21.
Petal
She slowed to a halt as she approached the area that had been indicated on the huge wall map. The drive had been surprisingly easy. In town the going had been slow as she tried to work her way north. Plenty of damaged buildings, trees, and fences were blown down all over the place.
Eventually Petal had given up, taken a hard left, and gone all the way out of town before heading north. As it turned out, the western edges of Surrey had also been lightly hit, and once she left the outskirts themselves, it was almost impossible to tell there had been any storms, besides the sheer wetness of the land. But the roads were mostly clear and she made good time heading north and then back east.
Thank goodness for GPS.
The two sides of the road were quite the contrast in styles. To her left was farmland. Field after field. Occasionally she would pass by a giant complex of silos, warehouses, and parked equipment, but for the most part it had been purely growing fields.
On her right, however, the simplest way to express it was to say “money.” Well-cultivated lawns with sprawling brick houses looking like they were from a previous century. Large majestic oaks lined many of the driveways and statues adorned the gated fences that provided access. Some of the properties were so typical of old money that they couldn’t be seen from the road. Either the fence was too high, or in many cases, there was a literally forest between the road and the property itself.
She’d become distracted, wondering about just how much money there was in Surrey, until she’d come across a single downed tree that blocked the road. She’d had to take the truck down an embankment and back up the other side. The interruption to an otherwise peaceful drive had reminded her of just why she was out there.
“Okay, enough sightseeing. Let’s get this done.” Judging by the GPS she was actually a bit short of the area where the wonky readings had first started coming in. Or not come in. Whatever. She started moving along slowly now, eyes only just flicking back to the road to ensure she wasn’t going to drift. It wasn’t other traffic she was worried about, but sliding off the side of the road. The embankment had gotten steeper compared to behind her where she’d gone around the tree. Now if she went over, there was no way she was getting the truck back on the road without assistance.
Everything looked fine to her inexperienced eye. No poles knocked over, no lines cut and dangling. She paused at each pole to inspect it more carefully before continuing along. Thankfully they only ran on the left side of the road, so she didn’t have to keep moving her neck back and forth.
“Well, this is boring. How does someone do this for a day job?” There was nothing out of the ordinary. No branches on the lines, no poles had fallen, no trees that had taken out the lines. Nothing. Everything was picturesque.
On her right the earth sloped upward suddenly, as a solitary hill appeared out of nowhere. While the land wasn’t as flat as the Western plains, perhaps, it was still quite level compared to the valley that Surrey itself was located in. This hill stood out quite easily from the landscape around her. She followed the lines along the road until they forked at the entrance to it.
Petal frowned. She had thought she’d memorized the map fairly well, but this split in the lines wasn’t something she’d remembered. Unsure of what to do, she called it in, eventually getting through to the tall gentleman who was in charge. Turns out his name was David.
“Miss Olson? This is David speaking.”
“Hi, David. I’m out here on Highway 2. I don’t see anything out of place really. I’ve been driving for twenty minutes or so now. The only thing is that the lines split at the entrance to a place on a hill. It’s the only hill in sight. Do you know what that’s for?”
There was a pause on the other end. She assumed he was checking the map again.
“Oh, you’ve gone quite a ways. That’s the old Wortley Manor. The Wortley family used to own a lot of land around Surrey, but the last daughter died nearly a hundred years ago now. Nobody has lived in the house since. I think it’s just an estate trust that keeps it maintained now or something.”
“So nothing I need to worry about?”
“No, not at all. In fact, you can probably turn around and come back now. If you haven’t seen anything obvious by now, then it’s unlikely that there is. Probably just something with our sensors. After the way they’ve been hammered the past week, I’m not overly surprised.”
“Okay, coming on back.”
There was a long pause from the other end. Petal had expected a simple “goodbye” or “see you soon.” When that didn’t come, she pulled the phone away from her ear and looked at it oddly.
“David?”
The sigh was audible through the phone. “I don’t know if I’m supposed to tell you this or not. But Lex came back. He looked like shit. But when he found out where you were going, he freaked and raced out after you. I dunno. Just thought you should know.”
Petal was pulled over into the empty bit of driveway between the road and the gate that led up to the Wortley place.
“Okay. He didn’t say why? I’m fine. I told myself if I saw even the barest hint of bad weather I was turning around and coming right back to the shop, no matter what. But the skies are clear, David. There’s nothing out here.”
She could all but hear the shrug in his voice. “I don’t know, Miss Olson. I’m just passing it on. It was really weird. He ate like four sandwiches and then tossed another six or so into a bag. Like, a plastic bag. The sandwiches weren’t wrapped. It looked like a sandwich salad in a plastic grocery bag. It was really weird.”
“What the hell?” What had gotten into Lex, she wondered. Ever since they’d landed at the airport he’d been acting all strange. Then as soon as they’d arrived at the shop in his truck he’d disappeared into the forest, promising to be back as soon as he could.
“Sorry, I don’t have anything more for you.”
“It’s fine, David. Just keep it up. You’re doing a fantastic job.”
“Thank you, Director. I should go now.”
“Yep, see you soon.”
She hung up and considered what he’d just told her. Lex had promised to tell her everything as soon as he could. Just what that was, she had exactly zero idea, but somehow she felt it was related to what was going on in Surrey. The reaction when he’d heard there was another storm had been too intense, too worried. Lex knew something, but he wasn’t telling her. It was the only conclusion that made sense.
That irritated her more than she expected. Resting her hands on the steering wheel, she leaned forward and considered why. First and foremost was the fact that he was keeping something from her. She could respect that he didn’t want to tell her everything about him right away. That perhaps he had things that would take some strengthening of the trust between them. No issues there—she had a few skeletons in her own closet as well.
No, it was the fact that there was knowledge that she did not have. Petal was insanely curious about everything. She hated not knowing something. Mysteries needed to be solved, and when it was clear someone else knew but didn’t share, that irked her, simply because she wanted to know.
That still left the question of just why Lex had been so worried about coming out to get her? She looked around, eyes to the sky. Was he aware of another storm that was heading their way? Could she be in the path of it? After all, much of Surrey had already been hit, but the entire north part of town, including where she was now, had gotten off lightly. Did that mean Lex was scared it could be next? Had Petal just gone and done something stupid that she might live through?
“Of course not, you idiot. These are just freak weather storms. They aren’t bloody guided attacks. It’s like this all over the country. Hurricanes in the southeast, tornadoes in the midwest, torrential downpours everywhere. The signs have been there all year long. It’s just now happening in Surrey as well. Stop being silly.”
A gust of wind rushed across the farmer’s field across from her. It wasn’t strong—barely enough to rattle the trees and whistle over the car. Petal snorted and put the car in gear, starting to turn around. She wasn’t scared of some wind. The sky was still clear, not even a hint of a forming storm. Although, she wasn’t going to let that supposed tranquility fool her. The last time she’d been out with Lex, the storm had gone from some dark clouds on the horizon to a catastrophe within minutes. The first sign of a black cloud, or anything really, and she was going to break all sorts of land-speed records getting back to the shop.
The low-pitched thrum of wind picked up as she went through a three-point turn, the roadway too small for the big extended-bed pickup to do a simple U-turn. Petal grimaced and tried to hurry it up. She wasn’t liking the sudden change in weather.
You’re imagining things.
The wind intensified the instant she threw the vehicle into neutral. A full-blown shriek reached her ears as the vehicle shook in place. Petal put the selector into Drive and stomped on the gas, but the windstorm was so strong it was lifting the car free of the pavement. The tires screeched and shot her forward a little bit every time the rear touched down, but it was no use. She was steadily being pushed off the edge of the road.
“What the hell!” she shouted, cursing and slamming the steering wheel as she vented her anger.
Outside, dirt and plant matter whipped up from the plowed fields was making it hard to see. The trees that lined the old manor were bent far over, trying to sway with the wind. She found it miraculous that they hadn’t been ripped from the ground just yet. Petal knew she should have been panicking, but it was hard. The windstorm was pushing her toward the ditch. The fall wasn’t going to kill her. Even if it flipped the truck onto its roof on the way down, she’d be okay.
But once she was in the ditch, she’d also be out of the worst of the storm. Perhaps she could use it to drive away while Mother Nature raged above her. Turning the wheel, she started to steer herself into the ditch, trying to work with the storm to speed things up. Now that she had a plan, Petal was focused, her fears put on hold until she’d escaped the current situation. The last time something had happened, she’d panicked and gotten knocked unconscious, forcing Lex to save her.
This time she was on her own, and she wasn’t going to rely on anyone but herself to fix the situation.
The windows rattled and vibrated so quickly she thought they were going to explode, like glass when it reached a certain frequency. Rocks were being tossed into the air and showering the side of the truck now. The constant bang-bang-bang was rather unnerving. It was one thing to get hit with a random one while driving down the highway, and quite another to have a steady stream of them hammer the exterior.
The glass on the rear passenger-side door suddenly shattered. Now Petal screamed as wind, dirt and other crud was blown into the truck. Her hair swirled around and kept getting plastered into her face, making it hard to steer as she tried to maintain control as the nose of the truck neared the edge of the ditch. She was moving so slowly, the truck mostly weightless. Thankfully the storm wasn’t strong enough to lift her right off the ground.
“Weak-ass bitch storm,” she muttered through her terror. “Can’t even lift a puny—”
The next thing she knew the truck was upside down in the ditch, the cab crushed down to within inches of her head. All the windows had broken, showering her in glass and opening a dozen cuts all at once.
“Truck,” she finished a moment later as her senses returned.
So much for driving through the ditch to get home. Now she was stuck out here, forced to wait for Lex to arrive. How lovely.
Almost as if on cue, the storm died out. The debris in the air fell, sounding almost like raindrops as it coated the top of the pickup. Or, she supposed, the bottom of it, since it was now upside down. Unbuckling her seatbelt, she collapsed onto the ground in a heap, careful to twist her head so she didn’t land on it.
“Brilliant idea, Petal. Real smooth. If you’d just kept trying to go along the road, you’d be fine now, and on your way back to Surrey. But instead you had to try and get cute. What do you think you’re in, a bloody action movie? Drive through the ditch while the storm rages overhead. Right, reeaalll smart.”
Pissed at herself, she violently kicked at the door, trying to open it. All she did was dent the panel.
“Fine.” She ripped off the jacket she was wearing and spread it across the ground and used it as a shield from the worst of the glass as she climbed out through where the front windshield used to be.
Standing up and brushing the glass free, Petal looked around. Other than the dirt strewn everywhere, her flipped truck, and what may now be a slight permanent lean to the trees at the top of the other side of the ditch, there was no evidence the storm had ever existed.
“You just had to come back here. Thought it was so idyllic and beautiful. Well, Petal, one thing they don’t have in the city is freak storms that deposit you unceremoniously in the ditch. So, make sure you put that in the list of pros for the city.”
She snorted, both at her words, and the fact she was talking to herself. It was time to get a grip though. First things first, call David and let him know what had happened. Then wait for Lex to arrive. She pulled the phone from her pocket—a brand-new one to replace the one she’d lost in the mudslide—and started cursing.
“This is going to come out of my bonus,” she muttered, looking at the cracked and mangled screen. Apparently when she’d unbuckled her seatbelt, she’d fallen onto the phone. “Perfect. Just perfect.”
Angrily shaking her head, she climbed up the gravel until she was once again standing on the patch of driveway that covered the ditch, between the road and the fence.
A fence which was now blown wide open.
“Right. See, this is how horror movies start, Petal. The stupid blonde girl, without a cell phone and without a ride home, needs to make a phone call. So she sees the open fence, and goes ‘oh, maybe there’s a phone up there that I could use.’ But there isn’t a phone at the creepy old manor. There’s just a serial killer in a hockey mask from the 1950s waiting for her. Because you know, that’s where they hang out.”
Fat chance she was going up there. Petal walked across the road and stood on the small gravel shoulder, arms crossed and slightly hunched over while she paced back and forth, waiting for Lex to arrive.
The twisted metal of the gate across the street groaned in the light breeze that still filled the air.
“Nope, I’m not doing it,” she muttered. “I am not going to be that person. So you can just fuck off mind, and stop trying to tempt me. I am not that stupid.”
All around her the wind seemed to laugh at her, an all-too-human sound that had Petal looking in every direction to see if someone was nearby. But it was what she saw above the farmer’s fields that made her blood run cold. Thick, billowing black clouds were coming in across the horizon. And they were headed straight for her.
If there was one thing Petal feared more than an old, dusty, abandoned house, it was being caught outside in another storm. If the temperature dropped like the last one, she would freeze to death before she got to the manor.
Decision made for her, she turned and booked it past the creaking fences and up the twisting, turning driveway, never once looking back. Above her the sky grew dark, and the wind began to laugh once more.
It’s just your imagination, Petal. Nothing more.
“The wind can’t actually laugh at you.”
Petal smiled and laughed back defiantly, daring the wind to prove her wrong. “You aren’t real!” she shouted, grinning like a maniac as she confronted her own fears. “You can’t hurt me!
She felt more confident now, her spirits buoyed by her attitude. So when the wind responded, she nearly fell over from the shock.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
Petal screamed as the air in front of her shimmered and spun around and around until it began to resemble a human figure.
“I going to kill you.”