A Walk Through a Window by KC Dyer Read Free Book Online

make it quick? I’m no judge of the weather around here, but that looks like a serious storm cloud to me.”
    He didn’t turn his head or even glance at the sky. Instead he held out his hand, palm up. Darby found it suddenly harder to see for some reason—maybe because the wind was whipping her hair into her eyes. She took a couple of steps closer. But it was only a rock in his hand. A plain, red, Island rock.
    Something about the way he held his hand seemed strange, but Darby didn’t take time to think about it. The wind had worked itself up to a roar.
    “Look, Gabriel, this is going to be one huge storm,” she said. “I need to get home. That’s a nice rock and all, but we’re just going to have to talk about it later. I’ve got to go.”
    Quick as thinking, his other hand shot out and grabbed her by the arm. “No time,” he shouted over the wind. Or maybe he said, “Too far.” Either way, she knew he was right. It was a couple of blocks to her grandparents’ house.
    As if to prove it, a sheet of rain swept down from the sky and she was soaked to the skin in an instant. Great. All the work hanging up Nan’s laundry was wasted.
    “Follow me.” Gabe’s voice somehow carried through the storm. There was a clap of thunder and something leapt straight out at Darby from the grass. She jumped, but it was only Maurice, her grandparents’ cat, hanging out here again. He must have been looking for shelter because he hopped past them onto the stone windowsill of the chapel.
    “This place doesn’t look very safe,” Darby yelled, looking at the half-collapsed roof and piles of rubble inside. Definitely more like a chicken-house than a chapel.
    “Perhaps you are correct,” Gabe replied. “But what choice have we? Please take my hand.”
    She grabbed on and they stepped up onto the windowsill. There was a blinding flash and the sky split in pieces divided by streaks so brilliant they left blue lines imprinted across Darby’s vision. Unless they dashed across the entire expanse of back garden, the tiny stone building was their only hope for shelter from the storm. Darby didn’t want to make the run, so she hoped it would beenough. She closed her eyes instinctively and clutched Gabe’s hand as they stepped across the stone windowsill and inside.
    The dark was absolute—and wrong. It took Darby a minute or two to figure out the wall of noise from the storm had stopped the instant they stepped inside. Just like someone had slammed a door on it. Darkness dropped around her like a smothering black hood. She couldn’t feel Gabe’s hand. She couldn’t see any light.
    The panic Darby felt rising with the onset of the storm threatened to erupt. She had thought things were bad when the darkness was on the other side of the bedroom door, but that had been nothing. Reaching for Gabe, she spun in a circle.
    Nothing.
    Waving her arms wildly, she tripped and fell, her head rebounding off the floor. It seemed to Darby that the darkness had taken not only her vision, but also her voice—or maybe she was just too scared to scream. One minute she had been yelling at Gabe over the noise of the storm, and the next …
    Finally she just covered her eyes with her hands, wanting to make her own darkness and not have it pushed down on her against her will.
    For some reason, it seemed to work. When she got up the courage to uncover her eyes, thin daylight outlined the stone frame of the window. The rain hadstopped, too. Instead, mist rose up from the ground in a ghostly shimmer that was almost scarier than the storm itself. It slipped along the rock window and rolled over the sill like foam frothing over a waterfall. The already dim light of the outbuilding took on a grey tone she didn’t like at all. And where was Gabriel, anyway?
    “Uh, Gabe? I don’t feel like playing hide and seek, okay?” she said, her voice sounding squeaky and scared to her own ears. She shifted a bit to one side and rolled up on her toes to see if