All Those Who Came Before

by Kathryn Meyer Griffith

  The wind was shoving her around like a crumpled wad of paper and Abigail wondered if they’d make it to the cabin before the worst of whatever was going to happen would happen. Thank goodness there wasn’t a funnel cloud anywhere in sight. Yet. So that was a good thing. Perhaps Myrtle was wrong. Perhaps it was just going to be another storm.

  Once in the car, Abigail put in another quick call to update Frank on what was going on, where she was, then she turned to Myrtle. “There’s no sign of a tornado yet. Do you want me to try to get you home first? I think we can make it.”

  “Maybe.” Myrtle cranked her head downwards and peered out through the windshield. “Okay, since I don’t see no tornadoes yet, and I imagine Glinda is wondering when I'm getting home, let’s make a run for it.”

  “Call her,” Abigail advised, “so she doesn’t worry.”

  “My grandniece worry? Ha! She probably already knows what’s going on and what’s going to happen, being a psychic and all.” But Myrtle pulled her big-numbered cell phone, the one she now carried everywhere with her, out of her dress’s pocket and called her niece. “I’m with Abigail, Glinda. We’re coming home now. Don’t worry. Be there soon. Don’t fret, the tornado is nowhere in sight.”

  Abigail heard the young woman on the other end of the call say something she couldn’t make out. Then the old woman hung up. Short and sweet.

  “Glinda said okay. She’d see us soon. Said to drive safely. She also said we should stay off Highway Sixty-One. Don’t know why, but I always listen when she tells me not to do something.” Myrtle put her phone back in her pocket.

  It still amused Abigail to see the old woman using a cell phone. She’d resisted having one for so long, but these days, since the creek incident where she’d been hurt, she listened to the people who cared about her and now always had her phone with her. Almost dying in that water, and the ringing of her phone locating and thus saving her, had cured her of being so anti-cell phone. These days her phone was a close friend.

  The car sped away from Stella’s and drove down Main Street toward the road that would take them to Glinda’s place. Rain from the skies had begun to sprinkle around them. The wind’s voice was a low hum growing louder every second. Myrtle’s eyes were studying the troubled skies. There was a crackle, an electricity, that rippled all around the car in waves.

  A limb, or something that looked like one, flew by Abigail’s window and crashed into the side of the hardware store. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the wind was yanking leaves, twigs and dirt from the forest floor beyond the town’s buildings and swirling them high into the sky in mini tornadoes. In moments all the flying debris had been sucked up into the atmosphere. The olive hue in the air around them had deepened even more. Everything appeared to be shades of it. The buildings, the streets, the cars whizzing by, the sky. The whole world was green.

  They did not take Highway Sixty-One.

  Yet they barely made it half-way to Glinda’s when the old lady, still gawking out the window, muttered, “Oh, oh. I might have spoken too soon. I think–holy cow! Look at that, would you!” Myrtle’s trembling finger pointed upwards through the window to her right. “Get a load of those clouds, thick as blankets, black as soot, traveling like crazy–and, wow, now there’s a funnel coming down. Tornado! By the looks of it, it’s going to be an enormous one...and it’s heading this way.”

  Abigail decelerated the car as the rain drops pelted against the vehicle in earnest. Visibility had become difficult. She focused her gaze where Myrtle was staring and, as the funnel descended from the sky to the earth, she caught her breath. She’d never seen a tornado as close, as big, as this one was. It filled the green sky.

  “Lordy,” Myrtle exclaimed in a loud voice, to be heard over the din, “I bet it’s at least an EF-4. Whoa! Look at that thing go.”

  “It’s between us and your house, Myrtle. Between us and my house.” Now what do we do, Abigail thought frantically. The tornado was hurtling towards them, smashing and gobbling up everything in its path. They couldn’t continue on their present route or they’d run right into it. Thank goodness the twister was heading away from town and not towards it. Problem was, it was aimed in the direction of Abigail’s house. Under her breath, she sent up a swift prayer that everyone she loved was somewhere safe, and her home, as well as Myrtle’s, would be spared.

  “I just remembered,” Myrtle piped up, her eyes reflecting the tornado barreling down at them. “I know a short-cut and it’s in the opposite direction. Guess fear brings things up you thought you’d forgotten forever. But it’ll get us away from that wind monster coming at us.

  “Here,” she pointed to something on their left, “go down that road.”

  “What road? I don’t see anything.”

  “There! By that broken tree.” Myrtle pointed with one of her fingers to a tree that was split down the middle. “The road used to be called Suncrest. Long ago. I guess the old sign got run down, blown away, or something. Road is still Suncrest, though. I remember.”

  In the sudden storm darkness, Abigail could barely see the road’s faint borders because it was so overgrown with age and weeds, yet she saw the rent tree clear enough.

  “Also, as I recall, there’s an old house down this way somewhere,” Myrtle added. “What was its address? Let me see. Oh, yeah, 707 Suncrest. I remembered those numbers because seven is my lucky number and because the place has quite the history.”

  At that moment, though, Abigail was too concerned over the tornado gaining on them to ask about that history.

  “All right. I’m taking your mystery side road.” Wrenching the steering wheel around just in time to make the sharp turn, she took the nearly invisible road, then her foot shoved down hard on the accelerator. The darkness of the day had made seeing the thoroughfare completely impossible, so she hoped they didn’t end up in a ditch. They didn’t. The car sped forward.

  A short way down the road there was a decrepit picket fence. The fence, with half the wooden slats missing, rambled down along the edge of the road and through the middle of what appeared to be thick woods. The car, buffeted by the wind, bumped and rattled over the gravel road, spraying tiny rocks everywhere.

  “This is a shortcut to where exactly?” Abigail’s heart was pounding, her thoughts had scattered on the air. She could hear the tornado eating up the distance between them. She’d never been caught in a twister before but, people were right, it did sound like an approaching train. A loud noisy train. Under the difficult conditions, she drove as fast as she could. The lane was full of rocky ruts, the wind a vicious enemy. “Where are we heading?”

  “Oh, it’s just another way to Glinda’s I used to take when I was much younger. When the house belonged to my sister.” To be heard over the storm, Myrtle had begun speaking louder and louder. “Hadn’t thought of this shortcut in ages. No one ever uses it anymore. The road is so bad and the creek washes it out more times than not every year. Then you need a boat to navigate it. No one lives on this road anymore, but it’ll get us to Glinda’s quicker. And if we’re lucky, in one piece.”

  “Or we hope so.”

  The trip took longer than it should have, what with the rough terrain and foul weather. The tornado was screaming somewhere behind them but with the unnatural night it was hard to see where it was. After a while, though, and more driving, Abigail did think the noise was lessening, and that the tornado was no longer right behind them. Thank God.

  As she slowed the vehicle down, maneuvering a tricky curve in the lane, there before her, embedded in a patch of furiously swaying trees, rose a hulking structure framed against the cloud filled sky. It took a minute for Abigail to make out the structure was a house, and one that had long ago seen its best days. Its condition was ramshackle; its outside paint long gone, boards missing, shattered windows, weed and tree surrounded, sad and abandoned, but it was still a house, or had been. There were thick woods behind it, with those spooky clinging Kudzu vines over many of the limbs, and snaking betwe
en the branches, that made the trees look like weird animal shapes. The whole landscape was spooky to Abigail, and it wasn’t even near Halloween.

  Abigail had never seen the house before, but then she hadn’t been down that way before. She hadn’t known the road or the house were there. The building, so massive and imposing, was in such disrepair, to her it mostly resembled a disintegrating castle.

  A broken mailbox lay on the ground, in the weeds with the faded number 707 on it. 707 Suncrest. She couldn’t make out the name on the box. The name was too small and she drove by too fast.

  But she saw the house–couldn’t miss it–and she had the uneasy feeling it saw her. The house and its eerie surroundings would make an intriguing painting, she ruminated, and knew immediately she wanted to paint it. She was going to paint it. It possessed such a haunting atmosphere. So much character. Envisioning the works of art on huge canvases, she believed they would make a great series of paintings. Hmm.

  “Whose house is that?” Abigail inquired as her eyes lingered on the eyesore they were passing. The house was having the strangest effect on her. It made her troubled and excited at the same time. Somehow, in some strange way, it was familiar to her; as if she’d been there before, when she knew she hadn’t. It was begging her to come and paint it; to freeze its edifice forever in time on canvas. Paint me. I need you to paint me. You must paint me. I have been so lonely for so long.... A shiver caressed her neck and crept down her spine. The house was calling to her. How strange.

  Myrtle hesitated and waved her hand at the place. “Oh, that house? It’s the old Theiss place.”

  The dwelling was in the rear view mirror and was receding into the twilight along with the thundering tornado, which had roared off in the opposite direction. Abigail could hear the natural world again around her as the noise level also dwindled. They were out of danger. Lifting her sweaty hands one at a time from the steering wheel and wiping them off on her jeans, she breathed an inner sigh of relief.

  “The old Theiss home?” Abigail repeated, as she stole one final glance of the house in the rearview mirror. “I never knew it was here. Out in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Most people don’t know it is or don’t remember it is. Or don’t care it is. It’s a falling-down wreck with a ton of bad juju sticking to it like old glue. Good thing it’s hidden in the woods and nobody has to look at it. Time has not been kind to it.” Myrtle had swung around in her seat, her eyes scanning the land around them searching for something. Probably the tornado.

  The wind had fallen to a soft growl so Abigail could hear her passenger’s words well enough. “Whew, Abby, I think the tornado is gone. Thank the Lord! We’re saved!” Myrtle was practically bouncing in her seat. “I hope it hasn’t done any real damage anywhere.”

  “Me, too.”

  They’d come to the end of the lane and Abigail brought the car to a full stop. “Which way?”

  “Left.”

  Abigail went left, recognizing where she was. She’d driven by the concealed road endless times since she’d married and moved in with Frank, but had just never noticed it before.

  The wind was now a strong breeze churning around the car as it sped down the road. By the sound of it, the tornado had moved on or dissipated into history. Even the sky had lightened. The ugly green color was gone.

  Abigail felt compelled to ask, “The house we just passed, the Theiss house you called it? Wow, it is a shame it’s fallen into such disrepair.” Abigail was shaking her head. “It must have been something in its day. It’s as big as a castle.”

  “Oh, I heard it was something in its time. The biggest, most gorgeous home in a hundred miles. I was never invited there, but other people I knew were.” Myrtle glanced at her, astonishment on her face. “We just escaped death from a killer tornado, for sure, and you’re wanting to yak about a ghost house that’s crumbling into the grass and dirt on the side of the road. You’re a trip, Abby.” Myrtle laughed, slapping her thigh.

  Abigail ignored the other woman’s reaction. “I’m just curious. I can’t believe you don’t find that decaying mansion as fascinating as I do. What’s its story? Why hasn’t anyone bought it? Why is it still empty after–how many years?”

  Myrtle took a minute to think about the questions, lightly scratching the side of her face. “I don’t know. But it’s been empty for at least twenty years or so to my knowledge. Could be longer. I’m not so good with remembering the years anymore. I’ve lived so many of them, sometimes they all blur together.”

  “So you don’t know who lived in it last and what happened to them?”

  “The Theiss family, I reckon. I don’t remember much else about the place or why it’s still empty. But...wait...I do remember one thing.”

  “What?”

  “Our book lady, Claudia, has some connection to that house, something or other, I believe.” She let out a soft chuckle. “Cause once, in her bookstore I was looking for a good cozy murder mystery. I’d run out of things to read and you know how I get when that happens. Oh, boy, did she recommend a great one. It had this crazy cat in it and a foggy, spooky town full of eccentric characters. I–”

  “Myrtle. The house?”

  “Oh, yeah. That.”

  “What connection does Claudia have with that old house back there?” Abigail had begun to come down from the earlier adrenaline rush that fear could create. Now she was feeling relieved they’d escaped any harm from the tornado, but she was also exhausted. All she wanted to do was get Myrtle and herself home; make sure her family was all right, eat a toasted cheese sandwich, then take a nap. Her hands on the wheel were trembling. Must be a delayed reaction.

  “I think maybe the book lady knew someone who used to live in the house, or she knows someone who knew someone. Something like that. Could be she read something about the house and its history. I only recollect she mentioned the deserted place a couple of times in passing, so to speak. She said it had a tragic history or something. Real tragic. Go ask her about it.”

  Myrtle’s attention was now on her house, now also Glinda’s house, as they drove up the driveway and parked by the front porch. “Whew, my home is still here and it looks to be untouched. Am I r-e-l-i-e-v-e-d. Whew.”

  “Have you ever been in it?” Abigail asked, as she watched Glinda come out her front door, the cat Amadeus trundling behind her, and walk toward the vehicle.

  “Been in what?” Myrtle snipped as she put her hand on the door handle, ready to exit the car.

  “That old house in the woods? The Theiss house?”

  “Oh, that. No way. It’s for sure full of bugs, spiders, rats and...ghosts. I stay away from dilapidated houses. Who knows when their floors will collapse, or their walls fall in on a person? It’s too dangerous. What? Don’t tell me you want to go and explore it now?”

  “I might. It would make some painting. Don’t you think?” The feeling she had about the house in the woods, how it beckoned her like a siren’s song, confounded her. But she knew she would see it again because she was going to go back out there tomorrow, weather permitting, and start painting a picture of it. She’d made the decision as she’d watched the old house disappear in her rear view mirror.

  “Agh! For Halloween maybe.” Myrtle threw her hands up. “Do what you want, but if you go poking around that rotting old house, be careful. There’s probably wild animals skulking in it and the ceilings might fall in on top of you.”

  “I can take care of myself. I’ll be careful.”

  Before Glinda reached the car, Abigail called Frank to let him know she and Myrtle were okay, but he didn’t answer. “I’m with Myrtle. Just wanted to let you know we’re fine. I took her home.

  “Glinda and her house seem to be unharmed, too. I am looking at it and Glinda right now. Be home soon. Love you. Call me when you get this,” she left the message for him, and hung up as Glinda arrived at the open window.

  Leaning down, Glinda murmured, “I’m happy to see you two. I was so worried. The weather report
claims the tornado was a big one, but, so far, not much damage has been reported. Anywhere. Except for a lot of downed trees.” Her eyes went to her aunt. The two exchanged a smile.

  “I told Abigail you’d be worried,” Myrtle spoke from the passenger’s seat, her smile fading. “We almost got blown away by a giant tornado. Did you see it? It was as big as a stadium.”

  “I saw it. It passed by the house and flew down to the creek. It didn’t come close to our place at all.”

  “You were afraid it would get our home, huh?”

  “No,” Glinda replied. “I knew it wouldn’t.”

  “The cards told you so, huh?” Myrtle spoke again.

  Glinda’s face had a humorous expression on it.

  Of course, Abigail assumed, like the tarot cards had told the young woman they’d be all right or one of her psychic insights had.

  “I just knew. But I am glad the tornado didn’t get either of you, and relieved to have you home, Aunt Myrtle. Supper is about ready to go on the table.”

  “Yippie. What are we having tonight?”

  “One of your favorites. Oven baked round steak.”

  “With those little roasted potatoes and carrots?” Myrtle seemed smugly pleased.

  “Of course, Auntie. And yeast rolls. I know what you like.”

  “Ah,” Myrtle winked at Abigail sitting next to her, “my niece just wants to fatten me up. She thinks I’m too skinny. Trying to feed me healthy. Sheesh! I keep telling her being skinny is normal for me and always has been. There’s no way she can fatten me up.

  “But,” she grinned, “I do like to eat, so keep trying to fatten me up. I won’t complain.”

  Abigail was observing the two women comfortably banter back and forth. Over their time together they’d perfected an easy relationship. They cared for each other and it showed. Myrtle moving in with Glinda two years before had been the best thing to happen to both of them. After Myrtle broke her arm Glinda had insisted the old lady rent out her own house and come live with her. It had worked out wonderfully in many ways.