THE RAINY SEASON, Laura Sanger Kelly, 4/11
4.
“Listen!”
It rained in the morning.
As the day grew hot and humid, mist rose from the streets, the sidewalks, and the roofs.
More storms were moving into the area, dark gray clouds beginning to claim the sky.
Barb sat outside, whittling. His figure was taking an hourglass type shape.
Rachel could see three similar figurines through the kitchen window of hishouse. Distaff statues made of ivory wood, sitting on the harvest gold sill.
The languid golden light splashed against them.
She half-dreaded seeing him. He gave her a weird feeling; like there was more than one of him watching her with those animated cerulean eyes.
She took her washed recyclables to the green plastic box at the curb.
"Better man than me," he called out, whittling away. "I can't keep up with the all rules on saving the world."
"I have a little time on my hands," she explained. She was trying to hurry inside, fidgeting with the doorknob.
"Come sit with me. I want to show you something." He grinned. "The ghosts."
Rachel felt manipulated by his crooked smile, his demeanor was somehow coercive even while it was charming.
He motioned to a chair, a respectable distance from his. She accepted the invitation with queasy hesitation.
They looked at the corner of his house. The light of the sun danced behind the heavy wet clouds. The illumination mocked structures and landscape. Things looked like they were stage props.
"Do you see them?" he asked.
She was looked where he pointed.
Mist rose from the ground, swirling, climbing, and clawing at the sky, trying to dissolve into nothingness. Light traveled through the air, refracted by the water, the heavier medium. Little rainbows and sunbeams carved the atmosphere.
"There!" he said. He got up, and reaching over he grasped her face with his heavy hands. His calloused fingers were rough against her cool, moist cheeks.
Her eyes followed his direction. In the vapor she saw them.
The forms were scarcely there. They twitched at the boundaries of Rachel’s vision.
There were three figures, outlined in rainbow-like auras. The first figure was the largest, with a jaundiced and static appearance. The second form was smaller, azure light dancing around its outline. A third seemed fresher, enshrouded with a pale white light. They looked like an old woman, a girl, and a young woman.
As Rachel sat and watched, the figures barely moved. Eventually, as the storm passed, the figures disappeared from her sight altogether. She wondered if they were still there and she simply could not see them, or if they had gone somewhere with the storm’s departure.
"They're still there," he said. "But you can only see them immediately after the rain, when the sun comes out quickly."
Rachel bolted up from her chair, wondering how he knew both her question and the answer.
"Now you believe, now you see." He proclaimed. "There are phantoms in the air all around us." He stretched out his arms; the whittling knife gleamed in the angry sunlight.
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