Under a Stormy Sky

There was no evidence that the storm would cease so early and home was just a few miles away. The road was completely desert and there wouldn't be any problems, I thought. But I was wrong in both cases.

In a moment, there was just the road, the rain, and the darkness. And suddenly she was there: a young woman, dressed in a white evening gown, arms stretched forward, a scared expression taking her face as I drove toward her. Idly I stepped on the brakes, as I desperately swerved to the right. A scream was muffled by a thunder, and I couldn't tell if it had been Sally or the girl on the road. I didn't know if I had manage to dodge, as my maneuver had put me off-road and I was trying to recover control of the car, which was dangerously sliding on the mud. It was as if an invisible hand was pushing it into a lethal route. The following scream, I knew it had come from Sally. And I heard my own when hers was abruptly interrupted by a tremendous shock. Then, quick as it had started, it finished. The entire thing had happened in a few seconds.

It was dark. Darker than before. Lights had gone. The rain fustigated my face through the broken glass. On my right, a bloody arm stood motionless, out of a mess of deformed metal. I searched for life signs. Nothing. I held her hand and felt my tears mixing with the rain.

A lightning outlined the huge shadow of her assassin. It was there, standing before us, imposing, merciless, laughing at my pain. During a long minute, I stared at the old oak tree. I could swear it looked back at me in a derisive manner.

A lightning gleamed again. I saw an old wooden house in the distance and, I was not sure, someone running among the trees. Fortunately, the next lightning came soon. For a brief moment, I saw her again. It was she! It was the girl who had caused the tragedy. I felt my wrath building up and plucked away the seat belt. With some effort, I opened the door and went out. My eyes searched for her. I couldn't find her in the dark, and waited for a new lightning. That time, she looked back and I thought she had seen me. But she turned around again and I still could see her passing the gateway of the old house. I followed her. Confusing thoughts ran across my mind while I made my way through the woods. Could I really blame her for the accident? She was probably as disturbed as I.

Soon I passed between the swinging gates and reached the doorsteps. I hesitated, not knowing exactly why. I had a strange feeling about the house. I wanted to run back to the car and was about to do it, but... there was the girl. I was curious. No, it was more than curiosity. I had to meet her. I needed to talk to her.

I tried the door knob. The door slid open. My disturbing sensation about the house grew up, as if a wave of evil had hit me. The frequency of lightnings had suddenly increased, as if they were being commanded by some supernatural entity to illuminate the large living room.

The girl was there, sitting on a dusty sofa, hiding the face in her hands. As I entered, she let the hands loosely descend and raised deep-blue eyes to me. Slowly I closed the door. Through the windows, coming from different directions and distances, the lightnings persisted on their ever-changing play with shadows. On the girl's face I didn't see surprise, fear, grief or anything. I walked to an armchair in front of her. We looked at each other and she waited for me to talk.

"What were you doing out there, in the storm?", I asked, after some anguished seconds.

"Trying to get a lift", she said, with a light, timid smile, lowering her head.

I waited for a while, but, as she didn't say anything else, I said:

"You are dressed for a party..."

"Yes", she confirmed, looking at me through the wet hair. "But it looks like he found someone more interesting than me at the party. I took the car and all I wanted was to be far away from him and all those hypocritical people. And guess what! I ran out of gas in the middle of the storm."

She sighed, and started: "How about you, Mr. ...?"

"Barker", I completed. "Stephen Barker."

She stretched me a hand, which I accepted with certain hesitation.

"Jennifer Livingstone. Call me Jenny. Can I call you Stephen?"

She was behaving as if nothing had happened. I could not retribute her smile and said, a little irritated:

"Sally is dead. My girlfriend is dead. Can you understand this?"

She seemed to understand. Her face changed to an expression of surprise and sorrow.

"I didn't know...", she said, between trembling lips. "So, it was you, on the road. The crash! I caused it. I... I killed her."

The last sentence was little more than a whisper. Her eyes moistened, as she repeated: "I killed her."

Feeling bad, I went to sit beside her, on the sofa. Smoothly holding her shoulders, I said, embarrassed:

"No. Don't blame yourself. It was an accident. You..."

She let her head fall against my chest and started to cry. I embraced her and she was gradually getting calmer. Her delicate skin, the blond hair falling between my fingers, her warm body against mine, made me feel something I should not. Ashamed, I pushed her away and walked to the large windows.

"Did you love her?", asked Jennifer, after some silent minutes, standing behind me.

"She was so sweet", I said, my eyes still lost in the rain outside. "So... happy. If I hadn't..."

"It was an accident", Jennifer interrupted me. "You said it, remember?"

I turned around to face her. She looked at me with seductive eyes. I feared she had noticed what she was causing inside me. I fought against that feeling, but it persisted. It was more than a strong attraction. It was something I had never felt before and almost could not control. That frightened me.

She broke the silence:

"It's cold here. We're likely to get a pneumonia with these wet clothes."

I didn't really know if there was some other intention underneath those words. I took a look at the fireplace, which had some wood. Although I had quit smoking for over a year then, I still kept my silver lighter with me. However, the wood was humid, and all my attempts failed.

Jennifer had already dropped her long gloves and from her smile I deduced that she had noticed my anxiety. Sally came to my mind as punishing image. There was a tremendous thunder, which shook the glasses of the windows and frightened Jennifer, who gave a step back and looked around with a scared face. I had to smile.

"Don't laugh at me!", she said, also smiling, throwing a cushion at me. Then, serious, she stated: "This house... It scares me."

"I think no one has lived here for decades", I said.

"Yes, I think so", she agreed, her eyes inspecting the ceiling. "But I don't like this place."

I knew what she was talking about. I felt a strong desire of running away immediately, but reason prevailed. The storm was growing even stronger.

"Perhaps we should rest", I suggested. "It's going to be a long night. There must be bedrooms upstairs."

Just after having said it, I regretted that. Jennifer accepted my suggestion and I felt even more disturbed as we slowly walked over the creaky stairs. She gave me her hand. Like me, I thought, she was certainly engaged in an internal fight to overcome her superstitions.

We reached a corridor and I tried the first door on the right. A large room with a double bed near the window was revealed by a lightning. The cobwebs didn't make me feel good, but I doubted I could find one single corner free of them in the whole house.

"You can stay in this one", I said, using my lighter on a candle nearby, and Jennifer had already entered the room. "I'll be next door."

A new lightning was immediately followed by the roar of a thunder, and she came to me, her arms

compressing my body as tightly as she could.

"No, please", she wept. "Stay with me. I'm afraid."

"All right", I said in a low, soothing voice.

As an unexpected demonstration of gratitude, she hung on my neck and kissed me with fervor. What I felt could not—and did not need to—be described. Nevertheless, in the moment her lips left mine, I was assaulted by the terrible image of Sally lying in the car, bloody, motionless... Jennifer seemed to notice it.

"Didn't you like it?", she asked, between surprise and disappointment.

"Jenny, we can't...", I started, and she seemed to understand.

"You didn't answer: did you love her?"

"That doesn't make any difference."

"You loved her?"

"We were together one hour ago. I simply can't..."

" ' Loved her?"

"No, but..."

Her arms were still around my neck. I tried to resist, but my conscience, my principles, my willpower, were about to ruin before something much stronger.

"I promised her I would never betray her trust", I said as my last effort.

"She is dead", said Jennifer, low but emphatically.

I didn't know what to think about her. She had looked shocked when I had first told her about Sally, and a moment ago she was crying like a frightened little girl. But she had suddenly become calm, steady, somewhat insensitive.

"We are alive", she continued. "And we belong to each other. We always did. The first moment I saw you, I knew it. We cannot change this."

Her words stayed echoing in my head while she left me for an instant to close the door. She had won, and she knew it. She slowly walked to the bed, sat on it and started fondling the spread. A cloud of dust ascended to the air and made her stop, smiling at her own fault.

I approached and sat beside her, while she turned her back to me, so that I could lower the zipper on her dress. At the same time, totally defeated, I began to kiss her neck. She closed her eyes, moved her head back and a sweet whisper came from her lips: "Love me."

A thunderbolt fell nearby, causing a light tremor on her body. Others followed, with increasing frequency, while our clothes were dropped on the floor.

Some minutes later, when the storm seemed to be in its climax, I had the biggest and most delicious surprise of all my life: Jenny was a virgin.

My hand searched for her naked body throughout the bed, but didn't find it. Slowly I opened my eyes. The storm had passed. The sun was high in the sky and a smooth wind was entering through a chink in the window, whose lock had been broken.

Jennifer wasn't anywhere in the bedroom.

My mind was invaded by the remembrance of that night, while I was getting dressed. It had been marvelous with Jenny, as it had never been. But there was Sally. How could I have done that in the night she had died? Now that a new day was arising, the blame struck me as an unceasing hammer on my head. However, I did not regret anything. After all, there was Jenny. That was macabre. It had been my best night, and the worst, too.

I left the bedroom and walked down the stairs. Jennifer wasn't in the living room either. I was about to walk to the front door when my eyes casually met one of the other doors, half-open. Wasn't it closed last night?

I went to it and halted before the descending stairs. Little light penetrated down there, but I could distinguish some torches on the side walls and something like a table in the center. I called for Jenny while I walked downstairs, but she was not there. The basement, however, was somehow interesting, and I used my lighter to kindle the torches. I started by the left wall. The ambient was being revealed to my eyes. There was a niche on the wall, between the second and third torches. A pile of human skulls filled it up. Some had fallen outside and I almost stepped on them. Carefully I passed by them to the next two torches.

I was impressed by a large painting on the back wall. It showed a strange figure sitting on a golden throne. He had furry legs, with hooves in the place of feet, and huge muscular human torso, a flaming pentacle burning on his naked chest. Eyes of a reptile irradiated evil encrusted in a goat head.

I turned myself to what I had thought to be a table. In fact, it had a sculptured basis with innumerable deformed dwarves holding a long marble slab. Reddish brown stains concentrated on the center of the slab, yet several lines went to the borders and below. My heart began to beat faster, although I knew there was no reason for fear. Terrible as it could have been, whatever had happened in that house belonged to the past. The dust and the webs were there to prove it.

The right wall also had a niche. I kindled two torches more, stopped before it and stretched my arm to reach another torch on its other side. That niche didn't contain any skulls. Instead, there was a single shelf with a large book, and a dagger over it. There was a reddish dried substance on the blade. It was not difficult to imagine what it would be. The wall behind the shelf had a horrible horned face carved on. Its eyes were two blue gems, but I didn't dare catch them.

I removed the dagger and a layer of dust from over the book. Some words had been written on its leather cover, in some old language, using runes. I opened the book and saw, under the tremulous light, a list of names, seven per page, written in red ink.

Ink?

They were written in a Gothic-like calligraphy, but it was still our alphabet. I could read them. Mostly they were common American names—women's names, all of them. I kept on reading, looking for something that I knew could not be there. But after a few pages, I found it. I read it again, and again, many times, my heart then in a crazy beat, while my rational mind attempted to convince the rest of my being that it was nothing but a stupid coincidence. Idle effort! The name was there. Her name!

I read it once more, listening to my own voice: "Jennifer Livingstone."

With some difficulty, I put my thoughts in order. She had planned everything, from the beginning. She was probably responsible for the "accident" and for Sally's death. If so, Jenny had killed only to obtain something she had never met in her short life, brutally taken in a fiendish ritual: a single night of love.