September 26, 2024
By: Gerald R. Lucas (2024)
The wind had begun its hollow dirge by early afternoon, long before the first gusts battered my shutters. Even then, the air seemed to shudder, as if laden with some invisible malice that slithered along the Gulf Coast with the coming storm. The radio, in its monotonous cadence, droned on about the coming storm—one of mythic proportions, they said, a storm to eclipse all storms, its birth a testament to the relentless scourge of a planet killed by progress. It would be a hurricane of such ferocity that it would carve its name into the annals of history. It was to be a hurricane unlike any other, the experts said—a beast borne of the swollen, fevered waters of the Gulf, I had always believed the scientists. It made sense, didn’t it? The seas warming, the storms growing more violent with each passing year, nature’s rebuke for humanity’s careless greed. It wasn’t superstition, but science—simple and brutal. The world had been pushed too far, and now it was striking back. My wife had begged me to leave with her and the kids, to seek shelter with her relatives further inland. But I had stayed, bound to this crumbling relic of a house—a family heirloom, passed down for generations, its walls steeped in history. “I’ll ride it out,” I had said. “I’ll watch over the place. You go on ahead.” And so, she had gone, taking our two young sons with her. They would be safe, far from the coastline, tucked away in her brother’s sturdy brick home, miles from the storm’s fury. As my wife and the boys drove away that afternoon, I stood at the porch and watched them disappear down the road. I can still see the look on the youngest’s face, pressed against the back window, his wide eyes full of confusion. He didn’t understand why I was staying behind, why I had to watch over this house instead of going with them. There was no fear, only the deep, questioning gaze of a child who hadn’t yet learned how to reconcile such things. The older, too, stared back, though his expression was different—more troubled. His small brow furrowed, lips pressed into a thin line, as if he sensed something was wrong, something much bigger than a storm or an old house. It was the look of a child who hadn’t yet found the words to voice his anxiety but could feel it in the pit of his stomach. Neither of them returned my wave. They just stared, their faces pale like betrayal, as the car turned the corner and was swallowed by the trees. Even then, before the sky darkened and the first winds rose, they must have felt the wrongness of it all, though none of us knew how much wrong there truly was. The air thickened as evening fell, pressing in with a suffocating weight, as if the sky itself labored beneath some unseen force. The radio crackled with warnings—the storm would make landfall by midnight. I checked the windows once more, though it did little to ease the growing unease gnawing at the edges of my mind. The house was secured, the shutters bolted, and I had enough supplies to last the storm’s duration. But something, deep and primal, unsettled me. I turned off the radio. The sound of static grated against my nerves. Outside, the wind began its assault, the tall pines groaning in protest as the first real gusts tore at their branches. The rain came soon after, lashing against the windows in heavy sheets, and with it came the sound—the unmistakable, skin-crawling scrape of something slithering across the roof. At first, I told myself it was nothing, just wind-driven branches dragging across the shingles. But the sound was too deliberate, too alive, a wet, dragging scrape that seemed to move with intention. It was a sound that wormed its way into my bones, a sound that shouldn’t have been. Lightning split the sky, illuminating the landscape in a sudden, blinding flash. In that moment, I saw them—long, coiling shapes, twisting through the rain, dark against the storm-lit sky. They writhed and undulated, massive and serpentine, winding through the air like the limbs of some ancient beast. I blinked, and they were gone, swallowed by the storm’s fury. I shook my head. Shadows, I told myself. Nothing more. The mind plays tricks in weather like this. But the sounds persisted. The scraping, the slithering—it surrounded the house now, echoing in the walls, the roof, the very foundation. The house groaned beneath the weight of it, as if it were being encircled by something immense, something alive. I glanced at my phone, checking for any word from my wife. Nothing. I imagined them safe, far from here, huddled together in the warmth of her brother’s home, oblivious to the horrors outside. I felt a pang of guilt then, for choosing to stay behind, for leaving them to face the uncertainty of the storm without me. But the house… the house was all I had left of my family’s legacy, and I couldn’t abandon it. Not even for them. The wind shrieked, a high-pitched wail that set my teeth on edge, and the slithering, scraping grew louder, more insistent. I checked the windows again, peering through the rain-streaked glass into the chaos outside. The serpentine shapes returned, visible only in the corner of my eye, twisting and writhing through the storm, too large, too fluid to be shadows. They moved with purpose, circling the house like predators, unseen but always there. I backed away from the window, my heart pounding in my chest. This was no mere storm. There was something more to it, something darker, older, and infinitely more terrible. It was as if the storm itself were alive, possessed by some malevolent force. The rain stopped suddenly, and with it, the wind. A silence fell over the house, thick and oppressive, as though the world had been sucked dry of sound. I knew what it was—the eye of the storm. I stepped to the window, and there, through the thinning veil of clouds, I saw it. The eye. But it was not the calm center I had expected. It was a void—a great, gaping hole in the sky, darker than anything I had ever seen, a blackness that devoured the very light around it. It wasn’t merely the absence of storm, but the absence of existence itself. The clouds spiraled into it, sucked into the maw of this vast, otherworldly darkness. And then it blinked. The realization hit me with the force of a meteoric collision: the eye was no meteorological phenomenon. It was a living thing—a sentient, ravenous void, gazing down upon me with cold, indifferent hunger. And as I stared into its depths, I knew with a sickening certainty that it had already devoured countless worlds before it came for ours. I stumbled backward, choking on the bile that rose in my throat. My family—they were gone. Swallowed by the darkness, consumed before I had even known it. The eye had already taken them, just as it would take me. There was no escape. The slithering returned, louder now, more urgent, as though the thing in the storm sensed my growing terror. The walls of the house groaned and buckled, the ceiling cracking under the weight of the unseen force pressing down upon it. I screamed, but the sound was swallowed by the void, lost in the vastness of the entity that hung in the sky above me. The shapes coiled tighter around the house, pressing against the windows, the doors, seeking entry. My thoughts unraveled, fraying at the edges as madness crept in. The eye was all that remained—the void, the devourer. It had consumed my world, my family, and now it would take me. But not before it let me drown in the horror of what I had brought upon myself. I felt my mind snap, splintering under the weight of the knowledge that had been forced upon me. The last remnants of my sanity were torn away, devoured by the blackness that pressed in on all sides. I was alone, utterly alone, in the presence of a thing older than time itself. And it had seen me. The walls collapsed around me, the roof caving in as the void descended. I screamed, clawing at my own face, but it was too late. The darkness took me, and with it, the world.  |
