Jillian Chantal

This week’s word for the group of writers who band together to write to the same word prompt each week is bridge. The heroine in my story has gotten a dream message from her deceased grandmother and is on her way out (in the middle of a storm) to a house she showed to the hero. She thinks there is an evil spirit in the house as there was a woman murdered there and strange things happened while she was showing the house. The hero has gone out there by himself and the dream told her he was in danger.

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Realizing she might be completely insane to drive out to that house in the middle of the night, but unable to ignore the messages being told her, Stella rose. She shed her pajamas and dressed in jeans and a polo shirt. Grabbing her duck boots and a raincoat that her grandmother had always insisted on calling a mac in the British sense, she readied herself for the long trek out to the Rigby estate in horrible weather.

Going out into the pouring rain, she slid into the driver’s seat, already soaked but grateful the raincoat was slick and the water slid right off. Into the floorboard.

As she drove toward the remote house, she tried to tell herself she was over-reacting and that her Grandmother really hadn’t spoken to her in a dream.

The storm worsened as she plowed on through the deluge. The sky was so creepy looking, Stella tried to keep her eyes down and not glance up.

When she got to the bridge over the river, she had no choice but to turn her eyes upward as the roiling water below made her sick to her stomach.

What she saw when she did look up made her gasp. “Do those trees really bend that close to the pavement ahead?” She didn’t remember there being a canopy over the road and with the way the wind was blowing them back and forth, she didn’t want to drive under them. It was weird and her stomach lurched as she came to the end of the bridge and drove under the first ones.

Ducking down even though she knew it was silly, Stella prayed out loud, “Get me through this if you want me to help Max. Get me through this.”

Terrified, with her heart thumping so loudly, she could swear it was louder than the rain, Stella drove forward as quickly as she could.  Until she almost hydroplaned.

Even more scared, she took her foot off the accelerator and allowed her car to right itself. “This is not getting me through this.”

Unsure if she was yelling at God or her deceased grandmother, Stella sensed the tears coming but she knew she had to keep going. Max needed her.

“I can do this. I can do this.” She decided that would be her mantra until she arrived at the house. If she arrived.

Pushing that thought out of her head, she was glad to see she was almost out of the wicked tunnel of trees. Lightning popped all around her and in the moment she passed the last group of branches, one bolt hit right to her left and exploded into a ball of fire as if it was one of the blow up ones tossed up into the air by kids at the beach.

Startled, she jumped. Her heart rate at dangerous levels, Stella clasped her chest with one hand and willed herself to settle down. “Stop being an idiot. It’s a storm, not the end of times.”