Winds Of The Fall
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Winds of the Fall
CHAPTER ONE
1.
A storm was coming.
David Henson had known it the moment he'd opened his eyes that morning. He always knew when there was a storm drifting up from the south, just sort of sensed it brooding in the distance like an ugly black secret. His grandmother had been able to do the same thing; predict the weather, sometimes days in advance. She'd been a spooky old lady, his grandma. Eighty-nine years old with a mouth full of venom and a voice that could crack a mirror from sixty yards. The kind of woman who kidnapped little boys and cooked them into ginger bread. All the same, she was always dead accurate when it came to predictions (pretty scary in itself when he thought about it). Dave had secretly rejoiced when they'd finally packed her off to the nursing home last year, cackling like some geriatric hyena, but it later occurred to him that precognition might not be the only thing that ran in the family.
Be that as it may, Dave figured that dementia was still a long way off, and he had more pressing concerns for the time being. Despite the warmth of the day, he wanted to wear his waterproof parka; a dark blue rain slicker with an adjustable hood. It was about three sizes too big and weighed like eighty pounds, but Dave knew it would keep him warm through an avalanche if need be.
Dave's Mom had shaken a skeptical head when he'd told her; the skies were crystal clear aside from a couple fleece-backs skimming the horizon. Wasn't enough there to fill a tea-cup from what she could see. But Dave had been adamant: there was a storm brewing to the south, a big one judging by the ringing in his ears, and he wasn't about to get caught in a gosh-darn tornado without a slicker. His mother finally capitulated, not so much because his arguments had swayed her judgment, but because he sounded cute when he said things like "gosh-darn."
Dave had headed stoically into school, trudging along the pavement while the sun beat down from an endless blue sky. Upon arrival, he'd endured the sneering ridicule of his classmates with almost superhuman patience, sweating bullets beneath half a ton of blue gortex. The morning lengthened to midday without a single cloud crossing the yardarm, but Dave stubbornly refused to remove his parka. Doubts were cast over his sanity by fans and critics alike (even young Janey Watson was puzzled by his behavior, although she made no comment RE his mental state). Back in the classroom, he sat gnawing the end of his pencil, watching the window the way others watched the clock.
And there it was, just as he'd expected.
A massive gray build-up along the southern horizon; obliterating the landscape as it crept imperceptibly along the Blaxland Ranges. Hardly seemed to be moving in their direction, would probably miss them by four zillion miles, but Dave knew better. This was going to be much worse than he'd anticipated. For a moment, he could almost hear his Grandma's shrieking laughter in the back of his head, high and shrill and razor sharp. For the first time that day, he started to feel scared.
The thunderheads circled Ridgewick most of the afternoon, driving cold autumn winds through the center of town. Doors and windows began to rattle, the classroom's corkboard walls began to 'breath' back and forth. Dave looked around in growing agitation, wondering why nobody else noticed the sudden change in the air. A static charge seemed to be crackling through his veins, a hundred times worse than the continual buzzing in his ears.
The skies were rumbling with purple anger when school let out around three o'clock. Most of the younger children scampered straight home trailing their backpacks, far too sensible to get caught in the rising gale. The older ones made a bee-line for Memorial Park, led by the malevolent Katie Prescott and her Minions of Darkness (that was how Dave actually thought of them: he'd discovered A.K. Rowland last year and tended to think in terms of Potterisms). Crumpled brown leaves chased them down the empty streets, streaking through fence pikes and power lines.
And still the thunderheads cycled overhead, bending the trees along Memorial Drive in their fury.
Dave tagged along in the rear guard, mainly because his friend Janey Watson had been roped into the exodus and he pretty much went wherever she did. He'd also been getting an odd vibe all afternoon, as if something black and ominous was approaching with the storm. Several times, he thought he heard dogs baying in the distance, but decided it had to be the keening of the wind. Unfortunately, this explanation did little to sooth his rising anxieties. When the short hairs on the back of his hands started to prickle, he knew the storm was almost upon them.
"We ought to go home," he told Janey, but knew she wouldn't want to leave until the game was finished. Katie Prescott had decreed an interclass tag marathon and when Katie Prescott called tag, no one left until the Final Game Was Played, not unless their parents had a comprehensive dental plan. So Dave stood inconspicuously off to one side while half the sixth grade stampeded round and round the Fountain in lunatic abandon. Sheet lightning seared the clouds several times and dogs wailed like ghosts in the background, raising the hackles at the base of his neck.
Something bad was coming.
The storm finally broke around three-thirty, blackening the skies as the rain lashed down in a literal torrent. Curbs were flooded, drains overflowed and lawns receded before the backwash. Long dead branches fell from denuded maples and were carried off to parts unknown. The One Last Game ended with a booming thunder-burst that scattered the children to every point of the compass. They emptied the playground in a swarming mass, screaming to the indigo clouds. Some of them lived close by and vanished within a matter of seconds, others bolted through the Wilderlands, emerging five minutes later into Westside Estates. A few spilled down Memorial Drive, heading towards the center of town.
Further out in the boondocks, traditional protective measures were taken by stern-faced adults. Curtains were drawn over a hundred picture windows; doors were locked and double bolted, as if this could somehow ward off the storm's howling ferocity. As a final precaution, mirrors were covered with white linen – an old superstition meant to ward off ball lightning, which was common this time of year.
Perhaps they should have painted ha'ants on the eves as well.
Who knows, it might have proven just as effective.
Winds Of The Fall (2)
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Winds of the Fall
2.
Janey and Dave bolted along Memorial Drive, heads lowered against the downpour. They crossed the bridge at Braithwaite Canal (overflowing its banks already) and sprinted along the sidewalk, all but swept away in the tempest. Stumbling to the corner of Threadmont Avenue, David paused long enough to get his bearings, then grabbed Janey by the right hand, pointing towards a dim gray shape in the distance.
"Over there!" he yelled at the top of his lungs, "the BUS shelter!" The girl nodded in reply, although she could barely hear him over the wind. They scrambled down the footpath in a welter of knees and elbows, feet slipping on the wet concrete. Janey held a forearm over her face; the rain was hammering down hard enough to leave marks on her pale flesh. They'd never seen a storm like this, none they could remember anyway.
Reaching the bus shelter, they hunched off their backpacks and began shaking the chill out of their bones.
"I knew we shouldn't have stayed at the park so long," Dave said, looking out into the deluge. He was a lanky young galoot with a shock of curly red hair framing his face. Looked about as Irish as you got this far west of Lower Manhattan. He eyed the heavens apprehensively, hearing that odd wailing in the wind again. What the hell was it?
Janey picked up the hem of her red gingham dress and started wringing the water out of it. She was an unusually pretty child with melting blue eyes and soft, girlish features - although she wasn't precisely a girl, contrary to all appearances. Like many children in born in Ridgewick over the past fifteen years, Janey Watson was somewhat…unique.
"You said it was going to rain this morning," she commented, her voice high and faint against the squall. Her frock was pasted against her body and she was shivering with the cold. Fall had come early; there was a threat of snow in the wind. "How did you know that?"
Dave shrugged. He got that question a lot, and he was never sure how to answer it.
"I dunno. You can smell it in the air sometimes." It was true: storms often carried an acrid, mineral scent. Strange that no else ever noticed it. "Rain has a kind of metallic smell, you know that?"
"No," Janey shook her head, spraying droplets everywhere. She dropped her hemline and hugged herself against the wind, teeth chattering. "How we gonna get home?"
"Wait for the bus, I guess," Dave answered, adjusting his hood and wishing he'd never left home this morning. He had no desire to stand around in this maelstrom, but didn't see what other choice they had.
"How long'll that be?" Janey demanded.
"About half an hour."
"I'm freezing!"
Lightning flickered to the south, remote and distant. A rail of thunder followed a few seconds later, just loud enough to set their hearts racing. Janey gnawed a lip, watching the horizon fearfully. The thunder was closing in, she could tell that much at least. Damn that Katie Prescott and her One Last Game of tag. If they'd left when Dave said, they would've been home by now.
"We can't wait for the bus," she said uneasily, "we might get hit by lightning or something."
"Aw, don't worry, this'll blow over in a while," Dave replied offhand, although he didn't feel as confident as he was trying to sound. The storm had him spooked so bad he was ready to run like a split streak. The skies were darkening almost by the minute, and that peculiar waling was getting closer. Whatever it was, Dave didn't care to be here when it arrived. All the same, he didn't want to worry Janey with his fears, she looked scared enough as it was.
"We'll be safe here," he reassured her, waving a dismissive hand about in the air, "that lightning's about a zillion miles away. I mean, if you count the seconds between – "
His words were drowned out by a deafening concussion directly overhead. The entire sky flashed white for a fraction of an instant, and the ground literally shook beneath their feet. Janey tensed against him like a child afraid of the dark, he could feel her clenching her teeth to keep from screaming. No - that wasn't her: it was him. Any louder and he would have run shrieking into the downpour. He stared off down Memorial Drive, cringing in the bitter gale, feeling his knee-joints buckle and weaken.
Janey didn't look much better: she was trembling from crown to heel, her body a collection of tight little knots. It was mainly the cold, but Dave knew she was frightened, too - terrified in fact. Nor could he blame her. A sense of urgency was slinking into his mind, a foreboding of impending disaster. They had to get out of this cyclone, right now, this minute, and they couldn't waste any more time waiting for some bus that may never come. Something bad was approaching, he was certain of that now. Something worse than the thunder, worse than the lightening, worse than anything he could imagine in his worst nightmares.
"Listen, my place is only two blocks over," Dave yelped, pointing across the road, "we can cut through Old Man McGinty's field, it'll take us around two minutes."
"Doesn't McGinty have a dog?"
David hesitated several seconds, startled by her choice of words.
"No," he answered finally, "I been through there thousands of times."
"Okay."
Shouldering their backpacks, they held their breath and plunged out into the rain. The storm engulfed them in a solid gray curtain, effectively limiting their vision to zero (but that didn't matter; they were kids, they were twelve and they frequently ran on instinct alone). Hauling themselves across Memorial Drive, they darted through to McGinty's Field, half-expecting the Hound of The Baskervilles to come slavering out of the chaos. No dogs were in evidence however (not even McGinty's fabled mongrel), although the clashing of the heavens added enthusiasm to their departure.
Somewhere along the line, Janey's fingers found his hand, and they ran the entire distance joined at the wrist.
Winds of the Fall (3)
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Winds of the Fall
3.
Roughly five minutes later, they were standing in the front hall of Dave's house on Lancaster Avenue, kicking off their shoes and babbling in excited canary voices. Even with the door closed, they could still hear the banshees wailing around the gables. Dave sloughed off his parka, listening to the windows shake in their frames. It was already dark outside, and it couldn't have been later than four thirty. It didn't seem natural, even this late in September. None of it seemed natural, now that he thought about it - the clouds, the storm; the vicious, lancing winds. What was going on?
"Coming down like a machine gun now," Dave observed, looking out through the door's leadlight paneling, "sounds like its raining bullets." Hailstones the size of golf-balls had started impacting on the veranda, exploding into smaller fragments. Bad as the rain had been, Dave was glad they hadn't been caught in the hail; he honestly thought they mightn't have made it home. It was almost as if the storm had tried to stop them reaching the front steps.
Janey coughed beside him, bending over to cover her face with both hands.
"What time is it?" she asked, straightening up. She started wringing out her dress once more, pulling the hem up to the top of her thighs. Her legs were long and well-shaped for a girl her age.
"I dunno," he replied, then remembered he was wearing a watch: "it's about ten past four." He looked through the leadlight once more, his expression pinched with concentration.
"I never seen the sky go black during a storm before."
"David? Is that you?"
Roslyn Henson, Dave's mother, appeared at the far end of the hallway, a tall, slim thirty-something with dark brown eyes and chestnut hair tied back in a short ponytail. She came down the corridor wreathed in an aura of freshly baked cookies. Dave turned to answer her, hoping she wasn't angry.
"Yeah, Mom. Janey's here too."
"What happened, why are you so late?" she asked in a voice tinged with worry, "did you get caught in the storm?"
"Yeah, we were playing down at Memorial park when it started raining," Dave explained, hanging up his slicker on the coat rack, "then we got stuck in this bus shelter -"
"You should've called from the park," Roslyn fussed in obvious relief, "I would have come out to get you. Well, at least you didn't get too -"
She paused in mid-sentence when she saw Janey standing behind him, quivering like a shipwreck survivor. The girl managed to raise half a smile, but her cheeks were blue and her dress was streaming on the floor boards.
"Oh, Janey. You must be soaked to the skin, honey," Roslyn cooed, reaching out to touch the girl under the chin, "come on into the living room, we'll put you in front of the fire." She took Janey's hand by the fingertips and led her down the hallway.
It was an oddly affectionate gesture Dave had seen several time before. He knew his mother had grown genuinely fond of his friend over the past twelve months, seemed to regard her almost as a member of the family. He'd found their instant karma rather baffling at first, but at least it meant he could have her over anytime he wanted (and he knew there were many parents in Ridgewick who wouldn't have let a tranzi in through the back door).
Dave fell in behind them as they headed down the corridor, listening to their chatter but not really following their conversation. He was keeping one ear cocked towards the storm. That weird howling noise was somewhat muted now, but he could still hear it through the closed door and it was setting his teeth on edge. God, he was glad they'd escaped the bus shelter when they had.
Janey coughed as they walked into the living room, doubling over in a rush of moist blond curls. Roslyn led her over to the fireplace, glancing down at her in some concern.
"That's a nasty cough you've got there, sweetie. Let's get you out of those clothes before you catch cold."
"OK."
Janey looked over at Dave to see what he was doing, but he was heading for the arm chair over by the TV, the remote already in his hand. As she watched, he sat down and started flicking through the channels, barely aware of their presence. Seemed rather distracted, as a matter of fact.
Arriving at the fireplace, Mrs Henson sat down on the sofa and drew Janey up in front of her, holding her by both hands now.
"No wonder you're coughing so hard," Ros told her sympathetically, "your hands are like blocks of ice."
"The rain was f-freezing, Mrs Henson," she stammered under her breath, "c-colder than that s-snow we had last year, I th-think."
"Well, don't worry. Once we get that dress off, you'll warm up in no time." Reaching forward, she began undoing the buttons down the front of Janey’s dress then paused, looking over towards her son.
"David?"
Dave glanced over at his mother, eyebrows raised in mute inquiry.
"Could you go upstairs and get a blanket for Janey?" Roslyn asked, absently undoing the next button, "she's freezing to death over here."
"Sure Mom," Dave replied, replacing the remote and hopping off the armchair. Chamberlain Regional News droned away in the background.
"And while you're up there, could you get some extra clothes for her too?"
"Okay," Dave said with an off-hand tilt of his head, and stepped through the living room door. Ros watched him leave with a quizzical glance, surprised he hadn't put up more of a fight. Odd behavior indeed for a boy his age: hardly seemed to notice there was a twelve year old girl getting undressed in his living room. Well, no matter; the excuse had worked, the errand would keep him out of the room for at least five minutes. She turned her attention back to the girl standing in front of her. Time to get her out of that frock before she turned blue.
"Still cold, Honey-girl?"
"Yeah, a little," Janey replied.
"Well, let's take off that dress and get you warm," Roslyn said, and slid the sleeves off the child's rounded shoulders. Janey raised no objections, she'd long since come to regarded Mrs Henson as a second mother (much as she'd adopted Dave as an older brother). Four years ago, she would have refused to let anyone touch her. But four years ago, she'd been a completely different person.
Roslyn lowered the frock over her waist and hips, dropping it to the floor. Janey hugged herself against the cold, flinchingly aware of her state of dishabille. Giggles threatened to bubble up from her tummy as she imagined how she must have looked. What if Dave came back and saw her like this? It was OK for Mrs Henson to see her stripped down to her underwear, but Dave was a boy. She suddenly realized why Roslyn had sent him from the room, and smiled to herself in silent amusement.
In the meantime, Ros had picked a crocheted quilt off the sofa and was draping it around the girl's shoulders. Janey meshed herself in the soft woolen fabric, making sure that she was decently covered. Despite the almost supernatural chill pervading the atmosphere, she'd finally started to warm up, drawing closer to the fireplace as the kindling sputtered and cracked. Gazing into the embers, she found herself wondering if she should phone her Mother.
"Mrs Henson?"
"Yes, sweetie?"
"Could you call my Mom and let her know I'm OK?"
"Yes, of course," Roslyn replied, reaching over the coffee table for the landline, "why didn't I think of that myself?" She smiled at the girl as she typed in the number, then waited several seconds for the call to go through. Her smile faltered as the dial tone continued to ring. Staring at the handset, she pressed 'recall' several times, then placed the phone down with a frown of vague confusion.
"What's wrong?" Janey asked.
"I don't know," Ros said doubtfully, "couldn't get through...someone answered, but then there was some kind of weird noise on the line."
"Noise?"
"Yes..." Roslyn mused, mostly to herself, "almost sounded like..." She paused, shaking her head as if to clear it, then looked out through the front windows. "No, that couldn't be right. Must be the storm."
Janey's face fell.
"Mom'll be worried about me," she fretted, putting an anxious hand to her face.
Roslyn blinked several times, glancing across at Janey as if she'd momentarily forgotten she existed.
"Oh, don't worry; you're in good hands. I'll drive you home as soon as this storm dies down a little."
"You'll do that?"
"Sure I will, sweetie," Ros beamed, touching the girl on the tip of nose. Her tone was light, but she felt a subtle wave of unease in the back of her mind. The tempest had set off alarms deep within her subconscious, activating her maternal overdrive. Relays were switching in her cerebellum, signals shunting back and forth through long-forgotten pathways. Serotonin flickered between synapses. At this moment she viewed Janey as one of her own offspring, and she would have faced hell, high water and eternal damnation if necessary.
Why? Well, that's a rather long and convoluted story.
Roslyn Henson was thirty-three years old and had lived in Ridgewick all her life. She'd been in her late teens when the Blaxland Disaster made national headlines, and like many of her friends, she'd witnessed the arrival of the first transsexual children - though none of them had realized it at the time. TISM doesn't manifest until the eighth or ninth year, and sometimes not until the advent of puberty. Roslyn considered herself very fortunate in this regard. David had never developed transfeminine characteristics (and probably never would at this late stage). It was like winning the lottery in a way; she'd delivered a perfectly normal baby, quite an unusual event in this particular town.
Unfortunately, the pregnancy itself hadn't been free of complications. Dave had arrived slightly premature - not enough to endanger his health, but more than enough to endanger hers. A breech birth had exacerbated the situation to critical levels, and her doctors had opted for a C-section. Several minor disasters ensued in a virtual cascade of agony, but at the end of her ordeal, the nurses had handed her a beautiful, red-haired baby boy.
Along with the worst news she could otherwise have imagined.
Was it somehow related to the Blaxland Disaster? Probably not; her pregnancy had been a text book case-study right up to the eighth month. It wasn't unheard of for a woman to lose the ability to conceive following a difficult delivery. Nevertheless, it had come as a crushing blow after everything she'd endured to bring David into the world.
Much as she loved her son, Roslyn had always harbored a secret, unspoken regret over the circumstances of his birth. Because she'd wanted more children. A whole tribe of them, in fact: raging and roaring 'round the house; scuttling beneath her feet and getting into the cupboards when her back was turned. Children rustling through the undergrowth, children sliding down the banisters and swinging off the chandeliers. Children of every make, shape and size. Tall and thin, short and round, good and bad alike, she'd wanted them, each and every one.
Most of all, she'd wanted a daughter.
Which was probably why she'd taken such a shine to David's little girl-friend.
Okay, she wasn't exactly his girl-friend - wasn't even a girl for that matter - but Roslyn had never met a child quite so endearing. Janey Watson had a delicate, ethereal appearance; her eyes were so bright they seemed to illuminate everything she looked at. More than that, she was kind and sweet and radiantly happy, the way a little girl should be. Roslyn had come to love her over the past year, much the same way she loved her nieces and younger cousins - maybe a little more than that, in recent weeks. And with a mother's unerring intuition, Ros understood that her feelings were being returned.
She placed a hand on Janey's cheek, brushing moist blond curls back from her face. She had the most beautiful eyes she'd ever seen, huge and deep and liquid blue. Her mouth was a tiny red pout surmounting a dimpled chin, her nose a bump between rose-tinted cheeks. The kind of face capable of inspiring Renaissance poets to Elizabethan raptures. That was typical of transfeminine children; they weren't simply effeminate, they were hyper-feminine in appearance.
From what Ros had read, TISM mimics female biology to the finest detail, right down to the reproductive system. Some tranzies were known to retain a vestige of their former identity, but Janey wasn't one of them: her transition had been absolutely flawless. Looking at the girl now, it was difficult to believe that she'd ever been a boy.
Ros glanced up towards the ceiling, hearing her son's footsteps ambling about from room to room. He'd be back in a minute. At twelve, he was both too young and too old to see his little friend undressed, but she'd worry about that when he came downstairs.
"He's certainly taking his time, isn't he?" Ros asked, raising a comical eyebrow in Janey's direction, "maybe he got lost up there –"
Before another word could be spoken, a strafe of lightening flickered beyond the window, followed by a blast that quaked the house to its foundations. The ceiling trembled, the lights blinked out of existence, and Janey leapt into Roslyn's lap with a startled cry. Coiling her arms around the woman's neck, she buried her face in Rosy's shoulder, struggling to control her whimpers. The thunder was so close now, almost inside the room with them.
"You scared of the storm, Honey?" Roslyn asked, unnerved by the light-show herself. Sounded like the roof was going to collapse, that time.
Janey nodded, biting her lip to keep from sobbing.
"Nothing to worry about, baby," Ros soothed, smoothing down her rain-matted hair, "the lightning can't hurt you in here."
Janey nodded in tactic agreement, but her eyes circled around the living room like small frightened birds. She could hear the night raging against the walls like some vicious, black animal and the sound terrified her. It was trying to claw its way inside; any moment now, the front door would explode off its hinges and the beast would rush snarling down the hallway, its red-coal eyes as huge as storm beacons –
"Honey, you're still shivering," Roslyn said, gathering the child so close they were practically breathing through each other's mouths, "come on, let's get you closer to the fire." She started chafing Janey's slender limbs to get her blood flowing.
Outside, the storm tore through lawns and gardens, uprooting trees and lifting roofs in its wake. The keening winds slammed at the doors and windows, seeking entry through slot and jamb and keyhole. The skies were totally black now: not a single shaft of moonlight penetrated the swirling clouds. It was a wild, hellish night, the stuff of terror and nightmare. Of all of this, Roslyn Henson was largely unaware. She'd found the daughter she'd lost the day her son had been born, and nothing else mattered to her at this point. Mother and daughter lay together, nestled together in a warmth deeper than that of the fire.
Neither one noticed when the dogs began to howl.