Checking In
A House of Glass Novel
Rowan Drury carefully restrung the violin laid lovingly in his lap, running his hands over the sleek, shiny wood marred only by the long scratch along the side of the instrument from when he’d tripped over one of his cousin Jack’s skateboards. The violin had been forever marked and he’d spent six weeks with his arm in a sling.
Rowan had been sad about the Drury heirloom that had dated back to who-knows-when and about all the worry he’d caused his mother and the rest of his family but, in truth, the whole situation could have been worse.
He stood, clutching the violin by the neck, and stared out the conservatory window at his brothers, sister, cousins, and other assortments of relatives who dwelled in the Drury castle. They were all dressed up, grouped together on the twisted driveway that led down the hill from the castle to town. They were going out tonight. Good night for it.
It was the Midsummer’s Eve and there’d been rituals all day—feasts and gatherings, prayers and parties—all to celebrate the year’s longest day. Rowan loved the Midsummer because he got to spend the whole day with his family outside of the castle. Still on castle grounds, true, but the gardens were beautiful this time of year—all blooming Irish roses and towering ivy. And, in this one day, he would spend more time out under the beautiful Irish sun than all the other days combined. And despite the layers of sunscreen his mother would smother his too fair skin with, Rowan would soak it all in, knowing this rare treat would have to hold him for a very long time.
He lifted the newly strung violin to his chin as he watched the others pile into cars, ready to make their way into the city and make the most out of the year’s shortest night. He nodded as his sister, Willow, and his cousin, Jack, turned to wave at him. Rowan smiled at his mother who—still as pretty as any of his cousins—blew him a kiss as she held his father’s hand. Rowan raised the bow and played a fast and rowdy tune in their honor, closing his eyes as he remembered planning the night with his cousins during supper. They’d have fun in Waterford City. There would be dancing, drinks, and music. With his eyes closed, Rowan could almost imagine it.
There’d been a time—when he was much younger—when he’d longed to go with them. But he was older now. And he understood that he was Widdershins.
He sighed and laid the violin back in its case. Feeling restless, he walked about the stands and cases and shelves of instruments lining the room. Finally, he slipped onto the bench and ran his fingers over the baby grand piano’s keys. The tinkling notes eased the tension inside him.
As his family’s newest Widdershins, Rowan really didn’t get out much. He didn’t go out at all. It wasn’t allowed.
And for good reason.
The people of Redeshire called his family cursed. And they were, Rowan supposed. In a way.
While most of their Drury ancestry—that had inspired many of the myths and misconceptions of Druids, wizards, and witches—had died out a long time ago with the rise of science and the convenience of modern technology—for God’s sake, his father was an investment banker and his mother a software engineer—there were legends and legacies that still lingered.
There was a story his grandfather used to tell him. One of a Drury elder who—for the good of his people—had stopped the hand of fate. This powerful man—a witch, he’d be called today—had cast a protection spell that would pass down through blood. It was the Drury blood that bound the curse and repelled all evil. All those that carried the family name carried with it magic in their veins and a life filled with luck. And, even now, centuries after the spell was cast, the Drury family possessed wealth, success, great love—everything most people wished for and few ever got.
It wasn’t that they got everything they wanted or never had to work for what they had. Just that the little uncontrollables in life, like being at the right place at the right time with the right people, just seemed to happen more frequently to the Drurys. It was as if the invisible hands of destiny were a bit more clear to them. A Drury learned to listen to the way the wind whistled or to track the sun’s progression. A dove in the sky boded well for one’s current plans. Strong sea air brought with it change. One simply learned to be patient and wait at a crossroads for fate to eventually tip its hand.
For the Drury family, there were always signs.
But with every spell comes a price and every Drury knows the balance that rules the world must always be maintained. So, to safeguard the whole family, the elder had sacrificed himself and become the first of the family Widdershins, vowing that another would be born into every generation. That person’s fate—their duty—was to keep the balance. If every other Drury member knew only good luck, then the Widdershins knew only the reverse.
Rowan was the family’s latest Widdershins, his destiny sealed from his first breath. And though he couldn’t say that every breath since had been an easy one, he’d long since made peace with his lot in life.
And so, as the year’s longest day came to a close, he played a song he’d only heard in the farthest parts of his mind, not quite sad but in some way longing. He marveled at the way the music flowed from heart to fingertips to key to air. It was a type of magic. And it was his.
But just as he moved into the coda, Rowan jumped at a loud crash coming from somewhere down the hall. His knee smacked smartly against the baby grand, causing the keys’ heavy cover to slam down hard onto his fingers. Hissing between clenched teeth, he shook his hand vigorously before sticking it in his mouth to suck the throbbing digits.
Rowan looked toward the direction of the noise he’d heard. Everyone should be out of the castle by now, leaving Rowan and his grandfather—the eldest Widdershins—alone.
Poking his head out the door, Rowan peeked into the empty hallway. Knowing Grandda, Rowan figured the old man had probably just knocked something over or tripped on something. He was probably all right, but Rowan couldn’t get it out of his head that something was wrong.
His grandfather, though proud to serve his family as a Widdershins, wasn’t known to suffer quietly. Rowan’s knowledge of Gaelic curses came entirely from his grandfather’s mouth.
But the large stone hallway that usually echoed the slightest sound was silent. “Grandda?” Rowan murmured, the sound reverberating through the now twilight-tinged house. “Grandda?”
He heard scrambling—the slightest squeak of shoes across the waxed tiles. Stepping from the smooth wood and soft cream-colored room and into the lofty gray stone and glass halls, Rowan headed toward the noise and hoped his grandfather wasn’t terribly hurt.
Pausing by the windowed wall that overlooked the castle gardens, he noticed a large crow perched hungrily on one of the eastside windowsills. Its black feathers gleamed a strange green in the sun as the bird pecked viciously at the glass, its beak half-opened in mid-caw as its talons clenched and released in anticipation.
Carrion in an in-between. A bad omen.
Rowan held his breath as he headed east. He turned into the courtyard foyer, opening the door cautiously. “Grandda?”
At first, there seemed to be nothing wrong. Just a feeling that something bad hovered on the edges. Though the room was exactly as it should, an ordered mess of Aunt Gilly’s gardening supplies, Truman’s summer reading, and various bottles of Bella’s tanning oils and screens, the orange hue the setting sun cast made the familiar room seem foreign. He turned toward the tapping on the window and the crow that still beat its beak furiously against the glass.
Every Drury knew a bad omen at an entrance or exit—a suspicious sign within the spaces between one place and another—meant danger close at hand. The in-betweens were places, where if one wanted to know what the future held, warnings waited.
Forcing his eyes from the crow, Rowan tried to convince himself that sometimes a bird was just a bird. But as his gaze swept the room, he took in the overturned pottery and the cracked bottles. He could smell the slight metallic scent of blood mingled with the spilled fragrances mixing together on the floor.
Rowan shivered at the small signs of struggle and knew omens never lied. He turned to face the bird’s hungry, beady eyes as its head tossed back and forth in frustration. He could hear the crow cawing raucously as its wings flapped, desperate for balance, and its talons viciously scratched at the window pane. He turned away.
And there on the scuffed, slightly dirty hardwood floor, Rowan saw his hands first. Burned, scratched, and oddly disjointed—the hands of a Widdershins. His grandfather had always loved to cook despite the obvious and many dangers a kitchen held for his kind, causing scars—from knife-cuts, grease splatter, and burns of every kind—that patterned those recognizable hands.
As Rowan peered forward in the messy foyer, his boots clicking against the now marked varnish, he followed the broken lines of his grandfather’s battered hands to his stretched-out body lying in a cluttered corner among several large, now cracked potted plants. He gasped.
Kneeling at his unconscious grandfather’s side, Rowan cut his hands and knees as he pushed aside some of the mess. “Are you all right?”
This was why Rowan avoided this part of the castle, too many things to trip and fall on. His grandfather ought to have known better. Rowan could see a bit of blood on the shards of terra cotta that littered the floor. He hoped the elderly man hadn’t cut himself too deeply. Groaning with effort, he turned his grandfather’s prone body over.
With a choked cry, Rowan jumped back, bumping into heavily laden shelves, causing more pottery to fall and shatter at his feet. Rowan cringed and curled in on himself.
A crow at the window meant one thing. Death at a doorway.
The crow’s caws grew wild as his grandfather’s body fell face-up on the floor. Rowan squeezed his eyes shut but he couldn’t wipe the image of the dead man from his mind. The body was untouched, just pale and so cold. From the right angle, Rowan could have almost believed that his grandfather was simply passed out. But his grandfather’s face, that in so many ways looked much like his own only many years on, oozed blood, dark and thick as it streaked down his tattered cheeks and around his opened, silently screaming lips. He could still see where the trail of blood met and mingled both into and out of the long, deep slash across the old man’s throat.
But the worst of it—the part that had Rowan panting and pleading to his God—were the empty sockets where his grandfather’s eyes gaped open, bloody and hacked.
Oh, Merciful Mother of God. Who did that kind of thing?
But Rowan knew exactly the type of person who would cut out his grandfather’s eyes.
Most myths, legends, and old sayings had origins in truth. And eyes were in-betweens too. Windows to the soul, as they say. And with no doorway, no exit or entrance, his grandfather’s soul—a Widdershins’s soul—was trapped inside his impossibly still body, unable to pass into the next generation.
Jesus, son of God. Crawling shakily to his knees, Rowan crossed himself quickly and bent his head. He wished he could close the old man’s lidless eyes. Rowan prayed as he draped a towel over his grandfather’s form. May God bless on your journey, Grandda.
Rowan sank down and fought back fear and sadness. He couldn’t afford to mourn long. He had to think.
This was an assault not just on Paddy Drury, but on the entirety of the Drury family. With one Widdershins dead, the balance of luck was tipping. Rowan wondered if his family could feel the change already. He hoped that they were all right, even as he feared the dangers that now seeped into their once impenetrable lives. One Widdershins dead, murdered and mutilated—his soul stuck. Who knew what damage could be done now?
Rowan gasped as a thought dawned on him, for a second drowning out the worry for his family.
One Widdershins dead. One left.
Rowan backed away from his grandfather. Rowan was now the only Widdershins left. Left alone. Left defenseless. With shaky panic, he called the first number on his mobile phone. His nervous fingers fumbled on the keys, but no matter what number he dialed, there was no answer. Rowan looked down at his phone, appalled to realize that his phone’s battery was too low to place a call. Shit. Damn. “Fuck!”
He clapped his hand over his traitorous mouth as he caught that same slick slide of rubber coming from somewhere in the hallway.
The mobile slid to the floor.
Someone was still in the castle and was now headed his way.
Rowan took one last look at his grandfather—hating to leave him—before easing the garden screen door open and stepping soundlessly outside. He could see the woods that bordered the Drury property. He’d never been in them—too dangerous—but his siblings and cousins had said that the hill the castle grounds sat on was flanked by a town and a motorway.
That meant people, right?
Lots of people. Most of whom weren’t ritual killers. Right?
Rowan paused at the large hedges that bordered the gardens about six meters from the forest and wondered what he should do. The shadowed trees looked harsh and unforgiving as their branches twisted in on each other, strangling the light that tried to break through the thick canopy. He began to hyperventilate as he took a tentative step back into the familiarity of the castle. But as he heard the door to the foyer creak open, Rowan took a deep breath and ran.
He turned as a loud flapping flutter of feathers swooped down, its talons and beak aimed for his head. He screamed as he waved his arms above his head, trying to beat the crow away, but it just kept coming. Ignoring the pain as the bird scratched and clawed at his skin, he headed into the trees.
Rowan rushed past low branches and jumped over fallen limbs and when finally the crow’s ravenous caws sounded distant and muted, he slowed, panting and wheezing. He looked around, confused and lost. He had no idea where he was or whether he was even closer to the castle or the road. His body ached, his arms torn and his legs tired, but he had to keep going. He looked around and sighed before limping ahead in a random direction, hoping it led him somewhere safe.
Rowan spun as he heard the leaves rustle behind him before jerking around again at the sound of a snapping branch. He tried to slow his breathing and listen. He could have sworn he heard whispers, but the wind was whipping them in every direction, making him feel cornered.
Trapped.
He started to back away uneasily before tripping on the rocky ground. Grunting loudly, he landed hard on his side. He scrambled to his feet as he heard the leaves shift. Choking on panicked sobs, Rowan ran.
He could hear the rustling and footfalls catching up to him. He peeked over his shoulder and tried to figure out where they were, but he couldn’t tell in all the darkness. All he knew was that they were close and getting closer.
Pumping his legs, he checked his back again. He yelped as his foot slipped on mulching leaves, his knees buckling beneath him as he tumbled down the rocky hill. He held out his hands, trying to catch himself before he crashed to the ground. But he couldn’t stop himself from falling.
The last sight he remembered was that of the hungry, black bird perched on a branch above him before his head smashed against rock and pain and blackness brought him down...
