Chapter Sixteen

San Ysidro, CA, July 16th, one year ago

“Hail of rocks damages house in upstate New York, leaving one dead. Authorities are attributing the tragic event to a rare meteor strike.”

Rob dropped his slice of pizza and grabbed the television remote to turn up the volume. He’d gone out to pick up a late lunch and just settled down to continue his internet searches when the news came on.

He immediately recognized the rock-covered property as the same one where the unnatural shower of frogs had occurred. After a moment, the video switched to an overhead image that showed a huge section of the porch missing, with wood and shingles scattered across the yard. Several windows were broken and the lawn resembled a grenade testing range, pockmarked with divots of various sizes.

The reporter continued on with the story, but Rob only half-listened. He opened a new browser on the laptop and pulled up the Reddit page where he’d first read about the weird frog deluge in Hastings Mills. Sure enough, there were multiple new postings, including footage from someone’s phone camera. The point of view was so similar to the frog video from earlier that he wondered if the same person had been there all day, waiting for something else to happen.

Jules21

This is no joke. Watch to the end.

Rob clicked the video.

An older man walked into the frame and slowly started across the yard toward the house. The video dipped and shook as the person holding the phone moved. Off camera, someone asked where the hell the frogs went.

Jesus, it is the same people, Rob thought.

Something bounced next to the man. He glanced down.

The back of his head disintegrated.

Rob’s hands jumped and the pad fell off his lap. He retrieved it and reset the video, his heart pounding.

What the hell?

He hit play and watched as the unsuspecting man tilted his head.

And died in an explosion of gore.

With a shaking finger, Rob replayed the video, this time using the advance bar instead of the play button, moving forward frame by frame.

There.

Just before the man’s skull burst open, a gray, tennis-ball-sized shape appeared over him. In the next frame, it was just above his hair.

Boom.

Rob hit play. The man collapsed facedown on the ground. Fist-sized objects landed around him. Several bounced off his body. The camera turned up to the sky. Streaks of dark gray appeared out of nowhere and sped through the frame. The camera veered back to the lawn and Rob’s stomach tightened at the sight of the old man lying motionless in the grass. Someone screamed, “Uncle Brian!” The gray streaks and bouncing objects increased in frequency. Several of them bounced off the far edge of the road and the camera zoomed in on them. Rocks, all of them the same dull color. From pebbles to fist-sized death bringers. Within seconds, the downfall grew so heavy he could barely make out the lawn.

The video swerved around and captured several sets of legs running. Then it ended.

“Holy shit,” Rob whispered. He earmarked the webpage and went back to the TV, scrolling through channels until he found another news station covering the story. He sipped at his vodka as a reporter provided commentary from the edge of the ravaged property.

“This is Lisa Morton, live in Hastings Mills. Earlier today, this same house was the target of not one but two weird events, first when frogs fell from the sky and less than an hour ago when a hail of rocks came down, killing one man. So far, the owner of the house, Curtis Rawlings, has been unavailable for comment. The deceased man has been identified as Brian Matthews of Hastings Mills. Police are not letting anyone onto the property….”

The reporter continued to speak while the camera zoomed past her to focus on two dark-haired women as they emerged from the house to stand in the shadows of the crumpled porch. One of them shifted slightly, revealing a pale face and a bandage on her forehead. Despite the distance and small screen, Rob’s heart slammed against his ribs.

No! It can’t be.

A memory erupted from deep inside him. Another house, long ago.

Rocks falling everywhere. Pebbles, mostly, but a few the size of marbles and even golf balls. Bouncing off the roof. Denting the cars in the parking lot. The younger children crying while the older children attempted to comfort them.

The twin girls on the couch in the sitting room, holding hands.

Staring at him with accusing eyes.

His shame had nearly overwhelmed him that day; he’d come so close to confessing his sins to the visiting auxiliary bishop. That rain of stones hadn’t been a freak meteor shower. It had been a sign from God. He knew it in his heart. With the eyes of his accusers on him, he’d stood up, ready to open the box of secrets he held and accept his punishment.

And then one of the windows shattered and a large stone had bounced off a table and struck Bishop Cooper in the face. The bishop screamed and fell to the floor, blood pouring from between his fingers.

The incredible hail ended immediately and everyone crowded around the injured man. The Brock girls ran upstairs hand in hand, but not before Rob saw their stricken faces and the tears in their eyes.

In that moment, he understood. The twins had been sent by God to be his salvation.

Except, when he woke in the morning, they were gone. He’d reported them as runaways and the police had looked for them, but he’d never seen them again.

Until now.

It couldn’t be coincidence. Not with their history. He went to the station’s website and watched the entire clip but they only appeared in the one shot. Then he checked the other news sites. When that turned up no additional footage, he did a search for their names: Claudia Brock+Shari Brock+Twins. Nothing, not even the story from the orphanage.

That can’t be. He remembered several articles in local newspapers about the ten-year-old girls who’d been nicknamed ‘the Carrie Twins’ because of all the weird occurrences that happened in their vicinity.

He tried different search terms, using nicknames, towns, and phrases like ‘stones from the sky’ along with their names.

No results.

Someone went to an awful lot of trouble to scrub them from the internet.

The internet. That gave him an idea. He logged into the dark web and within minutes found all the old articles about the twins, the ones he remembered reading. Plus one he hadn’t seen before, dated six years ago.

Nevada Diner Drenched in Flesh and Blood

By Rena Mason and James Chambers

The Eureka Gazette

Even for Nevada, this one counts as strange.

Customers at the Starlight Diner on Route 50 outside of the small town of Eureka experienced a most unpleasant surprise when, just after 6 p.m., it began to rain blood.

From a clear sky.

And just when they thought things couldn’t get stranger, pieces of flesh fell on the diner.

“It started with an ordinary rain,” said Patrick Freivald of Missouri, who had been eating dinner with his wife at the Starlight. “Well, not so ordinary. Not a cloud in the sky. But all of a sudden it turned red. We thought maybe there was a dust cloud nearby, and the water just picked up the color. Then someone went outside and said it was blood.”

Within minutes, the building and parking lot were covered in blood and fist-sized lumps of skin and muscle. According to one witness, it was a scene of chaos.

“People were screaming. Some ran to their cars, others hid behind the counter. It was awful. And the smell…like being in a slaughterhouse.”

Erinn Kemper, a waitress at the Starlight for more than thirty years, said she’d never seen anything like it. “Came out of nowhere, it did. Lasted about ten minutes and then it just stopped. Seen some weird stuff out here in the desert, but never anything like that.”

Police are still looking for two more possible witnesses, Claudia Brock and Shari Brock, waitresses who were working that evening. According to the owner, Peter Salomon, the sisters walked off the job right after the bloody downpour and haven’t returned.

“Can’t say I blame them,” he said, “but I still owe ’em a paycheck. Don’t want anyone saying I ripped ’em off.”

The article went on to recount other weird rains that had happened in the US since the 1800s. Rob put it aside and did some quick addition in his head. When he finished, a cold chill raised the hair on his arms and made him glad the AC in the room didn’t work well.

Eleven.

The number of times the Brock twins had been involved in supernatural events as children, according to his research. The most notable had been when a green slime burned through their house and killed their foster parents. That one had brought them to him.

There’d been others, though. The falling rocks. Hail on a sunny day. A swing that caught fire. Balls of lightning chasing them down the road.

By the time he’d taken over the orphanage, the Brock twins had already gone through four sets of foster parents. After they ran away, he’d visited two of them to find out as much information as he could. Two stated ‘things just didn’t work out’.

When he called the third couple, they’d told him they believed ‘them girls is haunted’.

The Witches of Midway.

Their faces still haunted him. Young. Innocent. Alluringly beautiful. Yet filled with a knowledge beyond their years. As if they peered into his heart and saw the wickedness that dwelled there. He’d been so sure they could cure him, that their power would transform him.

Now they were in Hastings Mills, of all places.

Kylie, floating through the air.

“Close the door, Bobby.”

Rob shut off the tablet. St. Alphonse University. The place where he’d made the decision that put him on the path to the priesthood, a road that ultimately led him to the darkest depths of hell and then dragged him not into the light but at least into the gray, revealing salvation as a conceivable goal. St. Alphonse was the turning point, yes, with Hastings Mills the epicenter of all his troubles. Childhood, college, everything.

Maybe this was what the Lord had in store for me all along. My redemption lies where my problems began. A full circle, and then I’ll be free.

I have to face my demons in order to banish them.

The idea terrified him. Seeing the town, the school. Reviving the nightmares that had plagued him all his life. He’d avoided Hastings Mills since graduation, leaving town and never returning once in twenty-five years. Never had to, since his family moved during his years in the seminary. But if that’s what it took to rid himself of his past, to shed his sins and banish the lust poisoning his soul….

He had to do it.

Twenty minutes later, he pulled out of the parking lot and turned north toward the airport. The California heat made the blacktop shimmer and drew alcohol-tainted sweat from his pores. But although his hands trembled on the steering wheel, he didn’t allow fear to weaken his resolve.

It was time to put an end to things.

His deliverance waited.