I DROVE SLOWLY up the narrow gravel road between the dunes as the wind tossed around my three thousand pound Volvo V40 as if it were made of papier-mâché. My headlights cut into the darkness like narrow lightsabers. I kept a keen eye on the road since, as you leave Leo’s house and climb toward Bill’s Peak, the path narrows and twists along the edge of a cliff, with nothing to shield you from a precipitous drop but some wild shrubbery along the shoulder.
Overhead, the great Goddess of the Storm had begun to stir, roiling in labor pains.
I leaned into the gas, a bit. I didn’t want to still be on the road when this mother started bearing her young, unleashing them on the earth below. But just as I crested the hill, something up ahead made me slam on the brakes.
A tree branch in the middle of the road.
It was an enormous branch, one of the four or five main ones from the lovely old elm at the top of Bill’s Peak. One of the ends of the branch was charred and still smoking, and I guessed it had been severed by a bolt of lightning. The gale-force winds must have tossed it right into the middle of the road.
I ducked my head and peeked up through the front windshield. The thick blackness overhead had started to rotate directly over my car. There were flashes from deep within it and thunder that rumbled like a sleeping giant who’d been abruptly awakened.
If I had driven a Land Rover Defender like Leo’s instead of a Volvo V40, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it: I’d drop it into low gear and climb over the thing. I’d worry about coming back to move it tomorrow. But the domesticated underbelly of my station wagon wasn’t having that. I’d bust a wheel or an axle, for sure. Plus, the O’Rourkes would be coming down the path later, and they might not see it before it was too late.
So I decided to act as quickly as I could.
I hopped out of the car and as soon as I did, I realized how dangerous this was. Everything I knew about lightning storms told me I was in exactly the wrong place: at the top of a hill, next to a tree, right below a storm cloud that was ready to burst.
Not tonight, Peter.
I remember hearing somewhere that you were safe inside a car (as in an airplane) during a lightning storm, that electricity from a lightning strike grounded itself without affecting anyone inside. I was about to sit back inside. Maybe it’d be easier to drive around it . . . dammit. Come on, Pete. Stick your chest out and be a man.
The wind gusted furiously. I looked up at the ancient elm, mutilated and still smoldering, and I could smell a burning in the air. But not the smokiness of a fireplace or barbecue, rather the electric char of a short circuit. It reminded me of the time my daughter, Beatrice, stuck her finger in an electric socket when she was just four years old. The lights in the entire house flickered and when we found her, her eyebrows were standing on end. That’s what it smelled like tonight.
Overhead, the writhing, twisting darkness let out a powerful roar that shook the earth beneath my feet. I looked up and noticed some kind of light coming from deep within the storm. A twister of blue light.
Lightning never strikes the same place twice, I told myself.
Still, the quicker you get out of here, the better.
I grabbed one end of the branch but the damn thing weighed more than I had imagined. I started pushing it as if I were trying to move the minute hand of a giant clock, turning it toward the side of the road. Behind me, the beach was shrouded in darkness. Only the white breakwater could be seen crashing onto the shore.
I pushed until the branch was parallel to the side of the road. That should do it. I let it drop with a thud, and I dusted my hands on my jeans. I took one step toward my car, and that’s when I noticed something all around me.
Light. Too much light.
At first, I thought it was the Volvo’s headlights. Maybe I’d flicked on the fog lights by mistake? All I knew is that it was suddenly very bright—almost too bright.
A little dizzy, I started to walk back toward the car, and then I noticed something else. It felt like an electrical wave was running over and through my body. A tingling that snaked from my neck to my backbone, down to my fingertips. I looked down at my arms and saw the hair standing on end, perfectly straight, like the quills of a sea urchin. It was as if someone had hung a magnet directly over my head. . . .
Over my head . . . ?
I looked up one last time. The whirlwind of blue light twisted above me, picking up speed, like a record spinning at a thousand revolutions a minute. Lightning never strikes the same place twice.
I felt something in my temples. My car’s headlights suddenly seemed too bright, hurting my eyes and becoming an all-encompassing whiteness. I had just enough time to realize what was happening. It was just a moment, and I think I even tried to run for the car, but I never made it. And that’s when I felt it: something bit me; my face, my shoulders, my legs. It shook me like a rag doll and tossed me aside.
It felt like a thousand-pound safe had landed squarely on my head, knocked me to my knees, and exploded as if it had been filled with dynamite. My eardrums were overwhelmed. They simply shut off, faded to white. . . .
I felt I was screaming and falling in slow motion, waiting for my body to hit the ground with a thud. But it never came. I fell, and continued to fall, into an endless sea of darkness.