A Sort of Summer Storm

It was a dark and not-yet-stormy night, but the radar map and the Weather Channel both agreed—the storm was coming. I could see it flickering at the southeastern horizon, cloud to cloud lightning, a mild incandescent light show.

I knew I needed to put the chickens up before it hit. They’d already gone to roost, but I still had to latch the doors and close the nest boxes behind them, and I didn’t want to do it in the rain. I opened the back door, urged the dog to get his business done too, but he didn’t want to go out. This was not unusual—our dog hates nature in all its forms—so I shoved him out bodily and left the door open for him to come back inside.

And the door slammed itself shut behind him.

I hadn’t touched it. The wind must be getting up, I thought, and opened it again. There was no wind, however. The trees were still and silent, not even a rustle of breeze. I stepped onto the deck just as the dog shot back into the house.

The door slammed shut behind him, yet again.

I headed for the chicken house in my bare feet. I started off walking, but then I realized how deep the silence was, as if the air had thickened. As if there were no animals, no night birds, no insects. Just this dull cottony silence broken only by the sound of my footsteps.

I started running. My imagination shifted into overdrive, and I had the sensation that I was about to be sucked into the air, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. So I ran faster. I hastily locked up the chickens—silent too, hunched inside their roost—then galloped back inside and shut the door behind me, breathing hard.

And then the wind rippled to life, and the first rain pattered down, and the heavy air dissipated.

My family has a complicated relationship with wild weather. We thrill to thunder and lightning, crowding onto our porches to watch storms coming, retreating inside only when the rain becomes horizontal and the sizzling bolts too close for comfort. My mother, however, has lost two homes to tornadoes, and she tells me that the feeling I had was probably one passing overhead. Or if not a tornado exactly, a pressure system of some sort, the eye of a meteorological black hole, dense and sucking and dangerous.

She is probably right. It is a reasonable explanation. But I am Southern born and bred, with ancestors hailing from the coasts of England and Ireland. We know that some nights are darker than others, that some winds don’t come from the compass directions. We remember the old tales of the Wild Hunt, and the Fey, and the Banshee. We understand that sometimes it is best not to think too hard about doors that slam themselves shut.

It is a bright morning as I write this. The breeze is still cool-ish, not yet warmed by the baking sun. The birds fight the squirrels over the sunflower seeds I have put out, and the chickens make crooning noises as they scratch and peck.

But there’s another summer storm coming tonight. And I plan on being safely inside when it does. With a candle lit against the darkness. Just in case.

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Tina Whittle writes the Tai Randolph mysteries for Poisoned Pen Press. The fifth book in this Atlanta-based series—Reckoning and Ruin—was released last year. Tina is a proud member of Sisters in Crime and serves as both a chapter officer and national board member. Visit her website to follow her on social media, sign up for her newsletter, or read additional scenes and short stories: www.tinawhittle.com.