The Year of the Storm

by John Mantooth

  Ten minutes later, I was slogging through the woods, waiting for the sky to break open. Thunder came in deep bellows and lightning had already struck one of the pines, almost bringing it down on my head. I’d made a mistake, coming here. The storm had come much faster than I’d expected, and the sky was almost completely dark now. The air felt like it was alive, so warm and wet and it hadn’t even started raining yet. Another blast of lightning struck a nearby tree, and I shrieked and sprinted ahead into the darkness, now losing my way, unsure of my bearings, wishing I’d just gone home and sulked in my bed.

  Then the rain came, soaking everything in giant gusts blown slantwise by the wind. I slipped and landed in the mud. Struggling to stand up, I reached for a low-hanging tree limb and heard a sharp whip crack of thunder. I felt a jolt run through my entire body, and I smacked the ground hard. My head came down on something solid, something too hard to be the ground or even a root. I rolled over into the mud, gasping. My body tingled and I smelled smoke, something burning nearby. I looked up just in time to see a flaming tree looming over me, an inferno so spectacular that even in my panic, I admired the beauty of it, falling. I rolled, my shoulder throbbing, as the tree crashed to the ground. A burning branch brushed my face and scorched my cheek. I screamed out in pain, but the heat was soon extinguished by the downpour.

  That’s when I saw her again. Anna. She stood as if on the air, hovering well above the ground and debris, untouched by the storm. She said nothing. She didn’t move, but I felt like she wanted me to get up to go somewhere, so I did, scrambling to my feet only to trip again over a concrete slab. I knelt and rummaged through the wet undergrowth, tearing away kudzu and weeds until I could make out a lip of concrete raised just off the muddy ground. I dug away more kudzu and mud until it was clear what I had stumbled upon: an underground shelter. I heaved open the lid, and just before going inside, I looked for Anna again.

  She was gone.

  —

  Inside, the darkness was complete. I lay still, resisting the urge to vomit as I felt the shelter begin to spin around me. I couldn’t see it, but I felt it, and then I did see things—flashes of water, trees, and shadows. I was turning, falling, and just before I hit the ground, I saw something else. It was only a flash, but it stayed with me. A cabin. Not the cabin I was looking for, though. This one was even more ancient, but perhaps a little bigger. It was nestled between giant oaks strung with Spanish moss, and a single light burned within. This one was bigger, older than the one Cliff and I had looked at in the binoculars, and it had a porch. Just a tumbledown, narrow walk in front of the cabin, but I was positive the other place, the one I was looking for, had no such addition.

  When I woke some time later, the shelter was still. I climbed the ladder out and slogged back through the flooded lowlands trying to get my bearings and head for home.

  —

  It wasn’t until later—much later when I was home and dry and thinking about the day—that I realized two things: I’d been struck by lightning and survived. That was one. The other was more disconcerting. I’d seen Anna again, and this time it was clear why. She had directed me to the storm shelter. Without her, I might have died out there. I wouldn’t have been the only one, as two other locals were killed in the high winds on the same day.

  —

  That night I slept the sleep of the dead. I spent the next day completing a to-do list Dad had left for me, which had me working inside and out. I didn’t get a chance to call Cliff until nearly three o’clock. But by then, I had already formulated a plan.

  “Invite me to spend the night,” I said.

  Cliff, never one to be caught off guard, said, “Wanna spend the night?”

  When Dad got home, I asked him if I could. This was just a formality in the summer. In fact, sometimes Dad seemed more than willing for me to go, and this time was no exception. He quickly agreed, even offering to drive me over.

  Though the July heat was miserable, there were no signs of afternoon thunderheads, so I told him I would be fine walking.

  I left him sitting on the couch watching the five o’clock news, something he and Mom always liked to do together while Anna and I were outside playing. I felt a twinge of sadness as I realized the chances of these things happening again were growing smaller every day.

  —

  We waited until eleven thirty, when Cliff was confident that both his parents were asleep. Slipping silently through the dark house, we paused just long enough at the back door to disable the alarm. Outside, it was clear and almost cool, the heat from the day lifting and sliding into memory. Above us the heavens seemed alive: a half-moon and stars beyond counting.

  “Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” Cliff said.

  “My house.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve got a feeling. Keep your eyes peeled for smoke.”

  I’d already decided that if he wasn’t outside my house tonight, we’d go on through the woods to his cabin, but I didn’t think it would come to that. Somehow, I knew he’d be back.

  We made the highway in good time and veered wide so we wouldn’t approach the front of my house. Sticking to the trees, we slinked along the outskirts of the property. As the house came into view, I was surprised to see that a light was on in my parents’ old room, the one Dad forbade me to go in, the one he kept under lock and key. I allowed myself a brief image of Dad inside, sitting on the bed, a photo album open and wet with his tears. This was the image I wanted. Instead, I got the increasingly cold Dad, the one who had lost his faith. The image of Dad with the photo album was fleeting because just then the light in the room went out, and Cliff and I were left in almost complete darkness save for the glow of the moon.

  Cliff tapped me. I turned and saw that he was pointing to the great live oak that dominated our front yard. A thin tendril of smoke snaked around the trunk. He was there, just on the other side of the tree. I took a deep breath, feeling a surge of panic hitting me. I forced it back down and nodded at Cliff. The plan was for Cliff to stay close while I approached the man. If something bad happened—God forbid—then Cliff would run for the house to get Dad.

  I stepped out of the trees and made my way across our gravel drive.

  The smell of tobacco smoke was strong as I neared the tree. Though I couldn’t see him yet because the oak was so thick, I heard him sucking oxygen into his nose followed by an almost inaudible cough.

  When he came into view, he was lighting another cigarette. He saw me and dropped it on the ground.

  “What are you doing at my house?” I said, trying to sound tougher than I was.

  He held up a hand as if to ward me off.

  “I asked you a question.”

  “I don’t mean any harm.”

  “So why are you here? Why do you keep coming back?”

  He dropped his head as if ashamed. This emboldened me, and I stepped closer to him.

  “Tell me why you’re here. Now.”

  He looked up at me then and I was close enough to see his eyes, or rather his eye. The right one shone with a clear intensity that made me weigh my next step. His left eye was dead, unresponsive, just a marble in a socket. He leaned over and picked up the cigarette he’d been lighting when I approached. Taking his time, he produced a book of matches and tore one out. He lit the match and then the cigarette, taking two long pulls before looking back at me. “You want to know why I’m here?” He nodded thoughtfully. “I’ll tell you,” he said.

  Some part of me suddenly wanted to say never mind, wanted to turn tail and run. But another part, a bigger, better-developed part, wanted—no, needed—to know.

  The next words that came out of his mouth still resound in my subconscious some sixteen years later. Some mornings, I wake up with them on my lips and ask my sleep-addled self if they could possibly be true. Some mornings the answer to that question is no. What he said that ni
ght changed everything. The words changed me and Dad and the people around us, and ultimately, I think his words saved my life.

  “I know,” he said, “where your mother and sister are.”

  I have no idea how long I stood there, openmouthed, trying to process his words. What I do know is that I never got a chance to respond because Cliff screamed bloody hell and came charging out of the woods in our direction. If the man was surprised by this development, he didn’t show it.

  Too stunned to speak, I simply waited for Cliff to join us. Part of me must have known his scream would alert my father, but I didn’t react. Instead it was the man, dropping his cigarette to the grass and extinguishing it under one heavy-toed boot. “Snake, most likely. Bastards are everywhere these days. Better steer clear too. They’re poisonous as hell. Time to get moving.”

  As if in confirmation of his statement, Dad’s silhouette appeared in the window.

  I watched as the man reached for his oxygen tank and dragged it swiftly toward the gravel drive and the woods on the other side. I followed him.

  He went around Dad’s truck and was almost to the trees when he stopped and turned back. “You know where I live.” It wasn’t a question. Then he was gone.

  Cliff reached me at that same moment. He was heaving breaths in and out, laboring to get the words through. “Snake,” he said. “Big freaking snake. Crawled . . .” Gasp. “Across . . . my foot.”

  I heard the front door open, and I grabbed Cliff’s arm and pulled him down behind Dad’s truck. I clamped my hand over Cliff’s mouth to silence his panting. We waited. Dad muttered something and went back inside. When a few minutes passed, I let go of Cliff and slumped against the truck.

  “Are we going to follow him?” Cliff said.

  “No. Not tonight.”

  “Good.”

  We crept back toward the tree line. As we disappeared into the woods, Cliff said, “Watch out for snakes.”

  Chapter Eight

  We didn’t sleep.

  There was too much to get our minds around. We spent the rest of the evening sitting up in chairs in front of Cliff’s big-screen television. Only we didn’t watch the TV. Instead, we stared at our own dark reflections in the mute screen and tried to make sense of it.

  By the time the sun came up over the cotton fields, I’d come to two possible conclusions. One, the man was a crazy fool. He’d come to town and heard about Mom and Anna and decided to cause trouble. Two, he might have actually had something to do with their disappearances, a conclusion that—considering the timing of his appearance—seemed harder and harder to ignore. He was in the cabin, which seemed enough to suggest a connection. This second option made me feel sick to my stomach to think about, so I didn’t. By the time I got around to articulating my thoughts to Cliff, I was thoroughly pissed because as bad as the second option was, the first wasn’t much better.

  “That’s it,” I said. “Neither one is worth a damn.”

  “No,” Cliff said, “there’s another one. Maybe, somehow, he knows where they are. I mean, he just knows. Like he didn’t put them there, so he’s not responsible, right? He just knows and he wants to tell you so you can help them.”

  I nodded. It seemed very unlikely, but I tried to ignore that and focus on the idea anyway. I think I had dismissed it simply because it held too much hope, and I’d learned that hope could sometimes be a dangerous thing.

  The sunlight streamed in through the windows behind the TV now, causing me to shield my eyes and yawn. “I’m going to sleep for a couple of hours. When I wake up, I’m going to the cabin.” I left the statement hanging there. I wanted him to volunteer to go with me, but I wasn’t going to ask. He’d already done a lot for me, and I would understand if he didn’t want to do any more.

  “You know I’ll go with you,” Cliff said.

  “Don’t worry about it. That guy could be a nut.”

  Cliff walked over to his bed and fell on top of it heavily. “Could be? He is a nut. That’s why you’re not going alone.”

  That made me smile a little. Then I stretched out in the recliner and fell asleep.

  —

  One of the great heartaches I have known in my life is losing touch with Cliff Banks. I last saw him when I was twenty-seven in New York City. We’d both gone to colleges up north. Mine was the University of Massachusetts. His was Harvard. We’d had plans of meeting once a week in downtown Boston for a beer. I even remember calling him once, it must have been the first weekend I was on campus, to set up a time to get together.

  “I’m already swamped,” he said. “Physics is going to kill me.”

  “No problem. We’ll do it another weekend.”

  “Sounds good, Dan. I’ll call you.”

  I was about to hang up when he said, “Wait.”

  “Yeah?”

  “What happened when we were fourteen. That summer. Do you remember?”

  “Of course I remember. It was—”

  “It scares me.”

  “Sometimes it scares me too.”

  “The things you said . . .”

  “It really happened.” I paused. “I think.”

  “Yeah, well, you always seemed like a reasonable kid, which is why it surprised me when you let that old man—”

  “Don’t,” I said. “Just don’t.”

  “Sure, Danny. I understand.”

  “No, you don’t.” It was a mean thing to say. And worse, I wondered if it was a hypocritical statement because the truth was, I didn’t understand either. Not really. Not enough.

  “Here’s the thing, Danny. With physics . . .” He paused. “I’ve learned a lot about the world, the nature of things. You know, I took that class last summer. It doesn’t compute. What happened, or what you say happened—”

  “You heard the story too. Tell me he was lying.”

  “He may not have been lying. Insane people tell the truth, Dan.”

  I said nothing. It was a place I didn’t want to go.

  “Besides, it’s all so vague now. Even if I believed every word he said, I didn’t experience it like you did. I didn’t . . .” I could hear his desire to say the word and not say it at the same time. I could hear it in the silence over the phone line.

  So I said it for him. “Slip. You didn’t slip. Whether you believe it or not, I did.”

  “Listen,” he said. “This is tough for me. It was always tough for me. There’s a term, maybe you’ve heard of it: willful amnesia. I’m starting to think it might not be a bad idea.”

  Willful amnesia. How many times had I repeated that phrase inside my head over the years?

  “I’ll call you,” he said, and it was clear that he couldn’t bear to talk about this any longer. “We’ll get together this weekend. I’ll call.”

  He never did.

  —

  When I ran into him in New York, it was as a stranger. He was sitting three seats down from me at a bar. By then, the clash between what happened to me when I was fourteen and the rational adult world I had known since was beginning to exercise a hold on my life. Some nights, I couldn’t sleep for worrying about how much of it really happened. See, you start growing up, moving faster, doing more things, occupying your mind with one thing or another of little or great consequence, and you begin to lose sight of the things you once held dear: the ideals and the truths that you had clung to in your interior life because the interior life is whittled away by scratches on a calendar, obligations, and all the damned little things that make you old.

  I saw him and at first, I didn’t recognize him. No, that’s wrong. I recognized him immediately, but I didn’t place him. Seeing his face spiked something in my subconscious and put me in mind of the past. I knew I knew him. I felt dizzy with it. Then I heard him speak, saw him gesture with his hand, and I had it. Cliff. I leaned forward intending to call out his name, but at tha
t instant, someone tapped him on the shoulder. Greetings were exchanged, beers bought amid uproarious laughter. I was left with a sense of loss so profound I immediately got up and exited the bar. Even now, I struggle to explain it. Maybe I just didn’t want to make him revisit those events that obviously had caused him so much pain. More likely, I believed it would be easier to simply walk away than to confront a person from my past with whom I had shared the greatest enigma of my life.

  I think one of the reasons I decided to write all of this down is because of that encounter with Cliff. It’s too easy to forget. And it’s even easier to pretend that you are just an ordinary person instead of that young boy who not only witnessed magic, but embraced it, reshaping the very world around him so that it lined up right and true.

  Chapter Nine

  Cliff woke me at ten thirty. For a brief second, I felt disoriented. I thought I was at Gran’s and I’d fallen asleep in her big chair. In my reverie, Mom and Anna were still with us, and I almost called out Anna’s name, somehow mistaking Cliff for her, before realizing where and when I was.

  “I figured it was time,” Cliff said.

  My neck was stiff and I had a dull headache, the kind I got sometimes when I’d been overstimulated. I nodded at him. “Good call. We need to get moving.”

  We grabbed a box of snack cakes to eat as we walked, and I wolfed down three of them before the highway.

  The day was already hot, something you got used to in Alabama, but there were no clouds that morning and the sun seemed particularly bright on my skin. I angled for a stand of pear trees in order to get out of its harsh glare.

  As we slid into the dim light of the woods, I saw the remnants from the tornado. Whole segments of the forest had been decimated, making it tough going because of all the deadfall. I remembered seeing Anna, the way she had seemed to beckon to me, as if she understood something about my fate that I couldn’t even begin to fathom. I was about to tell Cliff, when I thought better of it and decided to keep it to myself.