The Fourth Trumpet Read online

  The sky! The gray-white sky in the east—a sky that should be stained a bright pink with a rising sun—was slowly filling with what looked like black liquid. She didn’t know any other way to describe it. It was as if a giant oil spill was leaking into the sky, staining the white clouds greasy black. Oh, God, what is it?

  This time she didn’t count steps. She cantered most of the way home with a painful stitch in her right side and a heaving chest. Thor kept pace beside her, and that helped. Apparently his loyalty didn’t extend to absentee owners. The dog needed her as much as she needed him.

  Laboring to breathe and snatching quick glances over her shoulder, she urged, “Hurry, Thor. We’ve got to hurry.”

  Halfway across the front yard, Andrea skidded to a stop, then veered left and stumbled toward the garage. The car. What an idiot. She’d get in the car and drive somewhere—anywhere—just as long as it was in the opposite direction of that awful darkness. Swallowing a growing lump in her throat, she yanked open the garage door. She expected to find the cars gone and was actually surprised to see both her aunt’s and her uncle’s cars cold and silent. Behind the garage sat Berry’s dilapidated Chevy truck, which he worked on feverishly every waking moment. Andrea didn’t have her own car. A used Neon was in the works for a graduation present, but she didn’t have it yet.

  Aunt Claire kept a spare key attached to her visor. Andrea opened the Explorer’s unlocked door. Finding the key, she shoved it into the ignition and turned.

  Nothing.

  She turned the key again, this time pressing a little on the gas pedal.

  Still nothing.

  Not a clicking sound or a sputter. The battery was dead.

  For several seconds, she sat there, hands clutching the steering wheel, and staring straight ahead at the row of old license plates hanging on the back wall of the garage. She couldn’t think, felt as devoid of energy as the car. Only a whining and scratching outside the car penetrated her frozen mind. Thor. Upset about something. The darkness. It must be getting closer, and the old dog was apprehensive. Maybe he could sense something far more sinister than she could even dream of.

  “Okay, boy. I hear you, I hear you,” she mumbled as she clambered out of the front seat, shutting the door with an audible bang. At the sound, Thor barked and his ruff stood up. “It’s okay, boy. I’m not going to leave you. We’re going inside where we’ll be safe. The car won’t start, and I have a very bad feeling that none of the others will either. Come on. Let’s go inside where it’s warmer. Wind’s picking up.”

  A nervous glance at the eastern horizon sent a river of cold down her back. Through the grove of trees that her great-grandparents had planted in the early 1900’s as a windbreak, she could see the oil spill growing. The whole sky in the east was now soiled a dark, oily black. It seemed to swell as she watched, mushrooming, spreading, like a white cloth absorbing grape juice…or ink. She reached down and pulled on the dog’s collar. “Come on. I think we’re in for a really big storm. Damn. Probably a tornado.”

  Thor obediently trotted along beside her—so close, in fact, that he tripped her. She pushed him away with one knee and he backed off. On the front porch, she stepped aside to let him into the house first then closed the door. After a moment of hesitation, she shoved the bolt into place. “There. Not that there’s anyone around to break in, or that it’s any great protection, but…well, it makes me feel better.”

  Thor seemed to understand and gave her one staccato bark of approval. With only a glance at the grandfather clock, Andrea hurried into the kitchen with the dog right on her heels. Happy for someone to think about other than herself, she got out a large mixing bowl and filled it with water. She set it in a corner but Thor ignored it.

  “Okay, boy, so you get your water from the creek. That’s fine. I’ll just leave this here in case you want it later.”

  Her stomach rumbled. Rummaging through the cupboards, she found a can of chili and grappled again with the old can opener. This time she avoided nearly cutting off her finger. She emptied the contents into the same saucepan she’d used for the soup, lit the gas burner with a match, then stood over it, spoon poised. Every minute or so she gave it a good stir then watched as the thick stuff struggled to reach a boil. With one eye on the gathering storm outside and the other on the pan, she leaned against the stove to wait.

  “Don’t want to burn it,” she told Thor, who was keeping an eye on her from the rug in front of the sink. “Mmm, smells good, huh? I’m pretty empty since I lost everything earlier, and I’m so cold this’ll feel good going down. Hope it’s spicy enough to make me sweat. Hope I don’t get sick again. Hope I can eat it before the storm comes crashing down. I bet there’s hail.” She knew her sentences were rambling, but she needed to hear a voice—even if only her own.

  When the stuff began to bubble, she turned off the flame, got down a bowl, and dished out spoonfuls of steaming chili. Then she put the pan in the sink and turned on the faucet to fill it with water so it could soak. The faucet made a funny popping sound, sputtered, coughed, then released three explosive spurts of water.

  “What?” Andrea exclaimed in annoyance. Then she remembered. They were on a well. The pump was run by electricity. No electricity, no pump. No pump, no water. “Oh, no. If I don’t have any water, I can’t make it. How will I get water?”

  The same place Thor got his few laps whenever he wanted it, she thought. She’d have to do it the old-fashioned way. She’d have to go down to the creek and bring water back in a bucket. Then she’d have to boil it really, really well so she didn’t get a parasite or something. This was getting worse and worse. She wasn’t a Girl Scout—far from it. “Oh, Berry!” she wailed. “Where are you when I need you? You’d know what to do.”

  With a lump the size of Texas in her chest, Andrea sat down at the kitchen table and ate her chili. She washed it down with a can of orange soda. She didn’t care that it was cold. Her mind was cold. Her heart was cold. Her whole body was cold. She was probably suffering from hypothermia and didn’t even know it. She could topple over in a dead faint and be none the wiser.

  Did it even matter?

  She must’ve gone into a trance or maybe even fallen asleep right there in the chair because all of a sudden Thor nudged her thigh with his big nose. It did the trick. She sat up, blinked, then looked down at the dog and sighed. “Thank you, you big old teddy bear. I better move around before I really go under. Here, you can eat the rest. I hope chili agrees with you.”

  She set the bowl on the floor and the big dog lapped up the remains in two hungry slurps of his long tongue. “I guess I’d better look around for stuff that you can eat. Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you get something.” She pushed back her chair and stood. “Let’s make a roaring fire in the fireplace, okay?”

  Uncle Mike always kept the large wood box filled with split logs. On the other side of the fireplace sat a huge iron kettle overflowing with kindling and pine cones to help start a fire. Andrea had never laid a fire before in her life. She’d watched her uncle and cousin do it, though wasn’t sure she remembered how.

  She knew there had to be air or a draft or something so the flames could “breathe” but that was about the extent of her knowledge. She lifted the lid on the wood chest and took out three one-foot logs. She laid them inside the fireplace and stuck some dry pine cones in the cracks. Next, she wadded some newspaper and shoved that in, too. She struck a match and brought the tiny orange and yellow flame to the edge of the paper. It caught. She leaned forward and blew on the little flames licking at the paper and neighboring pine cones. In a couple minutes, she had a fire.

  “I did it. I did it,” she breathed.

  Thor circled the thick braided rug that Aunt Claire kept in front of the fireplace three times, then lay down. Andrea sat beside him, petting his coarse fur while watching the bright flames dance and quiver. The fire created a warm envelope around her and before long the leaping, dancing flames made her eyes heavy. She rolled over, reache
d up to drag the afghan down from the couch and wrapped it around her shoulders. Then she curled up beside the dog and closed her eyes.

  Somewhere in the peripheral of her consciousness she knew she should be heading to the basement and finding a corner in which to hide from the storm. She’d never experienced a tornado but had certainly heard about them. Her aunt and uncle had countless narrow-escape-stories about funnel clouds and terrible winds. But she didn’t get up, didn’t move from her cozy spot in front of the fire. Thor wasn’t moving either so maybe it was all right.

  She didn’t care. She had already slipped into another kind of darkness.

  FOUR

  “Berry!” Andrea screamed. “Is that you? Because if it is, I’m not laughing.” She stood on tiptoe, hoping to get a glimpse of her obnoxious cousin. He’d been wearing a gray shirt, and she thought she saw something grayish crouching behind a large oak.

  “Berry, you’re not funny. I see you. Leave me alone. I’m not going back and I’m not apologizing.”

  Thoroughly annoyed now, Andrea marched to the oak, prepared to yank her cousin into the open and give him a piece of her mind. Before she’d taken half a dozen steps, she skidded to a stop and stared.

  The blood drained from her head and a swarm of tiny black dots filled her peripheral vision.

  * * * *

  A warm, wet tongue startled Andrea into wakefulness. Opening her eyes, she stared into the soulful brown eyes of Thor, hunched over her, sending anxious licks to her face in rapid succession. Pushing him away, she sat up and gazed around the dark room in confusion. For a second, she didn’t know where she was.

  The fire was nothing but glowing embers and the room was cold. Andrea turned over and pushed with her hands and knees to stand. She reached out to turn on the lamp beside the couch and then remembered. No power. On impulse, she tried anyway. No luck.

  Flashlights and candles were kept in a cardboard box in the pantry, but the pantry was in the kitchen, and that seemed miles away. Thrusting her arms in front of her like a kid playing Blind Man’s Bluff, she shuffled through the darkened living room, past Great Uncle Fred, and into the kitchen. She couldn’t believe how incredibly dark it was. Even in the middle of the night, some light always filtered in. But this? This was more than a normal nighttime darkness, or even a storm-induced darkness. This was the very essence of darkness.

  An end-of-the-world darkness.

  She scuffed her feet along the floor, making her way to a window, where she peered out on a scene that stole her breath away. Pitch-black outside. No moon. No stars. No light whatsoever. It was like nothing she’d ever experienced before.

  “Like being in a subterranean cavern or something,” she murmured. Thor, who’d followed her into the kitchen, whined. She touched the top of his head with her left hand. With her right hand she raked through her own shoulder-length brown hair. “Thor, I don’t know whether you know it or not, but we’re in trouble.” Her eyes looked up at the ceiling. “Oh, Lord, please tell me what’s going on. What’s happening? Is it the end of the world?”

  Andrea continued to stare out at the strange scene being choreographed by sinister hands outside her once benign kitchen window. The yard that’d been the setting for so many family games and picnics was now an alien landscape. The thick cloud covering had lowered—if that were possible—and the absence of light was eerie. Last night’s full moon was long gone. No stars twinkled serenely against a velvet background. The oily, staining darkness was a living, breathing entity. It moved, pulsated, slithered in and out, over and under, like some gigantic serpent.

  Turning at last from her brooding vigil, Andrea made her way into the walk-in pantry and found the box of candles. Grabbing two flashlights, an unopened package of D batteries—the candle box tucked under her chin—she returned to the living room and dropped the load onto the recliner. She opened the box, took out a big, squat candle, set it on the coffee table and lit it. She was amazed at how much light could be coaxed from one candle. Wrapping the afghan around her once again, she flopped in front of the now-cooling fireplace. Not one ember emitted a feeble glow. The fire was dead.

  “Jesus loves me, this I know,” she sang in a childish voice that quivered on the high notes. “’Cause the Bible tells me so.” Not remembering the rest of the words, she hummed the simple tune over and over until her eyelids drooped. She tossed the blanket aside and got more wood out of the wood box. Laying the second fire was easier than the first. She had it roaring in less than a minute.

  “Come on, doggie-boy,” she coaxed Thor. “Come sit closer to me. We’ll get some sleep. Maybe when we wake up, everything will be back to normal, and it’ll have just been a terrible, horrible dream. Right, boy? No more eating half a box of Oreos before bed.”

  Thor wagged his tail and curled up on the hearthrug. Because he appeared content, Andrea was able to lie down and close her eyes. As sleep wove its mysterious net, she started The Lord’s Prayer. She didn’t like God—had given up on him when her father died, but praying was the only thing she could think to do. She was saying ‘deliver us from evil’ when the net caught her in its tangled weave, and she slipped into nothingness.

  FIVE

  Andrea screamed as she fell to her knees, her legs feeling like wet spaghetti. The thing was huge—a monster—bigger than she could have imagined. In her wildest dreams, she wouldn’t have believed an animal could be this big, this horrific. This was not the way she wanted to die. She screamed again…and again.

  “Berry! Uncle Mike! Help me! Oh, God! Someone! Anyone! Help me!”

  * * * *

  Someone was crying. Andrea burrowed deeper into the folds of her blanket and tried to ignore the intrusion into her dream world but it wouldn’t stop. Someone needed help. Lost in her web of sleep, she didn’t know what to do.

  The weeping grew louder. Heart wrenching. The sobbing tore at the soul like cats’ claws tearing a gauzy curtain. Andrea moaned. In her half-sleep, she writhed in discomfort. She wanted to help them, but she didn’t know how. “Who are you? What can I do?” she called out. “What can I give you? How can I help?”

  The wailing stopped.

  Andrea opened her eyes, blinked, and tried to focus. Where was she? Who’d been crying? Was her family back? It was so dark! She couldn’t see anything. Had she gone blind? She raised her hands in front of her face and barely made them out. Beside her, the neighbors’ dog was curled in a tight ball—nose to tail—not moving. She pushed her chilled body against the brute, hungry for any warmth he could spare.

  Then she remembered.

  “Good, doggie,” she whimpered. “Good boy. Don’t leave me, Thor. Please stay with me.”

  Her eyes at last grew accustomed to the impossible blackness. She could make out the humps of furniture, see the burned stub of the candle on the table. You should’ve blown it out before going to sleep she scolded herself. She had to be prudent now. No telling how long this present darkness would last. She needed to practice economy, not be stupid or wasteful.

  “Okay, Thor, first thing we’ve got to do is make better sleeping arrangements. I’m going upstairs and bring down some sleeping bags. Then we’ll see about getting you some proper food. But before I do anything, I really need to use the bathroom.”

  She groped her way to the small restroom in the hall beside the staircase. Finished, she was about to rinse her hands when she remembered their water predicament. Then she thought of the toilet. She’d been able to flush this time, but what about the next…and the next? The tank at the back filled up with water—water brought in by way of the electric pump from their well via all the pipes and things she’d never in her entire life cared about.

  “Okay,” she told Thor as though he were an interested party. “I have to bring in water from the creek. This is going to be a problem.” She made her way back to the living room and shuffled to the big picture window that faced the road. There was no way she’d be able to go outside—at least, not now, not while the evil, coiling,
sinuous blackness filled the yard. As she watched, she swore it breathed. It pulsated, swelled and shrank, swelled and shrank, like the heaving chest of an enormous monster. Was it waiting for its prey? She grabbed a drape in each hand and tugged them closed.

  “Okay…we’ll get the water later. I-I’ll get the sleeping bags now and-and then we’ll decide what to do next. How’s that?” Thor just sniffed.

  Clinging to the banister, Andrea went upstairs. For some reason, this was more frightening than she’d expected. Her once familiar home had taken on a demonic personality. It didn’t know her, didn’t even recognize her. It treated her like a stranger. Memories of being five or six and being left upstairs while Berry ran on down ahead of her, turning off the lights as he fled, naughty giggles echoing after him, flooded over her. She didn’t like the upstairs, or the dark. Oh, God, I hope I never need to go down to the basement…

  Without much thought, she dragged out sleeping bags and blankets from the hall closet and tossed them, one by one, over the railing at the top of the stairs. They landed with dull thuds on the foyer floor below. One bag rolled near the grandfather clock. It was hers. It didn’t matter. She’d use Aunt Claire’s.

  Scanning the area for anything else she might need, Andrea went into her own room and gathered an armful of underwear, long sleeved flannel shirts, some sweaters, and another pair of jeans. Then she hastened down the stairs to the relative comfort of the living room. Thor was occupying himself with a thorough sniffing of the scattered sleeping bags and rumpled blankets.

  “Okay, boy. That’s taken care of. Now I’ll fix you something to eat.” She threw her clothes on one of the recliners and went to the kitchen. After a quick search of the cupboards, she concluded that a return trip to the Martins’ would have to be made, and soon. There just wasn’t anything really suitable for a large German shepherd to eat—especially since she too had to eat, and needed to be prudent about doling out her meager supplies.