by Ray Wallace
A little while longer, James silently willed it. Long enough for me to finish—
He returned his gaze to the painting.
—whatever this is.
From outside, he heard a low rumble of thunder, as though the storm was telling him not to worry, it didn’t plan on going away anytime soon.
Wednesday, June 29th
Annette heard a thump from upstairs followed by the sound of something breaking.
With a sigh, she stood from the couch, used the remote to silence the television. It was just past nine in the evening and her favorite program had started—one of those shows in which violent criminals, many of them serial offenders, were tracked down by ridiculously insightful investigators using computer systems and forensics techniques that would have made more sense in a sci-fi movie. When she had first started watching this particular show some years ago, she would find herself muttering such phrases as “Oh, come on,” or “You’ve got to be kidding me,” during its more outlandish moments. But once she’d gotten to know the characters, she’d been able to forgive some of the more outrageous plotlines the writers had invented. She’d come to look forward to Wednesday evenings, to relaxing on the couch, drinking a glass of tea and losing herself in television land for an hour.
Now something had distracted her from this little pleasure. And she had a pretty good idea as to what that something might be.
After tossing the remote onto the couch, she headed over to the staircase that would take her up to the house’s second level, the joints in her legs and the muscles in her lower back aching as she made her ascent. Old age was a cruel bitch, no doubt about it. These days, it seemed she always felt a twinge or an ache somewhere in her eighty-three-year-old body.
This damn weather.
She could feel it seeping into her bones, making them swell up and push against the muscles surrounding them, stressing the very tendons holding them together. With any luck, the storm would dry up sometime in the next few days and she’d find some relief. It couldn’t rain forever, could it?
At the top of the stairs, Annette stopped and stared along the hallway, her eyes focusing on the doorway leading into the guest room. She was certain that’s where the noise had come from, the room where her husband had killed himself more than five years ago now, where his ghost could be seen with disquieting regularity since the storm—the damned storm—had rolled in. An overhead light illuminated the hallway, plenty bright enough to see by as she approached the guest room and peered inside.
Henry sat at the foot of the bed, looking more solid, more real than the last time she’d laid eyes on him, his ethereal form largely eclipsing the section of blanket covering the bed directly behind and underneath him. He met her gaze and smiled, a childlike expression, the kind that said, I know I’ve done something naughty but please don’t punish me because I’m usually such a good boy...
Not like she could have punished him if she wanted to.
Annette looked away from her dead husband, took in the sight of the vase lying on the floor, the one that normally stood atop the nightstand with several fake flowers in it. The fall had broken it, left the flowers scattered among shards of glass. It would seem that Henry’s solidity, his realness, went beyond mere appearances.
As she watched, Henry got to his feet and moved toward her, his mouth moving, whispering words on the edge of hearing.
You or me, babe.
Then, in an instant, the merest blink of an eye, he crossed the space between them, stood just inside the doorway, close enough to touch. He raised his hands, fingers curled into claws.
Finally, she moved, backing away from him. But not nearly fast enough, she knew.
You or me.
Those fingers reached for her neck.
Thursday, June 30th
Stephen lay in the dark, listening to the slow, steady sound of Karen’s breathing, taking it as a sign she’d fallen asleep.
“Karen,” he whispered, just to make sure. “Honey?”
No response.
He climbed out of bed, slowly, carefully, as a low rumble of thunder announced the storm’s presence outside.
Will it ever end? he wondered. Followed by: I hope not.
Before leaving the room, he cast a quick glance at the clock next to Karen’s side of the bed: 2:14 in the morning. He’d watched his wife take a sleeping pill around 10:30 and knew there wasn’t much of a chance of her waking up any time before six or so. Still, he felt nervous as he made his way down the hallway and through the living room, stopping before the sliding glass door leading out to the screened-in porch beyond. If she did happen to wake up and come looking for him…
Nothing I can do about that.
He just had to hope she would continue to sleep as soundly as she normally did. Not that the thought of getting caught dissuaded him in the least from what he was about to do. If anything, it only added to the excitement.
He went out to the porch, sliding the door closed behind him. Then he approached the screen door standing between him and the rain-drenched back yard, pushed it open, used the brace to hold it in place. Then he waited.
He didn’t have to wait long.
She appeared out of the darkness, all but invisible until she stood before him, the surface of her body softly gleaming in the yard's ambient lighting. He went to her, stepping out from beneath the porch's protection and into the storm. Much as it had for the past several days now—at times dissipating into nothing more than a heavy mist—the rain drizzled down from the cloud covered skies above. People were hopeful this lull in the heavier precipitation meant the end was near, that the clouds and the rains and the endless gloom would soon depart, that the greens and blues of summer would finally be allowed to shine. Stephen, on the other hand, found himself wishing for something else entirely, that the clouds and the rain would stay. Because he knew...
If the storm were to leave it would take his lover with it.
My lover.
She reached for him, took his hand in hers then led him away from the house. He walked through the puddles and the night shrouded yard in nothing more than a T-shirt and boxers, mindless of the wet and the chill, knowing his discomfort would mean nothing to him before long. She stopped next to one of the larger trees, leaned with her back against it, out of view from anyone inside the house—Karen—who might be watching.
Stephen slipped out of his shorts and T-shirt, tossed them over a low branch. A moan escaped him as his lover, this woman of spirit and water, took hold of him and pulled him close to her. After that first night—when she had entered the confines of the porch and lost control over the cohesiveness that gave her form—he had hoped she would return, that she was something more than a figment of his imagination brought on by feelings of discontent and a certain mind-altering substance. By the morning, he’d found himself—quite understandably—questioning the encounter. As it turned out, he needn’t have worried because that evening she had appeared once again and had returned every night since.
If he had to describe the experience, words would have failed him. When her lips met his... When she reached down and pulled him inside of her... He felt as though he had been transported, out of the rain and the darkness, into a world of swirling heat and light. Somewhere far away from the world he knew, from all that had ever troubled him or ever would. A realm of pure lust, of needs fulfilled, a place where he would never want for anything, not a single thing in all of creation.
And, afterward, when they were finished, he would tell himself it wasn't cheating—at least, not in the usual sense. This woman… Well, she wasn’t even human, after all. Which made it something else entirely, didn't it? Something he couldn't give a name to as he made his way back into the house, as he went into the bathroom and closed the door, stood there naked and shivering, wrapped in a towel.
And later, when he crawled into bed, kissed the back of his wife’s head and lay there listening to her breathe, he would feel only the slightest twinge of guilt as
he closed his eyes and waited for sleep to claim him.
Friday, July 1st
When he opened his eyes, he had no idea where he was, had no recollection of how he may have gotten there.
Lying on his back in a room filled with soft, white light, he listened to a series of low, repetitive sounds that, at first, meant nothing to him. The light, dim as it may have been, felt like acid being poured through his eye sockets and into his skull. And so he squeezed his eyelids shut, waited for the pain to subside before opening them again. By then, the sounds he heard had taken on a recognizable cadence—the soft, steady beeps of medical machinery. Sounds he had heard on several occasions in the past while visiting hospitals in his capacity as…
As what?
He didn’t know, much as he had no idea how he’d ended up in the hospital or how long he’d been there. Obviously, something bad must have happened to him but as to what that something may have been... And then he came to another, even more disturbing realization:
He had no idea who he was either.
He tried to remember his name, to conjure an image of his face seen countless times, he assumed, staring back at him from mirrors and photographs.
Nothing.
The first touch of fear made its presence known, a ticklish, queasy feeling that started in the pit of his stomach before making its way up into his chest. He took in a long, deep breath, held it for several seconds before letting it out slowly.
What the hell was going on here?
“Ah, Pastor McHenry, I see you’re awake.”
The voice was like a splash of cold water thrown onto the hot coals of his anxiety. He turned his head, looked in the direction from where the voice had originated, desperate to see its owner, the person—or angel, possibly—who had so effortlessly delivered him from the anguish taking root inside of him.
Next to the bed stood a woman in a white jacket with a smile on her face and a clipboard in her hand. She had an air of calm professionalism about her. A doctor, here to heal him, to aid him in his hour of need, to make him whole once again. Not an angel, after all, but the next best thing. Already, she had given him back a part of himself that had been missing. A name. Or at least part of one.
Pastor McHenry.
His gaze traveled to the nametag on the woman’s jacket.
Dr. Sylvan.
“It’s good to have you back,” she told him.
“Back? And where have I been?”
His voice was hoarse, barely more than a whisper, the type of voice a holy man—a monk, perhaps—sworn to silence would use upon breaking the terms of his oath. Or the voice of a dead man newly risen from the grave.
From beyond the walls of his room, thunder boomed.
“What do you remember?”
A long moment passed before he answered. “Nothing.”
The doctor nodded her head, apparently unsurprised by his answer. Then she turned and disappeared through a nearby doorway. He heard the sound of running water for a second. When she returned, she handed him a small paper cup filled with water.
“You’ve been in a nonresponsive state,” she told him while he drank, “the cause of which is still a matter of some speculation. Although, a lightning strike seems to be the most likely culprit.”
And just like that, he was there once again, behind the church, walking through the wind and the rain. He saw the flash, bright and blinding and all-consuming, like staring into the face of God. And then the darkness, black as an unforgivable sin.
“How long?” he asked, his voice not nearly as rough now.
“Four days.”
Did I dream? he had to wonder. Not that he could recall. If so, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what those dreams may have shown him.
“I’d like to keep you here under observation for the next couple of days,” the doctor said. “We’ll need to run some tests, make sure everything checks out.”
“Of course.”
She reached down and patted him on the back of the hand.
“Don’t worry, you’re through the worst of it now.”
He could only hope she was right.
Saturday, July 2nd
Officer Phil Greene watched as Jack Hanson, the building's superintendent, unlocked and opened the door before stepping out of the way. He didn't say anything, just winced as the smell which had been seeping out into the hallway suddenly got a whole lot worse. Phil really didn't want to go into the apartment because he had a pretty good idea what he'd find if he did.
Like I have any choice in the matter.
"Stay here," he said to the super. Then, with a sigh of resignation, he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, held it over the lower half of his face and went through the doorway.
"Miss Kolski?" he said, briefly pulling the cloth from in front of his mouth.
Because of the smell and the way he’d pounded on the door, he didn’t really expect an answer and he got none. The odor intensified the further he advanced into the apartment. He saw nothing out of the ordinary in either the kitchen or the living room, just the typical accoutrements one would expect in such spaces. The lights were off but enough of the gray day seeped in through the windows to let him take in his surroundings. Still, he reached for a light switch, feeling a need to disperse the gloom. Then he headed for the hallway leading back to the bathroom and the apartment's lone bedroom, calling the occupant's name one more time as he did so.
Light streamed out of the bathroom and into the hall.
He stopped just short of the open doorway, bracing himself for what he might see when he looked through it.
I really don't want to do that.
But he had to. It was his job, after all. And it's not like he hadn't seen his share of dead bodies in the short time—less than two years at this point—he'd worked as a police officer. The majority of those bodies had been seen in recent weeks, ever since the storm had rolled in, the one that seemed as though it might never go away. Apparently, the bad weather had been having a rather debilitating effect on the moods and psyches of a good number of Hidden Bay's good citizens. If he did, in fact, see what he expected to see in Miss Kolski's bathroom, it would make five corpses he'd have laid eyes on since the storm had first appeared in the skies above his home town.
An experience that definitely did not improve with repetition.
Each time he'd been called to the scene of another suicide, it had been just as difficult to deal with as the one preceding it. Only one of them had been particularly bloody—the man had opted for the same technique as those famously used by Ernest Hemingway and Kurt Cobain—but still, death was death, an unpleasant encounter in any of its myriad guises. Two of them had used sleeping pills. One a banister and a length of rope. Since this one was looking as though it had occurred in the bathroom, Officer Greene had a pretty good idea as to the technique that had been used to accomplish it.
Of course, there's always a chance she was murdered.
He didn't believe it, though. There were no signs of a struggle. Everything looked too organized, too clean. Murder was messy, or so he'd been told. So far, he'd actually never been to a murder scene.
You're stalling. Just get it over with.
And with that, he pulled in a deep breath—or as deep of one as the smell and the cloth over his nose would allow—then stepped through the doorway and into the bathroom.
She was in the tub, just as he'd expected. Naked. Water dark with blood. The side of the tub and the floor next to it streaked with more of the dark, viscous fluid, now dry. Flaky.
She has to have been in here for a couple of days now.
The water had not been kind to her body. Her face along with various other parts of her person floated above the surface of the water. Open eyes stared at the ceiling, seeing nothing. The bloody razorblade lay in the soap dish mounted to the wall.
He took another step into the room—not wanting to, no, not at all—just to make sure he wasn't missing anything. Near Miss Kolski’s head, a c
ircular patch of blood adorned the wall.
A smeared hand print? No. Too circular. Too... intentional.
She had drawn something. A rough oval, deformed, with a circle inside of it.
An eye.
The thought of her using her blood to draw it as she died disturbed him in a way he could not clearly define. Shaking his head, he turned and hurried from the room, left the apartment, brushing past the superintendent on his way out.
"Officer?..."
He left the building, rushed through the rain to his car where he sat breathing heavily for a couple of minutes, trying to cleanse his throat, his lungs of death’s lingering presence. And all the while the rain came down as he reached for the radio, ready to call the station, to let them know what he had seen, to tell them they’d have to send the coroner.
Sunday, July 3rd
While driving through the wind and the rain and the encroaching darkness, Keith did his best to resist the compulsion that had brought him out of the house and into the storm in the first place. But he knew it was a losing battle. Because of the voice. It was there, urging him onward, filling his mind with its unceasing message, not giving him time to think, to contemplate any other course of action.
He hadn't slept in a long time. Forever. Or so it seemed. Since the storm had arrived and invaded his home, the constant drip-drip-dripping hadn't allowed him a moment's peace. Add to that the endless whispering of the voice in recent days and the very idea of sleep seemed like nothing more than a cruel joke—one that did manage to elicit laughter from him on occasion, laughter he didn’t really feel, though, that sounded more than a touch maniacal even to his own ears.
"Where am I going?" he said aloud as the rain pelted the car—a fifteen-year-old hatchback with a badly faded paint job and a sizeable dent in the passenger side door he'd purchased a year ago off of Craigslist for five hundred bucks. If asked, the most complimentary thing he could have said about the vehicle was that most of the time, at least, it managed to get him where he needed to go. Although, besides showing up for the occasional odd job that came his way, it’s not like he had all that many places he had to be these days. This current undertaking of his, which involved driving around in this God forsaken storm, definitely fell outside the realm of what would be considered normal behavior on his part—in other words, leaving the house only when absolutely necessary.
