by Dan Padavona
At the Moran farm, General repeatedly reared up and paced the pasture perimeter. While Randy Marks stroked the colt's mane, General bolted away and acted skittish. Evan Moran heard the commotion from inside the house and came to help.
They were confused. General was spooked, but by what? Evan searched the shadows for signs of a predator—maybe a bear had come out of the meadow. There was enough cover in the surrounding fields for a large animal to conceal itself.
Meadow grass beyond the pasture waved in silhouette as a stiff breeze fell off the southwestern hills. Nothing moved within its camouflage. If a predator was out there, Evan couldn't see it.
He could see the dark outline of the forest against the burgeoning western twilight. The forest was always there, staring back at him. He thought of the blackness within. And red eyes.
Panic gripped him, though for the life of him he could not put a face to his fear.
“We need to get General into the barn. Padlock the doors. Something is out there!”
There was urgency in Evan's voice, and Randy did not question him.
A great wind screamed down from the hill forest, its roar like a jet engine. The pasture fence shuddered against the force. They shielded their eyes from dust and debris caught in the gale. Then the wind intensified, and a vile roar swept across Standish Road toward the barn. Randy looked questioningly at Evan and saw terror in the man’s eyes.
They sprinted for the barn and lunged to the ground, shy of the entrance, as the fury hit. A plank ripped past Evan’s vision, nearly clipping him in the head. It struck the side of the barn like a shotgun blast and wedged into the wood. Behind them they heard General’s agonized squeals.
At the Red Lion Tavern, Chuck Kingsley told Dell Lawrence that in no uncertain terms had his daughter visited his establishment that day, and that Dell needed to get his ass out of there before the bouncers threw him out. Dell cursed and threatened that Chuck Kingsley would regret crossing him. He shoved the front door open and walked outside.
If he found that Kingsley knew something about Katy, he would put that asshole into a hospital bed next to the Branyan kid.
There hadn't been rain in the forecast, so Dell was surprised by the way the weather was acting. A stiff breeze picked up out of the southwest. It knocked the hat off the head of an older man jaywalking and blew dirt into Dell's face. Rubbing the stinging grit from his eyes, he cursed again. As the gale built, he thought of Katy.
Is she caught in the storm?
He began to worry.
Greg Madsen didn't like the way the wind had intensified. Certain a spring storm was about to blast the town, he remained perplexed that there weren't any clouds in the sky. As he biked off Jensen onto Main, he saw Dell cursing at the door bouncer in front of the Red Lion. Greg knew he needed to diffuse the situation before Dell did something stupid.
He had turned his bike toward the scene when the wind exploded down Jensen and Main. The force threw him from his bike and smashed him to the concrete. A metal garbage can ripped across the road. It missed his head by inches and crumpled against a light pole with the sickening sound of metal screeching against metal.
The wind felt like a tidal wave crashing against him. As he tried to get to his hands and knees, the storm forced him to the sidewalk. The roar of freight trains filled his ears. All around him was chaos— windows shattered; people screamed as the wind hurled them across the pavement; he saw the traffic light at the intersection of Jensen and Main rip off the line and hurtle through a second story apartment window.
He was sure he was going to die, but then the wind was gone as quickly as it had come. He heard it scream like a banshee down Jensen toward the east end of town. Loud pops echoed in the distance— electrical wires were exploding.
The storm, or whatever it was, would have caused extensive damage to the more densely-populated east side of Jensen, and people might be injured in the streets. He radioed Art Stults to raise every available unit and to call the county for backup.
Nine
Twilight broke in the eastern sky, and a great fire burned below the western horizon. A throng of mosquitoes and moths congregated around the streetlamps above Maple Street, addicted to the yellowish glimmer.
Tom Kingsley had just walked Jen Barrows home. Her parents were out for Saturday night dinner and would not be back until late, and the lights were dark inside the house.
He noticed she had avoided talk of the forest today, which didn't bother him, since he had preferred to forget the incident too. What concerned him was how nervous she had become with the setting sun, as though her confidence had perished with the fiery orb.
Her sense of humor had vanished, and that was most unusual for Jen Barrows. She eyed every shadow warily and jumped at the slightest movement beyond her vision. There was a quiver in her voice when she spoke.
The wind had been acting fitfully, alternating between stifling calm and sudden gusts, which whistled through the trees and shook loose insects from the overhead globes.
They both felt a growing dread, which neither could place. He would not leave her alone tonight.
Tom knew his mother wouldn't approve of him being alone in a house with Jen. For that matter, he figured that Jen's parents would too have concerns. But better to let everyone have their concerns than to leave her alone and have something
(like what?)
happen.
The front door to the Barrows' home was unlocked, and that was not at all unusual in Storberry where most everyone knew most everyone. A darkened hallway greeted them beyond the front door. Jen flipped the light switch on the wall and chased the shadows into the adjoining rooms.
She laughed nervously.
“Now what?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Watch something on TV?”
“Sure.”
She patted him on the arm and led him into the living room, then bent over a glass end table to turn on the lamp. The incandescent bulb flickered once and filled the near corner of the living room with a yellowish-white glow, revealing a blanket-covered couch and an umber shag carpet. She hurried to the far end of the couch and turned on the second lamp. The living room filled with light.
The glow from the shaded lamps did not carry far. The light made visible most of the dining room and kitchen, but was engulfed by pools of darkness along the back walls. Tom followed her to both rooms while she turned on additional lights. Now the lower floor was lit up like a landing strip. She sighed in relief. No dangers had presented themselves.
She could see Tom staring up the dark staircase leading to the second floor. Anything could be concealed in its darkened passages. They both understood that there would be no solace until each and every room was checked. But that meant proceeding into the dark.
He had skeletons in his own closet, though most of those were confined to the hill forest. He had rationalized his way past his fear of monsters under his bed when he was a child, but the forest...well, that remained an itch he could not scratch. As the shadows from the upper landing spilled down the staircase in a murky river, he could not shake the feeling that the hill forest and his present sense of dread were interconnected.
He had no explanation for the chill running down his back. Something was wrong under the building twilight. He had felt it in the wind and in the setting sun. A tension, like static electricity, pulsed all around them.
He gave her a look of reassurance.
“I'll go up the stairs with you. We'll turn the lights on, check all the corners and under all the beds. It won't take a minute.”
“And then popcorn and TV?” she asked, trying hard to mask that she was a bundle of nerves about to come unraveled.
“Then popcorn and TV. Let's just get it over with.”
As she double-locked the front door, pulling on the handle to confirm it was secure, an alarm sounded from deep within Tom’s mind.
What if someone is in the house? How will we escape?
He stood
to her left and flicked the wall light switch at the base of the stairs. The first landing illuminated.
She placed her hand in his, and he looked at her. He believed that she was only holding his hand to chase away her fears, but that didn't stop his heart from thumping. He wished he could hold her hand under different circumstances.
He looked up the staircase to the darkened upper landing. It was just darkness, he reasoned. There were no boogeymen. No skeletons with rattling chains. No wide-eyed clown dolls come to life, crouched in the closet gripping the butcher knife gone missing from the kitchen. Once the lights were on they would see there was nothing to fear.
But there are real life murderers, he thought. Rapists. Pedophiles.
Sometimes crazed people do hide in your home and descend upon you out of the dark. There were real monsters on the TV news, flesh and blood. They cut you into pieces and hid you in refrigerators. They made ornaments out of your bones, which they hung in Wisconsin farmhouses.
She hears them at night in the crawlspace of her garage.
He inhaled deeply. No matter how terrified Tom was, he would not let her see. He held her hand and they climbed the stairs. One step at a time. As he twisted his neck to watch the upper landing where the light ended, they rounded the bend of the first landing. Staring up into the shadows, he paused, listening for any sound that signaled danger.
It was quiet upstairs, except for the metronomic tick of a wall clock. The tension grew with each tick, as though a pulley had wound a cord toward its breaking point. She gripped his hand tighter and they climbed another step.
Then one more.
Then another.
They were one step below the landing when gooseflesh spread across his skin. It took every bit of his will to keep from turning and running, and as his heart pounded like thunder, he found his right hand gripping the wooden bannister until it squealed. His vision cut through the gloom, expecting something to rush from the shadows.
He listened.
Just the old clock ticking.
Through her open second story window came the groan of creaking wood and the shotgun snap of a plank breaking. It came from outside, from the crawlspace above her garage.
Then the wind came shrieking off the hill.
Ten
When Katy Lawrence opened her eyes to thickening twilight, she sat up quickly and looked across the field. Terror gripped her until she remembered where she was.
How long have I been asleep?
The sun had set behind the tree line, and the dim blue of twilight cloaked the meadow. The lights from Maple Street were obscured by the copse at the top of the neighborhood. In minutes the meadow would be in total darkness.
She was in trouble. She should have walked to Jensen an hour ago to find a ride out of town. Where would she sleep tonight? Could she find her way back to town in the dark? If only she had put off rest a little longer.
But she had been exhausted, physically and emotionally drained from the last two days. If she hadn't rested, she might have collapsed.
Placing a hand over her growling stomach, she realized that she hadn't eaten since she’d spent her last few dollars on breakfast at the hospital cafeteria.
Safety existed at the hospital—it was a good place to sleep when there was nowhere else to go. Family and friends of hospital patients often slept in the lobby or in waiting rooms. If a nurse or orderly saw you curled up on the couch, he or she just assumed that someone you knew was hospitalized. Nobody looked at you twice.
If I can find my way to Main, I can walk to the hospital in about an hour and a half.
She would find a quiet, safe waiting room. She could begin her journey out of town after sunrise and have an opportunity to check on Jeff one last time.
The meadow was alive with the chirping of crickets, and an owl hooted from the copse. The low croak of a bullfrog came from down the slope to her right, helping her get a sense of where the pond was within the dark sea of meadow grass.
An unusual breeze picked up from behind her. The forest provided the hill meadow with a buffer from westerly winds, but this wind seemed to come from directly over the tree line. As she waited for raindrops to follow, she noticed that the sky was clear, with a growing number of stars flickering to the east.
As she started down the slope through the tall grass, she stumbled over hummocks and snagged her feet in knotted overgrowth. Footing was treacherous after dark, and the last thing she needed was a sprained ankle or twisted knee.
From the sounds off the pond and the slope of the meadow, she determined that the beaten trail was to the northeast. She had walked the trail a hundred times but never attempted to locate it in the dark.
Should I bear left and risk traveling the copse so I can get to the backyards above Maple Street?
Getting back to civilization would make her feel safer, and she could find a garage or shed to conceal herself in until dawn. She had done so a few times before when she was desperate. The problem was that the copse was thick and the slope considerably steeper toward the neighborhood. She couldn't safely traverse the slope in the dark.
As Katy walked onward, darkness thickening by the minute, she knew that she should have found the trail by then. It may have been to either side of her, but she was blinded by chin-high meadow grass.
Twilight had traveled to the eastern sky. As the moon lay hidden behind the forest, leaving the meadow in total darkness, she began to panic.
The familiar night sounds of Becks Pond were far behind her. She stopped and turned, looking up the slope. The meadow looked the same to her in every direction. She was lost.
Turning again, she took note of the sharper slope in front of her. If she was correct, the neighborhood was a fifteen or twenty minute walk in that direction. She stood and stared, trying to force her eyes to cut through the gloom. The night revealed nothing.
Then she perceived slightly darker shadows up the slope to the northwest, most likely the tree copse. She was out of options. She needed to risk the copse and hope for the best.
Katy moved cautiously forward, her hands outstretched before her, searching blindly for branches or bramble. She kept her weight back on her heels and shifted her gait so that she moved at an angle which better kept her balanced. There were pitfalls in the form of grass clumps, rocks, and holes, and she stumbled often.
A pricker bush caught her right calf, and she yelped as the thorns tore her skin. She backed away and pulled the dried stems off of her. She could feel thin rivulets of blood trickling down her ankle.
The tall shadows grew nearer. The copse was just ahead. If she could safely make her way through the thick grove, the lights from the houses would guide her.
Suddenly the wind struck with a guttural roar off the meadow's crest.
The force blasted Katy from behind and slammed her into the earth. Her instincts took over, and she covered her head with her hands, as dirt and stone pelted her back and legs. Wind-driven debris stung her exposed skin like a swarm of hornets. She screamed in terror and confusion.
Earth clumps ripped over her head with the power to crush bones and snap necks. Meadow grass whipped and snapped, tearing welts into her exposed skin.
The fury ceased as abruptly as it had begun. She could still hear herself screaming as the shrill banshee swept toward the center of town.
She lay on her stomach, panting and gasping for breath. Her body ached all over, as if she had been struck by a runaway vehicle. There were lacerations spread across her arms and legs in a bloody spider web pattern.
Pushing herself to her hands and knees, she ignored the stinging pain of skin being stretched. She felt relieved that she had no broken bones. As she looked to the sky in wonder and saw stars sparkling against an endless quilt of black, she couldn't reason through what had caused the wind. And then she remembered that she was still lost in the dark meadow.
As her legs turned into rubber bands, and her equilibrium warred with a bout of dizziness, she turned slightly a
nd began to edge sideways down the hill. She kept to a slow pace despite an overwhelming urge to see neighborhood lights.
The meadow was silent. It had been so since the wind abated. She expected the insects and night birds to revisit their songs, but the only sound was the crunch of twig and grass under her sneakers, as she struggled to maintain balance.
The silence troubled her. Her eyes shifted left and right, trying to slice through the gloom. She saw the faint outline of tall grass and the tree copse. All else was black.
The copse was the length of a football field. When Storberry was first settled, the tree line had extended to the bottom of the hill. In 1942 Maple Street was paved, and new construction had immediately commenced. The trees were leveled along the hill to tempt new home buyers with large, open backyards.
Marking the edge of the backyard property lines, the copse grew without human intervention until the thick meadow grass took over near the crest. In daylight it could be traversed in several minutes. In the dark, it was slow and treacherous. The overgrowth crowded together, and low hanging branches snagged clothing and whipped at skin. Katy knew this, and she kept her forward arm bent in front of her eyes for protection.
Rich with the scent of humus and pine, the interior was choked with dead trees rose that from the earth like hideous skeletons. Boughs were arms that threatened to snatch her off the ground.
Nothing moved inside. Brush and fallen branches snapped underfoot. As she concentrated on making steady progress down the slope, she tried to ignore her growing anxiety that she was in danger.
She walked for several minutes in the gloom as branches whipped at her skin, and patches of bramble tore at her sundress. The possibility of stepping into an animal trap occurred to her. It wasn't likely that anyone would place traps this close to the neighborhood, but one could never be sure.
If I step into a trap, I’m finished.
Now she watched the ground for hazards. It slowed her progress, but she wasn’t taking any chances.
She should have broken out of the trees by now. There was a growing dread that she had become lost, but that was unlikely. Provided she kept moving down the slope, she would walk straight into the backyards of the neighborhood. Even if she had miscalculated so badly that she missed Maple Street, she would arrive in town near Standish Road in short order.
