Out of the box.

The house hunkers on its rough rocky hill, listing and tilting to its side, and as the ocean slaps at the hill, spraying fine drops in the air when it surges upwards, the house almost seems to reach for it.

The house is made of windows; glass and metal and nothing else, overgrown with climbing vines and almost bare poison oak, still shedding the last of its deep red leaves.

This is where my life may end. At least, the life I have lived for all of my sixteen years.

The horses slow at the foot of the hill and send the lantern swinging in its post near the Ferryman’s seat. The light sways back and forth, comes to a stop quite sudden.

“Whoa,” says the Ferryman to calm the horses. He turns backwards to face us and flashes us a smile, one much too friendly to not be dangerous, then he faces forward again.

I have no idea why he’s called the Ferryman. And I doubt anyone else does. Must be one of those things that’s so old nobody knows or bothers to know where it came from.

And the Ferryman’s old. Ancient. He’s been doing this for years and years, carting children on the cusp of adulthood to the Glass House. And always, for years and years, carting all but one back home.

Like me, the other kids are covered in rags made of patches and a mosaic of different coloured clothing; a tradition that doesn’t make much sense. I wouldn’t want to be dressed like a beggar the last day on the island.

We’re all huddled together to stave off the cold, but it doesn’t do much good. Already, frost nips at the tips of my fingers and toes. The rock hill has always been the coldest part of the island, even in the blazing heat of the almost year-long summers. It doesn’t help that we aren’t allowed shoes or gloves. Another senseless tradition.

The Ferryman slides off his seat and motions for us to follow, grabbing the lantern off its post.

The road is winding and in the darkness and the biting cold; I see nothing but the swaying light of the Ferryman’s lantern. Not even the other kids I know are beside me, though I can hear their shuddering breaths.

My fingers clutch at the rags about me to pull them closer, like that would help. It’s as though the cold is a thing alive, desperate to steal into my bones and eat me from the inside. I am numb and my knuckles are stiff with the ice coat over my fingers.

The road is long, or perhaps it is short and I just can’t tell otherwise, but by the enid of it my feet are bloody from the uneven rock floor and ready to fall off and I am shivering so badly I swear I can hear my bones rattle.

The Ferryman holds a hand out for us to stop. Then he opens the door to the Glass House.

Unbidden, a memory strikes me. As a child, nothing in the entire length of the island was more fascinating than this lonely house on its lonely hill. Why was it here? Who put it here?

What was inside?

People say it’s been standing dead centre of the island for centuries — millennia, even. I wanted to see.

I made an adventure of it. Ran away from home in the dead of night with my little rucksack tied to a pole over my shoulder to make it feel more dramatic and daring.

My curious mind took me as far as the foot of the hill before I had to turn back for fear of a sure death. For years, I wondered, what if I had gone in alone? What would I find?

Now, I’m standing here and I don’t want to know.

Inside the house, it is warm. Very warm. Steam rising from my shoulders and face obscures my vision for a moment. And it is still dark. If possible, it is even darker than outside. I fear if I stand still too long I will disappear. But despite the darkness, I know what is around me.

The walls are windows, but they do not feel like glass. Instead, they feel like flesh, like the inside of a mouth; wet and slimy. I jerk my hand away when the wall moves. But just then, the floor moves too, like something in disturbed slumber, it undulates in pulses.

I shift around, dart forward, and I stumble. My hand catches something before I fall.

It is a platform. Made of stone and raised at the edges with a jutting smooth surface.

My finger touches a thing at the centre. It’s round and small; the size of a marble. It’s rough to touch when I turn it over between my fingers. Then from somewhere inside, the thing glows, first a pinprick of white light, then brighter, brighter till my eyes shut against the searing pain.

I feel fluttering in my stomach then... I’m floating... the light fades and I fall to the ground.

I open my eyes, and I am outside again.

Clutched in my hand is the glowing marble. I’m... not sure what that means.

The other kids stare at me until the Ferryman grunts to get the next person moving.

One by one each person enters the glass house and one by one each person leaves with a dark marble. By midnight, I am the only one standing with a marble that glows.

**********

The ship fares from the south, and by dawn I am away. Away from everything I have ever known. The warm sandy beaches, the forests, even the dangerous wild animals that frequently stole into our homes.

I don’t know what waits for me beyond the sea, but I know it will never be home. 

********** 

When the ship docks at the harbour, the air is swollen with a fine mist. I stride across the wooden deck with no small amount of trepidation and climb down the ramp to the head of the harbour. I see the first of them then.

They are like insects but writ large, dark-skinned and yellow eyed through the mist. More of them. There are more of them coming closer so that I can now see their silhouettes.

I don’t wait any longer. I don’t want to see whatever disgusting visage is hiding behind the mist. So I run. I run and I don’t look back. 

********** 

There is a new order to life and a new flavour of fear that has dictated it. Like something wretched and restless, this new fear twists in my gut and tightens every muscle in me till there is nothing else that isn’t a slave to it.

Ages and ages, I have run from the things in the mist and never once stopped to rest.

There is something about living here that ages me quickly. Soon enough, much too soon, I am old. My bones are creaking, my energy spent, and my joints in pain.

I can run no longer.

I settle myself at the foot of a cave I come across near the sea. The sea is the closest I can ever come to being home, and it is where I will die.

Just as my eyes close, a sound; before I can fetch a word from my dry throat, I see one of them. It seems I will die to the thing.

Gradually it comes closer, yellow eyes glinting in the light, and when it emerges from the mist it is... a man? Just a man. I don’t understand.

So what have I been seeing? Just men behind the mist?

The man says nothing, just holds up his hand with his index finger pressed against his thumb. It is a moment before I realize what he is holding between them. A glowing marble.

Oh. Now I understand. But it is much too late.