by Ray Wallace
DAYS OF RAIN
Ray Wallace
Days of Rain
Copyright © 2015 by Ray Wallace
This edition of Days of Rain
Copyright © 2015 by Nightscape Press, LLP
Cover illustration and design by Boden Steiner
Interior layout and design by Robert S. Wilson
Edited by Robert S. Wilson
All rights reserved.
First Electronic Edition
Nightscape Press, LLP
http://www.nightscapepress.com
For my mother,
who has read all of the ones worth publishing
and more than a few along the way that were not.
INTRODUCTION
Trouble is the heart of fiction.
Somebody’s in it, and it's off we go. Horror fiction ups the ante, of course, because the story’s trouble isn’t your normal everyday heart-breaking, bill-missing, crime-doing trouble. The kind of problems we’re used to seeing in the genre range from subtle hauntings to the splatter-gore of the Grand Guignol. And then, there’s the kind of horror where the trouble is big. It touches an entire family, a town, maybe even the world. Apocalyptic trouble.
That’s what we have here, right here in Hidden Bay.
The trick to writing the big trouble stories, of course, is to keep the story real by keeping the people in it true to what we know, what we’ve experienced about people in the “real” world. You’d think that would be easy. As writers, we see and talk to people all the time. We argue and work with, love and/or loathe, and otherwise gain first-hand experience about people, and we take notes. We even steal the tics, quirks, the entire identities of people we know or have encountered. When it comes to people, the writer and the readers who come to fiction for entertainment, are experts.
But it isn’t easy. In fact, it’s damn hard, putting living, breathing human beings with everyday wants and needs, and their own histories of joy and pain, trauma and recovery, in any kind of story, much less right up next to the Big Bad, and keep things believable. Because, in the case of the Big Bad, the already difficult task of artistically depicting characters in conflict in an everyday, believable world tends to be overwhelmed by the magnitude of that real world coming to an end. After all, as Rick once said in Casablanca, “It doesn't take much to see that the problems of three (or five billion) little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”
So it takes skill, grace, vision, discipline, along with a vivid imagination and a dedication to craft, to bring the individualized and quite personal apocalypses of a set of characters together with a Big Bad and make it all coherent, believable, compelling.
That’s what’s happening here, in Days of Rain: a cross-section of people living in the small town of Hidden Bay, encountering manifestations of something Very Big, and reacting in their own way, based on their histories, personalities, and situations. The arcs and threads of their lives intersect the unknowable, and maybe some are doomed, while perhaps others are liberated.
“The world ain’t quite what you thought it was,” says one of the characters, and having read the story, all I can say is, ain’t it the truth, I want the T-shirt.
A lot happens in the ticking-clock passing of days, as the storm approaches and the dread thickens. There are mysteries glimpsed, and people changed. And all I can say after reaching the end is, I want more.
Fortunately, the publisher has wisely encouraged Mr. Wallace to explore this universe he’s established, with its own brand of atmospheric setting and cast of characters and Big Bad. There’s quite a lot more to be discovered, I suspect. In Mr. Wallace’s very capable hands, it’s going to be a hell of a ride.
I can’t wait for the next storm, for more days of rain.
Gerard Houarner
Prologue
In the cold, lightless depths of the ocean, something stirred. Something that, had there been human eyes to witness its stirring, would have been initially mistaken for a section of the ocean floor come to life. Shaking off the silt that had settled onto the broad expanse of its head during the years it had lain there, silent and unmoving—but not unthinking, no, never unthinking—it rose upward through the frigid darkness, causing the strange and varied creatures of this place to flee in primal, animalistic terror. For here was something alien and unknowable, something that caused alarms to scream within the most primitive of brains. Here was something before which even the mightiest and most ferocious of predators residing within this vast, liquid realm would cower. Here was a nightmare made flesh, the embodiment of everything the planet's dominant lifeform, humankind, had learned to fear throughout its brief history. And as it ascended, it pondered the names it had plucked from the psychic babble infecting the world above, the very noise that drove it down into the ocean depths for years at a time so that it might find peace. Names like:
Kraken.
Behemoth.
Leviathan.
After making its way toward one of the planet's larger land masses, it slowed then stopped where the water remained deep enough to hide it from detection. It knew this place, had visited it some two decades earlier, had returned in order to set an experiment in motion, to see if its presence had a more noticeable effect on the nearby human settlement than it had before. To see how much of its strength had returned, how its powers had grown.
As it hovered there, less than a mile from the shoreline, it reached out with its mind, felt the waters surrounding it grow warmer, become more active, sensed a gathering of the clouds in the night skies high above. And it heard the dream voices of those who lay sleeping throughout the town of Hidden Bay raised in fear as something inexplicable, something ancient and unknowable revealed itself to them. Come morning, it knew, the fear would be explained away, rationalized and ridiculed when the logic of the waking world had once again reasserted itself. But it would not be fully exorcised. No. It would lie in wait and, given the right conditions, bloom like a flower bearing poisonous fruit. It only needed to be fed, to be nurtured as its roots took hold within the fertile soil of the human imagination.
Just before sunrise, the front line of thunderclouds reached the shoreline.
And, shortly thereafter, the rain began to fall.
Saturday, June 18th
“Rain, rain, go away,” said eight-year-old Emily Dawkins as she stood before the sliding glass door, gazing out past the wooden patio and the back yard, over to the ocean stretching away into the drizzle and the haze. “Come again some other day…”
Mommy had promised to spend the afternoon with her, to take her down by the water, something Emily had been looking forward to considering they hadn’t been able to spend as much time together in recent days as she would have liked. Not since Daddy had left. Not since she and her mother had moved across the state from the only home she had ever known, away from her friends and the school where she’d just completed the second grade. Not since they had arrived in Hidden Bay.
“Oh, you’re going to love it there,” her mother had said that awful day when Emily found out they would be moving. Mommy had sat with her and smiled, wiped at her tears and told her not to cry. “It’s such a beautiful place. We’ve got the entire ocean for a back yard. And you’ll make new friends in no time. Believe me, I know. When I was your age, my dad was in the army and we used to move all the time.”
Upon arriving at the new house, Emily had confirmed the truth of her mother’s words in one regard: The place certainly was beautiful. It had a wide, sprawling living room with all new furniture, an adjoining dining area with an ornate, wooden table set, and a kitchen filled with gleaming silver surfaces. Not to mention her new bedroom. Shelves had been mounted along one of the walls where she could keep all of her books—those she had alr
eady read and the countless others she planned to read in the future. She also had a new desk with a comfortable chair where she could sit and read or listen to her music—most of it performed by a variety of Disney pop stars—or work on one of her drawings.
Much like the houses to either side of it, Emily’s new home sat atop a section of land that descended rather abruptly to the beach, a fifty foot wide strip of sand bordering the vast expanse of the ocean beyond. And due to the house’s vantage point, the wooden privacy fence enclosing the yard in no way obstructed the view from the patio or anywhere along the rear of the stylish two-story structure.
On their first day at the new house, Emily’s mother had shown her the padlock on the gate that opened onto the beach, had used a key from the ring she carried to unlock it.
“Under no circumstances are you to go beyond this point unaccompanied,” said her mother in the tone of voice Emily had long known would brook no argument. “Ever. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Mommy,” Emily had told her, eyes wide, her most serious expression on her face.
Her mother had nodded and stared at her a moment longer before pushing open the gate and ushering Emily through.
It had been early evening, the sun still up but only just so. With the day’s heat lingering, Emily had dressed simply in a pair of shorts and a yellow T-shirt. The breeze coming in off the ocean played with her hair, carried on it the heavy, salty scent of the water. With a tiny shout she had run toward the waves rolling onto the beach, didn’t stop until the water touched her bare feet where she stood and stared into the seemingly endless blue stretching away to the edge of the world. Just offshore, half a dozen seagulls dipped toward the ocean’s surface before rising up into the air again, screeching all the while. Her mother had come up behind her and placed her hands on Emily’s shoulders. And there they had stood, listening to the water’s ceaseless susurration.
In that moment, Emily had felt truly happy for the first time since moving away from all she had ever known.
But now…
The grey weather seemed a physical incarnation of her mood as she realized she wouldn’t be able to spend the afternoon down on the beach with her mother after all.
“Rain, rain, go away,” she said again. “Come again some other day.”
She could only hope the world would be a brighter place tomorrow.
Sunday, June 19th
Pastor Tom McHenry had fallen into the habit of spending his Saturday evenings in seclusion, praying and composing his sermon for the service he would lead at Hidden Bay Baptist Church. The weather, which had only worsened as night had fallen, had undoubtedly influenced in no small way the words he found himself uttering the following morning to the congregation gathered before him:
“The Lord then said to Noah, ‘Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation. Take with you seven of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also two of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth. Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made…’”
He paused and looked up from his notes just as a perfectly timed rumble of thunder shook its way through the walls and floor of the building. When it abated, he could hear the sound of the rain pelting the stained-glass window with its depiction of Jesus Christ—a lamb held in the crook of one arm; a staff gripped in the opposite hand—behind him. Some of the parishioners let their gazes ascend to the roof high above their heads, nervous expressions on their faces. Yes, he had chosen today’s sermon well. The weather lent an air of gravitas to the proceedings, almost as though God Himself stirred the wind and the rain for the sole purpose of driving home the message in Pastor McHenry’s words.
And maybe He did, after all, thought Pastor McHenry, not entirely in jest. Maybe he did.
The initial intent of today’s sermon had been to remind those who had attended—the turnout had been more than satisfactory with nearly every pew filled, despite the weather—that a person’s real strength lay in the strength of those around them. That a family unit was always stronger than the individual. That in these tough and uncertain times, it was even more imperative to keep one’s friends and family close, to lean on them in moments of need and personal weakness. Look at what Noah and his family had done! And would anyone here try to compare whatever trials they may be facing—be they economic or of some other, less seemly variety—to those of that venerable and most righteous of families? No, of course not. Noah and his loved ones had faced the literal end of the world. Surely any of those in attendance this wet Sunday morning could overcome much lesser, although no less real, forms of tribulation.
But somewhere along the way, the morning’s message had changed. Pastor McHenry was not normally given to fire and brimstone speeches. He did not like to play upon the fears of the faithful. No, it was a lesser preacher, as far as he was concerned, who resorted to such petty manipulations. He vastly preferred reminding his followers that the Lord Above was, first and foremost, a loving and merciful god. He did have to admit, though, if only to himself, that on occasion it didn’t hurt to remind people that God’s mercy did have its limitations.
Pastor McHenry took a deep breath and continued reading:
“In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth for forty days and forty nights…”
Outside, more thunder. Pastor McHenry offered up a silent thank you as the rain fell ever harder, beating at the walls of the church like…
A legion of evil spirits, held back by the protective and eternal light of the Lord.
At that moment, the lights throughout the church flickered. Several gasps could be heard from the congregation. A nervous energy filled the building, running the entire length and width of the building. This was the type of sermon Pastor McHenry often dreamed about delivering, the type of sermon he lived for. He knew he had the undivided attention of everyone gathered before him, that no one would nod off while he spoke this Sunday morning. And so, with the sounds of the storm growing ever louder outside, he raised his voice and let the words rain down…
Monday, June 20th
The first rays of sunlight didn’t exactly burst over the horizon. No, they seemed to leak up and over the rim of the world like some dull yellow liquid in defiance of gravity. Annette Somers, all of eighty-seven years old this past May, was glad to see this wan and uninspiring light as it heralded the night’s denouement. She sat on the front porch of her home, a cup of coffee in her brittle hand, the hints of a smile playing at the edges of her lips, at the tiny wrinkles there.
Goodbye, Henry, she said to herself as she took a sip of the steaming black liquid, for another night, at least.
She knew he’d be back after the sun completed its journey across the sky and hid behind the Earth once again. It was the rain that brought him. The darkness and the rain. And, according to the weatherman on the local news the evening before, the rain was not going to end anytime soon.
“Another three or four days by the looks of things,” he’d said, pointing to the computer-animated clouds behind him. As Annette had watched, they swept in from the ocean, directly over Hidden Bay and its surrounding environs. The weatherman had gone on to talk about “above average ocean temperatures” and “low pressure systems.” After a few minutes of this, Annette grew bored and used the remote to silence the TV.
A few hours later, as she made her way upstairs then down the hall leading back to the master bedroom, she had paused to look in through the doorway of the guest room along the way.
And there he was.
Henry, her late husband, sitting on the edge of the bed staring back at her. Deceased these
past five years now. Dead by his own hand.
She’d come home one rainy evening after having dinner with an old friend to find her husband in this very room, hanging from a length of extension cord looped around his neck. A couple of weeks prior to that, a water-damaged section of the ceiling had been taken down exposing several crossbeams. Henry had tied the cord to one of the beams then stood on a chair, stuck his head through the orange loop, tightened it around his thin neck and stepped off. By the time Annette found him, his face had turned almost completely blue, his swollen tongue sticking out of his mouth. A gleaming trail of spittle had made its way under his chin and down his neck where it had pooled into a wet spot at the collar of his white T-shirt. Judging by the smell permeating the room, this was not the only substance to have vacated his body when he died.
All she could do was stand there for a while, hand pressed over her nose, shaking her head in denial and staring at him. Sure, it had always been a possibility that things were going to end this way. He’d said as much during several different conversations in the years following the diagnosis. Alzheimer’s. Early stages. For a guy who had always prided himself on being the smartest person in the room, this simply would not do. The changes in his personality became ever more pronounced as time passed. The mood swings. The sudden outbursts of anger. It reached the point where he needed to be in a nursing home, under supervision, but he would not go of his own free will and she could not bring herself to force him. They had been together for nearly five decades, been through too much together. If this was the way things were going to play out, so be it. She could handle it. She’d handled plenty in her day. Even if the Henry she had to live with toward the end wasn’t really the Henry she had loved for all those years anymore? Yes, even then. He would have done the same for her. It was the least she could do for him.
