Restless

2 - Spring Storms in Texas

Spring storms in Texas move in fast and violent like a stampeding horse herd and the one Debra drove home through was no exception. The little Toyota’s wipers could barely keep the torrential rains off the windshield. She pulled into her driveway, got out of the car to open the garage door, and within seconds felt her clothes soaked and stuck to her skin. The rain fell horizontally with drops the size of ripe grapes. She fumbled with the lock, but did finally manage to turn the handle and lift the garage door.

The storm had painted the sky dark blue and the rain made it nearly impossible for Debra to see beyond a few feet, but when she returned to her car a flash of lightning illuminated the memorial park. 

A thin woman wearing a white dress, soaked and muddy tore at her eyes as though they were sown shut. She pitched her head back at such a strange angle, that Debra wasn't certain what she'd seen had been a woman at all, but some wounded animal, like a white deer caught in a trap. Debra waited with the rain pouring down on her and a chill working its way to her bones for the next flash. When it finally came, there was no sign of the woman. 

Debra pulled the sputtering Toyota into the garage, got out, opened the backdoor to retrieve her plastic bags filled with a socket wrench set, a handsaw, and other items she thought her son might need to work on a car from Home Depot, and placed the bags on an old work bench left by the home’s previous owners. She hoped her son would appreciate all these tools. She knew she would need to find a car soon, because her son would arrive any day, and he would want something he could repair and drive around town. That’s just the way boys are. They all want classic cars, like a nineteen-fifty-four Mustang. She could almost see him, out under the hood of the car, wearing a white t-shirt and dark blue jeans, covered in grease and oil, smiling and waving at her.

When she went to close the garage door she realized just how dark the sky had grown. She checked her mobile, and though it was a quarter after six, the day looked like midnight. The light from the garage offered her some refuge, but the tiny bulb couldn’t fight back hard enough. 

Like a roaring sea the darkness, that haunting darkness from her mind, built up beyond her property like a great wave. She stood on the edge of the beach and waited for it to hit her, to cover her body in its inky emptiness, and then pull her into its depths until she became a part of it, until all around her was that oblivion she feared more than anything. To all at once be nothing, to be forgotten, abandoned to a place where no one would ever find her.

When she opened her eyes she could see a white form in the darkness close to her driveway. The woman hadn’t been an illusion after all, and now she stumbled up the sidewalk. Debra thought she must have been injured during the storm, because a huge gash cut across her chest in an odd "t" shape. She could see this gash through the rain-soaked dress, but there didn’t appear to be any blood. As she approached, Debra realized she wasn’t a woman, but a girl, a very thin teenage girl, maybe fifteen or sixteen years old, with sandy blond hair, chalky white skin, and dark eyes.

Debra grabbed an old blanket she kept in the back seat of the car and ran out in the rain and darkness to meet the injured girl. At first the teenager shied away as though Debra might attack her, but then accepted the blanket over her shoulders and the help into the garage’s refuge.

"What happened?" Debra asked. But the girl only moaned like an injured cat and pulled at her jaw.

"Let’s get you inside and warm," Debra said. She fumbled for her mobile to call for help, but when she attempted to dial out she received a ‘Service Unavailable’ message. 

Debra assisted the girl to the bathroom, the one off the master bedroom with the larger shower and the only two clean towels she owned. The girl walked with a strange gait as though her knees couldn't bend well or her pelvis had been broken. Perhaps the teenager had been struck by lightning?