Who's Afraid of the Dark?

Ember gave an involuntary shiver as she and Niall walked down one of the many hallways crisscrossing the spooky building. She knew she had been the one to suggest splitting up, as it had seemed much more reasonable than the whole group of them searching the castle as a single entity, but she somewhat regretted it then. As the old cliché said, there was always safety in numbers, and two didn’t seem like a very safe number.

“You okay?” Niall’s soft brogue beckoned to her, wrapping his warm hand around her freezing one. “Look, I’m sorry I decided this bet would be a good idea. It’s just freaking everyone out, and it’s all my fault.”

“Everyone else went along with it,” Ember murmured in comfort. “And it’s too late to start wishing you could take back your decision now. We’re already here, so we might as well make the best of it.”

“If anything happened to Lottie…” Niall’s voice trailed off, the strength taken by fear and pain.

Ember opened her mouth to soothe his guilt, but she was cut off by the sound of creaking behind them. “What was that?” she snapped so quickly that it almost sounded she spoke a different language.

Niall spun around as quickly as possible, shining his torch at the blackness that lay behind them. It seemed never-ending, and the little light emitted from the flashlight could never possibly illuminate everything that laid beyond. So, unsurprisingly, the two didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

“It’s going to our heads,” Ember asserted. She tried to shove down her fear and remember how she went into the situation, thinking how she hadn’t believed in any sort of haunted anything. Just because Lottie disappeared, however in the world she disappeared, everyone was starting to get frightened.

And then there was the sound of a crash not too far behind them, quickly followed by two more, each of them increasingly louder and closer.

Without saying a word, Niall broke out into a run, grabbing Ember’s wrist and dragging her forward, nearly tearing her arm out of the socket. The two raced through the corridors, the candleholders hanging on the walls throwing themselves at the two lovers. Ember’s breathing was ragged in her ears, her heart was pounding, and her lungs almost felt like they wanted to give up.

“Don’t slow down!” Niall pleaded, his voice punctuated with gasps for air. “Don’t get hit by anything.”

Ember willed herself to go faster, shrieking with shock when a fixture launched from the wall and shattered so close to her that she could feel the glass hitting against her legs.

They finally found a room, hidden behind a massive wooden door. Without thinking about it for a second, Niall took a running start and smashed into it, shoulder-first, and the doors gave way with a groan.

Once Niall and Ember were inside, Ember turned and slammed the door shut behind them, collapsing against the back and finally taking in the oxygen she so desperately needed. A few feet away, Niall was standing, his chest heaving as he struggled to catch his breath.

When they could both breathe a little better, Niall looked over at her with wide, frightened blue eyes. “What the fuck was that?”

“Maybe some screws fell out? Screws fall out all the time. The world’s an imperfect place.” Ember’s attempt at finding humor in the situation and easing her intense terror fell dreadfully short, and Niall just looked like he wanted to hit her.

“Ember, this is not the time to be quoting The Breakfast…”

Niall stared around the room, his eyebrows drawn together in confusion, making Ember do the same. They were in a huge room, a long table in the middle, a chandelier bigger than the living room of her flat back home hanging in the center. “Are we…” She took a deep, controlled breath before continuing the question. “Are we in the dining hall?”

“It’s a dining hall,” Niall finished, “but I have no idea if it’s the same one we just came from.”

“It can’t be,” Ember corrected. “We’re on an entirely different floor.”

“What about this place makes you think it’s nor-?”

Before Niall could finish his statement, the sound of whispers fled through the room. Ember closed in on herself, withdrawing and wrapping her arms around the legs that rested against her chest, staring at the ceiling to find the source. It was only after a few minutes of the hurried hisses that she realized they weren’t speaking English. It was a language completely foreign to her, yet, judging from Niall’s shaking limbs, he understood completely.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Niall darted over to her, features panicked, arms flying. “GET DOWN!” he screamed, coming over to her. He tackled her to the ground, covering her body with his, his hands wrapped around her head in protection, his head tucked in the space between his elbow and her head.

Ember was about to ask what was happening when she heard the squeaking, like unhinging, then chains rattling. Then there was a short period of intense, deep silence, like dead air on the radio.

And then the silence was destroyed, the sound of smashing glass and scraping metal so loud that Ember wanted more than anything to cover her ears to protect herself, but they were caught under herself, and there was no way Niall could let her move. Her legs and arms, along with a sliver of her stomach where her shirt had ridden up, felt like they were getting sliced into a million pieces, shards of something lodging themselves inside her skin.

She whimpered in pain, while Niall groaned in her ear. The whispers stopped suddenly, though Ember hadn’t realized they’d resumed until they were gone again.

“Are you okay?” she whispered, nudging her shoulder blade into him to get him to talk.

“I think I have glass everywhere.” His voice was pained and clipped, and she could tell that he was struggling to keep his tough exterior. But, to her surprise and relief, his voice was not weak. He was not dying.

Ember eased herself out from underneath him, widening her eyes when she saw the amount of ripped fabric and blood trickling out of his legs and back. A quick glance told her that the chandelier had been cut from the ceiling by whatever had been whispering, and the entire thing had shattered, sending tiny bits of glass and metal flying through the air. Niall should have been protecting himself, not her, she thought sadly.

She kneeled down next to him, ignoring the pain of the shards of debris sticking into her knees. “It’s okay,” she whispered, patting his head, which was matted with blood coming from a long, shallow scratch on his neck. “You’re going to be okay.”

And with that, she started to clean off the blood that had escaped from the wounds on his cuts, until he assured her that he was alright and sat up. “We can clean up the blood later,” he insisted, getting to his feet, wincing with pain. “We just have to get out of here.”

“Niall, stop it. How are you going to walk?”

“They look worse than they feel. They were just small pieces of glass, Ember. Stop fussing over me. What’s important is we get the fuck out of this bloody castle before someone gets seriously injured.”

She couldn’t have agreed more. As she wrapped her arm around Niall, giving him any extra support he needed, since his injuries were much more extensive than hers, she muttered, “I’m sorry I didn’t believe the haunted thing.”

“Babe, I don’t think any of us did.”