Chapter 25: The Green Light
The sky over Blackwood Crest did not simply darken; it collapsed entirely into a roaring wall of white as the core of the polar vortex made landfall. Hurricane-force winds screamed off the ocean, tearing the remaining shingles from rooflines and twisting thick pine limbs until they splintered like dry matches. Visibility vanished in an instant, dropping to less than three paces in a swirling, suffocating fog of ice pellets and blinding powder. Along the street, luxury sedans and sports coupes parked in the gravel driveways were swallowed whole by rising snowdrifts, their windshields encased in sheets of frozen crust as the ambient temperature plummeted past negative forty degrees.
The gale battered the shuttered facade of Alderwood Manor with a relentless, dru
