Stormy World, page 17
“Here it comes,” Shane said. “We’d better get below.”
“We still have a few minutes,” Corbin said. “If we extend this ladder, it will reach the window. Let me at least take a quick look. It might be our only other way out of this building when the storm passes. I have to see what’s on the other side.”
Shane hesitated, then said, “Well, okay, then, but let’s do this quickly. Just take a quick look and come back down.”
Shane came over and helped him extend the ladder all the way, and indeed, it reached right up to the base of the stained-glass window. As Corbin started up the ladder, Shane braced it from below. A gust of wind howled through the building, hitting a dozen different pitches as it moved through various unseen gaps in other rooms. The sound was ominous and sent a shiver down Corbin’s spine.
The hurricane was coming back, and it was coming back with a vengeance. When he was about halfway up the ladder, he realized he could feel the wind. It was vibrating the ladder, and even the window above him was rattling.
But of course, he thought. It’s blowing from the other direction now.
He reached the top of the ladder. The window was recessed in the cinder blocks a few inches, which gave him a narrow lip to lean against. He put his face close to one of the panes of colored glass. It was a bright orange triangle, the tip of one of the encircling flames. Because the pane was textured, it was only translucent, but he could just make out the north slope of the hill and the vague shapes of buildings in the town below. However, he was pretty sure it was a long drop to the ground on the other side.
“Okay, you should probably come down now,” Shane said. “Let’s get below.”
“Yeah, I don’t think we could use this window as an exit,” Corbin replied. “Not unless we were really desperate to get out of here. It’s a big drop on the other side.”
He had just lowered one boot to the next rung when he saw a massive shifting shape on the other side of the window. It almost seemed to be dancing in the air. He realized it was some large object flying through the air, caught in the leading edge of the hurricane wind as the eyewall closed in. And as it grew larger and larger, he saw that it was being blown directly at the church building.
The roof of a house, he thought. Picked up and tossed like a frisbee.
It was coming a lot faster than he’d realized. Corbin just had time to shut his eyes and turn his face before the shadow filled the entire window. It took every ounce of willpower not to fling himself from the ladder. Upon impact, the window shattered with a thunderous crash. Corbin felt shards of glass hitting his face, a dozen pinpricks of pain awakening all over. Then his grip on the ladder weakened, and he slid down.
His right foot eventually caught on a rung, and he tipped backward, falling the rest of the way. He slammed onto the edge of a tabletop and rolled onto the floor. It knocked the wind out of him, and for a few seconds, he struggled to catch his breath. He heard Shane rushing to his side, but he was afraid to open his eyes. The little spots of pain all over his face were quickly getting more intense, and he felt blood running down his cheeks and into his beard.
“Don’t move,” Shane said. “Don’t open your eyes.”
“Is it bad?” Corbin replied, but even that small effort to speak made the pain flare up.
He heard others climbing up through the hatch now, straining from the effort.
Violet was the first through. “What happened? What is it? I heard glass shattering, falling all over the floor!”
“Yeah, there’s a...um, roof lodged in the broken window,” Shane replied. “Shards of leaded glass all over the place. Corbin, it’s not too bad, but you’ve got a few pieces sticking in your face. I’m going to have to pull them out. Fortunately, nothing got in your eyes, but one piece is really close.”
“Oh, God,” Corbin muttered. “I saw it coming, and I just stood there and stared at it like an idiot.”
He felt Shane pull the first shard of glass from his right cheek, and he gasped in pain. Violet grabbed his hand and began caressing it, trying to keep him calm. He felt another sharp pain as Shane removed another shard.
“If you’d lost your eyesight, I guess you would have asked to borrow Ruby,” Violet said, clearly trying to lighten the tension. “It’s hard to find a trained guide dog these days.”
Shane removed the next few shards in quick succession. They were smaller and hurt less, but the fifth and final shard was embedded near his jaw. It was the biggest and the deepest, and he cried out when Shane plucked it out.
Above them, wind was roaring through gaps in the roof that had been blown into the shattered window. The storm had returned full force, and Corbin felt rain on his face mingling with blood from his wounds.
“Violet, take this.” It was Jodi. Somehow, she’d climbed through the hatch as well. “Dab the blood from his face as best you can. We have no first aid supplies.”
“I’ve pulled out all the fragments,” Shane said. Corbin opened one eye and saw him standing up, casting a long, bloody piece of orange glass aside. “There might be a few tiny pieces I can’t see, but I think you’re good. You’re very lucky, Corbin.”
Violet hovered close, gently dabbing his face with a scrap of cloth. She couldn’t see the wounds, of course, but she triangulated their location by his responses. When she touched a wound, he gasped or winced and gave away its location.
Shane and Jodi walked away, leaving Violet and Corbin there on the floor.
“You have to be more careful,” Violet said. “I heard you climbing that ladder. There was no reason for that.”
“I just wanted to see what was going on out there,” Corbin replied.
Violet shook her head sadly. “And what if it had sliced your jugular vein? What if the fall from the ladder had broken your neck? Please, think about me when you’re taking a risk like that.”
“Sorry,” he said. She pressed the bit of cloth to the side of his jaw, and suddenly, she moved her face close to his. Corbin glanced around to make sure no one was nearby. Shane and Jodi were climbing back down through the hatch. He waited until they disappeared below, then said, “I love you, Violet. We’re both going to get through this. I won’t take any more crazy risks, I promise.”
“Okay, good,” she said. “I love you, too.”
And with that, she kissed him.
23
When the wind returned, it made a haunting sound as it moved down the long open hallways and corridors of the school. Beth was sitting with her back to the wall, but Owen kept moving around. He was restless, getting angry again for some reason. He seemed unpredictable. The darkness came over him at strange times.
“We’re safer here than in the church,” Owen said. “It was smarter to come here into town. I knew it would be. I sensed it. The rest of the family should have come with me. They picked the church only because it was the most visible building in town. Or maybe because it was a church. I don’t know.”
“Well, we saw it first,” Beth replied. “And it was on top of a hill.”
The crack at the bottom of the door was big enough that Beth could see shifting light reflecting off the hall floor. It was turning gray, growing darker, as the storm moved back into the area. The break hadn’t been nearly long enough. She could hear the occasional pop or crack of trees and buildings being blown apart. The little town had already fallen into disrepair after years of abandonment and neglect, not to mention the previous hurricane that had passed through the area. This just seemed like the final straw.
“Walls are shorter and thicker in the school,” Owen said. He was muttering as he paced, as if talking to himself. As if trying to keep himself calm. “Newer construction, too. That church is going to be stripped to its foundation. They all should have followed me.”
“Daddy, sit,” Katie whined, smacking the floor with her hand. “Sit down. I want you to sit.”
“Stop it,” Owen said, a little more harshly than was necessary. “Just stay there.”
“But I want to sit with you,” Katie demanded, stomping the heels of her shoes on the floor.
“I said stop it,” Owen snapped. “Just be quiet already, would you?”
Katie whimpered and flung herself onto the floor.
“Owen, take it easy,” Beth said.
To this, he merely grumbled wordlessly under his breath. Beth had had quite enough of his attitude, and she was at the limits of her sympathy. However, before she could say anything else, a glint of shifting light caught her eye. She leaned down low and gazed through the crack at the bottom of the door. Light glinting on the edge of water. She stretched her hand out along the floor toward the door and felt it. Water was seeping into the closet, and it was coming fast.
Beth gently moved Katie to one side, then hoisted herself to her feet. The pain and tightness across her chest made this a challenge, but she used the edge of the big sink for leverage.
“We’ve got a problem,” she said. She took a step toward the door, and the sole of her boot splashed in water. “I think the new direction of the wind is blowing rainwater right down the hallway.”
She grabbed Katie and pulled her close, as Owen went to the door. Water was already covering the entire floor inside the closet. When Owen opened the door, rain blew into the room, and Beth turned to shield Katie from it.
“There’s a second story to this school,” Owen said. “Come on. Let’s go now while we still can.”
He pushed the door to the wall and stepped out into the hallway. Beth grabbed Katie’s hand and started to pull her along, but the girl resisted.
“I don’t want to,” she cried.
Beth tried to pull her out of the corner, but she was afraid the girl would fall into the water. She would have picked her up, but she couldn’t do it in her current condition. Indeed, the chest pain was starting to make her dizzy. She tried encouraging Katie, goading her, but the little girl kept fighting, pulling against her hand.
“Katie, come now,” Owen shouted, and he smacked the door with his open hand. “Right now!”
It startled Katie, and she started to cry hard. But she also stopped fighting Beth and let herself be pulled into the hallway.
“Take it easy,” Beth said to Owen. “She’s just scared.”
Owen didn’t respond. He turned and started down the hallway, working his way deeper into the old school building. The hurricane wind was barreling down the hall, blowing through the front doors, and bringing more and more water into the building. Beth moved Katie in front of her, shielding the child as best she could, as they followed Owen down the hall. Water was spreading fast down the hall, and Beth found walking treacherous. It didn’t help that she was in constant pain, that every action took monumental effort, and her vision was beginning to dim along the edges.
They passed a few open classrooms full of trash, cobwebs, and human detritus, then turned a corner and went past an old cafeteria that had apparently been a campsite at some point. Abandoned tents lay crumpled on the floor, along with piles of trash and scattered animal bones. The hurricane had already blasted the glass out of the windows and was soaking everything in the room. The crosswind through the door almost blew Beth off her feet, and she went skidding into the far wall, dragging Katie with her. Owen kept going a few feet, then stopped and looked back.
“Would you come on?” he said, beckoningly them angrily.
“Pick a mood and stick with it, would you?” Beth snarled. “I’m sick of the constant changes. Could you help me with Katie?”
But Owen just turned and kept going. Beth made sure Katie was okay and got her moving again. The little girl was still crying, holding her hands up in a vain attempt to stop the rain. At the end of the hall, past the cafeteria, a broad set of stairs led up to the second floor. Owen bounded up the steps two at a time, leaving Beth and Katie to pick their way up slowly. Beth felt blackness creeping into the edges of her vision, but she pressed on.
When she got to the top of the stairs, she found Owen standing in the doorway of an inner classroom, beckoning them impatiently with both hands. Beth passed through the door with Katie, entering a musty room full of trash and filth, a few toppled and broken desks, and plenty of cobwebs. She found a relatively clean spot on the floor and dropped down, as Owen swung the door shut. Even here, she could hear the wind howling, and some sharper whistling sounds were coming from above them, as if the ceiling overhead was not entirely stable.
It was dark in the room, with a bit of light coming through a single window that looked into the old school library. Books in there had been cast about, trampled, and torn apart, as if by a rabid pack of literary wolves.
“Daddy, no more rain,” Katie said, rubbing her face with her hands. “No more rain at all!”
“Stop complaining,” Owen snarled, as he kicked through trash and made his way over to the room’s single interior window. “Just sit there and keep quiet. I can’t think.”
Beth had had enough. As she pulled her Katie onto her lap, she snapped at Owen. “You know, I’m sick and tired of your mood swings, Owen. There’s no reason to yell at your two-year-old daughter for being scared of a damned hurricane!”
“Just stop it. Stop it,” Owen said, smacking the sides of his head with his hands.
“You were your old self for a while this morning,” Beth said, “and now you’re spitting venom again. Your daughter is scared. She wants comfort from her father. I can’t carry her, do you get that? I’m in a lot of pain. Katie needs help, and you keep yelling at her.”
Owen was standing at the interior window, his hands pressed to the dusty glass. “I don’t want to think about it. I’m trying to keep it together, okay?”
“Don’t want to think about what?” Beth said. “Your daughter?”
“She...she...” He hesitated a second, as if considering whether or not to say what he was thinking. Then he went for it. “She looks too much like Amelia, and I can’t...I can’t stop thinking about...I can’t stop seeing...”
His voice was taking on a weird coarse quality, as if he were truly losing his mind. Beth had to fight hard not to raise her voice at him. “Maybe you should have left her with her, Shane and Jodi, then. I don’t know why you’re acting like this. I was there when my son drowned. You know that, right? I was there when the man I loved got struck down by a boy he’d tried to help. We’ve suffered, Owen. We’ve all suffered. So why do you act like you’re the only one? Why have you become so hostile to everyone?” It hurt terribly to speak so much. Beth clutched her chest as pain stabbed through her body.
Owen smacked the glass so hard it cracked. Then he turned away and started back across the room, angrily tapping his forehead with the palm of his hand. “I don’t know, Grandma. Something’s wrong with me. It’s not just grief. I feel like something is broken. In here.” He smacked his forehead one more time. “I’m going crazy, and I don’t really know why. It’s so hard to hold it together.” He stopped in the far corner, facing the wall.
“You’re grieving,” Beth said. “That’s always a hard road to navigate.”
“No, no, I’m not just feeling sad,” he said. “It’s more than that. Worse. Ever since Amelia died, I feel like I’m losing my mind. I mean, actually going insane. I don’t know how else to explain it. Something is wrong with me. Very wrong.”
“Believe it or not, that’s part of grief,” Beth said. “Heck, I still find myself talking to my first husband sometimes, and he died twenty years ago. Of course, I sometimes talk to James and Mike, too. In quiet moments, it feels like they’re all close to me. I can feel them, you know? And I don’t fight it. I talk to them, try to imagine I can hear their responses. That’s the way they stay alive, Owen, through me. The dead are carried by the living.”
Owen sighed and bowed his head, still facing the corner. Beth let her words sink in, hoping they would take root. After a minute, however, Owen lifted his head and turned around. “I don’t talk to Amelia,” he said. “I can’t feel her presence. I’m not carrying her. It almost feels like she never really existed. Like she was just a dream I had once.”
“The evidence of her is right here,” Beth said, patting Katie on top of the head. The little girl had stopped crying, and she was just sitting there now. The little one might not have fully understood the conversation, but she understood just enough to get quiet and troubled. “Amelia was real, and you made a beautiful daughter together. I bet if you reached out, you could still feel her.”
“I don’t think so,” Owen said, his shoulders slumping. “The only person I talk to anymore is Luminance Flare.”
It was so out of left field that it took Beth a few seconds to process what he’d said. Maybe she’d misheard him. “You talk to...Luminance Flare? One of the leaders of the Helios cult?”
Owen nodded. “Yeah, he appears sometimes, usually at night when I’m keeping watch. Suddenly, he’s just there, and we talk.”
“Didn’t a burning building fall on top of that guy?” Beth asked.
“Yeah, I think so,” Owen replied. “He was locked in a fight with Greyson when the building fell. At least, that’s what Corbin said.”
“But why would you be talking to him?” Beth said. “Surely you don’t grieve his loss.”
Owen started back across the room until he was standing in front of the now-cracked window again. “No, I don’t grieve his loss. I’m glad he’s dead, and I wish I’d been able to watch him die. I think I would have enjoyed that.” He was speaking in a soft, haunted voice now. “But I still talk to him sometimes. I’m always alone when it happens. Suddenly, there he is, standing in the darkness, and we talk, and then he’s gone.”
Disquieted, Beth considered covering Katie’s ears. Maybe the little girl didn’t need to hear this. “Owen, are you sure it’s a hallucination and not a real person who has been following us? Do we know for sure that he died in Helios?”
