01 Fablehaven by Brandon Mull

Author:Brandon Mull [Mull, Brandon]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fantasy
ISBN: 1606415921
Publisher: Deseret Book Company
Published: 2009-09-11T05:00:00+00:00

Aftermath

Kendra knew it would be bad the moment she opened the door. Ragged gouges furrowed the walls of the stairwell. Crude pictograms defaced the far side of the door, along with an abundance of less orderly nicks and scratches. Near the base of the stairs, a crusty brown substance was smeared on the wall.

“I’m grabbing some salt,” Seth said. He returned to the ring around the bed and filled his hands and pockets with the salt that had scorched the intruder the night before.

When Seth rejoined her, Kendra started down the stairs. The steps creaked loudly in the quiet house. The hall at the bottom was worse than the stairway. Again the walls had been savagely raked by claws. The bathroom door was off its hinges and had three splintery holes of different sizes. Patches of carpeting were burned and stained.

Kendra moved down the hall, appalled by the aftermath of the violent night. A smashed mirror. A broken light fixture. A table reduced to kindling. And at the end of the hall, a gaping rectangle instead of a window.

“Looks like they let others in,” Kendra said, pointing down the hall.

Seth was examining singed hairs in a damp stain on the floor. “Grandpa?” he yelled. “Anybody!”

The silence was an ominous answer.

Kendra descended the stairs to the entry hall. Sections of the banister were gone. The front door hung askew, an arrow protruding from the frame. Primitive drawings marred the walls, some scored, others scrawled.

In a trance, Kendra roamed the lower rooms of the house. The place had been gutted. Almost all the windows were destroyed. Battered doors lay far from their frames. Mutilated furniture bled stuffing onto mangled carpeting. Shredded drapes dangled in tattered ribbons. Chandeliers lay in shattered ruins. Half of one charred sofa was entirely missing.

Kendra wandered to the back porch. Wind chimes lay in tangles. The furniture was scattered around the garden. A broken rocking chair balanced atop a fountain. A wicker love seat protruded from a hedge.

Back in the house, Kendra found Seth in Grandpa’s office. It looked as if an anvil had fallen on the desk. Pulverized memorabilia littered the floor.

“Everything’s trashed,” Seth said.

“It looks like a demolition team came through here with sledgehammers.”

“Or hand grenades.” Seth indicated where tar appeared to have been slopped against the wall. “Is that blood?”

“It looks too dark to be human.”

Seth picked his way around the splintered desk to the empty window. “Maybe they got out.”

“I hope so.”

“Out on the lawn,” Seth said. “Is that a person?”

Kendra approached the window. “Dale?” she shouted.

The prone figure did not move. “Come on,” Seth said, hurrying through the wreckage.

Kendra followed him out the front door and around to the side of the house. They dashed over to the figure lying supine near an overturned birdbath.

“Oh, no,” Seth said.

It was a painted statue of Dale. A faithful replica, except the paint was more simplified than his actual coloring would have been. His head was turned to one side, eyes squinted shut, arms raised protectively. The proportions were exact.

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