That humid night, the thunder was savage. The lightning bolts dwarfed the hills and spread their crooked rays across a sky that could scarcely contain them. The wind grappled with the trees, and made the walls shutter and creak. It seemed the deserted, old house would be a poor refuge for the eleven-year-old boy who was huddled by the window. His gray eyes were fixated on the storm in fright and wonder. His clothes were grass-stained from play and still damp from being caught in the sudden downpour.

A cuckoo clock hung on the wall. The boy could've sworn he had got it working. Now every time he looked the clock mocked him with the same time:

1:45.

1:45.

1:45.

1:45.

His imagination became uncontrollable. The boy fought it. He fought from seeing images of the lanky figures clinging to the branches of the rain-slapped trees. Their eyes stared white and silvery as raindrops.

As raindrops?

"See!" he said to himself. "Raindrops. You're imaging the raindrops as eyes, Cory. You dope!"

Then a scratching sensation crept across the back of his neck. He slapped the irritated patch of skin and spun around. Was it fingernails? Or was it the bristling hairs from some clever beast brushing past?

The lightning flooded the room with fresh purplish brilliance. His silhouette flashed against the far wall.

Not a soul was in sight. Just furniture. Just furniture. A musty ottoman crouched before an easy chair. An end table lurked alongside the davenport. An old kerosene lamp perched atop the gun cabinet appearing grandfatherly in its skin of dust.

The sight quickened Cory's pulse. These things gave the peeling room a lived in demeanor, as though the owners had never left. Merely vanished. Perhaps they were still here in some other fashion.

A telephone on the end table caught his eye in the next fitful fluttering of lightning. On an off chance that it worked he grabbed the receiver. There was a dial tone. Cory cranked the rotary and got an answer on the first ring.

"Mom?"

"Yes?"

"Mom! It's me, Cory. I'm at the old Abercrombie's house. I know you don't want me playing out here," he rattled off quickly, "but I wasn't! I was on my way home on my bike when the storm hit. This was the only place I could go. And it doesn't look like it's going to let up. Can you come and get me?"

Cory paused. "You're not mad, are you?"

"No!" she said cheerfully. "I know right where you are. I'm on my way. Wait there."

"You're not worried, are you?"

"Of course not!"

The hairs went up on Cory's neck. When he was late his mother worried, and when she worried she got angry. There were voices in the background, muttering. Cory did not recognize a one. Something was wrong. An idea hit him.

"Mom."

"Yes?"

"What's your maiden name?"

"My…?" For a spell the only thing Cory heard were the mutterings, then, "Oh, my boy is trying to trick me. No one has a maiden name, you rascal!"

Cory hung up.

He picked up the receiver and thunder blasted his ears. The exact same booms that were firing off outside roared from the telephone. Cory slammed the receiver back in its cradle.

He melted back to the familiar place before the window. Oh, God, he prayed, when am I gonna get out of here? He wasn't about to run out of the house with thunder hammering overhead and lightning a constant threat anymore than a soldier would go over the top into a barrage.

While the storm buffeted the house, Cory focused on the familiar sight of a rusted Crisco can laying tipped on its side, stuck in the gurgling mud of the sloping front yard. His eyes widened when he saw a tiny figure rise up from behind the can. First there was just a hand, pudgy like an infant's. It gripped the lip of the can before the whole figure stood up. The impish creature was hairless, its face featureless, its body smooth and appeared slick and oily black.

The boy's breath cut short. "It's a shadow," Cory insisted. "It's black as a shadow! So it has to be a shadow."

Yet the evidence defied reason. When the lightning flashed, the imp held its form. It didn't vanish in the light as it pitter-pattered down the slope with its fetal feet. A whole procession of slick, black imps emerged from behind the can, following their leader one after another.

Furtively one of the figures glanced toward the window. Cory's skin chilled when he saw the silvery beads of the imp's eyes. The same kind of eyes he felt was watching him from the limbs of the trees.

The thought came to him that maybe these weren't earth-bound spooks coming out of the woodwork of a crusty old estate. Maybe these creatures were being created by the storm. Their eyes were like raindrops. Their bodies appeared slick and wet. And the voice on the phone, the thunder that boomed out of the receiver…was it the storm trying to get his attention?

To be special in some way to a storm was thrilling as much as it was terrifying. Yet the terrifying aspect fed the thrilling part. Cory's exhilarated curiosity overwhelmed his good sense. He bound for the front door and swung it out of his way. Gingerly, he stepped up to the railing of the porch and beheld a panorama of manifestations.

Low over the fields across the highway, tiny clouds twisted into shapes, swooped as pairs of wings, then dissipated into charcoal-colored cotton, swirling and reshaping.

Alongside the broken cobbled path a pool of water spouted a perfect globule of its contents. Its projectile hopped over the path to a pool on the other side. The second pool formed into a watery mouth and splashed its lips over the hurtling globule. The pools repeated this game, back and forth.

A third pool snaked between them, down the path in the form of an amoeba. Before it made it to the front door the water amoeba banked into the yard and made its way between the legs of the shadow men, who were prancing and striding in all shapes and sizes. Some were tall. Others were squat. Some were as spiders hooking their legs from tree limb to tree limb.

It was like playtime.

"Who are you?" he cried to the sky. "I know you're out there. I believe that you are out there!"

One lanky humanoid-shaped shadow-being broke from the reverie, and strode toward the porch. Its pupils were the most silvery of any Cory had seen, like sizzling beads of mercury. This one was also the loftiest of his kin. Its cheeks protruded sharply from a face that bore no nose or mouth. The chin was a mere edged chip. The being uncoiled its arm, which uncoiled further into spindly fingers.

Their hands touched, fingertip to fingertip. The sensation was cold and wet, and gelatinous. Cory's heart thumped faster. He knew now he had been chosen for something special.

The wind paused and then blew in a different direction, becoming warmer. Miles away, a siren in Cory's neighborhood cried its shrill warning.

Cory paid no heed. His courage found its footing and rose with the wind. At any moment he knew he was about to fly.

A roaring tornado touched down in the field. Cory stood resolute upon the porch as the dirt and leaves whipped across his face and billowed his windbreaker. The tornado abruptly cut toward the estate, consuming everything into its vortex. The trees snapped and whirled into the air, and the great Abercrombie house exploded into tinder wood.

***

When morning came, rainwater was dripping from the leaves like residue, dappling rings in the muddy puddles. The storm was over. It was quiet. Roger, a retired farmer, stooped to pick up the branches scattered in his yard. His neighbor, Ray, accompanied him to his garden to help inspect the damage.

"That was one hell of a storm, Rog," Ray said.

"Sure was," Roger agreed in a crusty tenor. "Dammit! Look at that! All my sunflowers got blown down. Corn too." Roger lifted a limp corn stalk, and shook his head. Letting it droop, he commenced to pull out his tomato cages from the tangle of tomato vines.

Ray was younger, in his late thirties. "I lived here five years and have never seen one like it."

"I lived here forty," Roger retorted, "and I did. Once. Thirty-five years ago, when those well-to-do Abercrombie's used to live in that Queen Anne down the highway. They left the same night of the storm. At least that's what people say. But they won't tell you what you should understand by that. When the Abercrombies left, I mean they vanished! That night during the storm."

While Roger spoke, another neighbor, Dan Kindermin, joined them. His brows were etched in distress. He appeared anxious to butt in. When Ray said, "Vanished," he did.

"What are you saying?"

"It's like something is in the air," Roger explained. "I always said the county should've let all this old farmland fade back into the wilderness than put a subdivision on it."

"My son, Cory, took his bike up the highway toward the Abercrombie house last night." Dan pointed toward the highway with dire emphasis, as though the highway had wronged him. "He hasn't come back. Ellen and I haven't heard from him. No one's seen him!"

"Search for him." Roger squinted one eye at Dan. "Search real hard."

Searched for him Cory's parents did. They reported to the police that Cory was out bike riding early evening near dusk, when the storm hit. In return the police recovered the twisted frame of his ten-speed at the ruins of the Abercrombie estate.

Nothing more was found, and nothing more was heard.

Except once. During the throes of a storm of peculiar strength and violence, Ellen thought she heard "Moooom! Da-ad!" Dan heard it too - outside. It was Cory. "Up here! I'm flyin'!"

The End

Neil Riebe is a lifelong fan of speculative fiction. He became an avid reader in the third grade and began writing after graduating from high school. He has been published in two anthologies, "Eldritch Blue" and "Coach's Midnight Diner", and in a number of magazines, including "Sounds of the Night", "G-Fan", and "Prehistoric Times". Be sure to check his other fiction at these sites: http://www.petercushing.co.uk and http://www.g-fan.com.

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