More Fractured Tales stories!
A strong westerly wind smacked the rail of her raincoat against her bare legs as she pulled it tighter around her.
Stray tendrils of long, wet grey hair were whipped across her pale face.
The wind was increasing and it was getting wetter – the heavy mist turning into light rain.
She was oblivious to it all as she walked slowly out onto the bridge over the harbour.
There were no boats in the channel tonight… no one was working tonight… except those who were preparing for tomorrow’s holiday festivities.
But they did not know what was about to happen… what was coming after darkness fell… and it was coming on – or from within – the ocean.
None of the town’s residents were aware of it… they could not sense it… and, because of that… they would not be prepared.
She was the only one who knew… and she was not at all certain that she could handle it alone.
How did she know these things… because she had lived through them… probably more often than she was could remember.
The last event had occurred five hundred years ago… which, incidentally, had been the five hundredth anniversary of the time before that.
No one knew how many times it had happened before… strange occurrences had not been recorded for public records that far back.
Some private record keeper, however, had been very interested in those things… the things that came from somewhere out there in space.
What those things looked like… or exactly where they came from… or what they could do… was unknown, for they could change their size, shape and colour as deemed necessary.
The last occurrence had been explained as a small disturbance along the the ‘Ring of Fire’ earthquake zone… just strong enough to produce a minor tsunami that had swallowed up several small uninhabited islands and several thousand beachfront properties… leaving the rest of the population in total darkness.
The homesteads had been intact at midnight but… gone the following morning.
Well, she knew it was not a tsunami… at least, not a naturally occurring one … it was something far more sinister than that.
She knew because she had been there… it had all come back to her in a dream… she remembered being swept out to sea… floating in limbo… surrounded by total darkness for what had seemed like eternity.
She was alone… in a strange room… with walls that threw her back when she smashed her head against them.
