We Five (44 page)

The wind was wailing now. The wind had begun to sound angry and human.

Ruth groaned. “I don't think real tornadoes ever do that, Molly. I believe they're much more violent than that.”

“Holy shit, this looks bad, Lyle!” cried Jane from the backseat. She was bent all the way forward now, her fingers curled around Lyle's headrest. “Just pull off
anywhere
.”

“I think that's a farm up there. Doesn't that look like a barn?”

“Whatever it is, it's got to be a lot better than this death-trap-on-wheels we're sitting in right now.”

“I think one of the tornadoes in
Twister
was tossing around tanker trucks like they were Tinkertoys,” said Molly.

“That was an F-5,” said Ruth. “F-5s are very rare, as I understand it.” Then to Maggie: “Molly needs to shut the fuck up, okay?”

“What number tornado is
this
one?” asked Carrie nervously.

“What makes you think we're in the middle of a tornado?” asked Maggie.

“Because my ears just popped and I can hardly hear myself think.”

“Do you hear a freight train?” asked Jane. “They say approaching tornadoes make a sound just like a freight train.”

Carrie shook her head. “No. It just sounds like wind.”

“Then we're probably all right for the moment,” offered Maggie.

Lyle squinted through the windshield. “That gate looks locked.”

“Well, we weren't gonna stay in the car anyway,” said Jane. “Let's just get out and climb that fence and go inside that barn.”

“In the rain?” asked Molly.

Ruth snorted. “Molly, you need to get out of the car. Everybody out of the car. Anybody who objects is gonna get knocked unconscious and thrown over that fence like a hay bale.”

Molly said in her poutiest voice, “Would you please stop being such a meanie?”

“It's tough love, baby. Back me up, Jane.”

“One hundred percent. Everybody move your asses,” said Jane. “Carrie, baby-honey, that umbrella isn't gonna do you much good. It'll just carry you away like Mary Poppins.”

“I'm scared,” said Carrie.

“I'm right here,” said Lyle, squeezing her hand.

We Six spilled out of the Duster-Twister and onto the shoulder of the state highway and then trudged, heads down, into the driving wind and the driving rain toward the old barn, which sat at some distance from a small darkened farm shack whose electricity had already gone out.

Molly tried to remember what happened to Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton when they fled into a barn at the end of the tornado movie. She couldn't quite recall, and then in an instant she
did
recall and a great chill went down her spine, even though she had thoroughly tranquilized herself.

Ruth and Carrie were going to America. It had been decided that each would create new lives for themselves on the other side of the Atlantic pond. This made perfect sense, given their present situations. Ruth knew not a soul upon the earth to whom she was connected by blood, and with the exception of her absent and itinerate father, Carrie could make the same claim for herself. And who was to say that Ruth and Carrie's long friendship didn't create a bond which surpassed in steadfastness and affinity that of familial attachment? For has it not been stated time and again (in this story most markedly) that the link which joins female friends may be most sisterly in its strength and complexion?

The plan was made. And then the plan was altered in the best way possible when Lyle Higgins confessed upon the heels of its disclosure that he must be with the woman who had captured his heart, whither she might wish to go.

Would Ruth have it?

Yes, Ruth would have it.

And how would the three of them take themselves from the Isle of Anglesey in Wales to New York City? They would stop in the cottage by the sea for a few weeks and then make their way down to Cardiff, because leaving Great Britain from Southampton could pose difficulties for Higgins, especially if at the time of their sailing he was still being sought for the murder of Tom Catts.

It was a practicable plan, although it first required transportation to Liverpool and then transit through northern Wales. It was decided that they should take the horse and waggon Lyle used for his deliveries, with Lyle safely concealed in the back—that is, until they passed into Wales, where his anonymity would afford safe passage even with him situated upon the driver's box with reins in hand. As for Maggie and Molly and Carrie, they would go by hired carriage, which would be secured in Liverpool.

And where would all six spend those final hours before departure? The women would stop in the emporium and Jane's brother would drowse beneath the hay of the small area stable behind the shop.

Yet Lyle Higgins did not drowse that night, nor, in fact, did any of the others.

At first, thoughts of their impending journey kept each of the travellers from drifting into untroubled slumber. Then later, in the small hours of the night, there came something of a much more compelling nature to rob them of their needed rest—something of such grave importance and consequence that all thoughts of the morning journey were superseded.

It began with cries and shouts in the lane of sudden advent and without explanation. Jane looked out the front window of the family shop and saw that the street was glowing, as if from the light of a great many torches or lanterns, and there was a hazy cast to the luminosity, which made the picture seem not real at all.

Jane stepped out the front door and looked up at the sky. To her great surprise what she saw above the rooftops and treetops was a magnificent display of northern lights—brilliant unfurled curtains and squiggles and swirls of red and green and yellow and purple, the auroras glowing and shimmering with dazzling brilliance. It was the sky itself that lighted the street, and the light that shone down seemed to be growing brighter and brighter as if daylight were coming in accelerated prematurity. There were townspeople wandering about, many of them still dressed in their nightshirts and sleeping gowns, some in bare feet. They had emerged from their homes, just as had Jane, and were staring skyward in rapt wonderment, some clearly delighted and enchanted by the beauty to be found in this unexpected empyreal presentation. Yet others wore looks upon their faces that betrayed a quizzical pondering over what should be the reason behind it all.

Jane was soon joined by her sisters, whose faces were gleaming and radiant in the multihued illumination. “It's so
beautiful
!” Carrie whispered in a reverent, awestruck tone, as if the phenomenon had been handed down by God Himself for the pleasure of His terrestrial children.

But Molly wasn't smiling. She countered with a violent shake of the head and said in a low, fearful voice, “It is exactly what she
said
would happen.”

“Who? What?” asked Ruth.

“My cousin Jemma. This is how Jemma said it would begin.”

“How
what
would begin?” pursued Ruth.

“I cannot even put words to it.”

The shouts and screams that had punctured the night had not suspended, but instead were now increasing in volume and intensity. These were not cries of awe and wonder. There was a more fearful, even sinister, tenor to them.

For there were those in the town of Tulleford who took the celestial array as an evil omen and expressed their horror at the tops of their lungs.

Ruth shifted uncomfortably from one leg to the other. “I'm going to ask Mr. Prowse what
he
thinks this is,” she announced. She looked down at the nightgown she was wearing. “First, I'm going to get myself dressed. I suggest you all do the same.”

“Mr. Prowse will tell you the same as me,” said Molly, up-gazing apprehensively. “Because he was there the day Jemma made her prediction for all the town to hear.”

Maggie took Molly by the arm. She addressed her sisters on Molly's behalf. “She's still asleep, you see. Molly has yet to waken from whatever nightmare still possesses her.”

Molly turned to look directly at Maggie, the dread evinced upon her face holding fast. “Maggie, you must come with me to see Jemma. I wager she'll have much more to say about this.”

“I'll take you to your aunt and uncle's house, Molly,” returned Maggie, “but only to disabuse you of this ridiculous notion that what fills the sky has aught whatsoever to do with Jemma's foolish notions.”

We Five went inside as others who lived in the lane continued to move about without seeming to know just what to do. Was one to stand and enjoy the incredible beauty of a sky filled with glimmering auroral colour, as if the display were some grand pageant to be attended and applauded? Or was there some
other
purpose to what was happening in the sky—some purpose requiring serious immediate action or
re
action of some sort?

No one knew anything. Except that on the other side of town there were people screaming, people shouting, and they would not desist.

The night, as it was becoming quite evident, was fast unraveling.

Ruth and Jane dressed quickly and then were off and away to the Prowses' house, which was affixed to the back of Reginald Prowse's telegraphy office. Carrie slipped into a loose frock and rushed out to the stable to inform Lyle—should he not yet know—what was happening in the sky. Molly and Maggie were the last to finish dressing, for Molly's hands were trembling and she could not button herself and lace her stays without assistance. Finally, in a great hurry and flutter of spirits, the two set off for the Spaldings' cottage at the other end of town, Maggie attempting to calm a greatly agitated Molly all the while and to assuage her fear by continuing to aver that the unusual display of auroras was nothing but a harmless astronomical anomaly, for consider how often the Scandinavians witnessed such exhibitions from their Hyperborean precincts and thought nothing of it.

Molly nodded.

“I know this to be true,” she said groggily. “I know that San Francisco rattles and shakes as its wont, but it still woke me.”

“And now you've woken
me
,” moaned Maggie in nearly inarticulate protest. “So do us both the favor of going back to sleep.” Maggie rolled over upon the sleeping mat she shared with Molly on the floor of the little Chinese room.

But Maggie had scarcely gotten the words out of her mouth when the foreshock which was its preamble gave way to the great quake itself. The room shook with terrific violence, the crockery and glassware on the room's sideboard falling and shattering upon the floor, the walls shifting and juddering up and down and from side to side as if rattled by a giant hand.

In the next room Ruth and Jane tried to pick themselves up from the floor and could not. Nor could they even see one another through the thick cloud of atomized plaster dust, as strips and chunks and pellets of white plaster began to drop from the shuddering ceiling.

The same was occurring in the next room over, as Carrie, who had been sleeping alone, screamed out in terror, and Lyle, who was in the room on the other side, heard her even above the din and rose to his feet, only to be knocked back down again, and then was forced to crawl like a baby toward the door.

Now the walls and ceilings began to open up, to tear themselves into discrete planks and studs and beams, which snapped and cracked and fell this way and that, and one large beam came crashing down upon Lyle, pinning him flat to the floor, the boards beneath him continuing to undulate like the waves of an angry sea.

And all was a riot of noise from the tremendous quaking, and things throughout the tea house were crackling and fracturing into myriad pieces. And there was a thunderous rumble underneath it all that told the ear what the body could already feel and the eye could already see.

Molly tugged at the closed door that had wedged itself into its frame and she could not open it. Conversely, Ruth and Jane's door flung itself open on its own and, in fact, unhinged itself entirely from its frame, ripping through the drapery hanging in front of it. Through the cloud of dust the two could see the large copper gasolier in the dining room swinging wildly back and forth like a mad pendulum, while beneath it a wooden Buddha rolled its roly-poly self across the rippling, heaving, snapping floorboards like a performing Chinese tumbler.

In her own little cell, Carrie covered her mouth and nose with her hand.

But even in that intermediary moment between sleep and wakefulness, she recognized and registered the acrid tang of smoke.

She was the first to smell it. And she was the one to wake and alert her sisters and Jane's brother Lyle to the frightening reality of it, situated as they were upon surplus army cots in the basement storeroom of Sister Lydia's new tabernacle.

Quickly did they all wake and just as quickly did they spring to their feet. It was Lyle who stated the obvious: “The building's on fire. We have to get out.”

There was a little window in one corner of the room, but it was too high and seemed far too small for even Molly, the most petite of the six, to squeeze through it.

Jane was at the door now and pulling it open, only to be knocked backward upon her heels by a blast of smoke from the outside corridor. All began coughing and choking, each struggling for breath as the room became quickly filled with a thick fog of particulates and soot and ash. Each knew that survival meant leaving this room, for closing the door would only postpone the unthinkable. And so into the smoke they went, hands and handkerchiefs and pillowcases covering gasping mouths, each with one hand left free to grab the hand of another. Heads tucked and eyes half-closed, the six shouldered their way into the darkness—commending themselves into the waiting arms of either death or salvation, their fate dependent on how extensive had spread the electrical fire which only a few minutes earlier had been but a tiny spark, though now was something large and menacing and ravenous for the very oxygen We Six required to execute their escape.