SHORT STORIES VOL 1 INCLUDING: ROMANCE, COMEDY, DRAMA, SCI-FI, HORROR & MORE

Chapter 10: It Wasn't Wind

Carrie was looking out her kitchen window. The wind was howling outside despite the bright sunshine and unseasonably warm temperature. The morning weather forecast had said there would be a high wind warning later in the day. Still, even knowing this, she was surprised at its strength and ferocity.

She heard whining behind her and turned to see her dog sitting on the floor, looking up at her. The wind was making the dog uneasy. Carrie had tried to coax him outside earlier, but it was to no avail. He would not step outside the house. Carrie rolled her eyes as she got ready to try again to get him outside.

“You have to go outside,” she told the dog. “Look, I’ll even go out first.”

Carrie walked to the door leading out of the kitchen and onto the small back porch. She opened it and stepped outside, looking back at the dog.

“Come on, Buck. There is nothing out here except the wind, and you have been in the wind before,” she said, trying to convince him everything was fine.

Buck looked at Carrie as she waited just outside the door. He stood and walked a few steps closer to her and the open door before he stopped and began to growl, raising the hackles on the back of his neck and down his back.

“What is wrong with you?” she asked the dog as she stepped back inside, closed the door behind her, and walked to where her dog was. “Do I need to take you to the vet or something? You never act like this.”

Carrie sat down on the kitchen floor beside him and hugged him close. She could feel him trembling as she did. That was not like Buck at all. He was a country dog who routinely went out for hours at a time by himself and never became frightened. Now, for some reason, he was terrified because of a bit of wind.

“Aww, Buck. I'm sorry. I won’t make you go outside right now. But if this wind doesn’t die down, you will have to go outside, whether you like it or not, before we go to bed.”

She took the dog's chin in her hands and looked into his big brown eyes. The expression in them was of pure fear. She had never seen that look before. It unnerved her even more than the wind howling outside did.

She gave him a final scratch on the head before getting up and returning to the dishes she had been doing. Standing at the sink, she looked out the window again and saw leaves and dirt swirling around the yard and off into the pasture and woods beyond it.

She heard a sharp crack and saw a tree at the edge of the yard come crashing down, splintering as it hit the ground. When it hit the dry dirt, a cloud of dust and debris swirled around it before the wind sent the tiny particles across the yard, dispersing them into nothingness.

The light above the sink flickered as she finished the dishes she had been washing. Carrie looked up at the light fixture, hoping the wind would not cause the power to go out. Her small farm had a well. That meant she would also be without water if her power went out. She did not mind being without electricity for a while, but no water was something she did not like at all.

Carrie quickly went about gathering every pitcher and bucket she could fill, just in case the power went out. She hurriedly filled them and moved into the bathroom, where she began filling the bathtub. While she waited for the tub to fill, she stepped over to the window and looked out.

The wind was blowing even harder than it had been before. The windows rattled, and Carrie could hear the walls of her old farmhouse creaking. A loud pop above her worried her. The house was old and needed some repairs. She was questioning how much longer the roof would hold out if the wind did not let up.

Looking out the bathroom window, Carrie heard the water stop flowing into the bathtub. She let out a sigh as she turned back to the tub. It had filled to over half-full, which would hopefully be enough for flushing the toilets and washing herself until the power was back on. She shivered at the thought of bathing in cold water unless she warmed it over a fire outside.

Carrie made sure to turn off the bathtub faucet before leaving the bathroom. She knew that, with her luck, the power and water would come back on and flood her house if she left it on. When she opened the door, Buck fell into the bathroom. He had been leaning against the door, waiting for Carrie to come out.

“Buck, what has gotten into you?” Carrie said as she leaned over and rubbed the dog’s head. “Buddy, why are you so upset today? We have both seen the wind like this before.”

Carrie spoke to her dog as if trying to convince him everything was normal. The reality was that she was trying to convince herself. The wind was setting her nerves on edge in a way Carrie could not explain. She had a feeling, a sense, that something was in it that did not belong, something that she had never felt before.

“Bucky, I'm sorry to do this, but you have to go outside before it gets dark,” Carrie said as she glanced back out the bathroom window.

Carrie walked into the kitchen, Buck stepping on her heels as she went, and took a leash from a hook on the wall beside the back door. She looked at Buck and knew he would not be happy about going out. She got ready for the fight to get him out the door so he could do his business before they settled in for the night.

She looked down at Buck. He was glancing from her to the back door nervously. She clipped the leash to Buck’s collar as he whined. She opened the back door and tugged on the leash, hoping he would walk out the door on his own.

To her surprise, Buck slowly walked to the door, staying glued to her leg. He looked up at her one more time before they both stepped onto the porch. He tucked his tail and let out a low growl.

“I know, but you have to do it,” Carrie told him.

She tugged on the leash, forcing him to walk down the steps and onto the grass with her. Buck was hesitant to do it, but he did, staying as close to Carrie as he could. He stopped beside the porch as soon as his feet hit the grass and refused to go any further into the yard, no matter how hard Carrie tried.

As Buck did his business, Carrie began looking about as the wind whipped around them. She could see the tree that had fallen more clearly, and it was massive. It was a gigantic oak that had been at the edge of her yard. She had never thought that the tree would be taken down by anything, much less the wind.

In the distance, Carrie heard a sound. At first, she thought it was the wind, but as she listened, she heard something else. It was something that sounded animal or maybe even human. She became so focused on the sound that she was not paying attention to Buck and that he had finished what he needed to do.

Buck suddenly yanked on the leash, jerking Carrie off her feet and the strap out of her hand. Her knee slammed into the concrete step, causing her to shriek in sudden pain. She looked up to see Buck standing just inside the doorway, whining frantically at her with his tail tucked between his legs.

Carrie fought tears as she tried to stand, but when she put weight on her leg, a sharp pain shot through her knee and down her leg, preventing her from standing. Carrie forgot about the sound as she crawled up the steps and into the kitchen. She closed the door, locked it, and leaned against it, waiting for the pain to subside before she tried to move.

As she waited for the pain in her knee to ease, Buck came to her and snuggled against her. He looked up at her, tail still tucked as if he knew he had done something wrong. Buck began licking her face to apologize for pulling on the leash, causing her to be hurt.

“It’s okay, Buck. You got scared, so you don’t have to worry. I’m not mad at you,” Carrie told the dog as she hugged him.

Carrie sat on the kitchen floor, leaning against the door. She could occasionally hear that same strange sound in the wind. That was the least of her worries at the moment. Her knee was throbbing, and in the dimming light, she could see that it had swollen enough that the leg of her jeans was now tight around it. She had to get up and get to her bedroom, where she could check how badly she was hurt.

“Come on, Buck, let’s go to the bedroom,” Carrie said as she struggled to her feet. She had to lean heavily on the table and walls as she made her way to the bedroom. She found herself gasping with almost every step she took.

When she made it to her bedroom, she collapsed on the bed. There was searing pain shooting through her entire leg. She peeled off her jeans, revealing her knee. It was swollen to almost twice the size it should have been, and a dark bruise covered the entire front of her knee.

“Great, just what I don’t need right now,” Carrie mumbled under her breath as she carefully examined her knee. She carefully pushed on it and felt a crunch. “Oh, that’s not good.”

Buck jumped onto the bed and slowly approached her with his head down. He still acted as if he were in trouble because of what happened. He sniffed Carrie’s knee and gently licked it once as if trying to make her feel better.

Carrie scratched his head, making his tail wag for the first time in hours. She let out a sigh as she thought about how to get ice and keep ice on her knee with the power being out. She grabbed the pair of shorts she had slept in the night before, which were still lying on the bed, and slipped them on.

She let out a slow, deep breath as she stood, bracing for the pain. She slowly made her way back into the kitchen. She looked around, trying to figure out some way to keep the freezer closed as much as possible and still get the ice she needed for her knee.

While Carrie was leaning against the wall to keep the weight off her injured leg, there was a loud thump on the back door. Buck took a step back when it happened. She ignored it, too focused on her leg to worry about something the wind had blown into the door. As long as the glass did not break, at that moment, she did not care.

Carrie picked up the receiver of the old phone hanging on her wall. She was met with complete silence. The wind had taken out the phone lines, too. She let out a long sigh as she realized that if she needed help, there might be no way she could tell anyone. She had planned to plug in her cell phone after finishing the dishes, but had forgotten to do it before drawing the water.

She scanned her kitchen in the fading light and saw a small cooler sitting on the counter in the corner. She hobbled to the counter where it was and opened the drawer under it. She dug through the drawer full of first aid supplies until she found an old-style ice bag lodged at the back of the drawer. She dropped the ice bag in the cooler, then went to the refrigerator and filled the cooler with ice from the freezer as quickly as possible. She hoped that the freezer would stay cold enough that the food in it would not spoil before the power came back on.

“Come on, Buck. There is a couch in the living room calling our name,” she told him as she slowly began to make her way to the living room.

On her way to the living room, Carrie picked up candles and a lighter from the tables and counters she passed. She wanted to save as much walking and moving as she could because, with every step, the pain was nearly excruciating.

She dropped onto the couch, her arms loaded with candles and the lighter, still carrying the cooler. She set the cooler on the floor as she panted, trying to catch her breath. She placed the candles on the end table beside the couch as her breathing returned to normal.

Carrie lit a few candles and turned on the light switch of the lamp on the end table so she would know when the power came back on. She searched for the ice bag under all the ice and regretted dropping it in the cooler first. She quickly filled the bag and gently placed it on her knee as she got comfortable on the sofa.

Buck carefully climbed onto the couch beside Carrie, lying between her uninjured leg and the back of the sofa, as they both settled in for the evening. Carrie watched Buck close his eyes and calm down compared to what he had been earlier. She followed her dog’s lead, closed her eyes, and tried to push the pain in her knee out of her mind.

As Carrie listened to the howling wind rattle the windows, there was another loud thump outside. This time it was on the exterior wall near her front door.

Carrie’s eyes popped open as she looked through the darkness toward the door. In the faint flickering light of the candles, she could see the deadbolt was locked, so if someone was out there, they could not get in that way.

Buck stared at the door and let out a long, low growl. The hackles on his back were raised as he let out a quiet bark from deep in his chest. He looked at Carrie, then back to the door, afraid of whatever the sound was or what had caused it.

“It’s okay, Buck,” Carrie said as she stroked his head. “There is nothing out there that can get us.”

As those words left Carrie’s lips, she caught a glimpse of something moving past her window. The shadow of a figure flitting by. It had to be someone, but it didn’t look quite right, and a person would not have been able to move that fast.

She jumped up and instantly crashed to the floor with a yelp of pain when she put weight on her leg. She crawled to the couch, and while leaning against it, she reached blindly onto the end table, trying to find her cell phone, hoping it still had enough battery life to make one call.

Fighting to see through the tears that she no longer resisted, her hand finally hit the phone. She grabbed it and looked at the screen. She only had five percent left on the battery. She was kicking herself for forgetting to plug it in earlier in the day. She dialed 9-1-1 and prayed it would hold out until she could at least give them her address.

“9-1-1, where is the location of your emergency?” the dispatcher asked calmly.

“67843 Lone Lane,” Carrie told her.

“What is the street?” the dispatcher asked.

“Lone Lane. Lone Lane,” Carrie told the dispatcher, almost frantic.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but I can’t understand what you are saying. Was that Long Lane?”

“No. It’s Lone Lane,” Carrie almost yelled into the phone.

Carrie felt the phone vibrate in her hand. She looked at it as it shut off. Her only lifeline was gone. She desperately hoped that the dispatcher had finally understood where she lived. She knew that if someone broke into her home now, there was no way she could fight them to defend herself.

A sharp rap at the window behind the couch made her head snap around. She saw a brief glimpse of another shadow, this time in the near-total darkness outside; she could only see a slight outline of something. Something that was clearly not human.

What she saw made no sense. It must have been a person, but in the dark with only the light of the half-moon and her flickering candles, what she had seen had to be an illusion.

There was a long scrape along the side of her house. Buck jumped off the couch and pressed himself against her, shaking with fear. The scraping sound was followed by the same howling sound she had heard earlier. It was not human, animal, or the wind. It was something else or everything combined.

Carrie pulled her dog close, hoping to soothe herself as much as the dog. She huddled against the couch, ducking down, praying that whatever was outside would not see her and would go away. It had to be someone. There was no other explanation.

Another loud thud came from something hitting the house. Carrie could not tell where it came from. She could only recognize it was from above and in a different part of the house from where she was. The sound of the wind made it impossible for her to know more than that.

A piercing shriek came from the back of the house. It was like nothing Carrie had ever heard before and filled her with panic. Buck began to bark ferociously toward the back of the house.

“Buck, stop! Be quiet!” Carrie scolded him.

She grabbed the dog and held him as close as she could to calm and quiet him. He began thrashing to get out of her grasp, and a paw landed squarely on her injured knee, causing her to scream. She let go of him and clamped her hand over her mouth in an attempt to stay quiet herself as the pain washed over her.

Back ran into the kitchen, still barking. Carrie could hear shriek after shriek coming out of the darkness above the barking of her dog. She heard what sounded like claws on the window glass behind the couch, but refused to look. She knew no matter what it was, she could not defend herself from it.

The howling wind was filled with shrieks as something began to bang on her back door. The banging was steady and rhythmic, as if someone was pounding, trying to keep time to some unheard music.

Buck came running back into the living room and sat beside her again, now silent with hackles raised as before. He tried to crawl between Carrie and the sofa she was still leaning against, trying to be as motionless as possible to make her knee stop hurting. The only thing she wanted was for the power to come back on and be able to call for help. She needed to find out what was outside her home and to go to the hospital.

The front door began to rattle. Carrie looked at it in horror. She knew it was locked, so nothing could get in unless it broke the door. What if it did break the door? Carrie thought as her eyes widened. If it did, whoever or whatever was there could do what it wanted.

Tears flowed down her cheeks as she heard a shriek near the door. It was more animalistic than the other sounds she had heard. It was different. It came from something different and sounded as if it was in pain.

Carrie thought of a place in her home that might be safer. A room without windows where she could lock or barricade the door, so nothing could get to her and Buck. The closet in the hallway. That was the only place in her home that fit the description, but the door opened to the outside. She would have to tie the door to something on the inside of the closet to keep it closed.

She carefully thought out what it would take to do what she needed to do. She could tie the doorknob to the closet rod. For the life of her, she could not think of anything she had inside that would work. She had rope, but that was in the shed near the old barn. That was no help.

Buck kept pushing on her and bumping into her as he continued his attempt to hide behind her. The movements he was making were causing her leg to move, and pain shot through it with each one.

Carrie concluded that she could rip one of the sheets in the closet into strips and use them to tie the closet door closed. She had to do it now before those things made it inside.

She slowly stood, careful not to put any weight on her injured leg until she needed to take the first step. She took a deep breath and held it as she took the first step. She put her weight on it and a sharp, burning pain shot through her leg and into her entire body. A wave of nausea swept through her as her vision narrowed into nothing.

-

Carrie woke to Buck nuzzling her cheek with his cold, wet nose. She saw the light coming through the window, and the lamp on the end table was on. She felt confused and groggy as she tried to understand why she was on the floor. The memories of the night before came flooding back, and panic hit her.

Then she heard it. Silence. The wind had stopped. The thuds, bangs, scraping, and shrieks were all gone. Buck was also quiet. No more barking or whining. Everything was calm.

Carrie sat up, feeling her leg throb. She looked at it carefully in the light and saw the dark, nearly black bruise running from a few inches above her knee to halfway down her calf. She began to flex her toes, then her foot, ankle, and finally her knee, testing to see how much pain it would cause as she moved. The swelling had gone down overnight, which made moving her leg easier. To her surprise, it was not as painful as it had been the night before.

She stood, moving cautiously under the watchful eyes of Buck. It took only a couple of unsteady, painful steps to return to the couch. She eased herself down before she reached for her phone and charger.

She plugged in the phone and looked at it in her hand. She needed to go to the doctor, but it was not an emergency, so she did not want to call an ambulance. She placed the phone on the end table and let out a sigh.

Buck kept staring at her, which meant his food bowl was empty, and he wanted his breakfast. She reached over and scratched his head.

“Okay, Bucky boy. I will get you breakfast. Let’s go to the kitchen,” Carrie told the dog.

Carrie tentatively stood and slowly took a step. It was painful, but it was no longer excruciating. It took her a couple of minutes to work her way to the kitchen. Buck patiently walked with her, matching her step for step.

Buck’s dog food was right beside the kitchen door, which made it easy for her to feed him. His water bowl was empty, of course. Carrie sighed as she picked it up, knowing that there would be more steps she would need to take.

She hobbled to the sink, where a pitcher of water she had drawn the day before was sitting. As Carrie reached for the pitcher, she looked out the window over the sink. She gasped at what she saw.

In her yard were the remains of animals, not one, or two, but dozens. They were torn to shreds. Fur and feathers were drifting in the now gentle breeze. She felt sick as she looked at them. The shrieks she had heard, and the thumps and bangs against her house. That is what it had been.

Carrie turned her gaze away from the window and looked at Buck, happily eating his dog food and wagging his tail. Whatever had caused the c*****e was gone. If it were still there, he would have been upset.

Her mind was racing. What had it been? The things she had seen outside her window that she wrote off as being human could not have been. No human could do what had been done. The biggest question was, would it return, and if so, when?