Rosie pulled into her garage weak and shaking.
Not in all her years living in the North Country had she seen rain like this. It washed away sections of roads, made at least one roof cave in if rumors were to be believed, and she’d even seen a busted fire hydrant shoot a geyser one hundred feet into the air, right in the middle of the town.
She wished she’d had her camera.
The rain pounded against her house, made a stream of her driveway and a pond of her yard. It was the leavings of a hurricane from Florida and she could believe it. The rain came in sheets, not drops, and loud as thunder. Hurricanes didn’t make it to Northern New York when she was a kid—and that wasn’t long ago.
Harriet greeted her at the door. The German Shepherd was a bit damp; Nathan had let her out, then. He’d also left Rosie a little plate of blond brownies, with a handwritten note. Though he was long gone, she blushed. Why he was being so sweet to her, she’d never understand.
Rosie provided Harriet with water, treats, and scratches, grabbed a brownie, and sat at the kitchen table, listening to the rain and after a minute, noticed that Nathan had also gotten her mail and propped one envelope against the painted vase that served as her centerpiece. She smiled at his thoughtfulness this time; the envelope was from the photo developer in New Hampshire.
With a thrill, Rosie ripped open the envelope and fished out the prints. Two rolls were from her trip to St. Lucia, the third a generic batch she took after she got home. She was happy with the St. Lucia pictures; that was more a credit to the destination than the photographer, though. Rosie wasn’t great at taking pictures, she just enjoyed it, and she wasn’t the kind of person to stop doing what she enjoyed.
The third roll was good, too, in its way. Late summer flowers. A hike near the St. Lawrence. Harriet, of course; there was always at least one picture of her. She’d almost forgotten the next group she flipped through: a dusk walk she’d taken down her road on a night the light was particularly lovely. Hazy and wet, it had hung over the green fields along both sides of the road, making everything tropical. A storm had been on the horizon, but it had stayed in Canada. Rosie looked at her picture of those clouds now—cobalt knots, low in the sky.
The next picture, though, made no sense. She questioned her eyes. Flipped back a picture, and forward one, and still, things didn’t line up.
The photo was of the little brook that gushed through some woods, under the road through the culvert, and popped back out on the other side, where it widened out through the pasture. She loved that brook. All running water, really—except this rain. There was something so appealing about the way water looked, cold and clear, slipping over rocks.
But there was no brook in this picture.
Instead, in glossy print clear as day, was the same road, but caved in past the shoulder, obscured entirely by a sheet of water than flowed from the pasture and tumbled down the other side like Niagra Falls in miniature. This sudden waterfall was perhaps twelve feet long.
Outside, the Florida rain reached a crescendo. She couldn’t even see out her kitchen window. An idea sprung into her mind, about the picture, but that sure as hell didn’t make any sense. Though neither did the picture itself.
Rosie stuffed the picture in her pocket, fished a rain jacket and Wellingtons from the closet, and marched out into the storm. It was stupid of her. She knew it was dangerous to walk even in a couple inches of water during rain like this, but there was no waiting.
The culvert in the picture was just a quarter mile from her house and only a skin of moving water covered the road. Her rain jacket and Wellingtons did absolutely no good, though, and she was drenched in milliseconds. The rain was a roar in her ears, the landscape a muddle of gray and green, and unrecognizable. It was hard to follow the road except by memory; when it curved, she knew that the culvert was just beyond it.
Rosie shifted to a trot, her own bated breath and slamming boots silent in the din. She’d know immediately if the picture was true. How could it be true? On the other side of the curve now, Rosie slowed, because she saw it already.
Up ahead, the asphalt was a sheet of water. Like in the picture, the brook had swollen and risen up to overflow the bank and stream across the road, where the water ate away at the earth supporting it and collapsed, creating a twelve-foot long cliff. A long silken sheet of water poured over the edge.
Rosie tiptoed closer. A voice reminded her not to be too stupid. She stopped just shy of where the water started to pool on the pavement.
She slipped out the picture, holding it tightly against a barrage of rain. The picture and the view in front of her were so similar, she could’ve snapped the picture in that exact moment. The strangeness of it made Rosie feel light-headed and distant. Something about the natural way of the world been broken and now nothing felt real.
The rain shoved the picture right from Rosie’s hands. Within seconds, it was gone, flowing over the edge off the waterfall and into the brook below, now gushing past as a white-water river.
News & Other WIPs
The biggest news this month came as a surprise to me! During Covid I wrote this story called “In Sickness & In Slaughter,” about a she-werewolf. She’s unconconsious the entire story, because she’s just come in from a night of killing, exhausted and covered in blood. The story is really about her husband, who spends the story cleaning her up and making her “perfect” again. It’s a horror tale and there’s a pretty disgusting scene where I describe the woman turning into a werewolf. To be honest, I don’t really like the story all that much, because it’s so nasty. But, so far, two publishers have liked it. Last August, the story was read on the Tales to Terrify podcast. I resubmitted it a few months ago to an anthology, and to my shock and awe, they loved it! It’s going to be published Graveside Press’s Howl Anthology in January. So yay me!
I’m plugging away at the sixth Frontenac Sisters book, “The Only Constant,” trying to make up the writing hours lost this summer during Renaissance Festival season. I’m roughly three-quarters in. I should make steadier progress as quiet winter hibernation sets in.
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