The Orange-Sky Storm

A Tale of Horror

✪

    Karyl is looking at the baby again. I want to go inside and say to Mama, “Karyl’s looking at Alin, Mama, and I don’t like it.”
    I can see Mama through the window of the kitchen. She glances up from the sink and smiles at me. I can’t see her hands but I know what she’s doing by the sway of her body and the small movements her shoulders make. She’s washing the breakfast dishes, and Karyl and I are watching the baby.
    Odd, even knowing the violence that could erupt inside that house, that this would be the last day in my life I ever felt safe.
    Karyl pitches another rock at the oak tree. He hits it square on a big knot, just where I know he was aiming. He hits it every time. He’s been doing it all morning. Picking up a couple of dozen rocks of differing sizes from pea- to fist-sized. Putting them carefully in piles, a variety of sizes in each. Then, the throwing. One, two, three. Move to the next pile. One, two. Move again.
    He has his own rhythm for the thing, but there’s got to be method in it. There always is with him, Karyl, my adored older brother.
    He pitches another rock. Dead centre on the knot. This time, he turns and smiles at me. I don’t like that smile much either. He’s changed, these last weeks. I know what it is. It’s the woman by the lake, who lives in the old RV. Somehow, she’s taking my brother away from me, one rock and one sly, unnerving smile at a time.
    And I don’t like the way he’s looking at the baby.

✪

    “Tamblyn.”
    Not just the shout, too close to my ear, but an open hand smacking the table. Startled out of my reverie but never one to show anything if I could help it, I looked sideways at my interruptor. Calm, steady, slowly. “Bruce, when did you get here?”
    Disgusted, he snorted and moved off. No, I hadn’t made any friends thus far at the Academy, but that was fine with me. If you let people get close, your control can waver. You can. . . show something you’d rather not. Something that should remain yours alone. Hidden.
    Hidden as well as I’d hidden the boy who had a brother called Karyl. Hidden as well as I’d hidden my own real name.
    “Cadets, to the range!” The announcement came from a big ex-military sergeant, Tarra Prentice. She was what real female cops usually looked like, not the tiny breakable blondes and redheads of television: five feet nine inches of solid muscle and a neck thicker than mine. Also the best shot in Van, from what I’d heard, Olympic-quality. I made sure I stood as close to her during training as possible, to catch every trick and hint. Guns did not come easily to me. Nor did any sort of hand-to-hand combat.
    I got up, removing the remains of my lunch with an efficient sweep. I’m a long way from the lake, and a million years have passed since that summer. I haven’t thought about it for a long time. Not since I was Frankie, and he was Karyl, and neither of us had ever stolen an identity to make a new start.
    Before I’d taken this identity from a dead baby, and used my job as a civil servant to make it stand up to any degree of scrutiny, so that I could follow my dream of becoming a police cadet.
    Before I realized that Karyl, whatever he’d decided to call himself, had gone just about as far to the other side of the law as it was possible for a man to go.
    I didn’t like to think about him. I didn’t like to think about that summer, when Karyl had started eyeing our sister Alin as if wondering what she’d taste like. Why now?

✪

    Tarra took up a position behind me, sighting down my arm, checking the firmness of my grip. “Good, John,” she said. “That’s a lot better. Do you feel it?”
    I nodded. It did feel good, like my strength flowed from my shoulder right into and through the barrel.
    “The whole clip,” she directed, and resettled her headgear. I emptied the clip, letting my breath back in slowly as it did. She brought the target back, and I was glad to see a neat grouping in the vital areas, just where I’d meant to put the rounds.
    “Is that a smile?” she said, and there was the hint of a taunt in the question. No, maybe just good natured teasing. I wasn’t known for showing a lot of expression, especially on the pleasure side. But it wasn’t meant cruelly. Not always.
    I checked the chamber and followed her out. We were the last—besides the officer on duty in the range, it was just us left. At the door to the women’s locker room, she paused. Suddenly, there was awkwardness in the air, but I didn’t know what I could have possibly done to cause it this time. Then:
    “Hey, John, do you feel like grabbing a beer?” she said, and I realized that no, for once it wasn’t me filling the room with my social ineptitude. Tarra Prentice was the one feeling ill at ease.
    I must have waited just a split second too long before answering. Her words tumbled out on top of mine. “Another time, then.” She vanished through the door, before I’d even had time to decide on a real response.