Chapter One
Sarah sat on her front porch lazily sipping an iced tea. The glass was slick with condensation and periodically Sarah would hold the glass to her chest for relief from the sweltering heat. It was dusk on an August afternoon and the crickets were singing their choruses of songs. She propped her feet up on the wooden railing.
The sky was a deep cobalt peppered by dark clouds. Thunder rolled in the distance. Sarah closed her eyes. Sweat or condensation rolled down her chest and Sarah let out a contented sigh. The wind kicked up dust from her yard and she opened her eyes to watch the crops in her field sway with the invisible currents. A few moments later, fat and heavy drops of rain fell from the churning sky. Sarah went inside.
Sarah's house, though modest and small, was comely and inviting. Her grandmother's crocheted blanket lay over the couch and her mother's cross-stitching greeted visitors with a "Welcome." On the counter in the kitchen, a crock pot quietly cooked a week's worth of red beans with sausage. Sarah sniffed the aroma that perforated throughout her kitchen. They're almost ready, she thought. Her brother's old television hummed to life in the corner of her living room with a flick of the remote, and the look of concern from the meteorologist from Channel 6 confirmed the nastiness of the storm ahead.
"Looks like we're in for one hell of a storm, Bobcat," Sarah said to the cat sprawled on the rug under her coffee table. Bobcat dozed unaffected.
Later that night, Sarah slept on the couch. She had fallen asleep after dinner. The storm rolled in outside and heavy gusts of wind and rain pounded Sarah's house. A clap of thunder woke Sarah from her slumber. There was another clap followed by the flickering of Sarah's electricity. She fumbled around her living room trying to find a flashlight. She tripped over her cat.
"Move, Bobcat!" Sarah yelled over the din. Bobcat darted from under the table and Sarah rummaged through the small side drawer. Lightening flashed white and hot outside the window, and seconds later Sarah's electricity went out. With no luck in finding a flashlight, Sarah felt her way to the kitchen where she lit a small candle on her breakfast table. The howling of the wind grew ever stronger as the storm raged on.
Suddenly, lightening cracked outside of Sarah's kitchen window so close to her house that a teacup too close to the edge of the counter fell and shattered. The boom of it left Sarah temporarily deaf. She knew Bobcat would not be coming out of hiding now until the storm had passed. Eerily, Sarah's yard remained illuminated. With the no more close flashes of lightening and no electricity, there was no explanation for the effervescent light pulsing from what seemed to be the edge of her field. Too scared of the storm, Sarah decided not to venture out to observe it. People die in storms like these, Sarah thought.
Unable to sleep, Sarah sat at her kitchen table gazing at the small flickering flame of her candle. An uneasy chill took hold of Sarah and she kept thinking of the light seemingly coming from her yard. Outside, the storm mellowed and subsided to a disgruntled growl. The sheets of rain thinned to a glistening web consistency. Sarah got up from the table to look out at her fields through the window. The light that was once in her yard was gone. Instead, in the distance, Sarah saw something much more startling.
Through the soft reoccurrences of lightening in the farther off, Sarah thought she could make out the form of a man lying on the ground. Around his form, the earth had moved to surround him as if he had fallen from the sky. With a sudden resolve and a dangerous curiosity, Sarah grabbed her shotgun off of her gun rack and decided to investigate.