Blackout

4

It was bound to happen sooner or later and with the way the storm was kicking up its heels, I was surprised the power hadn’t gone out long before. The house went dark and so did the neighborhood as the streetlights died. It’s amazing how black the world can be at night without the aid of electric lights. I walked into the yard, shining the light around as the rain sprayed in my face. Then the lightning started flashing again and I had to cover my eyes.

If Kathy had been out there, she was gone now.

I even looked in the side yard, the garden, and poked about in the bushes I’d seen the snakelike form disappear into. That took nerve. But by that point my panic had become fear and I was pretty certain something had happened to her. My guess was she had heard something or seen something and went outside and maybe she was still out there, maybe on the ground somewhere.

I kept calling her name and kept getting no reply.

What were you supposed to do in a situation like that? Wake the neighbors? Call the police? I decided I was going to do both, but first I had to make damn sure she wasn’t in the house. Dripping wet, I went back inside and looked everywhere once again. She wasn’t there. Okay. I went back outside and looked in the garage. Maybe she had hurt herself and crawled in there to get out of the storm. It was thin as hell, but I figured it was worth a try. The door was open and I went in, shining the light around. There wasn’t much to see. Her new Dodge Charger was still parked in there. I played the light over the lawnmower, the tarped snowblower, my workbench and tools, shovels and rakes and hoes that hung from their hooks. That was it. I even looked under the car and felt more than a little foolish doing so.

Nothing.

The wind blew the door closed behind me and I jumped. The darkness pressing up against the window over the bench was immense and depthless. I was suddenly filled with fright and I didn’t know why. I had the strangest sensation of being watched. I moved the light around, investigating every pocket of shadow. The lightning came again, flickering through the window. It was a weird and surreal night.

Time to call the cops, I figured.

Then something thumped against the side of the garage. I told myself it was just a tree limb, but I didn’t believe it for a moment. It thumped again and then I distinctly heard whatever it was drag itself up the outside wall and over the roof. It was no tree branch. It made a rustling sound that was fleshy and thick, almost rubbery. Then it was gone. I had the worst feeling that it was the snakelike shape I spied disappearing into the bushes. That it had just crawled up the wall and slithered over the roof.

My scalp itchy and hot, I waited for it to make another sound but there wasn’t a damn thing. I pressed my face up to the window, but all I saw out there was the wet grass, tree limbs swaying in the wind, and pools of standing water. Nothing else. It was then that my rational mind suggested that maybe there was a power line down or perhaps a telecommunication line. The latter would be no big deal, but the former would be much more dangerous than a giant snake. Right away I imagined scenarios of Kathy being electrocuted.

I threw the door open and jumped out into the night, half expecting some monstrous serpent to drop down on me like a jungle python. There was nothing. I searched more desperately this time, looking everywhere. Still, no Kathy. I even looked around in the Peckmans’ backyard, but it was hopeless. I needed help and I knew it. I dashed back inside and grabbed my cell from the end table. It had a full charge, but I wasn’t getting any bars. When I tried it anyway, all I got was a high whining sound I had never heard before. I tried the cordless. There was no dial tone, just a continuous humming that must have been the empty sound of the lines themselves.

I went back outside and to my amazement, the rain had stopped and the wind had died down. There wasn’t so much as a drizzle out there. It was like somebody had flipped a switch. The lightning was still flashing, but there was no thunder. It was not only weird, it was disturbing. Earlier, I had thought there was something funny about the patterns of the lightning and now, as I stood there, I realized what it was. It was the pattern itself. It was not irregular as you would have thought, but very precise. The lightning would flash on and off three times; then there would be a period of darkness; then it would strobe nearly continuously. I found myself counting. The lightning would flash followed by thirty seconds of darkness, then it would strobe for exactly two and a half minutes. I was almost hypnotized by it. I stood there and timed it through three cycles.

It was completely unnatural.

This was not some accidental atmospheric thing, it was premeditated and intentional, as insane as that sounds. I walked over to the Peckmans’ and paused once again at the hedges, timing it out. It was the same. What would the chances of something like that be? What would the odds be against a storm forming a perfectly timed pattern like that?

I looked up in the sky as it initially flashed again and I thought for one moment I saw an immense dark mass like a fucking aircraft carrier up there. It was just an optical illusion and I told myself so. Regardless, with the strobing lightning there was no way I could keep staring skyward. It was like looking into a flashing searchlight.

I jogged over to the Peckmans’ and as I made to go up the steps, I heard a screaming in the night. It was a hysterical, insane sort of sound that went right up my spine. A scream of pain and terror.