Darkness Creeping (34 page)

Am I its master?
I wondered.
Or is it the other way around?

As the monster circled around me, I could see just how big it had grown. It was as big as me now, and I felt helplessly drawn to it.

I climbed on its back, and it leaped out an open window, carrying me home with such powerful smooth strides, it felt like I was floating on air. I could almost feel myself dissolving into it, becoming a part of it.

Grandma never mentioned the crystalline beast to me or to anyone. She didn’t even say a word about it when the police came by to see if we had seen Mr. Dalton on the day he had disappeared. We told the officers the truth—that the man had bought a chandelier, and that I had helped him carry it back to his place.

That was a month ago, although it feels like another lifetime. In fact, everything that came before my creature feels like another lifetime to me now.

Grandma doesn’t talk to me much anymore. She tolerates me in the house, and at the breakfast table. She’ll ask me to pass the butter and stuff, but she takes no further interest in my comings and goings . . . or to the comings and goings of other things in the house. She asks no questions, and locks herself in her room most of the time. Perhaps I should feel bad about that, but I don’t feel much of anything anymore. Except cold.

My dad came to visit today, with his girlfriend, who I’ve been told is now my stepmom. She’s the same one who first suggested I be sent away to live here—the same one who convinced him that a college fund for me was unrealistic, and the money was better spent on their summer trip to Europe.

Dad’s out jogging now, and my new stepmom is upstairs drawing a bath. “Oh, how beautiful,” she’d said when she’d first stepped into the guest bathroom. “A bathtub made entirely of glass.”

“They don’t make them like this anymore,” I had told her, running my fingers along the Art Deco design of its sharp beveled edges.

Now I sit downstairs listening to loud music. I am icy cold as I let the music flow through me, like the icy wind blowing through the window that I always keep open. My veins are like glass, growing numb, and I feel myself feeling nothing . . . while upstairs, my beautiful crystalline bathtub slowly fills with water.