At eleven, they finally turned in. I thought about staying up and watching a ballgame from the west coast, but it had been a long day and I wanted to be fresh in the morning. I went and lay on the bed in my old room. The night was quiet. Not the quiet of silence, but the quiet of the country. The buzz of insects. The hoot of an owl in the woods. The distant cries of a coyote and the answering bark of dogs.
Sounds of my childhood comforted me as I slipped into sleep.
Chapter 2
I sat up in a panic. My head felt like it had been dunked under rushing water and I felt as if I had been falling a great distance.
The room wasn’t mine. Lexi wasn’t next to me in the bed. I was at my parent’s house. I took a deep breath as I recognized the room.
I closed my eyes and opened them again. I must have had a nightmare to have woken up that way. I looked around the room and wondered what time it was. There was enough ambient light outside to suggest it was morning, but the color of the light was wrong. The howls of the coyotes and dogs meant it was still late at night, but they were loud. And wrong.
I slipped out of bed as I heard movement in my parent’s room across the hall.
“Davey?”
“I’m up, Dad. What’s wrong?”
The door to my room opened and my dad stuck his head in.
“I don’t know. Look outside.”
I went to the window and lifted the curtain. Bright light poured in. Blue and green light. I squinted and looked up. The entire sky seemed to be on fire with shimmering sheets of light. Curtains of unnatural colors were visible in every direction.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Northern lights,” Dad said. “Saw them occasionally when I was stationed in Maine with the Navy.”
“Yeah,” I said as I twisted my neck to look around the sky. “We get them every once in a while in Chicago. Have to usually drive out a bit to get a really good view. I didn’t think they would get this far south.”
“They don’t,” Dad said. “Never even seen a glimmer of them before. But I doubt they get this way even at the North Pole. Something is wrong.”
I lowered the shade and looked at my dad. His voice had a strain to it, but this one was different than when he worried about mom, or worried about money. This was almost a scared sound.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Listen to those dogs,” he said as he motioned outside. “Them and the coyotes aren’t howling at each other right now. And all the birds are riled up, not just the owls.”
I listened closely and could hear it. All of the local animals were upset.
“Let’s turn on the TV and see what the news is reporting,” I said. I started toward the living room.
“Power’s out,” Dad said. “No lights, no radio, no TV.”
“Let’s see if I can get a signal.”
I went to the side table where I had left my phone. I had set it as an alarm clock, but the screen was off. I tried to turn it on, but it was dead.
“I charged this before I went to bed,” I said.
“Your mom is looking for the flashlight in the kitchen,” Dad said. “Although as bright as it is, don’t think we really need it.”
I sat down and grabbed my jeans from the floor. I had just zipped up when mom came in the room.
“I know these batteries are brand new,” she said. “But it won’t work.”
“Go get some candles, then. We’ll get some light,” Dad told her.
I bent down and started putting on my shoes.
“Where are you going?” Dad asked.
“Out to the car, I can charge my phone out there. I can hit some news sites on the internet and find out what is happening.”
I picked up the keys from the dresser and headed outside.
The night sky was so bright, I felt like I had stepped into a large auditorium. I could see the stars if I looked for them beyond the sheets of color that rippled across the sky. I stood in wonder for a few minutes and just stared at the brilliant show nature was treating us to.
“Hey,” a voice behind me said. “Do you have a charger in your car?”
I turned and saw a teenage girl walking toward me.
“Uh, yeah. I do. I was about to charge my own phone on it. Who are you?”
“I’m Sarah,” she said. She pointed behind her at the Johnson’s house. “I’m staying with my grandparents this weekend.”
“I’m David,” I said. “This is my folk’s house. Let me see if my charger will fit your phone.”
We both had the same brand of phones so it looked like it would work.
“That was something, huh?” she said as I handed her phone back.
“What? The lights?”
“No, the flash. The lights were just there afterward.”
“I was asleep, I guess. Were you awake?”
“Yeah, I was texting a friend. Phone died at the same time as the power went out. Freaky coincidence.”
She was looking for confirmation, and she was scared.
“I guess. What happened?”
“Don’t know. Just a big flash outside, lit up my whole room. I screamed and woke up Grams and Pop-pop. When I settled down, I realized the power was out and my phone was dead. That’s when Felix went nuts and Grams had to let her out.”
“Felix?”
“Their cat. Just started screaming and running everywhere. Guess the flash spooked her.”
“I would imagine.”
“What are those lights in the sky? Is it something the government is doing? It’s kind of cool if so. Gives everybody enough light to see by if there is a power outage.”
I shook my head. “No, those are the aurora borealis, the northern lights. The sky does that when the sun hits the atmosphere a certain way near the North Pole.”
Sarah looked at me with a suspicious look.
“Are we near the North Pole? Isn’t that in, like, near New York or something?” she asked.
I laughed. “No, the North Pole is quite a bit north of New York.”
“Oh, well I’m from Louisiana so everything is north of us.”
“Sarah!”
We both turned to see Rose Johnson calling to her granddaughter.
“I’m here, Grams,” Sarah called. ”This man is going to let me charge my phone.”
Mrs. Johnson walked closer. “Is that David?”
“It is, Mrs. Johnson,” I said. “How are you doing?”
“Well enough I suppose, what with being woken up in the middle of the night with all of this,” she said looking up at the sky. “What are you doing out?”
“My phone died and I have a charger in my car.”
Mrs. Johnson fished out a phone from her tattered robe.
“My phone died, too,” she said. “Do you think you could charge mine?”
“Get in line, Grams,” Sarah said. “I already asked him and he said he would do mine next.”
I smiled and nodded. “Sure, if the charger will fit, I’ll get everyone’s up and going.”
I walked toward the car as I hit the unlock button on my key fob. No click. I tried it again and there was the distinct lack of the sound of my doors unlocking. I tried the handle, but the door was locked. I shook my head and unlocked the door with my key.
“David, are you out here?” Mom called.
“He’s out here, Abbey,” Mrs. Johnson said. “He’s going to help us charge our phones with his car.”
“Be careful, David.”
“I will, Mom,” I said as I slid into the driver’s seat. I wasn’t sure what she thought charging a phone entailed, but I would be careful.
I fished out the phone charger from the glove compartment and slipped the bottle of mom’s pills in my pocket since I saw them. I would just have to make sure I didn’t walk close to the little pick-pocket when I went in the house.
I sat back up and jumped as Sarah had moved over to the car and was staring into the windshield with her face almost against the glass.