Creepypasta

Faces in the Storm

I think I’m going to go insane…

It’s been twenty eight days since the seventeenth of December, and the rain hasn’t faltered for a second since then. It keeps falling in sheets, driving down from the heavens like a waterfall. Outside, you feel like you could drown walking.

When this all started out, I don’t think that anyone thought much of it. I mean, this nightmare was just another winter storm then. It started in kind of an odd place, out in the North Atlantic across from the Gulf of St. Lawrence, but I’m not sure that meant anything to people who weren’t meteorologists or oceanographers. The storm started out expanding very rapidly. I’m not sure if it’s still growing or not, since the TV hasn’t come on for more than three weeks, but it sure hasn’t moved at all.

Things started looking more bizarre when the wind failed to move the storm. It just kept hammering New England, growing south along the coastline from Maine all the way down to where I lived in Nassau County, just outside of New York City. The weather forecasts changed every few minutes, as forecasters revised their estimates, going from saying that there would be light flurries, to saying that there would be a few inches of snow, to saying that there would be an absolute blizzard across the city, and that everyone should stay inside.

My wife, Sarah, couldn’t heed that warning, though. She had to go to work, and I had to stay home and take care of our five year old daughter, Tanya. When my wife walked outside that morning, I promised her that I would keep Tanya safe. Watching Sarah pull out of the driveway in her Nissan Altima, I had no idea that would be the last time I would ever see her.

As the day wore on, the weather took a turn for the worse. It looked like the weather forecasters were right, predicting one of the worst storms New York had seen in over a century. It amazed me when the power stayed on late into the night, but I wasn’t complaining. You never know exactly how bad a blackout really is until you go through one with a five year old who’s still terrified of the dark.

Not that I can say I’m not scared of the dark anymore, myself.

The last time we saw the cheerful, smiling forecasters on the Weather Channel, they were saying that the storm had expanded south into New Jersey, and that we could receive two feet of snow during the night. It was at about 6:23 P.M., I think. Less than a minute later, the Weather Channel cut off, and every program on the television changed to a warning, telling everyone to get out of New York City along whatever bridge they could take and avoid Manhattan Island.

I tried to reach the company where Sarah worked on my phone, but the lines were down. I didn’t really know what was going on, but I decided to listen to the reporters on my TV, and get Tanya out of the city. I struggled with the idea that I shouldn’t just desert Sarah, who worked on Manhattan, but when I got outside, I realized that I couldn’t possibly risk going there.

To the south, across the horizon, the dark clouds of night were painted red with flames.

The traffic was horrible, but not as bad you might think. A lot of people were reluctant to leave. They all seemed to be in shock. I drove my Cadillac along the roads through Nassau and Queens, seeing a lot of people standing by the roadside watching the shadow of the flames flickering against the sky, but running into far fewer actually driving along the road. Some of the people were slowly making their way by foot out of the city, and as time went on, the traffic congestion got a bit worse, but amazingly I was able to get myself and Tanya out of New York before it became so bad that I couldn’t drive at all.

I still remember looking across the harbor on the road from Queens to the mainland, and seeing Manhattan Island burning. I don’t think that I’ll ever forget that. Tanya kept staring out the window, speechless, and tired, too, I believe. I don’t know for certain what time it happened to be, but I think it was past eleven.