Page 15 (2/2)

"After you dropped me off"

"All these since then? Is that possible?"

"No It isn’t"

She looked up fros

"It isn’t possible," he said "Not this s, this detailed, in so few hours"

"What’re you saying?"

"Das had happened, were happening, but he lacked the frame of reference to articulate properly what he had experienced or what he felt about it Until now he had led an ordinary life in which, with the principles of architecture, he had striven to impose order on the chaos of existence Now chaos had overwhelh he sensed a new order under it, he could not see through the tu at the clock, at the drawings, at the clock, at A stepped into ?"

"And took me outside of time I don’t even knohat I mean by that I was here in the kitchen But I wasn’t I was drawing, but it wasn’t reallyin Nickie’s eyes, andto helpin Nickie’s eyes? What do you mean? What did you see in her eyes?"

"I don’t know I felt it so strongly Sos, the ether "What do you see, Aht, shadow, shapes"

"TheyWhat do they mean?"

"I don’t know They’re beautiful"

"Are they? I think so, too But why? Why are they beautiful?"

"They just are"

"You said ‘shapes’ What shapes do you see?" Brian pressed

"Just shapes, for real," he disagreed "I just can’t quite draw it It’s ale, but it eludes itated about?"

"I’itated I’m excited, I’itated"

"Well, you’ve got uess that’s what they must’ve been Auditory hallucinations Because I was exhausted This terrible sound I can’t describe it Terrible but at the same time…wonderful"

With the mention of hallucinations, he expected her to look at him askance, but she did not Intuition told him that she had a story of her own to tell

"And shadows," he continued "Quick shadows, passing and gone And no apparent source My eyes ached I thought I needed sleep Come on I have to show you this"

"Shohat?"

As he took her hand and led her out of the kitchen, into the hallway, he said, "The bedroooing to agitate me between the sheets"

"I know that Who would know that better than " He led her into his bedroom, to the foot of the bed "See?"

"See what?"

"It’s perfect"

"What is?"

"The bed Perfectly ratulations If I had a e, I’d pin it on you with a flourish of tru this very well"

"Give it another shot," she suggested

"I was born in Kansas"

"That’s really starting at the beginning"

"In Kansas, in a tornado"

"I’ve heard the story"

"I don’t have any ? You couldn’t pay attention?"

"I’ve heard about it, of course A thousand times, froht, a week before everyone’s expectations, Brian’s one into labor Her water broke shortly beforeto drive her to the hospital when sirens sounded a tornado warning

Angela’straveled from Wichita to be of assistance after the birth By the tihter, and her son-in-law stepped out of the house, heading for the car, the wind had escalated frog, broke open and spilled sharp electric-white gouts of yolk In an instant the dusty air reeked of ozone and onco rain

"In the dream," Brian said, "I was an observer Not part of the action Have you ever had a drea other people?"

"I don’t know Maybe Co a dreaela, and John reached the old Pontiac, shatters of rain rattled down on the the skin and bounced high off the hard earth

"I wasn’t part of the dream, just the audience I didn’t speak to anyone, didn’t interact with anyone, and nobody saw me Yet I was iainst ht Scraps of green leaves, torn off trees, kept slappingto reater sound, not thunder, a continuous roar, growing in volu trains

"The wall of the tornado, the whirling wall," Brian said, "out there in the blind dark, concealed, approaching, not on top of us yet but not far off"

Their storm cellar enty yards fros back in Wichita, urged theoing to deliver the baby in the stor alcohol to sterilize the knife hich he would cut the cord, and other ite to the house, but he said he’d be a minute, less than a minute, no time at all

Brian said, "I ran with Morass was slick underfoot, not like in a dream Intensely real, Amy Sound, color, texture, smell There was an open stone vestibule built into the slope The shelter door stood at the back of it"

Brian had turned to look toward the house, and surprisingly the s had been still bright with light

Suddenly lightning broke not in bolts but in cascades, did not step jaggedly down the night as usual, but lashed through the dark like broad undulant whips of chain mail

Those celestial flares revealed the twister i over it, the i beast, as a up and up and still up, so high into the night that the top of it could not be glirated The funnel seelass, every scrap of wood, every nail, and John McCarthy, whose body would never be found

"My one into the cellar and closed the door," Brian said "I was outside, watching a tree being pulled up by the roots-such a sound thatscream-and then I was somehow inside the shelter with them"

At the last moment, Cora had looked back, had seen the house taken and no sign of her son-in-law She had closed out the chaos and had driven hoe of the door to the header, ja ten thousand cla Previously Brian had heard a sound like a score of trains, but now all the trains in the world were converging on a single intersection of tracks directly over their bunker

In that s and the walls transmitted vibrations from the punished earth above, and dust sifted down, and the hordes of Hell howled at the door and tested the bolts that held it

Perhaps accelerated by terror, Angela’s contractions brought her to the moment of delivery quicker than Cora expected With the funnel having passed but with the storhtened for her unborn child, weeping for her husband, Angela gave birth

Cora pulled a Coleht, she delivered her grandson with a calenerations of her family who had first settled the plains above

"In the dream, I watched myself be born," Brian said "I was a wrinkled, red-faced, cranky little bundle"

"Soe," Amy observed

Because not all twisters descend with suddenness, because some storm watches can last hours, the cellar had been furnished with two old ela delivered her baby on one of these, and the cover ith amniotic fluid, blood, and afterbirth