[This story was published in Nocturnal Ooze]

Having the lights go out during a thunderstorm wasn't at all unusual in Jake and Millie Cranston's neighborhood. They would find themselves sitting in the dark as the TV picture shrank in on itself and then winked out. Jake would call the power company while Millie groped her way into the kitchen for the flashlight she kept in the drawer. They would light a few candles and sit and talk. Usually the lights would come back on in half an hour or so and everything would be back to normal, except Jake had to go around and set all the clocks.

The family room had a big sliding glass door that led out to the patio and back yard. When the lights went out, Millie liked to look out the door toward the houses on the street behind them. "Look at all the candles, Jake," she would say. "The lights of candles in all the other houses looks so romantic. Except for the Porter house, I wonder why that's still dark?"

"Bill Porter told me after one storm. He and Gloria don't bother with lights, they just head for the bedroom."

Jake and Millie were eating supper in the kitchen on a stormy August night when the lights went out. Millie got out the candles and they finished eating before they went into the family room.

Millie looked out the door. "Jake, there's something odd out there. I don't see any candles in the other houses."

"Maybe they all copied Bill and Gloria?"

"No, that's silly. Several of the families on the next street have little kids, they'd want lights for them. Probably afraid of the dark."

Jake looked slowly from one side to the other. "Ah! Over there to the right, there's a lit up house."

Millie followed his gaze. "That doesn't look like a house. Anyway, it's too far away. There should be several streets of houses between us and that place."

A flash of lightning lit up the world, and both Jake and Millie gasped. "Jake, did you see that? All the houses have vanished!"

"Must have been an optical illusion. Houses don't vanish. Just wait for the next lightning ..." he stopped as things lit up again. "My God, you're right. No houses, just open fields behind our house."

"That building we saw, the one that was still lit, it was a church. Jake, there are no churches with three or four miles of here. What's going on?"

Before he could reply, the lights flickered and came back on. The lights of the houses behind them, the houses on the next street, came on too.

"Look, Jake, the houses are back." The relief in her voice was obvious.

"Yeah, they're back. But where were they? How did they disappear?"

Millie didn't answer.

The next storm took out the lights just as Jake and Millie were getting ready for bed. "Shall I go down and get the candles?" she asked.

"Not much point to it, we would have turned the lights out soon anyway. Probably oversleep tomorrow with the clocks wrong, but what the heck."

"It's just that ..." She hesitated, as if unsure what to say.

"You're worried about what happened last time, right? Well, I'll just look out the window .... Ouch! Damn it!"

"What's the matter?"

"Just stubbed my toe in the dark. I'm OK. And I can see the houses across the street, several have candles on, or flashlights moving around inside. Everything's normal."

"But ..."

"But what?"

"But that's out the front. What we saw last time was out the back. I want to look out back, except somehow I don't want to. Jake, I'm scared."

He put an arm around her. "Well, the spare bedroom looks out the back, we shouldn't have to go downstairs." He led her down the hall to the spare room and opened the curtains. "Only one house lit up, but it's late. They probably decided not to bother, just like we did."

A flash of lightning lit the sky and Millie screamed. "It's not a house, it's that church. But it's closer, much closer. Right on the next street." She was shivering in his arm. They stood silent until the next flash.

"Damn! Not only a church, but a churchyard with a graves and everything! Looks like one of those old iron fences running right across our yard. I'm going downstairs for a better look."

"No, Jake, no." She pulled the curtain closed. "Let's go back in the bedroom. I need to be held."

The next morning the back lawn showed no traces of a wrought iron fence. Jake talked to some of the neighbors, but nobody had noticed anything unusual about the storm the previous night. Jake dismissed the whole thing as illusion, but Millie remained upset.

The weather was nice for the next week or so, but then another big thunderstorm was forecast and Millie acted even more nervous, urging Jake to "do something about it." He finally gave in and bought a portable generator which he had installed behind the garage with an automatic cutover switch.

As the storm approached, Millie went around and closed all the curtains. For half an hour they could hear thunder outside, and then the lights blinked, dimmed, and came back as the generator cut in. Millie had tensed up at the first blink, but became noticeably calmer when it was obvious the lights would stay on.

"See, Jake, isn't this much nicer than candles?"

"Yeah, I guess it is. I wonder why nobody else in the neighborhood has one? I'll bet several of them will after this. If they notice, that is. Why don't we open some of the curtains and show off?"

"No, Jake, I don't want to. I don't want to see what's outside. You can look if you want, but I don't want to see."

"OK, OK. But I do want to see if the optical illusion is back." He walked over to the glass door and slid behind the curtain. He waited there until the next bolt of lightning. "Oh, boy! The church is there, right at the back of our property. We're in the graveyard, and there's a big headstone right in the middle of the patio. I couldn't read it, though."

"Jake, come back in here. Forget the graveyard. I'm afraid of it. Please!."

"Just a minute ..." There was another flash of lightning. "Shit! The headstone says Cranston! Jacob Cranston! It must be my grandfather's grave, I was named after him." He came back around the end of the curtain. "I want a picture of this, to prove it's real."

"No, don't, Jake! Just let it alone!"

"Oh, come on. Just one picture, just to prove we really did see it." He rummaged around in the closet, finally coming up empty-handed. "Where's the camera?"

"We loaned it to my cousin Susie for her vacation, don't you remember? Jake, we don't need any pictures. Let's just forget about the whole thing."

"No, I can't forget about it. Maybe I can just go out and note down what's on the stone. Next time we go back east we can go to the graveyard where my grandfather is buried and compare it to the real thing. Millie, this is a real experience, I can't just drop it." He picked up a pad and pencil and the flashlight, and edged around the curtain again. He opened the glass door and went down the three steps to the patio.

He started to switch on the flashlight, when he heard the curtains being pulled back and the family room lights shown out at him, illuminating the headstone. He looked back. Millie was standing in the doorway, her face invisible with all the light behind her.

Jake squatted down in front of the headstone and started to read. "Jacob Cranston, born 1959, died 2007. Hey, wait a minute! Those dates are all wrong! That's not my grandfather ..." The last words were lost in the crack of the lightning bolt that provided an exclamation mark to his final sentence.

Return to Main Page Return to List of Stories