Tornado Cloud

The pounding outside of her house had kept her awake for most of the night. It had been the most violent storm to hit southern Wisconsin in several years. The rain beat against the side of the house in sheets and waves while thunder shook the walls. Kaitlin had lain awake for nearly three hours. Lightning had knocked the power out before midnight, so there was little else to do now except await the much yearned for embrace of sleep. After the most recent foundation jarring wave of thunder, Kaitlin sat bolt upright, more out of aggravation than any actual fear.

The decided to light and candle and walk downstairs to stair out the window into the night. Precious little could be made out, but it made the time go by. Leaves blew through the air and twigs and small branches tumbled across the ground. Flashes of lightning would illuminate the entire forest outside her window. Kaitlin had always been struck with how ominous and foreboding the forest around her house looked when illuminated by lightning.

She watched the trees sway violently amid the torrent and rain. Her eyes were drawn toward the heavens where the lightning would zigzag across the sky, giving sudden shape to the cloud covered night sky. Then something strange caught her eye. There seemed to be some sort of roiling amidst the clouds. She could catch the briefest of glimpses of the cloud movement, or movement within the clouds. She could not tell for sure. When it flashed again, and she could sure there was some sort of movement in the clouds, she rushed into the basement with a blanket. She crouched down between two support walls in the center.

She could here the thunder echo through the air again. Now instead of annoying, the thunder was dreadful and threatening. She listened for the tell tale sounds of a tornado. The wind continued to blow. The thunder continued to echo across the night sky. Yet the distinct sound of a tornado never presented itself. She waited for what she guessed to be the better part of thirty minutes and still nothing.

She listened intently in the stillness of the house, which contrasted so greatly with the torrent outside. She crept carefully toward the window, keeping the blanket wrapped tight in case glass should suddenly spray inward. Tempting fate, she ventured a gaze outside.

The outside was terribly dark. Lightning flashed in the distance. Even though the thunder was still loud and menacing, the lightning seemed very far away, in all directions. Each flash would illuminate the edges of the sky but not the center. Perhaps the storm was traveling onward. She could not account for the sudden darkness. Still she was glad there was not a tornado coming and decided to attempt sleep again.

As she ascended the stairs back to her room, she felt an odd pressure change. The walls of the house seemed to sigh heavily, as though the entire house were settling at once. She froze in terror in the stairway, fearing that she had missed some sure sign of the tornado. It was now wrapped around the house itself!

She creeped back down the stairs to be closer to the ground. She wrapped the blanket tightly around her. The front of the house had a large front window, and Kaitlin decided not to venture to close to it in case tornado force winds were just outside the house. As she was contemplating her next move, the front window shattered inward with great violence. What looked to be an immense tree branch came through the window.

In sudden fright, Kaitlin ran back up the stairs to get away from the tree limb and spraying glass. She ran up the stairs to the emotional safety of her bedroom. As she opened the door to her room, something far worse then a tornado awaited her.

An immense, inhuman eye stared emotionlessly through her window, as though it had been waiting for her. The eye was so large that the edges of it were beyond the view of the window panes. The eye seemed at once to stare blankly and yet transfixed upon her. Its gaze remained, unblinking, set upon her. She crawled backward into the hall. The heavy sighing of the walls now took on an even darker tone than she had originally surmised. As she crawled further from the horrific eye, down the stairs, she felt the slick, slimey tendril constrict around her ankle. She was too frightened to scream.


***

The house was excavated by fire crews the next day. People in the area had seen the strange swirling clouds and the only assumption could be that a tornado had demolished the house. Despite their best efforts however, Kaitlin's body was never found.