Fiction Friday!: Prologue

Prologue

The storm was one of the biggest the town had ever seen. Rain came down in sheets for days, so that even a week after the initial winds had torn the town apart, it was still impossible to come back because of the flooding. The hurricane swept through like a leaf blower on a house of cards. Thunder could be heard from towns far away. Some said they could see the lightning as far as Sunshine County.

The day the rain finally stopped, the people of the town cautiously made their way back to see what was left of their homes. It was like pulling back the curtain of time, the first settlers discovering a new land not yet inhabited, a town that did not yet exist. Except instead of possibility, these pilgrims saw only loss. As they stumbled through the rubble, entire houses were lifted off their foundations. Pipes stuck up from the ground like some strange stem without a blossom. Not one memento, not even a broken chair or a shattered picture frame could be salvaged. It was as if the houses had been swept up into the sky, still intact, and plopped down somewhere else.

The only thing left standing, was the house at the top of the hill. As onlookers grieved and cried in the places that their own houses once stood, slowly they shifted their gaze upward, in amazement and dread, to the otherwise ordinary looking two story Victorian. Not only was it standing, it looked as if the hurricane had deliberately tip-toed around it. Every shutter, every windowpane, was precisely the way it had been, polished and perfect. Even the flowers in the window boxes remained vibrant and rigid against the storm. The house seemed to gleam, as if having just cooled off in a summer shower instead of the worst storm in the history of Shadow Lakes. The people shuddered at the pristine gables.

The rebuild was slow. Some people started over from scratch. Others cut their losses and headed off to a new town, one that wasn't haunted by the ghosts of loss. Meanwhile, the house at the top of the hill cast a looming shadow on the devastated town. It sneered at their efforts and malevolently mocked them with it’s perfectly sculpted bushes. It is not hard to see how all of the rumors began-- cursed, haunted, terrible secrets cloaked behind it’s mysterious walls.

Despite this, the people were resilient, and the town returned to a semblance of it’s former glory. After a while, things settled into normalcy. Lives went on, and over the years they began to forget the destruction of that day, or at least keep it as a memory in the distant past. For after things go well for so long, you start to believe that they will stay that way.



Author Notes: NaNoWriMo-ing in April is hard! I don't know if it's because I'm used to gloomy November, the rain and cold making it perfectly suited to being hold up inside with my computer/pen and paper, or if it's because I'm trying to edit a previous work instead of write a new one. Perhaps it's a little of both. Already, I am nowhere near on track for my word goal...I have barely even been counting. My new goal is to at least keep my promise to post a section here every Friday, I'm shooting for one chapter a week. 

Happy April everyone, it's going to be busy!!