And now, the final installment. On the day the world ends. (I think the end is near. The ground is covered in a strange white substance and everything is cold.)
Anyway, read on.
O-o-O
-storm-
It seemed fitting that Sadie should end up back home.
Except she couldn't possibly be home, could she? Because Brooklyn House was empty, abandoned, its occupants long dead or fled or simply vanished. This creaking, waterlogged building couldn't be her home. It just couldn't.
She wandered around the Great Room, her boots squelching in the soaked carpets. The windows were shattered, the doors hanging crooked on their hinges. Philip's pool was covered in a thin film of scum.
Sadie trailed her fingers along the Thoth statue's base, which Cleo had scrubbed lovingly every day. It was cracked and spotted with dried blood.
It was funny, she thought as she ascended the creaking stairs, how quickly a place could fall apart once everyone who had tended it was gone.
She passed through the second floor of bedrooms in a daze. Zia's room was still neat. Not even the forces of nature would dare touch her belongings.
There was a faint light coming from inside Walt's room when she passed it. His laptop, wheezing on its last vestiges of battery power—when she stroked the mousepad, his background popped up, with a much happier version of herself seated on his lap, smiling at the fireworks that had decorated the sky last July.
The screen went black as the laptop died.
She passed Jaz's room. Her guitar was propped up in the corner, waiting for its owner to return and play it lovingly.
The strings were snapped.
Carter's room was its usual mess.
She supposed he must have been going through a stage of semi-rebellion; after all, if she'd been forced to live out of a suitcase for eight years, she would've transformed her room into a pigsty as well. Piles of clothes were scattered in front of his closet, papers and books littered every flat surface, and his bed was unmade—come to think of it, he probably hadn't made a bed in his life. Lucky boy.
Lucky, dead boy.
She sifted through the pile on his nightstand. A picture of himself and Walt dressed up last Halloween as a couple of characters from some movie that Sadie had never seen but Sadie had taken great pleasure in teasing them both about; what self-respecting teenage boy would watch a movie called The Princess Bride?
She dug a little more and found a small silver bracelet with a single tag; there was a red caduceus on the front and an inscription on the back. Carter had been allergic to penicillin. There was a battered copy of The Hobbit; when she flipped open the front cover, she saw careful pencil markings, translations of the runes on the inside: The Hobbit or There and Back Again.
She carefully replaced the book and made her way to the roof.
The wind whipped her hair into her face, but she shoved it away and staggered to the railing, the rain slicing through her and soaking her straight to the bone. She felt the building groan in protest as the elements battled it.
She scratched away a bit of rust from the rail and gazed over the city. The streetlights simply couldn't compare to the lightning crackling above, playing through the swirling clouds, illuminating the urban wasteland.
Brooklyn House swayed under her feet as the wind pushed and shoved at it. The movement made her feel sick, so she turned instead and looked over the rooftop. Freak's nest was abandoned, an empty crate still set out in front of it.
The lightning flashed again, and the building rumbled, swayed, cracked, collapsed.
A dozen spells flashed through her mind, a dozen ways to live.
But she was so, so tired.
She closed her eyes and sighed with relief as the rooftop gave way, and she fell.
O-o-O
And with that, I bid you a fond farewell. This miniseries has come to an end. (Huh. I actually finished something. First time for everything.)