Wind and Indigo
By David M. Buhajla
The back of the eighteen-wheeler almost flipped in front of us as we drove north on Interstate 55 in the worst blizzard to hit Northern Illinois in the past fifteen years. The trucker seemed to be hauling an empty load, going as fast as possible to avoid jackknifing into the snow-filled ditch at the side of the road.
My father’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel of our small sedan as it was buffeted and thrashed by gale-force winds. My teeth were clenched from the stress of the situation, almost cutting the filter of my cigarette in half. I gave up the smoke as a lost cause and cracked my passenger side window, sticking the cigarette out into the maelstrom and watching as the storm tore the butt from between my fingertips.
“Jesus. Did you see that?” said my dad. “The trailer is almost tipping over again.”
My eyes snapped back to the road as I closed my window. The trailer of the semi was tipped over and the wheels on the left-hand side were suspended in mid air. It came back down with a muffled boom. The trailer rose back up again only to slam back down to the frozen pavement. I shook my head.
“Maybe we should back off from this guy a bit, Dad.”
“Good idea. If he jackknifes, we’re screwed.”
“Double screwed in this weather.”
“Precisely.”
Dad tapped the brakes a few times and the truck disappeared into the storm.
We drove in silence for a few minutes before I saw a dim blue-green glow reflected in the thick metal frames of my father’s glasses. For some reason, I felt an overwhelming sense of vertigo, like I was in a fast-moving elevator that was in the process of slowing down.
I turned my head, tipped back my baseball cap, and looked out of my window. There was a huge aquamarine orb that floated about fifteen feet above the wind-blasted wasteland of a dead cornfield. Large drops of its luminescence fell onto the frozen Illinois dirt.
What I saw didn’t feel right.
“Dad. Maybe you should pull the car over and get a look at this.”
I could tell that my father had a sense that something was wrong as soon as I opened my mouth. I guess there was something in the tone of my voice.
“Stop now, Dad.”
“Okay. Jeez. You gotta take a crap or something? I think there’s a gas station only about ten or fifteen miles up the road. Can’t you hold it till then?”
“I don’t need to use the bathroom. Just pull over.”
Dad’s fingers loosened up on the steering wheel and his eyebrows rose. He slowed down to a stop. The force of the wind pushed the car back and forth and he raised his voice so I could hear over the noise.
“What are you talking about? Why do you want to stop? We need to get to the next gas station. I need a break from this weather and I need coffee. A shitload of coffee.”
He turned to look at me. Then he looked past me at the floating light as the wind hammered the car.
“Jesus! What in the world is that?” he asked.
“I’ve read about this kind of thing before, back in high school. I think it’s called St. Elmo’s Fire. At least I hope that’s what it is. I hope it’s not some kind of funky UFO or something. I don’t feel like getting an anal probe today.”
“You got that right,” he mumbled.
My father’s voice was strange. I could barely hear him speak.
The car continued to be buffeted by the wind. We both just sat and stared at the blue-green sphere. My father bent forward a bit so he could get a better view of it.
“It ain’t right,” I said.
I glanced over and looked at him. His head was tilted back against his headrest. He looked pale, as if his face had been bleached of all colour. The only colour came from the St. Elmo’s Fire that reflected across his face and glasses. He was staring. Slack-jawed.
Hypnotized.
“Dad. You okay?”
Nothing.
“I asked if you’re okay.” I started to get nervous.
“Fine. Fine, now that I think of it,” he said.
He trailed off into a mumble, his lips squirming about like slugs covered in salt. I grasped his shoulder and shook it, looking into his eyes. The reflection from the St. Elmo’s Fire made it seem like his eyes glowed, like some creature in one of those weird science-fiction movies.
Then, Dad began to moan. It was loud.
“Hnnnnn-gaaah . . .” He paused for a second before he moaned again.
“Hnnnnnn-gaaaah!”
“Dad!”
I screamed his name and shook his shoulder again. My fingertips dug into his thick coat as he continued to stare at the light. A bubble of spit mushroomed at the corner of his mouth and broke open, turning into a line of drool that oozed down from his chin in one long and unbroken line.
Panic began to burrow into my brain. Frustrated, I turned to look at the ghastly ball of light. I wanted to see what it was doing. It seemed to have closed in on us in just a few seconds. I had to do something. The thing was making my dad have a seizure.
As I stared at the orb, I too had become paralyzed. I couldn’t move, not even a finger. All I could do was watch, listening to the blast of the wind and the moaning of my dad.
The orb moved closer and grew twice the diameter of a basketball.
Helpless, I noticed that the snow from the blizzard seemed to have no effect on the orb. The snow seemed to separate as if it wanted to avoid touching it. Either that or the orb had some kind of force field. It was beautiful as the colours shifted from aquamarine to cerulean to indigo and back again. Drops of liquid energy dripped off of it like the drool from my father’s chin.
My father.
I was in the car with my father.
I tried to move. I tried to think. I tried to speak.
“Hnnnnn-gaaah.”
It was the only sound that I could make.
There was nothing that existed except for me, my father, the storm, and the unholy fire of St. Elmo.
Deep down, I felt a growing sense of animalistic panic. There was a small spark of myself that hammered and clambered to break free from the influence of the orb’s dark energies. That little spark that I thought of as “me” fought like a starving, trapped, and desperate predator. I wanted freedom and, more importantly, I wanted escape, not only for myself, but also for the man in the driver’s seat.
Fighting with all of my will, with all of my emotion, and with all of my fear, I snapped free of my paralysis. I noticed that the orb was only yards from the car. It had grown again. It was almost the size of our car.
Screaming, I unbuckled my seat belt and slung it aside, pushing my paralyzed father back against his seat. I reached for the armrest of his door and unlocked it, opening the latch and extending my fingers enough to push the door open about a foot.
The wind slammed the door closed again.
“Oh, goddamnit. Please God, get us out of here,” I yelled.
Bringing my knees up to my chest, I pushed forward with my legs and crawled over my father headfirst. My pack of smokes fell out of my jacket, spilling cigarettes onto the floor. My lighter followed suit as I tore open the door and plunged headfirst into the blizzard.
The wind hit me like a sumo wrestler and the skin on my face went numb. Snot formed in my nose and tears slid down my cheeks and froze as my body slithered down into the snowdrift that had started to form against the side of the car. I kept one hand up to keep the door from slamming back into my face and I turned onto my left side as the lower half of my legs rested on my father’s lap.
Cursing, I slid my legs out of the car and got my feet under me. I stood up, turning toward the car and my father. The force of the wind slammed the door into the middle of my back. I fell forward and hit my chest against the top edge of the roof, which sent my baseball cap flying away toward the orb. I caught my breath as I watched my hat fly into the sphere.
The hat didn’t burn up in a puff of smoke. It didn’t turn into a mourning dove and fly away. It wasn’t electrocuted, frozen, or turned to dust.
It just ceased to exist.
And the orb grew a fraction and floated forward.
Tearing my eyes away, I saw a flashing light coming from my right. I turned my head and held my hand up to the right side of my face to block the wind as best I could.
A pickup truck moved through the blizzard. It moved in slow motion, a solitary migratory animal moving through a blasted white nothing.
The orb turned blue, as if in anticipation.
I wondered if the truck would stop for the half-second it would take me to get moving. I bent down and hooked my left hand under my father’s left knee, lifting as I pushed his shoulder with my right hand as hard as I could. He toppled to the side like a corpse and landed in the passenger seat. The top of his head smacked the passenger door and I winced.
“Sorry, Dad.”
Pushing his buttocks forward and lifting up his legs, I slid him into a sitting position as the wind hammered at the back of my head. His body curled into a fetal position. He moaned once and went silent.
I crawled behind the wheel. I didn’t even need to close the door. The wind slammed it shut for me as I put the car into drive and stomped on the gas pedal. The small four-cylinder engine revved as much as it could. I put as much distance between the orb and us as possible.
Looking in the rearview mirror, I saw the flashing yellow light. It turned out to be a snowplow and it had moved closer to the orb. I prayed that the driver of the plow wouldn’t stop.
I slowed down and clawed my hand into the inside pocket of my coat, pulling out my cell phone. There was no signal. The blizzard must have knocked out cell towers and the weather was thick enough that no signal could get through anyway. Frustrated, I tossed it onto the dashboard.
I glanced into the rearview mirror once more to check the progress of the snowplow. The orb had reached the edge of the freeway, pulsating from blue to indigo and back again. I shook with fear and impotent rage. There was nothing that I could do. There was no one I could call. My father was comatose next to me and the blizzard would keep the driver of the plow from seeing me even if there was no orb, even if I could risk standing in the storm to flag him down.
The plow stopped next to the orb and I could only watch. I was helpless. I didn’t realize until a second later that I wept. I watched as the plow waited, light flashing.
The orb darkened into the purest shade of indigo that I have ever seen. It moved forward and touched the plow as droplets of glowing darkness pattered onto the pavement.
And both the snowplow and the orb winked out of existence. No light. Only snow and darkness. Black on white.
I turned my head and looked at my father curled up in the seat next to me. He looked like a sleeping child. I sniffled and wiped the tears and mucous from my face.
After a few moments he stirred and mumbled and sat up.
“How long have I been asleep?” he asked.
I kept driving.