Lingering memories
Frank's breath caught in his throat when he realised what his brother was about to do. Out of all the crazy, impulsive things Joe had done in his life, this was about to take the cake. He tightened his hold on his brother's shoulder in warning. He was fully prepared to tackle him to the ground and keep him there if needed, and as squashed as they were inside the tiny shelter, it wouldn't even be that difficult.
But then Joe turned around and pinned him with a determined look. His blue eyes were brighter than usual and Frank felt as if he were being gazed upon by something ancient through his brother's eyes, leaving him utterly disconcerted and a little afraid.
Frank was torn. The thing inside the barn that had them trapped, defied the laws of physics and nature. His brother was about to run headfirst into the damn thing and against all of his ingrained instincts, some bizarre inner sense was compelling him to trust his brother and let him go.
"Frank please," Joe implored. "Stay back, I'll be fine." With that, Joe pushed himself out into the blizzard before Frank could stop him.
"Hey," Chet exclaimed, peering over Frank's shoulder. "What is he doing?"
"I don't know," Frank muttered, watching as Joe ducked, rolled and crawled against the whirlwind towards the middle of the barn.
By some miracle, he managed to avoid getting hit by any of the larger-sized rubble that was swirling around as if they weighed nothing. Frank let out a relieved sigh when Joe finally rolled into the middle of the barn, where the eye of the storm protected him from the continuous assault.
He could barely see Joe through the screen of rapidly revolving wind and the flying debris, but he thought that his brother was waiting for something, as he stayed still in a crouch, intently watching something caught in the twister. Then after some time, he extended his arm in a quick move, letting his hand cut through the vortex.
He caught a glimpse of something dark and slippery wriggling among the flying debris the moment Joe made contact, something so weird and life-like that he wasn't even sure that he had seen something. Then Joe screamed and he was on his feet and running towards his brother, heedless of the suddenly dead twister and the debris falling all around them.
Frank caught him before his head hit the ground. He quickly checked his pulse and was relieved to find it strong and only a little elevated, which told him that Joe was only knocked out. His brother was cold to the touch and Frank could feel him shivering as he held him.
His left hand was another matter though. Frank cursed as he lifted it off the damp floor gently and realised that it was the hand Joe had stuck into the twister earlier. As he held it up to inspect the damage, he could see the raw, reddened abrasions all over his palm and forearm, some even reaching past his inner elbow. Some of the cuts were bleeding and there were strange blackened vein-like lacerations along each and every cut and abrasion, making his hand and forearm look like something out of a horror movie.
"Come on, kiddo, wake up," he muttered, softly tapping his unresponsive brother's face. Nothing happened.
"Frank, is he alright?" Chet asked, dropping to his knees on the floor next to Frank and Joe. Then he saw Joe's hand and inhaled loudly in alarm. "Whoa! what's wrong with his hand?"
Frank was trying to figure out the same thing. The wound was most definitely not normal and Joe wasn't showing any signs of coming around. Just as he was about to suggest taking him to the hospital, an even stranger thing happened.
"What the hell?" He gasped when the black lines all over Joe's hand and arm started to disappear suddenly. As he watched in utter disbelief, all the poison-like veins pooled into the middle of Joe's palm and dissolved, leaning only the cold, pink flesh behind. The cuts stopped bleeding and the damaged skin sort of stitched back together before his eyes, leaving an undamaged hand in his hold in mere seconds.
Frank looked up and saw his own disbelief mirrored on both Chet's and his dad's faces.
"Tell me I didn't just hallucinate that."
"If you mean the unbelievable sight of Joe's hand healing itself–" Chet muttered, blinking at Joe's hand wearily. "Nope. We saw that."
"Boys," Chet's dad grunted, nodding at the severely damaged barn. "We need to get out before the barn collapses so we can figure out all the crazy things we just lived through later."
To punctuate his point, the walls that were still standing around them groaned ominously, and the roof gave a creaking sound, as the wooden planks and the roof tiles made rattling sounds, caught in the wind from outside. The barn door, which was now open, banged a few times against the pile of broken pallets and other ruins collected in a pile next to it as if urging them to get out while they could.
…...
Joe started to stir the moment Mrs Morton brought a tray of coffee and hot chocolate to the living room. He was lying on the sofa and Frank sat on the armrest near his head, watching his brother. Chet was on the couch closer to him and Mrs Morton settled next to her husband on the other sofa after placing the tray laden with beverages on the table in the middle.
"Hey, Joe," Frank called softly, carding a hand through Joe's hair. "Come on, kiddo, wake up."
His brother opened his eyes after a moment and blinked, focusing on Frank with a tired sigh. "What happened?"
"You crawled through the freak storm and stuck a hand in it," Chet jumped in before Frank could say anything, startling Joe. "Then the entire thing just vanished and then the barn collapsed after we got you out."
Joe sat straight on the sofa and turned a panicked gaze towards Frank.
"Pretty much what he said," Frank said. "Then your hand kind of healed itself."
"My hand," Joe muttered, examining the hand in question. There were absolutely no marks of the damages left after the unbelievable phenomenon they had all noticed. Then again, the day had been full of them, Frank reflected quietly as Joe continued to stare at his hand with a frown.
Then the rest of what Frank said, registered.
"Wait! What?"
"It was kinda creepy," Chet interjected, nodding. "We all saw it. Your hand was all black and full of bleeding cuts before it healed."
Joe gave one last look at his now completely undamaged hand and grabbed a coffee and a hot chocolate from the table. He passed the coffee to Frank and pinned their friend with an inquiring look.
"You mean creepier than freak storms that come out of nowhere to kill people and flatten buildings?" he asked dryly.
"That's not the only weird thing that's been happening around here lately," Mr Morton said quietly, exchanging a glance with his wife. "Although today's incidents were the strangest I've ever experienced in my life."
"Incidents like what?" Frank asked, settling on the side next to Joe comfortably now that his brother wasn't hogging the entire length of it.
"It started about two days after Iola's funeral," Chet mumbled, fixing his gaze on a spot on the floor, avoiding looking at any of them. It was apparent that his lighthearted, fun-loving nature had dulled due to the loss they suffered. "There were only sounds at first, you know," he said, shrugging. "I could hear things moving around in her room, a chair being pulled, door banging closed, mugs falling off the table–"
Chet's room was upstairs facing Iolas' on the opposite side of the narrow corridor. So it made sense that he could hear the sounds from her room due to the close proximity.
"We found nothing amiss when we checked, of course," Mrs Morton said just as softly. "We thought it was just the wind at first, that maybe we had forgotten to close the windows in her room or something," she then looked at her husband and placed her hand in his, reaching for quiet comfort before continuing, "but then David and I also started seeing and hearing things…"
"I woke up one day thinking I heard her crying," Mr Morton picked up as his wife trailed off. "Chet said he heard her calling out, and Mary saw her in the kitchen, by the phone. I was getting to a point where we just couldn't ignore it anymore."
Frank looked at Joe, who had gone pale and quiet. His mind was full of perplexing possibilities. And he already knew that without a doubt the freak storm had been the reason for Joe's sudden demand for visiting Chet earlier. He wondered whether Joe's strange dreams had anything to do with the inexplicable incidents that had been happening at the Mortons.
"Um," Joe said after a moment of silence. "I don't even know what to say–"
"We thought it was the grief, you know," Mrs Morton murmured. "We're all still in shock over what happened, it's very hard to believe our sweet little girl is gone. Honestly, we thought we were just making things out of nothing, seeing and hearing her because we wanted to, not because she's really here–"
"Then the things got worse," Chet added with a sigh and slumped in on himself. "Things actually started to break, in her room and everywhere else in the house."
"Yeah," said Mr Morton. "We wake up in the morning and the place would look like a hurricane passed over, broken glasses, plates, overturned chairs, tables… It just got very hard to ignore after a couple of days."
"Did you do anything about it?" Frank asked.
"We spoke to Father Hendriks last Sunday when we went to church," Mr Morton said. "He visited only two days ago, and he blessed the entire house with holy water. He advised us to move her things to the attic just to be safe,"
"He wasn't very forthcoming," Chet said. "But he said something about feeling a presence–"
"You mean a haunting?"
"That's what he implied," Chet said, answering Frank's soft murmur. "After everything that's been happening, and what we just saw in the barn, that's the only fitting explanation, no matter how impossible."
"Is there anything you can do?" Frank asked. He was concerned for the safety of his friend's family. The picture they painted sounded very unpredictable and therefore, quite dangerous. "Everything you just told us, it doesn't sound safe."
"It wasn't Iola…" Joe muttered quietly, his unseeing gaze fixed on his now empty mug.
"Joe," Mrs Morton said, her tone laced with sadness. "Son–"
"I'm not trying to deny that you have a very serious and dangerous problem, Mrs Morton," Joe cut her off, looking up. "But I don't think it's Iola's presence that's causing all this horror."
They all exchanged glances, possibly surprised at how confident he sounded.
"Then what else could it be?" Chet asked.
"I don't know." Joe averted his eyes.
Frank had a feeling that his brother knew a whole lot more than he was actually saying. He also knew he had to wait until they got home to get Joe to talk to him properly.