AprilShowers(FTDParish)

The wind rustled the leaves and a light spring rain misted the farm. He could smell the rain in the April breeze as he listened to the night sounds. It was late April, tornado season. Already the local news stations had had warnings, watches and what nots for storms, flash flooding and tornados.

When he was a small boy, his Mum woulda already had them all huddled in the cellar. She had been in a bad storm when she was younger than he was now. Her Poppa had died in that storm when he'd left the storm cellar to check on the livestock. So she'd been obsessed with storms all his ife.

Gramma had quickly followed close behind Poppaw up the cellar steps, Mum's older sisters following close behind them. Gramma telling the smaller children to stay in the cellar til she got back. They had an oil lantern for light and the youngest kids played jacks while the slightly older kids whispered amongst themselves and tended the babies.

Poppaw had died about halfway across the back yard, he lay there still smoldering. It was assumed that he'd been hit by lightening. And that's what the coroner put on the death certificate. But Gramma knew that lightening hadn't struck here. Nothing was smoking or burnt, nothing but him. The sherriff said it had to be lightening, so that's what all the official reports said.

Both Mum's brother's died within the next 4 years.

Matter of fact, he was the only living male left in his Mum's side of the family that he knew of.



Mum had told him stories....stories meant to scare kids on dark nights. Stories about the old ways, in the old days. And that's what he was thinking now as he struggled against the storm.

He wished he didn't have to deal with this right now. Wished his Mum was just batshit crazy and a stay at a home would be enough to remedy the problem....then he immediately felt bad for thinking like that. But the alternative was a real motherfucker. A drink, that's what he needed. A fuckin drink...big one....definately.

The wind whipped his hair and the rain stung his face and arms. The trees were swaying wildly in the heavy wind. Clouds churned overhead. The wind was picking dirt, small debris and leaves off the lawn and whipping them around, making it hard to see.



He didn't remember having draft horses, he had John Deere, but he knew he had to get to the barn and tend to them before they all broke their legs from jumping around in their stalls, scared of the storm.

He suddenly realized he was his Poppaw. He was running as hard as he could, but he wasn't getting anywhere. It was like he was running on a treadmill...... a treadmill in molasses.

That's when he knew it was a dream. It was always like that in dreams. Now he felt better, now that he knew it was just a dream, he wasn't afraid. Sometimes when he knew he was having a dream, he could wake himself up...................

"Ok......this wasn't one of those times", he thought as the weather battered him.

His heart was racing and he couldn't seem to catch his breath. The rain and dirt was still pelting his exposed skin. And no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't wake up, or calm down. He knew it was just a dream....and dreams couldn't hurt you, but he was afraid...very afraid. He knew he shouldn't be afraid for the horses in the barn that he knew he didn't own. But he was. He knew he shouldn't be afraid of the storm, but he was. And he was afraid it was coming.

He didn't know what it was, couldn't remember the name his Mum's people had called it in the old country......but he could remember what the name meant. It translated roughly to the gatherer in the storm.

It was that gatherer that his Mum had told him had killed his Poppaw. Killed him because he had forgotten the old ways, because his children weren't learning the sacred rituals. Anciet ceremonies.

Mum said the old gods were jealous and vengeful. The matriarchal clan societies had made ritualistic sacrifices to appease these wrathful and punitive dieties until their societies had turned patriarchal and sacrifice had been replaced with ceremony.

He slowly made his way across the back yard. He was crying. Crying because of the stinging wind and the dirt in his eyes....and because he was very, very afraid now. Crying beacause he was realizing it wasn't a dream. An oppressive, blanketing fear soaked into his bones and the inevitableness of it all washed over him.

The barn was slipping away into the storm and the darkness gathered in the fields like a tidal wave. His legs were trembling so bad he thought he might fall.

His mind reeled as a patch of air condensed and grew thicker and darker right in front of him. It shimmered, not with light, but with the abscence of light, forming into an amorphous figure of pure maleavolent power. The darkness filled his vision as he sagged to his knees and thought that maybe lightening did kill his Poppaw as he watched the plasmatically electrical display beginning inside the coalescing presense.

His hair stood on end. An euphoric expression adorned his face and visible static electricity roiled over his body as he happily gave himself to the darkness. Just as he made contact with the now solid darkness, the euphoria gave way to an eternal instant of terror in it's basest form. The scream that started in his lungs never made it out of his mouth.

The spring night crackled with electricity for an elongayed moment. The rain stopped, the clouds parted, the wind died down and the light show ended. He lay smoldering in the back yard. The April shower over.

His sisters and his Mum watched from the back porch, hands clasped, murmuring the ancient words and drawing the arcane symbols in the night sky.