the room. Shocked and totally defenseless, I just stared at them, wide eyed and pale faced. My heart sped up and I tried not to start panicking. The two them immediately turned to look at me. When the boy turned those dark, solid eyes on me, I panicked.

I stood up as fast as I could, grabbed the flashlight and ran down the steps. Before I had barely made it down the first set, someone grabbed me from behind. Two hard arms stretched around my midsection and pinned my arms down. He picked me up off the ground and we somehow soared back to the room. 

Great, I thought, now he has wings too. What on earth is this thing??

I screamed and kicked around trying to free my arms. I had just kicked his knee and managed to stumble to the ground away from him when I realized that I was already back into the room where the rest of them were. I looked up to see all the others now staring at me.

The girl and the other two figures I had seen earlier, another boy and girl, were all looking at me with the same black eyes, horrific faces and outstretched black wings, each one slightly different from the other. The younger boy and girl were guarding the sleeping child, who apparently had seen none of this. 

I scrambled to get up and run again, but the door was shut and the older boy was standing in front of it, teeth bared and his claws extended even longer than I had thought. 

I turned back around, looking for some kind of exit, when something hard hit me on the back of the head. I fell to the ground in what felt like the longest few seconds of my life. 

From the ground, I looked up and saw the dark, terrifying faces one last time before I shut my eyes and blacked out.