Stormstruck

Stormstruck
It was “Power Hour” from five to six pm, she wanted to get the evening meal simmering before that. The landline utility, cash strapped since the advent of cellular technology, was offering a wide range of incentives to draw back lost subscribers. Although available on a daily basis, she used it only once a week, an hour set aside from the endless chores, for a call to a lifelong friend. Just thirty kilometres separated their houses but they only saw one another two or three times a year at best, so “Power Hour” on the phone to Sofia was sacrosanct on Wednesday evenings. She always prepared the same meal, had the preparation time honed down, leaving her just enough time to scoop everything into the pot of water bubbling slowly on the stove, rinse off her hands, and get herself settled into the chair beside the phone.
Bright sunlight flooded into the kitchen as she diced carrots for the vegetable soup. Birds darted past the bay windows, their shadows flitting, ghostlike, across the pale lemon walls inside the kitchen. The shadows had frightened her when they first moved in. Their sudden flutters and tumbles in her peripheral vision made her blood pressure spike, and even now- six happy years later- she still had occasion to feel her heart leap when a particularly large one loomed from an unusual angle. The carrots done, she selected a turnip and cleaved its head off, sliced it through, and started to dice it evenly, hoping faintly that the twins were not driving Mr Jaspers crazy at their weekly guitar lessons. Those boys could be hell on wheels at times. Turnips dispatched, she started on the potatoes, her mind dwelling on the twins and Jeremy, her loving husband going on seven years. It was Sofia who convinced them to move to the Midlands. Jeremy had vetoed the idea immediately. A reduced client base and her condition being his objections when she first put it to him, but after a two- week holiday on Sofia’s farm, he had started seeing things her way. They moved from the city a month later and just two weeks after they settled in the twins were born. Life had flourished since then. The sunlight dulled momentarily, cloud shadow glided sinuously across the lawn and slid into the valley out back, its passing creating a brief chill in the kitchen, making her shiver slightly. She hoped it was not an outrider heralding an approaching storm.
She loathed the Midland storms, so swift and violent in onset. From a bright calm sunny day to wind, hail and thunder in a matter of minutes. But it was the lightening that got her nerves jangling, shadows on the kitchen walls she could live with, lightening frightened her even more than heights, and she got nervous stepping up onto a carpet. Midlands lightening seemed to have a malevolent quality to it. Like it was seeking you out, stabbing its forks ever closer to your hidey- hole, blasting trees into smouldering matchwood as it approached. She glanced at the clock on the sideboard, it showed sixteen forty-five. She started peeling onions. Another shadow, bigger than the last, scuttled across the lawn, its frenzied rush betraying the strong winds that scythed overhead. Her mind drifted to her friend.
Opposites attract, that’s a fact. Where she was faint-hearted Sofia was self-assured and decisive, she given to procrastination, Sofia always expeditious. Sofia voluptuous and vivacious, she slight and retiring. Opposites also created high- tension electrical charges. As the thought entered her mind, thunder rumbled at the edge of her hearing. Another wind driven cloud skittered its shadow over the house. This time the chill swept up her spine, spreading through shoulders and neck. A sudden gust shook the trees, and as if sensing her tension the birds all single-mindedly took flight, headed home to batten down the hatches and sit it out. A subtle change in the light filtering into the kitchen from the dining room windows drew her attention. She dropped the peeler onto the cutting board and stepped through to the dining room.
For a moment she stood transfixed, staring, appalled at the huge wall of coal black cloud looming in the distance. Even from here she could see it roiling up into a phalanx of advancing thunderheads. Back in the kitchen she thought about sitting in her car with the cordless phone. She had read somewhere it’s a safe place to be in an electric storm and she could access the garage without going outside. A glance at the clock banished cordless thoughts. Besides, Jeremy had told her landlines were safe in storms these days because of the new optic fibre things. Thunder growled in the distance, perceptively closer now. The pile of sliced and diced vegetables in the mixing bowl looked colourful, she liked to be sure her family ate a good variety. More thunder made the dining room windows rattle softly. Did Sofia have optic fibres? She wondered about that as she added the beef-stock. The storm would be directly above Sofia’s house about this time. The rattling of the window- panes, although still soft, was almost continues. Just short silences interspersed the rattles now. She tried not to imagine the white- hot lightening streaking down onto the farm. Having experienced a storm out there she knew the added unease its isolation brought. She spooned the vegetables and stock into the simmering water and turned the power up a notch, adding a teaspoon of salt, she stirred the contents and put the lid on squarely- or roundly- depending on your point of view. Stripping off her apron, the one with the picture of a moose that Jeremy had bought her in Alaska, she tossed it over the back of a chair and went to the sink to rinse her hands. The phone rang. Mildly irritated that Sofia had called early she shook her hands under the water then reached for a towel, glancing again at the clock. It was exactly seventeen hundred, bonus hour. The phone rang a fourth time. Sophia had not called early- well maybe just a few seconds!
“Hi Sofi! How you doing honey?” she said into the blue handset.
“Ali, darling I’m fine thanks! How are you all?”
“We all good here thanks, the twins are at music lessons.”
“ Oh imagine that. So cute!” Her voice squeaked up an octave on the latter word, electronic interference hissed and crackled on the line for a second.
“ Sofi you okay chatting with all that lightening about hun?”
“Storms starting to subside here Ali, it’ll be hitting you next. Hold tight it’s a meany! ”, she chuckled down the line. There was a single loud pop on the line then, something akin to a branch snapping suddenly, and then silence. No fizzing and popping, just a fuzzy grey silence.
“Sofi…Sofi what was that honey?” She asked nervously. More fuzzy silence!
“ Sophia?” More strident now! The air around her seemed suddenly warm.
Thunder, still distant, rattled the panes loudly. She registered vaguely that the lightening bolt that generated it must have been an all time winner. She felt perspiration start to sheen the sides of her neck. It always started there whenever she began getting scared.
“Sofi you there?” she was almost shouting into the handset. Grey fuzzy.
“Shit!” exasperated, she was about to put the handset on its station when the grey fuzzy changed its tone. What sounded like well-drawn flames rushing up a stovepipe reached her ears or perhaps a squadron of propeller driven aircraft approaching. No! The stovepipe analogy worked better. A stovepipe, narrowing down and opening up, the flames thrumming through a lattice of almost musical pitches. High notes then low. Somewhere faintly- skipping on the lattice- she could hear Sophia calling her name!
“Sophia, Sophia can you hear me?” she implored. The stovepipe’s thrumming settled out abruptly and took on a steady even hiss, and suddenly Sophia’s voice was there, clear as crystal. Still calling her name. “Sophia what happened?”
“ Oh Ali I’m…” There was a flat quality to Sophia’s voice Ali found disturbing.
“You okay Sofi?”
“It’s so dark in here Ali, it was the lightening, it…” That flat monotone again.
“Geez! It must have disturbed your neurons, you sound kind of ironed out.”
“It hit the house somewhere sweetie, powers all out. Nothing’s burning.”
“Wow no wonder you sound like you do,” then “ Where’s Reggie?”
“Should be back soon. You know husbands, never around when needed” The stovepipe effect started up again. Sophia’s voice skipped away into the lattice, it sounded like the voice of a child far down a tunnel, getting further. Then back it came clear as crystal.
“ Sorry! Connections bad… The lightening”
“It’s okay, not your fault.” The total lack of emotion in Sophia’s voice worried Ali. “You feeling alright Sofi?”
“Feeling weird sitting here in the dark, like I’m in limbo or something, it’s friggin cold in here.” “ I’m sure Reggie will be there soon hun. Why don’t you go put on something warm”, she added, “I’ll wait for you” “I won’t be long.”
Ali switched the phone to loudspeaker while she waited. The minutes ticked by. What was Sofia doing? Another gust of wind outside flattened the treetops. She had forgotten about the storm in her concern for her friend. A powerful rumble of thunder reinforced her memory. The digital readout on the phone told her that Powerhour was three quarters done. She reared back in her chair as Sophie’s voice suddenly filled the room. “They here for me now Ali- I can see their light coming. It’s very bright ”
“ Great! Reggie’s arrived then?” Lightening flashed, close, its crack drowning out any answer. “I have to go sweetie. Kiss the twins for me. Love to Jerry and you take care.”
“ Bye Sofi you take care too,” she said brightly. The phone went dead before she could complete the sentence. So unlike Sophia to be so abrupt, but then the past hour must have been a bit trying for her, alone and isolated out there. On impulse she dialled Sophia’s number. But her phone did not ring. Fuzzy silence. “The subscriber you have dialled is not availa…” She put the handset down. Thunder rumbled again, receding now, the storm passing its height. She fussed around the kitchen, tidying, stirring the soup. She tried Sophia’s number again, still uneasy about her friend’s expressionless voice and a little miffed at the way she had cut the call. She decided that, if she could not make contact with Sophia in the next day or two, she would ask Jeremy to drive her out to the farm on Saturday morning.
Later, the twins tucked into bed, she and Jeremy shared a bottle of red wine along with the leftover French loaf she had served with the soup. She told him briefly about what had happened on the farm. Frowning when she told him about the lightening strike on the house, he soon allayed her concern however. “ Don’t worry Ali, you know Sophia- she’ll bounce right back honey.”
“ It’s just her voice sounded so weird!”
“ Must have been the line sweetheart, lightening or water damage maybe.”
He picked up the wine bottle and offered her more, getting to his feet to pour it for her. The phone started ringing. Jeremy glanced at his watch, eyebrows raised in surprise. “Hello! Eight o’clock- surely that’s not di Resta already?”
He finished pouring her wine, took a bite out of a slice of bread, and chased it down with a healthy slug from the bottle. Ali admonished him with a frown. Sonny di Resta phoned for the security code every evening on weekdays. It was changed daily and Jeremy was the only one who had the code, so di Resta called in for it at nine when he secured the vault for the night at Jeremy’s laboratory.
“Hope he has’nt twisted a key off again!” He said, walking to the phone. Ali could not stop a smile creasing her face. Sonny had twisted off a key in a lock some two years back necessitating a call out for a locksmith. It still rankled with Jeremy, despite it being the only error on Sonny’s part in three years of otherwise faultless service. She could not hear what was being said, but by the tone of his voice she gathered that something had gone amiss. She started gathering together the cutlery and crockery on the table. He would probably have to go over to the laboratory for a couple of hours like the last time the key got broken. Still feeling drained from the day’s events she intended being fast asleep when he got back. Jeremy came back into the dining room. His face was a mixture of emotions she had never seen before, bewilderment mostly, sadness and even a touch of anger. But it was the strange look he was giving her that turned her veins to ice. “That was Dr Cohen from Nottingham Road. It’s Sofia…”
She felt her knees go weak. He put his arms around her, holding her tight. “She’s gone Ali, lightening hit the landline beside the house just after five. The doctor says she died instantly!” He paused for a moment. “You must have got a crossed line or something after the lightening hit her phone.”
But of course, she knew that’s not what happened. Her last thought before she fainted was that Sophia could not have had optic fibres.