Here is the latest in my series of stories titled "Spring Storm," where I try to see what different kinds of stories I can do under that title. Last time it was a Civil War story. Now....

Spring Storm


She had never known the house to be so…quiet. Mom and Daddy had just left for their anniversary weekend journey. Chad and Andy were away at college. Amy was sleeping over at her friend Stacey’s house. That left only Jen at home. She could not remember ever in her life being in the house alone for more than a short while.

Jen had intended to spend the night with her friend Angie. Then Angie had gotten sick, and the sleepover had to be cancelled. Mom had suggested that Jen spend the weekend in town with Aunt Tracy and Uncle Todd. Jen had not felt much like spending the weekend with her little cousins. So she had suggested that she stay home by herself.

It had taken some time to convince Mom and Daddy—especially Mom! Jen had reminded Mom that she was fifteen, that she was very responsible (Mom had always said so herself!), that she could ride into town on her bicycle and that if anything happened help was only a telephone call away. She had eventually talked them into it.

While Daddy had loaded their luggage into the car, Mom had run around the house going over all the instructions. The food was here, the emergency numbers were there. She should be sure to keep the doors locked. And so on and so on. Finally Daddy had called impatiently from the car. Jen had gone out, hugged them both, said goodbye, and watched them pull out into the road and out of sight.

And now she had the whole house to herself. What should she do first? She could not recall there being anything on TV she wanted to see that evening. Besides, turning on the set would spoil the quiet. Now that she heard some silence, she found she rather liked it. The only sound in the house was the hum of the refrigerator and freezer in the kitchen.

From outside Jen heard a breeze stirring the trees. She stepped out onto the front porch. The sky seemed kind of dark for so early in the evening. To the west she saw a mass of angry clouds the color of a bad bruise. The weather almost always came in from the west. They were about to get a storm.

Mom and Daddy would be on the road in this mess! No they wouldn’t; Daddy has mentioned that they were heading east. That should keep them out of the bad weather. They would be okay.

The breeze stirred the trees again. Heavy drops began to splash down. The drops came faster until they had became an actual rain.

Jen listened to the beat of the rain on the porch roof. She liked that sound sometimes. She stood on the edge of the porch and stuck her hands out from under the eaves. The cool drops spattered on her hands and trickled toward her arms.

An impulse seized her. She leaped from the porch and ran out into the yard through the bracing cool shower. She skipped and twirled like a little girl and felt the rain on her face and neck. It occurred to her that she was acting awfully silly. The thought made her laugh for joy.

A rumble sounded in the distance. The rain began to fall harder. Suddenly running around out in the rain did not seem such a good idea. Jen ran back under the porch. The wind blew harder. She felt herself shiver in her wet clothes.
Jen went upstairs and toweled herself off and changed from her wet clothes into an old pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Outside the sky had grown very dark. The rain had turned into a downpour. Through the window of her and Amy’s room she could just see treetops whipping back and forth in the wind. The wind hurled the rain against the house with a force that almost shook it.

The thunder had grown louder. Now an especially loud, ear-splitting, echoing boom made Jen jump and give a little yelp. The storm was getting scary! A blindingly bright flash caused her to brace for another huge bang. It arrived within a couple of seconds.
A vague feeling that she might be safer on the ground floor made Jen start downstairs. About halfway down the lights went out. The stairway was totally black.
Jen froze. Her heart and breathing seemed to freeze as well. What was she going to do now?

Calm down…just calm down. They had had power outages before. Mom and Daddy kept a flashlight and matches and candles in the kitchen. This was her own house. She could remember the layout well enough without needing to see it.
She gripped the stair railing and slowly stepped downstairs. She groped her way into the kitchen. The latest claps of thunder were noticeably less loud and jarring. The storm must be passing. That was a good thing.

Jen found the kitchen counter. The lighting supplies would be in the last drawer to the left. Another drawer over…yes, that was it. Pull it open, and inside would be…yes, that was the flashlight right there!

She snapped on the light and flashed it around the room. Everything looked undisturbed. Of course it did…there had been nothing to disturb anything. The storm was still outside. Everything inside was still safe and dry.

Jen took matches and lit a candle. She needed to set that on something…a saucer from the cupboard would work. She set this candle on the kitchen table. Then she decided that it would be a good time to lock the outside door in the laundry room.

Jen walked through the downstairs with her light. In the living room she lit one a scented candle that Mom and in a holder. She locked the front door. Everything looked fine. The flickering candle glow made her feel much better.

Now she had to check upstairs. The thought of doing this gave her pause. She had always been a little afraid to go upstairs by herself at night. When she was a girl she had read a comic book story about a man alone in a house who had seen a ghost at the top of his stairs. Somehow she still thought about that scene when she had to go upstairs and there was not a family member already there.

Okay, there were no ghosts in the house. What if there was somebody upstairs, though? What if somebody had sneaked into the house and was waiting for her?
That was silly. There had been nobody there earlier. Nobody could have gotten into the house and walked upstairs without her knowing it. Still…going up there right now scared her.

She didn’t have to. She could go to the kitchen telephone and call Aunt Tracy and Uncle Todd right now. They could come and check out the house and take her home to stay with them.

And she would feel very stupid and childish! No, she had to upstairs and check out the house herself. Honor demanded it!

With a deep breath, Jen started upstairs. She climbed slowly, keeping her flashlight beam in front of her. Come on, Nancy Drew wouldn’t be afraid, would she? Of course, she kept getting herself knocked in the head by unseen assailants…. There was nothing there! She had grown up in this house. It was stupid to feel afraid.

The bathroom at the top of the stairs was empty. She lit the scented candle that Mom had in there. It was a good thing Mom liked scented candles so much!

Her and Amy’s room looked perfectly all right. She checked the closet just to be sure, even though she already knew that it was much too full for anyone to hide in there. The hall closet was also empty, as were her brothers’ room and the guest room.

That left Mom and Daddy’s room and bathroom. For some reason she still felt nervous. She was actually getting even more nervous, in fact. Why was that? It must have something to do with the movies, where they built up tension and suspense. This wasn’t a movie. It was a simple rainy evening in her own house. There was nothing there. But she had to finish looking.

She stepped into Mom and Daddy’s room. She saw the tall queen-sized bed with its curved headboard and footboard. Mom’s chest of drawers and closet stood to her left. Along the left wall of the room was Mom’s dresser, with all the junk she had cluttering it all the time. It also had that music box that Jen sometimes came into the room and played—the one that played that old tune by somebody called the Carpenters. She could almost hear it now. It had been a long time since she had come in here and done that!

Daddy’s chest of drawers stood to the right of the bed. It had a fancy candle holder on top. It was made of pottery, with a dark and shiny glaze and a lot of curved tracery. Sure enough, Mom had a candle in there. She lit it.

Now all she had to do was go past Daddy’s closet and into the bathroom. If anybody or anything was going to jump out of her it would have to be here. There was nothing there! Swallowing hard, Jen pushed open the slightly ajar bathroom door and stabbed into the room with her flashlight beam.

And sure enough, there was nothing there.

Jen sighed. Okay, that was over with. She had proven to herself beyond any doubt that she was alone in the house. She walked back into the room and threw herself on her back on the bed and snapped off the light.

She lay there quietly for a little while. Outside the storm had slowed to a gentle rain. Jen listened as a car roared down the road past the house, its wheels swishing through the water on the pavement.

Inside the house it seemed more quiet than ever. The candle burning in its holder cast curving patterns of light on the walls. The soft and flickery candle light made everything look soft and mellow. It really looked quite pretty.

Mom and Daddy had a nice room. The bed felt good. The furniture had a nice dark stain to it. There was a picture of a house in the evening with a light in one window. They had bought it years ago, when they were first married. Jen supposed that her family’s house must look kind of like that from outside right now. There was nothing scary about that. It felt good to lie here like this in the quiet with the candlelight. She was seeing her home…experiencing her home…in a way she never had before.
What was it like to lie in a bed with someone else that you loved?

Okay, where did that thought come from? Of course Mom and Daddy slept together. They were married. They surely did other things together that you did when you were…she had to stop this train of thought.

There was nothing wrong with being curious, was there? Well, maybe there was. Jen suddenly felt as if she was invading her parents’ privacy. Come on, she had been in here before. They wouldn’t mind. It wasn’t like she was going through their drawers or something. She was just lying on their bed relaxing.

They made love on this bed. They had made her on this bed. Okay, that felt creepy. Why? Mom had told her about the facts of life. She and Daddy loved each other. They were often showed affection. There was nothing wrong with that.

Jen got up from the bed. She really needed to think about something else. She needed to go downstairs and…and what? What could you do during a blackout when there was nobody around to talk to?

She decided to read. Jen went into her room and found a library book she had started. She walked downstairs and lit another light at the kitchen table. It took some doing, but with two candles she could just about read, if she turned her head and the book just right. How did people ever read and write by candlelight?

After a while she noticed a humming sound. It was the refrigerator. The refrigerator had come back on. That meant that the power must be on! Jen got up and flipped the light switch. The kitchen filled with light. They had gotten the power turned back on to their circuit.

Jen blew out the candles. She suddenly realized that she was feeling hungry. She’d have to fix herself some supper.

First she walked into the living room. She started to blow out the candle in there. Then she stopped. She would let it burn a while longer. It looked pretty and smelled good.
She unlocked the door and stepped out onto the porch. The air felt cooler. She still heard drops falling from the eaves. It sounded like it was still raining a bit. Well, let it rain! She was all set for the night.