They Came With the Rain

by Christopher Coleman

  “To make sure your mom was healthy, I would think.” It was Allie now, and the feminine pitch of her voice sent a refreshing sound through the room.

  Maria shrugged. “I guess, but she stopped caring about herself too. She just figured when the time came, she would just go to the hospital and be done with it. And if she went the full term and the baby was born alive, my aunt is a CNM who was going to deliver the baby anyway—just like she did me—so nothing was going to change with that.” Maria’s voice had become defiant now, supportive of her parents’ decision. “The doctors said there was no way of saving it past a few hours anyway—a day at the most—so she decided just to let it die in the house instead of in some plastic bin hooked up to a bunch of tubes.”

  “But he didn’t die,” Allie muttered, suddenly realizing the twist of the story that had already been revealed in the beginning.

  Maria shook her head. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Maria swallowed and stared back at Allie with a look that was both challenging and tortured, and then her face melted into something closer to sadness. “I don’t know. I still don’t know what happened that day. His birthday. I came home from school and my mom was in the kitchen making dinner. I had barely seen her for months since she stopped going to the doctor. And the last time she cooked? All I ate was soup and sandwiches that I made myself for, like, months.” She hesitated. “But she wasn’t pregnant anymore—that was obvious—so I asked her about...it...about the baby...and she just said it was ‘fine.’ ‘It’s over,’ she told me.” Maria shrugged. “I thought she meant it was dead. I didn’t ask for any details. I mean, I was sad for her, but I was also glad to have my mom back.”

  There was a pause and then Josh blurted, “Wait, you said your brother was born eight months ago. That means there was a baby in your house for eight months? And you didn’t know about it? You never heard it cry?”

  Maria glared at Josh, unappreciative of the challenging tone. “I didn’t say I didn’t know about it, did I?”

  Josh instantly dropped Maria’s stare, eyes now locked to the ground. “Sorry. It just...it sounded kind of crazy to me.”

  Maria kept her laser glare on the side of Josh’s face and then added, “And besides, even if I didn’t know about him, it wouldn’t have been impossible. He never cried.”

  There was silence again throughout the station, another awkward pause as this latest detail settled in. Finally, Ramon spoke, verifying the remark. “The baby never cried, Maria?”

  Maria’s eyes thinned and stared forward as she shook her head, as if the memory she was recalling was of a thing not quite real, an event that was in question as to whether it had happened at all. She shrugged. “I don’t know why. I guess it had to do with his condition. But he didn’t. At least I never heard him.” She looked at Josh again, more sympathetically now. “And you were right, I didn’t know about him at first. Not for a month or two. After that first day, my mom went back to being in her room almost all day. And my dad stayed at work as long as he could. And then when work was over, he would go somewhere else. I don’t know where, but I’m sure it was someplace my mother wouldn’t have liked too much. But I was used to living like that, alone most of the time, so I just thought everything was back to the way it was. I assumed my parents were still grieving or something. And that they were going to get a divorce at some point.” She stopped and hung her head. “But he was alive. My brother was alive and in that room the whole time.”

  The tears came in a sudden wave from Maria Suarez now, and Josh quickly put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her toward him. Ramon expected the girl to shove the boy’s grip away, an instinct to protect herself, but instead she leaned into Josh and rested her head against his thin bicep.

  Ramon let the girl cry, allowing the tears their organic flow until they finally waned to a sniffle, at which point he decided to get to the core question. “What does this have to do with your parents, Maria? With what happened at your house today?” His voice was deep now, authoritative, the tone he used when pressing a witness for information. It was a gamble to take on this firm persona, but he didn’t have the time to coax Maria back to an even temperament.

  The girl gave a series of rapid blinks, a bit stung by the question, the paths of her tears still bright against her copper skin. “Because she rejected him. He was her son and she rejected him. She never wanted him in the womb or when he was born. She never took it to the doctor. She never took him outside or to meet his family.” She hesitated. “And my father...” Maria shook her head, choked from speaking, the tears threatening to come again.

  “What about your father?”

  She swallowed and closed her eyes. “He wouldn’t even go in the room. Not even to see my mother. He didn’t want to look at either of them. He just...he just wanted the baby to die.”

  Silence fell on the room for several seconds, and then Josh asked, “But why?”

  “He was so...deformed. You wouldn’t think a baby could look like that.” Maria hesitated, considering her own answer. “But I don’t think it was just that. My dad heard for so many months how the baby was going to die, that he would never get a chance to raise him or...anyway, he just thought it was over. And then when he was born alive—and he kept living—my dad wasn’t...I don’t know...he never learned how to love it. Or to have any feelings at all for him.”

  “Maybe he was just in shock,” Josh said doubtfully. “Maybe he just needed time.”

  Maria shook her head. “I thought so too. At first. And then I heard him praying one night, in the living room after I’d gone to bed. And I knew he would never change how he felt. He was crying and praying, pleading to God for my brother to die.”

  “Jesus,” Allie whispered.

  “But it wasn’t just him,” Maria added quickly, defensively. “My mother felt that way too. At least at first. I mean, he had been born for two months before I even knew he was alive. And during that time, I never heard her say a word to him. Or sing to him or anything. If she had, I would have heard. At least once.”

  Ramon felt a wave of sympathy for the Suarez family come over him. Not just for Maria and the baby, but for Maria’s parents too. Ramon had no children himself, and thus he was in no position to judge the couple on their reaction to the heartbreak their daughter was now explaining. He assumed they were decent people—he needed only talk to Maria for a few minutes to realize the job they had done raising their daughter, the love and strength they had instilled in her—but they had been unable to handle the tragic news of their unborn baby. They’d been dealt a shitty hand by the universe, and it was one they were simply unprepared to play.

  “How did you find out?” Allie asked. “About your brother?”

  “It was a Sunday, when my dad was at work like always, and I snuck into my parent’s room when I knew my mom was napping. There were bottles everywhere. Cans of formula scattered around the room. The smell was...” She closed her eyes and shivered off the memory. “And then I saw him. He was lying in the bed next to my mom. His face and head were wrapped in a blanket, and I could only see his bulging eyes staring back at me.”

  Allie nodded, allowing Maria to get back to that place in her mind, to see the memory of that day. She then continued Ramon’s line of questioning from a moment ago. “You said you knew why it happened, Maria,” she said flatly, steering the girl back to the point. “You said you knew why that thing killed your parents. Why?”

  Maria took a deep breath, gathering her words into their proper order. “It wanted to hear their sins. From their owns mouths. It wanted them to say it out loud. Like a confession.”

  Allie swallowed and felt a burn in her chest, unable to believe the eloquence of the girl sitting before her.

  “But they wouldn’t do it,” Maria continued. “They couldn’t. They couldn’t bring themselves to say it.”

  “What was it? What was the sin your parents couldn’t speak?”

  Maria thought a moment and then sa
id, “Hate. Hate for Antonio. And worse, hate for God. For the curse He put on their son.”

  “But she grew to love him, right?” Allie asked, her voice that of a wondrous child now. “Or at least to accept him. Why else would she have kept feeding him and taking care of him if she hated him? If she wanted him to die?”

  Maria smiled and nodded, blinking back new tears, these of happiness. “By the third month, when he was still living, he became the only thing she loved. She loved him more than she ever loved me, and she loved me a lot.”

  “Why wouldn’t they have just confessed?” Ramon asked. “Just admitted their feelings? Their sins?”

  “My mother would have rather died than admit it, and my father...”

  “What is it?”

  “My father wanted to die. Those things just made it easy for him.”

  Josh rubbed the top of Maria’s back now as he wiped away a tear from his own face with his other hand.

  “We have to go there then,” Allie said suddenly, her voice laced with something bordering on frenzy, as if she’d just realized the answer to some long-puzzling question.

  “What are you talking about?” Ramon asked. “Go where?”

  “To Maria’s house. We have to go back to Maria’s house. There’s a baby there, for Christ’s sake! All alone!”

  “Allie, it—”

  “No!” Allie shook her head defiantly, not wanting to hear the litany of reasons why they shouldn’t go. “I don’t care. I don’t care if he might be dead or if he’s probably dead or whatever. We came from there less than an hour ago, so he might still be okay. If I had known there was a baby...”

  She broke off the sentence, not wanting to make Maria feel guilty for keeping the secret of her brother from Allie. After all, the girl had been conditioned to keeping the secret of her brother for the first eight months of his life—and for somewhere around nine months before that—so mentioning him to Allie, especially under the circumstances, wouldn’t have come naturally to her.

  “Listen to me, Ramon, we have to check on the town anyway. We have to see who is still...alive, who we can help. Maria’s house will give us something to focus on. A direction.”

  Ramon took a breath, pondering the suggestion. “Fine,” he said, “okay.” He could hear the headstrong commitment of his deputy and knew it meant she would refuse to accept any other answer. “We’ll go, but we’ll do it this way: you head back to the house, to Maria’s, see if you can find the baby. If he’s there, alive, try to gather as many supplies as you can—diapers, formula and bottles, whatever—and then bring him back to the station. We’ll do our best for as long as we can.” Ramon frowned, indicating he wasn’t hopeful. “I’m going to head to Gloria’s house. Her car is gone, so I’m hoping she went home for some reason. Maybe she had an...encounter, I don’t know. And I’ll canvass some of the homes on my way back.” Ramon looked at the kids. “You two are staying here.”

  Both children shook their heads in unison. “No way,” Josh said, his eyes electric with fear.

  “I’m sorry, you are. It’s too dangerous. We don’t know what is happen—”

  “Sheriff,” Allie interrupted.

  “What?”

  Allie shrugged, frowning. “What’s the point of leaving them here? We don’t know what we’re dealing with exactly—at all, really—so just leaving them here alone and locking the doors isn’t going to protect them. Not necessarily. Even if we locked them in one of the cells, we don’t know what this thing is capable of. And how will they protect themselves. Are you going to give them shotguns? They’re children.”

  Ramon sighed through his nose and gritted his teeth. “Fine. We’ll keep it divided equally then. I’ll take Josh and you—”

  “I want to go with Ms. Allie,” Josh asserted. He gave a quick nod following his request, eyes wide and hopeful.

  Ramon frowned, returning to the boy a look indicative of betrayal.

  “I just want to help get Antonio. And I want to make sure Maria is safe too.”

  Maria shot a twisted look toward Josh and leaned her shoulder back, staring down her nose at the boy from her perch on the desk. “I’ll keep you safe, you mean.”

  Josh smiled and nodded. “We’ll keep each other safe.”

  There was a beat of silence as the tacit agreement between everyone settled into the room.

  “Allie,” Ramon said, his voice subdued. “Don’t stop for it.”

  “For what?”

  Ramon nodded, indicating she knew what he meant. “If you see it, don’t stop. Don’t be brave.”

  Ramon wanted to say explicitly that if she saw one of the creatures at Maria’s house, she was under explicit orders not to enter. But he didn’t want to upset Maria any further and was hoping the meaning of his words was obvious.

  “I need you back here, okay. No chances. Not yet. Not until we know what’s happening.”

  Allie nodded. “Same with you then, Sheriff.”

  Allie and Ramon locked eyes for several beats, and in that moment a feeling passed between them that had not previously been felt, certainly not from Ramon. He’d always found Allie attractive, but there was an age gap—eleven years—that was wide enough that he’d never thought of his deputy in that way. And he wasn’t feeling that now exactly. What he was feeling was even more primal than sex or romance, a sensation that perhaps only blossoms during existential circumstances like the one in which they found themselves now.

  Allie turned and walked toward the door, leading the kids behind her, and as she grabbed the doorknob, she stopped in her tracks and turned back to Ramon. “Hey, Sheriff?”

  Ramon clicked his head up. “Hmm?”

  “Do you think that sinkhole has anything to do with what’s going on?”

  Ramon gave a thoughtful nod, his eyebrows raising just a tic. “At this point Allie, I think anything is possible.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Two months before the rain

  Winston Bell stared at the phone as if it were a screaming baby in a crib, watching it with a look of both annoyance and concern. He slowly closed the book he was reading and placed it on the sofa cushion beside him, and then he closed his eyes in thought, considering whether to answer.

  He decided to let it ring out this time, but he knew that would only delay the inevitable; there was little doubt the next call would come within the hour.

  The weekend of the monitors was a stressful one for Winston now, and though the mysterious infiltrators of the Grieg Radio Telescope had yet to visit him again since that one strange morning four months earlier, Zander had advised him—warned him—of a follow-up call that would come well before the day of the event. There had been no specifics as to the time frame of the call, but to Winston, four months removed seemed about right. He couldn’t be certain it was they who were calling now, but to the core of his soul, he knew it was.

  And there was another thing he knew as well: although Zander and his associates hadn’t returned since that first visit, they—or someone connected to them—had been monitoring him the whole time.

  He hadn’t seen any trucks near his estate, nor pedestrians stalking around the perimeter of his property, but there was little doubt he was being surveilled. More cars than usual passed on the road now, makes and models that Winston had never seen in the area before, several of which slowed to a crawl before finally moving on. This rolling scrutiny happened at least once a week now, as if the driver were attempting to locate an address on a mailbox or on the façade by the door. But Winston knew that somewhere in the back seat there was a man snaking an antennae through a crack in the window or trunk, pointing it toward his home, ensuring he was interrupting the frequencies with the proper consistency and signal levels, keeping in compliance with the arrangement that had been made months ago in his parlor.

  Winston was fine with the monitoring though; over these last four months, he had performed his duties with absolute vigilance, despite his doubts about the effectiveness of the signals, which
wasn’t for him to argue. Zander had stressed the importance of daily transmissions—several times a day for hours at a time was his preference—enough that the analysts at headquarters would question their own readings and then ultimately dismiss them as useless, ruined by the noncompliant citizens of Garmella. It was an absurd plan as far as Winston was concerned, one that seemed to overestimate the impact his scrambling device would have on the Grieg’s readings, and underestimate the scientists who analyzed them. But that was the deal he had made, and for the last four months, a day hadn’t passed without him upholding his end of it. It was a fact Winston had become quite proud of, frivolous though his actions may have been.

  But there was also a catch to these new spikes in electromagnetic activity. Because the signals had to be sent with such regularity, there was simply no way to avoid being caught by the actual monitors, those legitimate inspectors who were sanctioned by the Grieg and drove the streets of Garmella every month in search of violators.

  For all the years he’d lived in Garmella, Winston had stayed off the radar of these auditors—quite literally—but over these last four months, they had discovered him as a new source of interference, and Winston now received a visit from the sheriff every thirty days or so. To this point, Sheriff Thomas had been lenient—giving Winston only a verbal warning on each of his visits—but it was only a matter of time before the man’s patience expired. The pressure Ramon Thomas was undoubtedly getting from the Grieg would trickle down to Winston, and at some point, the verbal warnings would become written citations.

  Of course, Winston wasn’t concerned about paying whatever pittance of a fine came that with the violations—he would have paid a fortune just to keep the monitors away—it was the fear that on the next visit a warrant would be issued, and if the subsequent search of his home revealed the cause of the interference—which it most certainly would—his deal may be broken, and the promise of his future would be extinguished like the flame from a match dropped in the ocean.