As Grey ran he heard human voices screaming, too. Rising to match the wind.
They came from inside houses. They came from behind closed doors and windows. And they came from the mouths of Thomas Looks Away, Jenny Pearl, Brother Joe.
And from his own mouth.
Jenny grabbed his sodden sleeve and jerked him sideways toward a rain-spattered porch. They raced up the three wooden steps and across the porch. Jenny fumbled in her skirt pocket for a key, stabbed it into the lock, turned it, shouldered the door open, and fell inward, dragging Grey with her. Brother Joe came through next, stumble-running from a push, and finally Looks Away staggered in. The Sioux slammed the door and began slapping at his skin, trying to swat away the stinging rainwater as if it were filled with biting gnats.
Jenny pushed past him and tore a curtain down. “Use this!”
They each grabbed a corner of the frilly yellow curtain and frantically dabbed and blotted themselves.
“It burns,” cried Brother Joe. “God, it burns.”
“Out of those clothes,” ordered Grey. “Now.”
Brother Joe, despite his pain, cast an appalled look toward Jenny, but the woman brusquely waved him off and began unbuttoning her blouse. Grey half tore his shirt getting it off. He yanked off his boots and shoved down his jeans. Looks away was already down to britches and Brother Joe pulled off his robe to reveal a thin and many times patched pair of what looked like woman’s cast-off bloomers.
All three of the men turned their backs on Jenny Pearl and she stepped out of her dress. Grey had a lingering afterimage of her in layers of white, and a bodice with a plunging neckline. There was another tearing sound and he half turned to see her rip down a second curtain and begin winding it around her slim body.
Thunder boomed and outside branches snapped from the oak tree on the lawn. Flying sticks hammered the front of the house.
“Stay away from the windows,” warned Grey.
“Looksie,” said Jenny, “the shutters.”
“Shite,” groaned the Sioux, but he ran to the closest window and opened it. Wincing into the spray, he snagged the pulls of the heavy wooden shutters and slammed them closed. Grey did the same with the window on the other side of the door as Brother Joe and Jenny ran to repeat this with the windows upstairs. By the time they were done, Grey and Looks Away had the rear and side windows shuttered. It darkened the house, but it felt far more secure. They grabbed the curtains and rags from the kitchen to mop up the stinging rain.
“Am I burned?” asked Looks Away, probing at his face with nervous fingers.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” said Grey, “but your skin’s red.”
“Hilarious. But it feels blistered.”
“It’s not. How’s mine?”
“The same. There must be something in the rain to cause this, but it doesn’t seem to be causing tissue damage.”
“Hurts like a bitch, though.”
“Yes, it damn well does,” agreed Jenny as she rejoined them. Grey became instantly and acutely aware of how transparent white undergarments could be when soaked with rainwater. He tried his level best to look anywhere but at her, and failed miserably. He felt his face burn even hotter, and that had nothing at all to do with the rain.
Outside the rain intensified. Grey bent and peered through the shutter slats. The rain fell in sheets that seemed to march like platoons of ghosts across the street.
“It’s starting to hail,” said Looks Away, then he stiffened. “Oh… bloody hell!”
“What is it?” asked Jenny, crowding beside him to peer between the slats.
When Brother Joe joined them, he immediately gasped and clutched his crucifix in a white-knuckled fist. “Dear Lord, save us from the horrors of the Pit.”
In silent fear, they stood and watched for long minutes, each of them staring in horror at what was falling with the rain.
Snakes.
And frogs.
Hundreds of them.
Thousands.
The snakes were strange and there were many kinds Grey had never seen. Not desert snakes like sidewinders and rattlesnakes. These were mottled and sinewy, more like sea snakes or eels. And the frogs were tiny and brightly colored. Livid greens and bright blues and shocking yellow. Some of the frogs landed in puddles and hopped away; others struck harder parts of the street that hadn’t yet softened to mud. These exploded into red that was immediately washed away. All of the falling animals steamed, though, as if plucked from boiling pots.
Overhead the lightning flashed with blue madness and it cast the entire street into an alien strangeness.
They could still hear the screams and the deeper bellows of whatever vast things they’d glimpsed inside the storm. Huge, stentorian cries rattled the glass in the frames and shook the timbers of the house.
“What’s happening?” whispered Jenny. “What the hell is this?”
“It’s the end of the world,” whispered Brother Joe. “This is the Beast come to conquer. God, bless us sinners and shelter us with your mercy.”
If Grey expected — or hoped — that Looks Away or Jenny would refute the monk’s words, he was mistaken.
Blue lightning struck a telegraph pole on the far side of the street and it exploded into a swarm of splinters. The wires broke apart and drooped in defeat to the muddy ground. Grey and the others cried out and shrank back as jagged splinters thudded into the mud and rattled against the windows like a hail of arrows. One of the panes cracked but did not break. Even so, Grey spread his arms and pushed Jenny and Brother Joe backward. Looks Away flinched away as another azure bolt hit the stump of the telegraph pole and set it alight. The blue flame burned like a torch despite the heavy rain.
“This is madness,” breathed Grey.
“Madness,” agreed Looks Away.
Outside the storm raged.
It went on and on and on as darkness closed its fingers around the town of Paradise Falls and tightened everything inside a big, black fist.
Chapter Twenty-Six
After a while the lightning and thunder began to ease, but the rain continued to hammer down. The thump of frogs and snakes had dwindled and stopped after the initial cascade. Now it was only rain.
The four of them had long since retreated to the subjective safety of Jenny’s kitchen and sat huddled around the table. As the storm eased, their focus shifted from the wrath of a perverse nature and more toward the others in the room. The men became increasingly aware of their state of undress, while Grey in particular remained distracted by Jenny Pearl’s lack of attire. With disheveled hair and a curtain for modesty she looked like some fairy princess from an old story. Even in the weird blue light of the storm she was beautiful.
It seemed to take her longer, however, to begin feeling self-conscious. She was clearly not overly concerned about modesty. Not that she flaunted herself, that was clear enough. It was just that she seemed to be a practical woman. Very grounded, and Grey admired that as much as her looks.
However she did finally turn away from the windows and pluck at the folds of cloth she’d wrapped around herself. “I’m going to get dressed,” she said. “There’s wood in the kitchen. Looksie, why don’t you make a fire in the stove and set some water to boiling. Once that’s going I’m sure you men can figure out how to dry your clothes. When I’m decent I’ll see about eggs or soup. Maybe a steak, if it hasn’t spoiled. And Brother Joe — you’d better get some hot coffee into you.”