The Lost Ones by Adrienne Kress

Author:Adrienne Kress [Kress, Adrienne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2021-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

I flung open the door as Brant stood in front, the chain in both his hands, ready to leap. I, for my part, was ready to grab Constance and run. I felt certain that whatever this monster was that Thomas was going on about, metaphor or not, human or … not, this was it. Right here in front of us. My hands were shaking.

There was a stillness that felt both welcome and not in that moment. There should have been a monster charging at us for all that noise coming from inside the icebox. But instead there was quiet.

“It’s empty,” said Constance, gripping her bottle tightly.

“It can’t be,” said Brant. He was standing right in front of the icebox. Right there staring into it. How could he doubt what his own eyes were telling him?

Then again, my own mind played tricks on me all the time.

I joined him at his side and looked into the box. It was indeed empty. Not even a black void like inside the machine. Just the back of an icebox. Rusted like its outside.

The world around us seemed to get darker, murkier, like we were being drawn into the thing. I shook my head, trying to make the world brighten. It was my mind playing tricks on me again. I hated I had so little control over it.

“Did a light just go out?” asked Constance, her voice turning into a whisper.

My heart leapt into my throat. It wasn’t just me then, a figment of my imagination? It was real? I looked around. The lights still buzzed overhead. But she was right. It really seemed darker in the room. Why? What was happening? I felt the urge to run, but I calmed myself down. There had to be a logical explanation, there was no room for panic. Not yet.

“The shadows,” she whispered, and pointed at the wall.

“Well, that’s strange,” said Brant, finally speaking up, sounding as confident as ever. “What do you think makes a thing like that happen?”

Black shadows seemed to drip down the walls while others oozed out from the floor to meet them. We seemed to be at some kind of gruesome center, where all the shadows were aiming to meet.

How could Brant be this calm?

Constance stepped forward toward the shadows and bent down to look closer. This was wrong. This was so very wrong.

“We should leave,” I said. Dread crawled over my skin.

“Don’t you want to know what’s happening?” asked Brant.

“No.”

I did not. I wanted to leave. We all needed to leave.

“There’s nothing there,” said Constance, returning to our little group, speaking quietly but urgently. Her eyes were wide with concern. “It’s nothing tangible. It’s just a shadow.”

“A shadow of what?” I asked, watching as it seeped closer, noticing as it did the room was growing darker and darker.

“I don’t know,” she replied. Her voice quivered as her eyes looked about the room.

We stood there, frozen to the spot, not by any outside force but by the weight of our own fears and confusion.

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