THE STORM
Copyright Nick Brady 2019. All rights reserved.
Jeff and I were buddies. We lived next door and had known each other since we were in the second grade. I had other friends but Jeff was special. We liked the same things – football, scary movies, and making dumb jokes. Besides, he lived next door. When there was nothing else to do, we ended up finding something that relived the boredom of being fifteen in a small town in Kansas.
School was out and it was early July. Jeff told me that he had a friend who's brother had a brand new Mustang. He had been promised a ride and wanted to know if I wanted to go with him. Of course I did, and we walked the four blocks to his friend's house at the edge of town.
The friend's name was Mickey and he lived in an old two story house next to his family's small farm. We knocked and Mickey was home. Sure enough, there was a new red mustang sitting in the driveway.
"Hiya, Mickey. This is my friend David," Jeff introduced me. "Is that your brother's car outside?"
"It is," Mickey replied. "He's in the basement. Want to meet him?"
We trudged down a short set of stairs into an oddly shaped room. The basement was in a cross shape and did not extend under the entire house. The north leg held a furnace and ducts which snaked out under the floors. The south leg was filled with boxes and used as a storage space. The east leg had been converted into a sort of family room with a TV, an old sofa, and some beanbags for a seating area.
The leg opposite the TV ran to a cellar door on the west end. and some steps which led up to a slanted timber door which opened to the outside. The walls on each side were covered with shelves lined with canned goods, some store bought, some containing produce from the family garden. There were small windows in the other three legs near the top of the cellar which was ground level outside. The place had a musty smell and was cooler than outdoors which was hot and unusually humid that day. The basement made a nice retreat from the summer's heat.
A stocky boy lay on the sofa watching something on television. He looked like he was about eighteen and was the proud owner of the Mustang. Mickey introduced him as his brother Calvin. "They're interested in your new car," Mickey told him.
"Yeah, it's beauty ain't it," Calvin smiled. "I just got that last weekend. It's the first new car I ever owned. At least I get to make the payments on it," he laughed then proceeded to list all its features, horsepower, and modern accessories. We sat on the bean bags and envied his new treasure.
Calvin seemed like a nice guy and talked easily with us. Being younger we were quite impressed by him. The time went by pleasantly when we began to notice that it was getting darker outside despite being early afternoon.
Mickey tiptoed to one of the windows and looked out. "I think we're gonna have some rain," he said. "There's some dark clouds coming from the southwest."
"I hope so," Calvin replied. "We could use some rain."
We continued our small talk until it began to thunder. Mickey looked out again and reported, "I don't much like the looks of that. Those clouds are black."
With that, the wind which had been blowing from the approaching storm suddenly stopped and everything got quiet. At this point we all got up and joined Mickey at the little window. The sky to the southwest was solid black with a greenish cast underneath. The clouds were moving fast and were ragged at the bottom. Lightning zigzagged across the top and the sound of thunder grew louder.
As we watched, the light from outside grew very green, the wind started to blow hard, and the ragged edges beneath the clouds started to rotate. "That might make a tornado," Calvin said in a serious tone. "I think we'd best stay in the basement."
"Where's your folks?" I asked Mickey.
"I'm not sure," he said. "They left in the truck right after lunch. I guess we're on our own. Wouldn't make any difference if they were here. We just got to ride this out."
"Maybe it'll pass us by," Jeff suggested hopefully.
"I think it's coming right at us," Calvin declared. "We need to get in the south corner."
We wasted no time and hunkered down among the storage boxes and piles of whatever had been shoved to the sides. We had no sooner taken refuge there when the house started to shake and the wind to howl. The old house began to give off ominous creaking sounds and a roar filled the air.
The roar grew deafening and the creaking changed to sharp cracks and booms. The cellar door began to snap back and forth despite being barred from the inside, then seemed to explode and pieces of timber flew across to slam against the sofa and the television set. The four of us were huddled together in a pile hanging on to each other for dear life. The storage boxes bounced against us, the cellar windows blew out and the air was filled with swirling debris. After the longest minute of our lives, the noise began to subside and a heavy rain started to fall. Water poured in from the ceiling above, the wind died down and we guessed that the worst had passed.
We all stood and looked around at an eerie sight. Light came through cracks in the ceiling and the contents of the cellar were strewn around as if run through a blender. We ran up the stairs into the house and found ourselves outside looking at the receding funnel. The field beyond was littered with splintered lumber, scraps of tar paper and pink insulation as far as we could see. After a minute the cracks of thunder died down and a strange calm came over the landscape. The clouds behind us parted and the sun came out while the sky beyond was still a roiling black.
"Is everybody OK?" Calvin asked calmly. We decided that we were, then went back down to the basement in all that was left of the house.
We found the TV with a broken timber protruding from the screen and pieces of the cellar door covering the old sofa which had been pushed against the wall. The rest of the room was thrown this way and that. Strangest of all were the rows of canned goods still neatly lined up on the shelves against the walls beside the shattered space where the cellar door had been.
Going back outside we walked around looking for whatever remained of the house's contents. One hundred yards to the north stood the old barn with a few shingles gone but otherwise intact.
No trace of Calvin's new red Mustang were ever found.
Send comments to y2kslacker@mail.com