A SIGN OF DISTANT STORMS

“What the fuck?!” Vivian shouted, causing me to look back towards her, breaking eye contact with Leo and Ajay. She was backing away from the three of us, an expression of confusion and slight fear plastered across her face.

Before I could say anything, I heard Ajay exclaim, “What the absolute hell just happened?!” For a moment, I saw relief flicker across Vivian’s face as she stopped backing away.

“I have no idea, but we all need to calm down for a moment, okay?” I said as calmly as I could, which was rather difficult since a part of me wanted to just scream and panic. Speaking a little more softly, I turned to Vivian. “I promise I don’t know what just happened, and I doubt Leo and Ajay do either,” I could almost hear them nodding in agreement, “We’re just as confused as you, okay?”

I ignored the rising wave of panic within me, forcing myself to focus on the others at the moment. Vivian slowly nodded her head, glancing at the tree behind her before letting herself sit down heavily, leaning against the trunk.

Looking back to the twins, I saw Leo looking over himself silently, examining all the changes. Ajay took a page out of Vivian’s book and sat against a tree trunk while staring at Leo and himself alternatively. Seeing this, I finally let myself look over my body for my own changes.

Looking down at my hands, I noticed the first change right away. I’d always been rather pale, owing to having spent a lot of time either indoors or in places without nearly as much sun as California. But now, instead of having a light tan, my skin was pale. Not deathly so, simply without a tan and a little lighter than I was before.

Beyond that, I could easily see that my musculature was vastly different. Before, I never would have said that I had defined muscles; I simply didn’t work out very often. But now, I could see my shirt having tightened across my torso. My shoulders had broadened, and my arms had thickened with muscle. Even my legs were far more powerful now than they had been.

With a sudden thought, I fished my phone out of my pocket. Ignoring the slight shake in my hands, I quickly flipped over to the camera setting and reversed the camera. Staring back at me was a distinctly different yet still familiar face. My face was more angular than before, giving me a sharper look than I’d had before. Whereas I’d had dark brown hair, now it was pure black. And finally, my eyes. My eyes were a misty white, the exact same you would expect to see on a blind man.

Swallowing heavily, I slowly and carefully slid my phone back into my pocket. My legs felt suddenly weak. I allowed myself to sit down heavily, letting out a long breath.

A long few minutes of silence stretched in the small forest clearing. Finally, I cleared my throat, “Does anyone… Have even an idea of something that could have caused something like,” I gestured at the twins and then at myself, “Like this?”

Leo shook his head slowly. “No, not a clue,” his voice was quiet, soft. As if his tone could lessen the blow. “Only some crazy biological agent or something could do anything like this, but… Even the most advanced things I’ve heard about are far from this. And that wouldn’t explain a lot as well. Like why did it hit us three at the exact same time? Why did it not hit Vivian? And why did it do the same change to Ajay and me, but not Ethan?” He paused for a moment, looking at us before looking back at the ground. “No, I have… No idea.”

I nodded just so I had something to do more than anything else. Vivian spoke up next, “What… What did it feel like?”

Ajay answered first, “It felt… It felt like a massive weight was pressing down on me, but also not? Like, it felt heavy but not like a physical object, just something you had to hold up and endure. I also…” His voice trailed off, glancing away suddenly.

“Also…?” I lead him on, encouraging him to keep going. Leo was watching him intently, no doubt concerned.

“I also heard the ocean, okay!” He rushed the words out, “I heard waves crashing, that sorta thing….”

Before anyone could say anything more, Leo quickly spoke up, “It was the same for me! A massive weight, and then the ocean! It just,” he let out a loud sigh, “It doesn’t make sense! We’re so far from the ocean that there’s no way we could possibly have heard the ocean from here….”

I could almost feel the weight of the looks the others were giving me. I shook my head gently, “I felt the weight, but… I never heard the ocean.” I ignored the quiet curse Ajay muttered, “Instead, I felt this cold… It felt like the temperature dropped around fifty degrees. The weirdest thing was, that it felt comfortable. Like it was supposed to be like that.”

I could almost see the gears spinning wildly in Leo’s head, just trying to make sense of this all. Turning my head, I looked at Vivian, and she was looking between the three of us slowly and carefully, seemingly taking stock of all the changes and listening quietly to us talk. “Vivian? What did it look like to you?”

She tensed for a moment before relaxing again. “It, it was… I don’t know how to describe it without sounding crazy….”

Ajay laughed at that, and it wasn’t filled with humor. “Vivi, the three of us just physically changed massively. Two of us heard the ocean, and one of us felt cold. We found what looks like a silver apple, and before all that, we talked about the three of us feeling odd sensations all day. I’m not really in a position to call you crazy, so just say whatever it is!”

She seemed to want to say something to that, but ultimately she nodded. “You all just froze where you were standing and… And your eyes started, started to glow.” She was looking anywhere but towards us. “That’s when your eyes changed colors, and then the rest of you started to change and….” Her voice faded, too quiet to be heard as she said whatever the last bit was.

Leo looked more and more concerned by what he was hearing and also more confused. I quickly spoke up, “What was that last part, Vivian?”

She sighed, “I said… Then you three started to glow. Like, like some kind of aura or something!” Her voice was rising now, her confusion and some panic slipping into her voice, “Ajay and Leo had this greenish-blue glow around them, and you had this white and grey one around you! What even does that?! What the hell happened?! I don’t understand any of this!”

She was almost yelling by the end. At some point, she had stood up, and she was breathing heavily as she stared at us, almost like she expected us to answer her.

I saw Ajay and Leo simply stare at her blankly. I could feel my own thoughts clog up in my mind as I tried to process the idea of us glowing. Seeing the three of us be so surprised, Vivian’s momentary strength seemed to desert her as she sagged back down. “Yeah, I don’t know what happened, and all I know is that it was scary as hell and definitely not….” She paused for a moment, “Definitely not natural.”

A few moments of silence followed her quiet statement before Leo spoke very slowly and calmly. “What, in the absolute fuck.” He turned to face Vivian more fully, “There is nothing, literally nothing that would make even the slightest sense of all of this….”

Ajay suddenly snapped his fingers and sat upright. He hesitated for a moment when we all turned to look at him but continued, “Leo, do you still have access to the Bio-Lab?”

Leo raised a questioning eyebrow for a moment before realization washed over his face. “Yeah, one of my classes uses it, so I should be able to get in. You want to use it to test if something affected us?” Hearing this, I nodded, feeling slightly dull at not having immediately realized why Ajay was asking about it.

“Yeah, that’s pretty much it. If it turns out to be some kind of biological thing, then it should show up. And if it doesn’t, then….” His voice trailed off for a second, “Then I guess we can simply cross that off the list.”

Leo thought it over for a moment before speaking, “That’s better than anything I’ve thought of so far. Okay, let’s do it.”

“What, just like that? Aren’t we going to keep talking about this?” Vivian stared at Leo as he leveraged himself to his feet.

I stood up as well as I answered for him, “There’s really no reason to stay here. We’ve talked over what it was like for each of us, but otherwise… There’s nothing to really talk about, and we don’t really know what any of it could mean.” I took a deep breath before continuing, “And I don’t know about any of you, but I’m keeping myself from freaking the fuck out by a bare thread.”

I shrugged, “At least with this, we have something to do other than sit here and panic.”

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Vivian stared at me before deflating, “Alright, but we talk about this more if we don’t find anything, okay?”

“Yeah, that’s fair,” Ajay responded. For a short moment, the four of us stood there awkwardly, not knowing what to say and not knowing exactly what to do. Finally, I shook my head and simply started walking back through the trees to where we had all left our things.

Our small group was silent as we packed everything up, each of us desperately going over everything in our heads, just trying to make things make sense. I purposely avoided the point that Vivian had brought up earlier.

Not Natural.

I couldn’t help but notice that my bag that had seemed ever so slightly heavy earlier was now barely even noticeable. Finally, not even a dozen minutes later, everything was packed away again.

Glancing around the clearing and taking note of the three entrances and exits, I quickly recalled which one led back towards the main campus. “Off we go, I suppose.”

“Now all we need are yellow bricks….” Ajay commented just loud enough for the rest of us to hear.

“And whatever tools you need to pave a road,” Leo added on, traces of humor laced through his voice. I just snorted at their joke before walking toward the path.

The path through the trees was surprisingly quiet, almost as though the forest knew something and was holding its breath. Something in me didn’t want to break that quiet, and judging from the silence from the others, they didn’t want to either.

Almost fifteen minutes later, the path widened out onto the campus grounds. The forest’s edge came right up against the broad grass field that the college kept around the school, a few hundred feet of open ground that was often used for picnics or pick-up games.

The college buildings looked almost surprisingly modern compared to the natural surroundings, with clean white surfaces, and sweeping curves along the edges of the buildings. A few hundred students were visible, either walking to and from the buildings or just out in the grass.

Our small group blended in quickly as we crossed the field and towards the Biology entrance, where Leo would take over the lead. As we made our way through the more crowded paths, I couldn’t help but notice that the other students would move around our group, almost as though they were making way for us.

Frowning slightly, I pushed the thought away to think about later as we approached the doors. “Alright, Leo, your lead from here,” I murmured just loud enough for him to hear. He nodded to me slightly and took over as we entered the building. I glanced around the interior, noting the soft green and white colors. Leo led us through the lobby and towards the leftmost door leading further into the building.

We followed him through a few halls and around a couple of corners before he stopped suddenly as he was about to turn another corner. “What…” I barely heard him mutter to himself before we saw around the corner ourselves.

A door was propped open a few rooms down the hall, clearly a breakroom of some kind. What caught our attention was when what looked like an upperclassman poked his head out of the room and yelled down the hall, “Some crazy shit is on the news!” He saw us as he turned in our direction. He glanced back into the room before calling over to us, “You will not believe this!”

I blinked in shock as he ducked back into the room, glancing at the others with me. The others looked just as shocked as I did. I locked eyes with Vivian for a moment before shrugging. Leo and Ajay suddenly sped up and led the way into the breakroom, where we quickly saw a group of a dozen or so differently aged students watching the large TV intently.

It was what was on the TV, though, that caught my attention. I recognized the news host as one of those 24/7 show anchors as he spoke over the video being shown picture in picture.

“We’re getting reports, multiple reports, of different attacks and phenomena taking place. These seemingly supernatural events are strange and seem unconnected as of now.”

A video started playing behind him, clearly shot on a phone. A couple was playing around in a river, laughing and joking with one another as a dog jumped around in the water with them.

A moment later, I felt my jaw drop as I watched tendrils of water snap out of the river and coil around the man’s neck before dragging him under. The video cut off right as you heard the woman scream and the person holding the phone curse loudly.

The anchor suddenly looked noticeably shaken as he looked into the camera, “This is just one example of multiple strange phenomena being reported. We also have over a dozen reports of different animal attacks with descriptions that….” He stumbled over his words for a moment, “Descriptions that match… certain creatures. Here’s an interview now.”

Another video began playing, showing what looked like an older woman, mid-sixties, I guessed. “I swear! It was a fuckin hellhound! It was a big fuck-off dog, all black and red glowing eyes!”

The reporter on the screen was glancing desperately between the woman and the camera, trying to get a word in as she ranted, “All the way up to my chest, fuckin five feet tall! I know a dog from a dog, and this was a fuckin hound! I swear it was! The damn thing was snarling and trying its damnedest to kill me! I’m lucky I had a metal door over my basement!”

The video cut off abruptly as I looked over to see Leo, Ajay, and Vivian looking just as shocked as I felt. Ajay met my gaze before letting out a heavy breath and shaking his head disbelievingly.

By now, another two dozen students had crowded into the room with us, and I could hear the murmurs getting louder as people started discussing the report over the anchor’s shaky voice.

Only a moment later, I heard something that made my attention snap back to the TV. The anchor’s hand was up to his ear as he listened and glanced noticeably past the camera, most likely looking for confirmation of whatever he was hearing.

“News just coming in, of new massively widespread phenomena, we’re getting matching reports from our national affiliates as well. People being seen in crowded areas seeming to glow suddenly before….” He paused again while letting out a mix between a disbelieving sigh and a shaky laugh. “And changing physically, apparently. We have a video filmed in Maine, sent from our affiliate stations; watch now!”

I could feel my jaw slowly drop as I watched this latest video play out. A family was playing in the park. The father and mother sat on a picnic blanket and watched as their daughter and son were throwing a frisbee. The girl couldn’t have been older than fourteen, and the boy was maybe eleven.

I watched in disbelief as the girl threw the frisbee before a frown crossed her face, and a moment later, she staggered as though a weight had just landed on top of her. Her eyes glowed brightly before their color changed to a swirling black mist. Her shoulder-length black hair grew into a long braid down to mid-back. Her skin paled similarly to what mine had done.

And just a moment later, a black glowing aura seemed to emanate out from her. Laced through the black was a crimson red and a deep curling purple. The boy had quickly run behind the two parents as they ran yelling towards their daughter, though she didn’t seem to notice anything until the aura suddenly faded, and she shook her head as though snapping out of a trance of some kind.

The video cut out quickly after that, but I simply stared unseeingly at the TV for almost a minute. My mind was running a marathon every second. I had been quietly denying what Vivian had described in my mind, but now… Now I had seen the same thing. How many people did this happen to? Why did it happen? And, was it connected to what else we had just seen reported?

Eventually, I snapped out of it as I felt Ajay tug on my arm. Looking around me, I saw even more students crammed into the breakroom, all watching the news report and talking loudly with one another. I absently noticed that someone had put on subtitles because the talking had gotten so loud.

I recognized Leo and Vivian making their way through the crowd and towards the door and nodded a quick thanks to Ajay for getting my attention. He smiled slightly before nodding back and helping me make a path of our own. We caught up to them outside the break room. Vivian opened her mouth to speak before Leo put up a hand and glanced through a window, apparently seeing an empty classroom behind the door.

Vivian looked mildly annoyed to be hushed in such a manner but acquiesced. Leo got the door open quickly and hurried us inside. As soon as he closed the door behind us, Vivian spoke, “So, do you all believe me now?!”

Ajay laughed, “I don’t know if now is a good time for, ‘I told you so.’”

She crossed her arms and glared at him slightly, “That’s not what I’m saying-”

“Look, I’ll be honest, I didn’t really believe you before, but I can’t deny what I just saw,” I interrupted quickly.

Leo nodded in agreement, “That… I’ve never seen anything like that before. And for the water, I just….” His voice trailed off as he stared at the ground.

“That wasn’t natural,” I spoke quietly but firmly. I looked each of them in the eyes, “I don’t know about the hellhound one cause we didn’t see anything, but for the other two, it wasn’t natural.” I raised an arm to point in the direction of the breakroom, feeling a small sinking feeling of certainty in my gut as I spoke. “Can we agree on that?”

I waited for each of them to gesture or murmur agreement before continuing, “And if what we saw happen to that girl wasn’t natural, then what happened to us wasn’t natural.”

“And if this sort of thing is happening….” I felt my voice soften as I spoke, “Something happened. Something big. I don’t know how I know, but I do.”

Leo murmured a quiet affirmation while Ajay nodded grimly.

Vivian was looking between the three of us with a confused expression, “What do you mean, ‘you just know’?”

Leo shook his head slowly while staring into space, “I don’t know how to describe it, but…”

Ajay cut in, “I just know. It’s like a gut feeling or something, I guess? I just know that it’s something. Something big, and something we don’t know about.”

Vivian leaned back against one of the tables before letting out a long breath. She let herself take a few deep breaths before speaking, “This doesn’t make any sense. At all.”

I chuckled humorlessly, “Yeah, that’s fair.” I shook my head for a few moments, “Did the rest of you notice by the way?”

Ajay and Vivian frowned while Leo narrowed his eyes, “Notice what?” Leo asked slowly, clearly trying to remember anything he might have missed.

“When we were walking up and into the buildings, the others on the path walked around us. Almost without even noticing they were doing it, they split in our path. More than that,” I gestured towards where the break room was, “When that room got crowded, it should have been hard to push against the crowd to leave. They moved out of our way again.” Looking at them, I could see the realization on their faces, “I don’t know about you all, but this bag I’m carrying was a little heavy. Now I barely even notice its weight.”

I looked them each in the eyes, “I don’t know what happened or how, but we changed.” I let out a long breath and slumped down, “What do we do now…?”