Behind the Smile

55

The clouds were wringing themselves dry. Lightning danced about him, and he felt small and trapped inside the Mustang. He jumped at the booming crack of thunder. The storm was on top of him.

Thunderstorms. 

He hated them.

The locals never mentioned them. They always griped about the winters – the two or three ice storms that invariably hit each year, and the snow.

The ice might last two days before melting. The snow, if they had any at all, never amounted to more than a couple of inches.

A foot of snow was a big deal. To folks down here maybe but not to Hayden.

For him, it was the thunderstorms. The howling tempests of rabid gods.

He had never gotten used to how quickly the massive clouds could build or how heavy the rains could fall. The downpours at times were torrential, the blue-white lightning fierce and keen, the wind gusts near hurricane strength. The ground became quickly saturated from the deluge, and the water flowed over it in a multitude of tiny tributaries. Trees could topple, the once firm hold of their roots giving way in the mud with a crash and a top-heavy faint to the earth.

Someone had told him once that the water drew the lightning and made the storms more intense. He'd seen enough of them to wonder if this wives' tale wasn't true.

As he turned off onto the trail that led to the Landing, his tires slid, and the rear end fishtailed, but he quickly righted it. This stuff was as slick as black ice. He wondered how long it would be before it let up. At this rate, he'd need a wrecker to get him and Cecil out of this mess.

Everything was an angry blur. The wipers were on high, but the blades could not keep up with the water pouring down the windshield. Loose leaves stuck to the glass, only to be swept away by the fast moving blades.

A blinding flash lit the forest, and he felt the jarring thunderclap rattle the Mustang's chassis. The fireball had struck a tree in front of him. It exploded in a volcanic burst of sparks and noise. A towering trunk fell towards him. In a futile gesture of protection, he flung his arms in front of his face as gigantic branches entwined with leaves and vines ripped through the convertible's cloth top, crushing him and smothering his screams.

Ridge and Graylon saw the bolt hit deep in the kudzu grove. They heard the deafening snap as the monstrous tree fractured and fell to the forest floor. They sat in the car as the storm raged on. The feeling was returning in her hands, and she rubbed her wrists to stimulate the circulation. She felt a hard lump in her jeans pocket.

The key.

She had absently slid it into her pocket while showing Luke the photo album.

Ridge was hyper, babbling non-stop, making no sense. Graylon tuned him out.

The storm raged on, occasionally lighting the car's interior with brief flashes of white. Though she could not see his face, Ridge's body was silhouetted, a black shadow cut-out in the front seat. She assumed he saw Luke and her in much the same way as they sat in the back seat, but she couldn't be sure.

Shielding her right hand with her left arm, she slid her fingers into her pocket. She pulled the key out and palmed it. It was an iron skeleton key about five inches long. A relic from the old home place.

It wasn't much, but it was all she had.

Luke began to stir, groggy but coming to, and Graylon wanted to cry with relief.

Ridge droned on.

"It has to be this way, Gray," he said. "There's no other way. It's the age-old ritual. The sacrificial lamb to the deities. They must all be fed, you know. Such hungry little buggars."