Chapter 536

The old, weathered man, Boonsong, sat on his porch, the damp wood creaking beneath his weight. The air was heavy, the sky a sickly shade of green. He watched as the wind whipped the banana leaves in his small yard, a dance of impending doom he'd witnessed many times before, but this felt...different. He shivered though it was humid, his skin prickling.

"Grandfather," a small voice, belonging to his granddaughter, Mali, interrupted his observations. She clutched a worn, stuffed elephant, its button eyes staring blankly ahead. "Is the bad wind coming?"

Boonsong offered a reassuring smile, one he didn't entirely feel. "Just some wind, little one. Nothing we haven't seen before." He tried to maintain his usual demeanor. He was getting tired of playing this role, but felt it must be kept.

Mali remained unconvinced, her small hand tightening around his. "It doesn't feel like the other winds, Grandpa. It feels… hungry." She looked toward him, seeking more of his advice and the confidence it was meant to instill.

Hungry. The word sent an unpleasant jolt through Boonsong. It resonated with a feeling that had been growing in the pit of his stomach all day. A sense of things taking a dreadful turn. He squeezed her hand, the physical touch reassuring at least him if not the child, hopefully her, too.

"Come inside, Mali. Let's have some mango sticky rice. Would that make you feel better?" He needed to distract her, and himself, from the unease. The role must be maintained. He must project an illusion of confidence, and never anything other than that.

Inside, the wooden walls of their home offered a false sense of security. The windows rattled, and the wind howled like a tormented spirit, and even Boonsong looked a little disturbed, a reaction the girl noticed, which made it all even more sinister for the 6 year-old child. He knew better than his sweet little granddaughter. He knew that wind like this took what it was owed, what it believed it deserved.

Mali ate her rice with an appetite diminished by fear, her eyes occasionally going to the windows, where the storm pressed its face against the glass. Her youth was a shield that was starting to degrade, the truth pushing down on her. It would soon give in and snap, shattering everything, breaking her heart.

Boonsong tried to start conversation, desperate to break the thick, suffocating dread. "Remember that funny monkey we saw at the market last week, Mali? The one that stole the lady's banana?" His stories usually elicited smiles, but his humor failed him. The monkey seemed harmless and sweet but he knew it had bad intentions and desires. It was cruel but the appearance it maintained served it well.

Mali gave a weak smile, a mere twitch of her lips. "He was funny, Grandpa." She couldn't hold on to that thought as the house shook, a violent shudder that made the plates on the table rattle. That little smile washed away quickly, leaving a void behind it.

Then, the sound. It started low, a deep, guttural groan that seemed to emanate from the very heart of the storm. It was like the earth itself was in pain, wailing and tortured by some cruel action of mother nature, maybe the handiwork of a greater intelligence beyond Boonsong's wildest imaginations.

"What's that, Grandpa?" Mali's voice was a barely audible whisper, her eyes wide with terror. Her innocence was slowly dripping, dropping, fading, fading. The realization of a horrible outcome.

Boonsong didn't answer. He knew that sound. The villagers called it the 'Sky's Wail,' the precursor to the taking. An old wives' tale, he'd always thought. Until now, until his blood felt chilled like it did when his mother described it all to him as a child.

The Sky's Wail grew louder, resonating deep within Boonsong's chest, vibrating his very bones. The house vibrated in sympathy, groaning and creaking like a ship about to be swallowed by the sea, perhaps foreshadowing events about to begin.

Mali ran to Boonsong, burying her face in his lap, her small body shaking with uncontrollable sobs. He stroked her hair, his own heart pounding in his ears. The moment of decision, if it could be called that. He had none really. Only surrender.

"It's okay, Mali," he lied, the words catching in his throat. Lies now flowed, just as easy, and naturally as his truths had just before. "It's just a loud noise. It can't hurt us." His actions betrayed his speech.

The Wail intensified, reaching a fever pitch that was almost unbearable. The air pressure dropped suddenly, ears popping. The walls of the house bulled inwards, as if the whole sky, filled and angered with winds and blackness were trying to rip through Boonsong's small and modest little home that had housed countless memories.

Suddenly, one of the windows shattered, sending glass shards everywhere. Mali screamed, a high-pitched, piercing sound that was swallowed by the roaring of the storm. His mind now raced. He couldn't take a loss. Not anymore.

Boonsong pulled her close, trying to shield her from the wind and rain that now whipped through their home. He tasted the bitter bite of his tears. This small, modest home in Thailand, what would happen to it without them, without their spirit and warmth that made it not a house, but their family home.

But the storm had other intentions. It was no longer a collection of clouds and water and a few stray gusts, it was something sinister and conscious with malicious intent that ached to break their peace apart at the center.

A swirling vortex of wind and debris formed in the center of the room, a miniature cyclone that danced with impossible energy. It pulled at everything – furniture, rugs, even the pictures of his lost wife. Boonsong's old body shuddered at his history now being discarded like old and unimportant relics.

Boonsong felt a force pulling at Mali, an invisible hand trying to tear her from his grasp. He held on tighter, his old, arthritic fingers digging into her arms with a desperation that pushed through the years of old and degrading physical agony.

"Grandpa!" Mali shrieked, her voice a broken sob, filled with anguish and torment that could not be sustained by something so pure, sweet and small. She could only have enough fear inside of her to make these reactions make sense. It was too much for someone like that.

He looked into her eyes, the brown of wet earth now glistening with pure, unadulterated terror. It mirrored his, except his included age and sorrow beyond anything he had imagined could fit into a human heart, let alone his.

"I love you, Mali," he said, his voice hoarse, barely audible above the screaming wind. It was probably the final time, but perhaps not. He considered, while the options slipped, dwindling fast like grains through the hourglass.

The force intensified, ripping Mali from his arms. A sickening crack, like the snapping of a dry branch, filled the air as her small hand was pulled away from his. The crack he believed, was in his heart and not her hand.

He screamed her name, a guttural roar that was swallowed by the greater roar of the storm. He watched, helpless, as Mali was lifted into the air, her small body spinning within the vortex of darkness, being crushed by that force which he never had a single hope of even diminishing by a small margin.

The vortex rose, carrying Mali through the shattered window and up into the swirling green sky. He could still, above all of the horrible screaming that felt would fill the place and permeate it permanently, that of himself and Mali and the wind itself, hear his poor girl crying, still just hear her faint desperate voice.

Boonsong scrambled to the broken window, heedless of the sharp edges that gashed his hands. He reached out, a futile gesture of a man bereft of his final and biggest reason, reaching to the girl of his blood as her face got smaller.

He saw her, a tiny speck disappearing into the black clouds. Then, she was gone, leaving behind a void bigger than his little world. His poor and only granddaughter had been claimed.

The Sky's Wail ceased. The wind died down. The rain slowed to a drizzle. The storm was over, leaving behind a trail of devastation and a silence that was more terrifying than any noise, not so dissimilar to the eye of a greater, physical and earthly hurricane.

Boonsong stood at the window, the water washing away the blood from his hands, mixing with the ceaseless stream of tears that ran down his weathered cheeks, knowing their salinity was far greater than ever the rain, and his wounds ran much deeper than could ever bleed to make him better from having to heal, the physical sort.

He stared into the now clearing sky, a cruel expanse of innocent blue, that, not for the first time felt an ache of longing for his wife who was not of this realm, he thought, wishing her to show him this same terrible mercy that Mali had just received.

"Why her?" he whispered, his voice broken, the words lost in the empty space of his ravaged home. His tears felt infinite, it was clear that any sort of healing for such wounds was a completely unmanageable task to his core.

The only answer was the echo of his own grief, bouncing off the shattered remnants of his life, a life he no longer even wished to recognize as it did not, after all contain her any longer. No one, anywhere, who could know and experience even a minor taste of such trauma, such pain and torment and deep loss of one they loved so dearly as his darling, small granddaughter, could.

He knew then, standing there amidst the wreckage, that this was not a random act of nature. The storm did not come just for the houses it could crush or for the people that could run in the panic and fear that they're going to experience before losing all.

It came for the children. It took what he would, not even ten seconds ago, would have offered his poor aging, decrepit body up for, without question, for the first borns, as old testament bible tales. But he had a suspicion this had been ongoing for much, much longer, and to assume it would stop soon, at all was another delusion.

That thought brought forth his grief again, that if he had anything, anything he did have. But they all were nothing compared to that which had just been ripped from him. The innocent, the pure. The future that he once felt, but realized how he did, before he even noticed this coming change in atmosphere, hadn't, he now understood.

The storm fed on something much more than destruction. It hungered for stolen joy, the unlived years, the unfinished dreams. And they would be just his soon, one day, hopefully soon enough, if any mercy were granted to him.

Boonsong remained at the window for hours, a solitary figure framed by destruction. The sun rose, painting the sky in mocking hues of pink and orange, mocking with the life and energy and promise it seemed to exude, not that it had a shred.

He didn't move. He didn't cry anymore. There was nothing left inside him. An emptiness so profound it threatened to swallow him whole. To consider what had become, he could think only that he was something empty with only memories now, and nothing left to contribute, at least until whatever terrible rest he may have been owed, arrived, mercifully, as Mali's, to some, had.

As the light strengthened, revealing the full extent of the devastation, a strange sound caught his attention. It wasn't the Sky's Wail. It was something different. Fainter, softer. More haunting, not so much the terrible thunder that took away, that ripped through and snatched but a single sound, repeating.

He listened intently, trying to locate the source. It was coming from his yard, near the banana trees that had been battered but not broken by the terrible and brutal act that had ruined him so terribly just before, and had always.

He walked out, slowly, his bare feet treading on broken glass and debris. He followed the sound, a soft, plaintive whimpering that pricked his empty heart, a sound he might have been familiar with long ago when she came to them, his daughter's only child, his wife so sick and on the edge of this world, and wherever, after.

Near the base of one of the trees, hidden beneath a large, torn leaf, he found it. A small, soaked creature huddled, whimpering with cold and fear. But familiar and perhaps welcome. The warmth he had known before this storm of many forms, the small kind.

It was a kitten. Barely a few weeks old, its fur the same golden color as Mali's stuffed elephant. It looked up at Boonsong with wide, terrified eyes, the same color as Mali's before the terrible final image he knew was to plague him, that took away everything.

Boonsong knelt, ignoring the sharp pains in his knees. He reached out a hesitant hand, his old fingers, cracked and rough. The kitten flinched but didn't run, not old and weary, maybe something as a kitten would take more quickly, even at such an age.

He stroked its tiny head, gently, so softly that it might as well been that of a small hummingbird and felt another of Boonsong's tears on its body, it trembled like his very core had earlier when the horror had unfolded for him to see in full detail, too quick but he couldn't forget even the most painful memory.

Something stirred within Boonsong, a flicker in the desolate wasteland of his heart. A small, insignificant spark in the face of such profound darkness. But a spark, the idea he wanted was there, nonetheless. Perhaps what would be the start.

He scooped up the kitten, holding it close to his chest, sheltering it from the lingering dampness of the morning air. Its warmth so small and insignificant yet it felt profound to him, who needed and thirsted after any little detail that had so been robbed.

The kitten looked up, and in that instant, he had his realization: he might name the poor creature for what he had just, was being robbed of by this sick storm. A namesake, a thing to replace, though how poor, but it would be a constant trigger, or, constant reminder and something physical, too, maybe a love, in a fashion.

"Mali," he whispered, the name a sob that came with so, so many connotations now, all of them deeply terrible except that which he, in those first, precious and important final, healing moments, must only think of and consider for Mali, little kitten now.

He walked back inside, the kitten snuggled against him, and that, was the point, the realization. To use something like his little granddaughter, for himself and his need for solace to feed on and feel a return. It might feel something like it did. The tiny animal.

But the joy. That's what the storm wanted, Boonsong was sure. Not just children's bodies. No. Their unlived lives, the dreams. It's something beyond the cruel, crushing physical action. The pain was beyond just taking something, breaking a structure, some poor man's life.

No. What would break it forever, what could fuel, or satisfy the storm…wasn't a physical sacrifice. No, this kitten was everything and was only a kitten to that sick demon.

Boonsong smiled for the first time since his granddaughter was stolen, his mouth the new host, though it felt strange and difficult to form. It was the kind of reaction Mali, now of two lives in a cruel reality, used to create. He decided what would finally fix his little slice of devastation was this, at its source.

The storm stole Mali's joy, her unlived years. Her stolen future that wasn't some storm's to take or have any action towards that end, he'd, the one who had any say on it, had it instead.