by Ray Wallace
Shortly before the police arrived, she had found the note consisting of a single line in the kitchen:
It was you or me, babe.
Using one of the burners on the stove, she set the note on fire, tossed it in the sink and washed the remains down the drain.
And that should have been the end of it.
But it wasn’t.
It had been raining when he committed the foul deed. Afterward, on several occasions, the rain had called him back. A ghost, haunting the very room where he had died.
Last night, he’d been there.
And tonight? Will he be there again?
Come nightfall, she’d find out one way or another.
Tuesday, June 21st
“Can you believe this fucking weather?”
The happy hour crowd at Dirty Larry’s had started to arrive, mostly blue collar guys—roofers and plumbers and electricians—who needed their alcohol fix after a hard day’s work. The man who had spoken was one David Lees, a bearded, black-haired bear of a man who’d been running his own roofing company for the better part of ten years now. He was busy racking the balls at one of the bar’s two coin-operated pool tables. Jerry Thompson, a truck driver recently back in town after two weeks on the road, stood across the table from him. Clean shaven, he had neither David’s height nor his girth. Beneath his flannel shirt and blue jeans he was all muscle, though, knew how to handle himself in a fight—as the few drunks who’d crossed his path over the years had discovered much to their dismay.
“Yep, pretty nasty out there,” said Jerry as he blew the excess chalk off the tip of his pool cue and got ready to break.
“Cutting into my profits in a big way,” David grumbled over the song emanating from the jukebox—Metallica’s “Unforgiven.” He tightened the rack, lifted the plastic triangle away and slid it into the slot along the side of the table.
Jerry leaned over and with a quick, sure stroke sent the balls careening around the table. Three of them found their way into the pockets—two solids and a stripe. Two more shots put two more solids out of them game. He missed a bank shot after that, letting David have his turn.
This early in the evening—not yet six o’clock—they played for fun. But as the beers continued to flow and the night wore on, someone would inevitably drop a few dollars on the table. For now, though, they kept things light and talked about the weather.
“I’m supposed to be heading out again this weekend,” Jerry was saying. He watched David make three shots in a row before he missed. “Hope this shit lets up by then.”
“Wouldn’t count on it. Reminds me of a storm back when I was a kid. I swear it rained for nearly three weeks solid.”
The game ended a few minutes later with Jerry sinking the eight ball. David pulled out the rack again while Jerry wandered over to the jukebox and fed it some money. After picking a couple of Bob Seger songs and one by Led Zeppelin, he took a long swig of beer and returned to the table.
“Just hope I don’t see any of those damn gray men,” he thought he heard David say as he leaned over the table once again, ready to break. A statement like that, though, it’s the kind that’ll make a fellow take notice and stop whatever he might be doing.
“What the hell did you say?”
Plenty of noise filled the place—people laughing, a few of them arguing, the jukebox playing, pool balls clacking, the pinball machine pinging away. So Jerry had to wonder if he may have misheard what his friend had said.
David shook his head. “Nothing, man. Shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
But there was no way Jerry could let it go now. “The gray men? What the fuck does that mean?”
“Is that what you heard?” David smiled but it looked a little forced.
“That’s what I heard, all right.”
After a moment, David walked over and stood next to Jerry.
“Okay, yeah,” he said, keeping his voice low. “The other storm I mentioned? When I was a kid…”
“Yeah?”
“Well, by the end of it I started to see them.”
“See what?
“The gray men.”
“What, aliens or some shit like that? Little gray dudes with big heads and big black eyes?”
Jerry laughed, just a little, knowing that David Lees wasn’t the kind of guy you wanted to laugh at. But the big fellow just shook his head.
“No. They were men. But their skin… It was gray. Like they were dead or something. And the way they walked, slow and kinda hunched over...”
In spite of himself, Jerry felt a little creeped out by what he heard. “What were they, fucking zombies?”
David shrugged. “I don’t know, man. I only saw them a couple of times. Once on my way to school. Another time out in front of the house one night. They never messed with me.” He sipped his beer. “After it stopped raining, I never saw them again.”
Jerry stared at his friend for a few moments, wondering if the big guy was putting him on, decided he had to be.
“Fucking gray men,” he said under his breath.
Then he turned back to the table and took his shot.
Wednesday, June 22nd
He knew this storm. He was sure of it. All the subtleties of it. The way the wind gusted and swirled. The intensity of the rain. The intervals at which the downpour would slacken, would weaken to little more than a half hearted drizzle. The deep-throated grumbling of its thunder. The seemingly random forks of its lightning. Hell, even the very smell of it.
At first, when the rains came sweeping in off the water, he told himself it couldn’t be. The same storm as the one he remembered from more than twenty years ago? It defied all reason. It also defied all the known laws and rules of meteorology. From an early age, studying the mysteries of weather had been his life, as it had been his father’s before him. There was never any doubt that when he got older he would follow in his father’s footsteps and take over the department of climate study at the local university. There he would continue to advance and spread any knowledge associated with his particular field of interest. His path diverged from his father’s, however, when he went to work for one of the local news channels, bringing his passion to a much larger audience via broadcast television. For the past two decades, John Lazanger had been WSUN Channel 9’s weatherman. And with his fiftieth birthday looming on the horizon, his passion in regards to his current profession had never been stronger.
He knew this storm.
It was a gift he shared with his father—dead now these past eight years—the ability to innately sense the subtle differences between one thunderstorm and another. Father had claimed it had something to do with their Native American bloodline. John had no idea if this had anything to do with it or not. What he did know was that most people never gave the weather, even fairly disruptive weather, more than a passing thought. Storms rolled in and storms rolled out. But he knew there was much more to it than that. They were as unique as any two people one might encounter. Sure, physically, one human basically resembled another—a head, a torso, arms and legs, feet and hands, eyes and nose and mouth—but because of the subtle differences in their features, it was easy to tell them apart. And so it was with storms. They were basically the same. But there were plenty of small differences that made them unique. John could recognize these differences almost immediately. All he had to do was step outside, look to the sky, take in the sight of the clouds rolling in, open his mouth and taste the rain then close his eyes and listen…
He knew this storm.
He knew it from the moment it had arrived. And he recognized it as the same one that had accosted this place some twenty-plus years ago. His memories of that other storm were quite vivid. It was, after all, one of the more memorable to ever come this way. For more than two weeks, it had settled in and dumped rain over the many streets and thoroughfares of Hidden Bay. By the time it dispersed, six people were confirmed dead and two more had gone missing, never to be found. It was assumed they had been swept away by the river, grown
dangerously swollen and turbulent, that cut through the center of town before emptying into the ocean.
The same storm.
The way it behaved… There was no mistaking it.
But how could it be?
John knew weather like this came and went. As with all living things, that was its nature—to be born, to live, and then to die. And, due to the amount of energy expended, its life was inevitably short, often measured in hours, occasionally days in the case of particularly large systems. But years? Decades?
Impossible.
But here it was just the same.
Yes, he knew this storm.
He imagined it roaming the Earth, crossing seas and oceans, staying near the water, the source of its power, strengthening and weakening but never dying. And how old would it be by now? Those twenty-plus years ago, when it first came ashore here, was that the moment it sprang into existence? Or was it older? Hundreds or thousands or quite possibly millions of years older? He could see it, venting its peculiar brand of fury on much younger cities, forgotten settlements, ancient tribes and vast herds of creatures extinct long before the first man ever built a fire or carved a stick into a spear or painted vague figures on the walls of caves. Pure fantasy, he knew, an absurdity beneath contemplation from a serious weatherman such as himself. But still, he couldn’t shake the idea. Because there was definitely something out of the ordinary going on here.
As he walked out of the house and over to the driveway on this wet Wednesday morning, an umbrella raised above his head, he looked toward the sky and felt that sense of certainty once again, the one he could not shake no matter how hard he tried…
He knew this storm.
Thursday, June 23rd
“Damn this rain,” said Stephen Kuttner as he sat on the screened-in back porch, listening as the water rapped incessantly against the metal roof above him. On the table before him rested an ashtray, a glass pipe, a plastic baggie with two fingers of marijuana in it, three empty beer bottles, and a half empty pack of cigarettes. The latter of these he’d been trying to quit without much success for nearly a year now. The beer and the weed, on the other hand, he could never imagine giving up, not completely. He enjoyed them far too much. And unlike his cigarette habit, he only got drunk or high a couple of times a week—his little escape from the mundane pressures of day to day reality.
He took a sip from the freshly opened beer in his hand, its flavor—along with his attitude—enhanced by the weed he’d smoked a few minutes earlier, all the while trying not to think about the conversation he’d had with Karen when he came home. The moment he walked through the door he’d known she was in one of her moods.
“It's this weather,” she’d told him. “The rain has always brought me down, ever since I was a little girl.”
Not like she needed anything to compound the bout of depression she’d been battling in recent months. None of the prescription medication she took seemed to make a damn bit of difference. It hadn’t taken her long to start in on one of her favorite subjects: whether or not they were ever going to have children together. He’d gone with the standard response:
“We’ve been married less than two years. We’re still young. There’s plenty of time to have children. All the time in the world.”
At twenty-seven, Stephen was in no hurry to become a father, had no problem with the idea of waiting until his mid-thirties, at least, before taking on that particular role. Hopefully, he and Karen would find a way to become financially sound by then, would be able to buy a house instead of renting a place on the outskirts of Hidden Bay as they did now. She was two years younger than him. Why was she in such a rush? It wasn’t as though her biological clock was in danger of winding down anytime soon.
Half an hour ago, she’d gone into the bedroom, her eyes filled with tears, closing the door behind her with more force than necessary. And now, here he sat, alone on the back porch, working on a pretty good buzz. Night had fallen and so he passed the time watching headlights go by along the road at the far edge of the property a good hundred feet away.
“Damn this rain,” he muttered once again and took another sip of beer.
And that’s when it happened.
A figure appeared just beyond the limits of the light radiating outward from the back porch. After walking out of the darkness, it stood next to the trunk of one of the trees inhabiting the back yard, facing him. For several moments he could only stare, wondering if the gusting winds, the rain and the bad lighting—And the weed. Don't forget about the weed—were playing tricks on him. He thought about saying something, maybe asking the person—if person it was—what the hell it was doing there. But he didn’t. Later on, he would wonder about this, why he had sat there saying nothing. And he would tell himself that even then, at that first moment when he first laid eyes on her, he knew something extraordinary was about to happen.
And, yes, he could see now that the figure was that of a woman. A naked woman. He was sure of it. He could also see that something was wrong with her.
Like she isn’t all there.
He searched for an explanation.
A ghost?
No, she seemed more solid than that. More real. Just… incomplete somehow. Unfinished. Lacking in the details required to fully make her a part of this world.
Damn, you really are stoned.
The woman walked toward him, moved in a flowing, graceful way that had Stephen’s heart thumping in his chest. As if in a dream, he set his beer on the table, got to his feet and approached the screen door. Drawing nearer, he could see she was translucent, like a woman made of water. When she was only a few feet away, she stopped, the door the only thing preventing them from touching. And he wanted to touch her, felt an almost overwhelming urge to do so. Acting on this impulse, he opened the door and he reached for her, feeling the rain on the exposed skin of his forearm. She reached for him, too, this clear, glimmering shape of a woman. He took her hand in his. It felt smooth and solid, pliable, like a balloon filled with warm liquid. If he squeezed too tightly would it burst?
Without thinking and unaware of the consequences, he pulled her toward him, through the doorway and out of the storm. And there, on the threshold, she collapsed with a rushing, splashing sound, reduced to nothing more than a puddle of water, no different than the countless others gathering and growing across the grounds of Hidden Bay.
Friday, June 24th
The water dripped randomly into the buckets, bowls, and pans placed about the room. Keith sat in the middle of the floor, cross-legged, hands on his knees, eyes closed, humming the same long note over and over again—
“Mmmmmm… Mmmmmm…”
—trying to find a place of solace and solitude somewhere deep inside his mind. He thought of warm spring days, flying a kite as a child, the touch of his mother’s hand on his elbow as she applied a bandage to a minor cut. And he almost had it, the feeling of calm he so desperately sought, the eye of the maelstrom of anger and anxiety swirling around him, the emotional tumult that seemed to dominate so much of his life these days. Hell, these past couple of years now. Ever since Brenda died…
No!
He couldn't go there, not right now, not with the welcoming eye so near.
Focus. Take a deep breath. That’s it. Now hold it... hold it... and...
Exhale.
He let the breath escape him slowly, just like it said to do in the book on meditation he’d checked out of the library several months back, the one he’d “forgotten” to bring back.
Deep breath again. Think happy, soothing thoughts. Ignore everything else. The outside world is nothing more than an illusion. The world inside your mind is all that matters. Can you see it? Almost there now…
And he could see it, the eye of the storm, so wide and warm and blue. So comforting. So inviting.
A drop of water tapped him on top of the head.
He stopped humming and opened his eyes.
Thunder rolled across the night sky directly above h
is house. Another drop of water struck him in exactly the same spot as the previous one. Then a third. And it all came rushing in on him, the continuous drip… drip-drip… drip… drip-drip-drip… of the rain invading his home, his sanctuary, his world.
Springing to his feet, he stood there in his underwear, quivering with rage.
“No!” he shouted, practically barking the word as the feeling of peace he had tried so hard to achieve evaporated. He didn’t want to think about Brenda, about the unborn child—their unborn child—she had carried inside of her. But, as usual, what he wanted didn't seem to matter.
It had been raining that night, too, the night Brenda had died, the night Mia—a week earlier, they had found out they were having a girl—had died along with her.
They’d gone to a party. He’d had a few drinks, four at the most, had snuck a couple of them when Brenda wasn't looking. As an expectant mother, she had stayed completely sober. He should have let her drive—
Why didn't I let her drive?
—but he’d insisted he was fine, even walked a straight line across the porch to prove it, laughing like it was all a big joke. Brenda had given in, let him take the wheel. It had been a good night and he knew she hadn’t wanted to argue about it. The rain had been coming down pretty hard as they left the party and headed for home. A couple of minutes into the drive, he started messing with the radio, took his eyes off the road longer than he should have.
“Watch out!”
He looked up and saw the red light, lifted his foot from the accelerator and slammed on the brakes. The car slid across the wet pavement into the intersection. A white pickup truck plowed into the passenger side of the car knocking Keith unconscious when his head slammed into the driver side window. He suffered a concussion and four cracked ribs, spent the night in the hospital under observation. Brenda and Mia both died at the scene of the accident.
And just like that, the whole of Keith's world came crumbling down.
He spent three-and-a-half years in prison for his role in the deaths of his wife and unborn daughter. After his release, he eventually ended up in this rundown little shithole where he'd been staying for the past two years now. It was all he could afford—barely—with the money he earned from the odd jobs he worked when he could find them. Nearly a week ago, when the storm had rolled in and the water started dripping from the ceiling, he’d called his landlord, had been promised the roof would be fixed just as soon as the rain let up.