by Natalie Lund
He pedaled toward the address he’d heard on the scanner. Rode past a barn, its wood splintered, the red paint now faded to pink, Coca-Cola just barely visible on the roof. It had once advertised to moviegoers on their way to the drive-in and had been a signal to Joshua when he was young that he was almost home. What were the odds of a tornado appearing at nearly the same place decades apart?
Not far from the Cola barn, Joshua saw the red-blue flicker of cop lights and a collection of headlights on the shoulder. Pickup trucks mostly, angled in different directions so they illuminated the road, the field, and the base of one of the red-blinking turbines. He knew from listening to the scanner that Mercer volunteer firefighters reported to scenes—fire or not. That they were some sort of man club, uniting for even the smallest chance at heroics.
He stopped beside a dilapidated Oldsmobile just outside the ring of light, and looked around.
In front of him, a turbine’s blade was twisted and drooping. A white car—something classic like the ones in the car shows his grandfather had liked—was crushed below it. It was as if Magneto had levitated the car and thrown it. The glass was shattered. The roof and hood puckered. The trunk open and mangled. Joshua didn’t see any bodies.
An ambulance was parked on the shoulder, a police car in the field across the way, the bean plants rippling like water around it. One EMT leaned on the grille and spoke into a radio. Another stood beside a policeman talking to Callie, a girl Joshua knew from pre-calc, and a blond man he presumed to be her father. No one looked injured, and he could see from the wreckage that the tornado path led west, away from his grandparents’ farmhouse. Joshua relaxed his grip on the handlebars.
A little way off, a clump of plain-clothed volunteers stood on the gravel shoulder. They were all men: lean and young, the kind who wore baseball caps frayed along the brim. One stood apart from the others, arms crossed, watching. His hair was dark, longish, parted on one side and slicked to the other. He was wide-shouldered, thick-necked, stubble-chinned. Joshua wished he had his sketchpad; this man would make a perfect Wolverine—chiseled, rough, and lunging off the page. Only his clothes—a gray mechanic’s jumpsuit with a red belt and blackened knees—marked him as non-mutant.
As Joshua perched there, the Oldsmobile’s window rolled down beside him, emitting a wave of stale cigarettes and pot.
“Hey,” a girl’s voice said.
Joshua glanced behind him, sure she was talking to someone else. The girl leaned out the window. She had powdered brown skin, a pierced eyebrow, thick eyeliner, and red-tipped hair. He’d seen her around the halls, crowding the drinking fountains with the goth kids and smiling with her mouth closed, as though she were afraid to show people her teeth.
“I know you?” she asked.
“Um, I don’t think so.”
“Yeah, I do. You’re that kid who came out.”
He felt light-headed, giddy like he’d just inhaled helium. She’d known who he was and still talked to him. “I’m Joshua.”
“Brenna,” she said. “Why are you riding your bike in the dark?”
“I heard about the car on my scanner.” He left out the part about his old farm, its magic and his fear.
She nodded as though she understood. “I followed the ambulance,” she said. “News flash: Mercer is boring as hell.”
“Always. Do you know what’s going on?” he asked.
“Not much. There was a tornado that picked up that car over there. No one got hurt. That girl knows something more, I think, but we got interrupted.”
Whatever it was, it was over. Flicking off its flashing lights, the ambulance lumbered from the shoulder and headed back toward town. The emergency workers and volunteers waved and nodded at one another, turning from the scene toward their own, undamaged, vehicles. The young guy who looked like Wolverine was already gone. Only the police cruiser remained, the policeman inside with the dome light on. Joshua wished he had brought his scanner with him so he could hear what the man was saying.
“Want a ride back to town?” Brenna asked. “That bike’s so small, I bet I can fit it in back.”
He realized he was smiling dumbly at her. Part of him was imagining what Lawrence would say if he found out Joshua had ridden in a car with someone who smoked pot. But another part of him was just plain happy.
“Where do you live?” Brenna asked after loading his bike.
“The Piedmont subdivision off the interstate.”
“Great. I know a shortcut,” she said. Rather than U-turning, they drove straight and took a sharp right onto a gravel road, the tires churning and flinging rocks. This road was even darker than the last, the air satiny and thick. Ahead, Brenna’s headlight caught a sliver of pale blue.
“Hold up,” Joshua said. “There’s something in that field.”
Brenna slowed and they crunched their way closer to the blue object. She put the car in park and climbed out. Joshua scrambled to unbuckle his seat belt, unwilling to stay in the car alone. As they pushed their way through rows of corn, he could see clearly what Brenna’s headlights had illuminated: a VW bus with a robin’s-egg belly and a cream top. Its bug headlights glinted, blinking like eyes. There was a spiderweb crack on the windshield and the paint was dinged, like it had been in a meteor shower instead of a tornado.
Brenna pushed aside cornstalks and squelched through the mud toward the van, seemingly unfazed by the cobwebs that were plastering her face. She pulled on the chrome door handle, flicked on her cell flashlight, and shined it into the VW’s cabin.
“No one here.”
“We should probably call the police,” Joshua said.
“Don’t you think it’s weird?” Brenna asked. The cornstalks cast striped shadows across her face, but Joshua could see her eyes glittering with excitement. “A tornado touching down on the anniversary of the 1961 storm. These old cars. And you know where we are, don’t you?”
It was pitch-black outside the cone of their headlights, but Joshua had been there enough to fill in the details: the overgrown driveway, the plastic flowers and crosses by the road, the neat rows of corn masking what the plot of land had once been. He’d ridden his bike there as a kid with Ruthie, never venturing into the field itself because Ruthie was terrified the spirits would follow them home. Joshua used to believe in the spirits and stories too. But he had stopped believing at a very young age—once he understood that he was gay and realized the truth about his town: that most Mercerites could believe in ghosts but were unwilling to believe that someone should be able to love, marry, and have a family with a person of the same gender. He couldn’t wait to be eighteen and put Mercer in his rearview mirror, to live in a city that wasn’t obsessed with stupid folklore and stuck in 1961.
“I’m sure it’s just a coincidence,” Joshua said.
“Come on. Really?” Brenna sounded doubtful.
“Yeah. There’s got to be a simple explanation.” But face-to-face with the empty VW, he couldn’t think of one.
MORE THAN FIFTY YEARS AGO
More than fifty years ago, back in 1961, the police found some of us in ditches, still alive, huddled and damp and scared. They wrapped us in stiff gray blankets, drove us to the station, and handed us the phone. Call home, they said, and we blinked because we couldn’t remember what home was.
But some of us remembered and drove there on our own, as if home were the only beacon we knew. We stumbled up steps, into worried parents’ arms. All of us only wanting to be held, to be children again.
It was hours before the police sorted through those of us whose bodies were flung far and wide beneath the dry cornstalks, whose cars were overturned, braced by tree branches or smashed like toys. They cut through steel, peeled us off dashboards, pried us from between folded seats, matched our severed limbs to our torsos. Morticians sewed us back together, plastered us with makeup, or just closed our caskets.
We are many.
Fifty-four buried in 1961. Another fifty who made it home with all or most of our bodies, and countless others—friends, parents, lovers—who lived on but became ghosts anyway, always waiting, always aware of the spin. How, eventually, it stops.
Callie woke to the murmur of voices in the next room. The air smelled of toast—breakfast that her mom probably wouldn’t eat. Usually, she was up before her parents, but she’d stayed awake late, hoping to see the face in the car and hear the whispers—if that was what they were—better in memory. Find them. Save them. Was it real? And who was them? Had someone in the field been trying to tell her something?
Last night she’d watched Joshua from pre-calc climb into an Oldsmobile beside the girl with the clunky red boots who’d given her the sweatshirt. She’d hungered for the normalcy of getting a ride from a friend. All of her friends except Leslie had faded from her life as though her mom’s sickness were contagious. Or maybe Callie had pushed them away with her silence, with her avoidance of the cafeteria, of youth group, of the locker room before cross-country practice. Losing friends was another side effect of emptying.
Now Callie listened to the way her parents’ voices rose and fell, unable to decipher their words. It was as though she’d awoken to something secret and fragile, like a flower that only blooms every fifty years; she might never experience it again. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to stop the thought.
Just then there was a knocking sound, somewhere above Callie’s head. She opened her eyes again and looked up at the ceiling. Squirrels, her father would say, but something was niggling at the back of her mind. Those sounds. That face.
It was the kind of story Callie would have loved when she was little, when she and her mom had squeezed into the armchair together before bed. Callie was never interested in library books written by someone who hadn’t been to Mercer. She wanted their stories. Mercer stories. Her mother would always say, But you already know them, until Callie begged, Tell me again, please. Then she would comb Callie’s bangs back from her forehead, kiss her right at her hairline, and begin: Back when Mercer was no more than a few farmhouses, there was a woman named Margaret Peterson. She built this house—something no one believed a woman could do at that time. But she did, and when she was done, she opened it to everyone who stopped through Mercer, so that they could sit by her fire, eat her bread, and curl up under her blankets. And they all loved it so much that some of them never left. They built their own houses right by hers, so that they could sit by her fire, eat her bread, and curl up under her blankets all their lives. And when they died, they still came—Callie would interrupt to finish the story—to sit by her fire, eat her bread, and curl up under her blankets.
Callie shook her head, as though she could shake away the memory. She wasn’t sure how much longer she’d live in the Petersons’ house, with its rich burgundy shutters, its scalloped trim, its tower and cone-shaped roof that always reminded Callie of a witch’s hat. A few nights before, she’d overheard her parents talking about the mortgage, how it was hard to manage with all the medical bills. This house was everything to her mother. She’d even joined the historical society—founded by Eleanor Peterson, the great-granddaughter of Margaret Peterson. With their help, Callie’s mother had preserved the home, painting its walls and refinishing its floors, searching every antiques shop in Illinois and Iowa for period-appropriate furniture, and opening it for tours every year during the town’s Victorian Christmas celebration. The house was her mother’s, and Callie wanted to save it. A want that she tried to bury deep down. Because, in this new world, wants were just as meaningless as beliefs.
“Callie? Are you awake? Come say hi to me before you go to school,” her mother called. Bedside talks were part of their ritual now. You can ask me anything, her mother always said. This is your chance. During the chats, Callie would pretend to be one of the ghosts her mother believed in, floating above, knocking around just enough that her mother thought she was still there, still present, while she wished herself somewhere—anywhere—else.
Callie opened the door to find her mom propped in bed, her green scarf still on the nightstand. Callie averted her eyes. She didn’t want to see the caverns of her mother’s skull, the beads of her spine beneath yellowing skin.
“Morning. Want some toast?” her mother asked, nodding toward the plate beside the scarf.
Callie shook her head and took a sudden interest in the jewelry chest on the bureau, pretending to be too occupied to sit on the bed. Before the diagnosis, when Callie and her dad returned from their runs along the canal, her mom would be reading the newspaper, waiting for the coffee to brew, and eating granola that she’d baked with honey, walnuts, and raisins. She’d say good morning but little else as Callie and her dad kicked off their shoes and peeled off damp socks. Just the crunch of granola and the shuffling of a newspaper. No pressure to make those mornings count. Now every conversation had to matter and be meaningful because they were never certain when the goodbye might come.
“You can have that,” Callie’s mom said.
Callie blinked and noticed she’d threaded a string of pearls between her fingers. “That’s okay,” Callie said, putting it down.
“No, really. You should take it. It’s yours.”
Callie shook her head. “I won’t ever wear it.”
Her mother grimaced.
“Sorry,” Callie said. “I didn’t mean that. Maybe I’ll keep it for special occasions.” Callie made a show of holding it up to her neck and posing. In the mirror, she looked so plain, so dull in her cross-country sweatshirt and pajama pants—absurd next to the pearls. Her mother’s reflection appeared happy and sad all at once, and sicker, too—her face puffy, sweaty, and grayish green.
“You look beautiful.” Callie’s mom opened her arms for a hug.
Holding her breath, Callie walked over and bent just enough for her mother to fold her arms around her shoulders. Callie clutched the pearls, trying not to imagine them as her mother’s spine.
“Anything big happening today?” her mother asked.
Callie wondered if her mom had slept through the sirens last night, and if her dad had told her about their near-deaths or if he’d tried to spare her the worry. She pulled herself out of the hug and shook her head.
Her mom dabbed at her eyes with a tissue she kept under her watchband. “How about for your birthday Saturday? Doing anything exciting?”
Callie shook her head again.
“Are you ready to get your license?”
“I need a half hour more.”
“Maybe your dad can take you out again tonight.”
“Yeah,” Callie said, trying to force enthusiasm. Getting her license was all she’d wanted. Before. She’d been counting the days until she was able to drive her friends to the Cities for Thai food and movies. She’d enrolled in driver’s ed last fall, when her mother was healthy, or, at least, when they didn’t know she was sick. Her mother had often taken her to practice in the church parking lot, sucking her cheeks and slamming an imaginary brake if Callie got too close to the curb in her turns. Back then, Callie couldn’t wait to be rid of her mother and drive alone.
“What if you just sign off on the hours? It’s not like they have any way to check,” said Callie. All practice hours were self-reported, initialed by parents, and then submitted to the DMV after the test. It was easy to fake, and Callie knew some of her older teammates on the cross-country team had done it.
“No.” Her mother’s jaw tightened, a ripple of muscle beneath almost transparent skin. “Practice is important. So is integrity. Do you hear me, Cal? I want you to remember that after I’m gone.” Her mother’s voice did this now whenever she had a lesson to impart: got louder and louder, but also trembled, like she was cry-yelling.
“I hear you,” Callie said. “Integrity.” But her mind was already escaping, as it often did when her mother got this way. Instead she thought about the night
before. She hadn’t told her father or the cop about the whispers or the footprints. She’d just watched the cop walk back and forth near the prints, like he didn’t see them at all. Why, she wondered, when they’d been so obvious to her?
Before school, Brenna kept the volume low on the small kitchen television, hoping not to wake her mom; she wasn’t in the mood to talk. On the local news, a woman with over-bronzed skin stood in the bean field. The white car was gone, but the camera kept panning up to the turbine’s broken blade.
“Not since October 7, 1961, has Mercer seen a tornado of this magnitude touch down,” the woman said. The producer cut in a photo from the drive-in. The wooden movie screen was halved, the cars piled like they were in a junkyard. It was the photo that the media often used, but Brenna knew there must be more gruesome ones out there, taken before the bodies were cleared.
The reporter interviewed the cop with the handlebar mustache who’d shooed Brenna away the night before. “Who was the driver?” the reporter asked.
“We’re still investigating.”
“Has anyone come forward?”
“No. We’re in the process of reaching out to the owner now.”
No mention of the blue VW, which either meant they still hadn’t discovered it or that they weren’t linking it to the white car.
The desk anchors continued the story with a call-in witness. “It’s gotta be connected to the drive-in,” the man drawled. “A few of us heard them chattering last night.”
“Who?”
“The spirits.”
The anchor smiled nervously, clearly thinking she had a crazy person on her hands. The local news filmed in the nearby Quad Cities, not Mercer. People from the Cities thought themselves more cultured and rational—simply because they had Super Targets, coffee chains, and more than one screen at their movie theaters. Mercerites were probably on the phone theorizing and storytelling, or packing up their planchettes for a trip to the turbine, convinced—as Brenna was—that it was all too coincidental, that the Storm Spirits must be trying to tell them something. But what?