Whatever the Weather

“The last box, your highness!” Harry announced triumphantly, setting it down before me with a theatrical bow. Even under the weight of the wet weather outside I couldn’t suppress my smile. It vanished, however, when I went to peel off the strip of brown tape struggling to keep the top folds together. I repressed a grimace as I felt the clammy dampness of the moist cardboard beneath my fingers.

“It’s wet.”

He scoffed at me from across the kitchen. “You’ve said that about all of them!”

“Because they were all wet!”

Silence seeped in from the cracks beneath the doors, down the chimney, up through the floorboards. We’d had more fights about damp boxes than days since we’d moved in. And this was the last one – a cause for celebration, not a quarrel. Not another wordless evening spent glazed-eyed in front of the TV. After months of planning and discussing and pros and cons, that wasn’t how I’d wanted our first few weeks of cohabitation to unfold. Yet here we were.

Neither of us spoke. The quiet took root, disrupted only by the soft patter of tiny droplets drumming against the roof and windows. The soft sound of the rain crept into my ears like so many tiny insects, making my hairs stand on end, making me shudder. The constant patter of three weeks of rain made my whole brain feel like an open sore.

I peeled back the flaps of the box to reveal the warped cover of my mother’s copy of The Wind in the Willows. I took it in my hands and felt the damp-buckled page. I turned to show Harry, but saw only the empty kitchen, the teak cabinets lit by the weak gray of the wet day outside. I ran my thumb along the edges of the pages, and went to find a space for it on the shelf.

I wasn’t sure how long Harry was out of the room, but by the time he returned the rest of the damp books had been homed. I’d pressed them together tightly, in the hopes that the pages might flatten out again when they dried. If they dried. I heard him enter, his footsteps punctuating the drizzle outside, and then his voice.

“We’re all out of milk, I’m off to the store.”

There was still time to repair our day.

“I’ll come with you!” I called back, in the sprightliest voice I could manage. “This box needs to go in the trash anyway!”

He grinned at me from the threshold of our new home. The front door led straight into the kitchen, with a little coat nook, and a mud-caked doormat that already desperately yearned for a cleaning. I collapsed the empty box, trying to ignore how easily the soft cardboard gave way in my hands, and skipped over to pull on my rain boots. Harry leaned down to plant a kiss on my cheek as I bent down to grab them. I blushed like it was the first time.

“You’ll learn to love it here too, I promise.” He whispered. The warmth and sincerity in his voice made me forget the rain, momentarily. The rain that hadn’t stopped for twenty-three days. It was hard to believe that Harry had grown up here. His tanned skin and sun-bleached hair still bore the imprint of the southern California summer we’d left behind. I still couldn’t reconcile his appearance with the gloom and damp that now engulfed us. Perhaps only the grey-green of his eyes rooted him in this place of mud, trees, and inclement weather.

We stepped outside, raincoat clad and hand in hand. The vibrant blue of his jacket stood out like an ulcer against the murky greens and browns and greys of the landscape around us. Low, dark brown houses blended seamlessly into the rich earth they were built on, sodden with water and topped with a mat of yellow-green grass that looked more growths at the bottom of a pond than a lawn. Streams of water ran off the corner of each and every house. The rain washed away the warm feelings of moments before like a worm off the sidewalk. I looked up at Harry. He was beaming as if we’d just stepped out into a glorious, cloudless day in the height of summer.

“What a beautiful day,” he sighed, stretching out an arm as if to try and catch more rain. I’d have strangled him, then and there, for just a sliver of blue sky.

The walk to the store was a short one, past a handful of houses and the little matchstick church, the only painted building in the village. It had been white once. What could be described as weatherproof paint anywhere else was at best weather resistant here, and the paint had sloughed away from the wood, leaving dark gashes of the natural color. Where it hadn’t been removed completely, the perpetual moisture had turned it unsavory shades of sickly yellow and sallow grey. And yet I was grateful for the rotting church, felt camaraderie with it, even. It was somehow a reminder that a world existed outside of this village where life itself seeped into the mud. We passed the graveyard, separated from the sidewalk by a low stone wall that was held together by a thick carpet of moss. The sound of our steps startled a small frog that’d been basking in the rain, perfectly camouflaged against the grey and green before his slippery little form leapt down into the grass below.

It was a wonder you could bury anyone here.

I thought about the waterlogged dirt patch we called a front garden, all the little plans I’d had for all the things I’d grow outside our new home, then how I’d watched the water immediately pool into the slightest boot print the day we arrived. How could you dig in that? How could you hold back the seeping water, or stop the saturated earth from collapsing in on itself? And yet, a new memorial plaque stood at the head of a mound of fresh dirt. Beneath the crushing weight of six feet of dense, cold mud lay a body. Did the water trickle in through the seams of the coffin? I felt the hairs stand up on the back of my neck, as if the rain had seeped through my coat, welling up against the backs of my arms and legs. People died here. People were buried here. People even lived here in the first place.

Upon reaching the shop we were greeted by two women, huddled in glistening raincoats under a large black umbrella, guarding the entrance like two trolls beneath a bridge. I’d felt the weight of their glares since we’d turned onto the main street, leaving me self-conscious. I tugged at the sunshine yellow sleeves of my raincoat, adjusted my hood, fiddled with the zipper. Harry exchanged all the requisite smiles and pleasantries while I cowered behind him, watching the flicker of disapproval across their faces as they glanced past him to look at me. I had failed once again to solve the riddle of passing politeness, and barely squeaked out a weak “see you later” after Harry had won us passage into the store.

The bright white glare of the fluorescent tube lights was so similar to the cold, cloud-filtered sunlight outside that I didn’t even register that I could pull my hood down now until Harry reminded me. En route to the dairy, we passed a half-aisle of sad produce. Skinny carrots with more greens and roots than vegetable, plastic bags of half-yellowed spinach spotted with welts of condensation. I picked up a half-shriveled apple.

“Do you miss it?” I asked Harry, turning the apple over in my hand.

“Miss what?” I felt the hiss of dismay in his tone and immediately regretted the path I had set us on.

“California.”

He took a few paces forward, stopping at the end of the aisle to turn to face me.

“You want to do this here? Really?”

I looked at the linoleum floor under my feet, at the apple, up at Harry, then back to the apple. I became aware of the puddle accumulating by the fruit display, courtesy of a small leak in the ceiling.

“The produce was better.” I tried my best to frame the statement as a lighthearted quip, but the expression I’d intended as a playful smirk sank like lead shot. I watched the knots form in Harry’s brow as my admonishment began.

“The weather, the landscape, the produce!” He paced towards me now. “We talked about this. You agreed to come here with me, you agreed to give this place a chance, but instead you’re just steeping in, in this… this misery that you’ve invented.”

“I know, I…” I began, but the conversation was too far gone for me to toss out the life ring of apology now.

“But no, I guess organic and locally grown is only trendy if it’s California organic,”

“Harry…” He reached for my hand to grab the apple from me.

“If you’re so homesick, go home.”

A dark shape passed beneath us on the floor. At first, I thought he’d dropped the apple, but looking down I saw it grasped firmly in his hand. I frowned, and followed the shape with my eyes as it hopped beneath the sad little vegetable display. Staring for a moment in stunned silence, I noticed the handful of frogs nestled between the asparagus, and the broccoli, and the Brussel sprouts. I gagged and turned to leave.

Harry did not follow me. I did not acknowledge the two women, still huddled before the doorway. I did not stop. Without so much as a single glance back I made it home, my legs moving as if of their own volition. Within minutes I’d packed a backpack. Pyjamas, a toothbrush, and a change of clothes. It wasn’t until I was sat behind the wheel of our little red car, keys in the ignition, windows opaque with fog that the tears began to sting at my eyes. In spite of their sharp, salty pang, I drove off the moment the windshield had cleared enough for me to see. As I pulled away from the house, and out of our street, I caught the blue flash of Harry’s coat in my rearview mirror. I accelerated.

It was dark by the time he finally called me. I hadn’t stopped. I didn’t have plans to stop. I didn’t have plans, period.

“Hey?” His voice crackled, broken slightly by the itchy static of tinny rain through the phone. I waited an agonizingly long time to answer.

“Hey.”

“Where are you?”

“I don’t know.”

He sighed. There was another pause.

“Come home.” The road before me blurred as I began to cry. “Please, I’m sorry. Come ho-“

He was cut off by a sudden onslaught of noise. It blasted through the phone at the limits of the speakers, a maelstrom of white noise and screeches. A thud. The call cut off.

“Harry?” I asked the empty car, before calling him back. Straight to voicemail. I pulled the car over and called him two more times. Voicemail. Half-blind with tears I swung the car around.

***

I got back in record time.

I bolted into the house, engulfed immediately in the darkness, not thinking for a moment about the clots of mud clinging to my boots that I dragged in with me.

“Harry!” I screeched into the gloom, flicking on all the lights. Even with the bright glare of the bulbs, though, I still couldn’t see through my own panic. I ran into the kitchen.

“Harry?!” I called again, my voice trembling with desperation, the snakes of my soaked hair dripping water into my eyes, onto my coat, onto the floor. I flung my head from side to side, as if he might be hiding under the table or behind the bookcase or in the pantry. But there was no sign of him. Shaking, I tried the bedroom.

“Harry!”

The bathroom.

“Harry?!”

All that remained was the basement.

I stood gripping the door handle until my knuckles were white with exertion, beads of water perched precariously on my clammy skin. Behind the doors, steep stairs descended beneath the house. I’d only been down them once before, on one of the first days of moving in. Though I knew the concrete and foundations had held back the tide of sodden earth for years, every second I’d been down there I had felt the oppressive weight of all the dirt and soil and water around me, as if one wrong step and the walls would give way. I felt the flood, the landslide of earth and rain rushing towards me, filling the basement, swamping my feet, my knees, my chest, my shoulders, pouring into my lungs, my nostrils, my eyes. The panic as the quagmire weighed me down, sucked me in, and crushed me from all sides.

“Harry?” I cried out once again in a feeble, faltering voice. One he scarcely could have heard if he was down there.

Only the thunderous drumming of the rain answered me. I lifted the latch and thrust the door open.

I tumbled down the stairs and into the darkness, an avalanche of wet clothes and muddy boots. Alternating between holding my breath and desperate pants and gasps for air I grabbed at the wall at the bottom, my frigid hands violently searching for the light switch. I let out a whimper of frustration as I clawed and smacked at the place I knew I was sure it had been. I paused for breath, somehow cobbling together the resolve to try a calmer, more methodical approach. In the blind dark and dank air I became aware of a new sound. Above the drum of the rain and my breath was the lapping and splashing of water. I looked to where my feet ought to have been and saw only inky black. Lifting one, I felt the cling and slosh of water. A new splash. My splash. My chest caved in on itself as panic once again took hold. I dared a step further into the water in my search for the light. The moment my feet inched forwards the splashing and lapping began to intensify, as if the water around me were being brought to the boil. I could feel the spray of water creeping ever higher up my legs, when finally my fingers met the cold plastic of the switch.

I plunged into the light, and screamed.

The water, though a horror in itself, only came halfway up my shins. In it roiled hundreds, thousands, of glistening masses, moving together as one like some enormous tumor caught in the throes of a seizure, somehow expanding and growing. It was pouring in from the far wall. I took a step back, but instead of the hard floor behind me my boot struck organic matter. A sickening squelch, punctuated by the crackle of tiny, fragmenting bones.

The masses were frogs.

I stood there long enough to glimpse among them a flash of vibrant blue, then fled.

They’d reached the stairs before me, creating a slick mat of squirming, jerking bodies. As I clutched the handrail and fought for my footing, I felt them landing on my legs, my coat, cold and damp even through my clothes and felt the tears sting my eyes as I tried to shake them off.

“Harry!” I wailed now. The time for calling his name was over.

Frog after frog leapt up the stairs ahead of me, up and around my boots, and onto my back. Their density was like having chains thrown around my ankles, but I fought on, upwards towards the door, dragging my weight up the stairs first with the railing, and then with the stairs themselves. By some gracious lull in their forwards march, or a sudden burst of my own strength, I threw myself forward into the open, only weighed down now by those that’d stuck themselves to me. My own momentum flung me out of the door, back into the house. Only in that moment did I first hear the cacophonous chorus of croaks emanating from the basement and the staircase. And the hallway. And the rest of the house. Turning for the front door, the floor was already pockmarked with dark, amphibious bodies. The walls, too. I held back the bile rising in my throat. The car.

Thankfully, the door already swung open into the darkness and the storm outside. It flapped back and forth in the wind like little more than a piece of paper. The car sat where I’d left it, lights on, door open, parked at such a violent angle that only half the car sat in the driveway. I flung myself through the open driver side door, slamming it shut behind me and starting the engine. Stalling, stalling, stalling. Bursting to life. I hit the gas. I heard the engine. The car did not move.

“No, no, no!”

I tried again, only to hear the helpless screech of wheels in the waterlogged mud of the garden. I heard a plunk as the first frog hit the hood. Then a second. And a third. I jammed my foot to the floor, the noise of the engine rising with the sound of frog after frog as each tiny body hit the vehicle. They were pouring from the house now, through the gaping maw of the front door, the windows, up from the very ground itself. The car was sinking.

***

Harry sat before the police officer with bloodshot eyes, gripping the edge of the couch with both hands. He’d forgotten to offer them coffee. He’d forgotten how to sleep. He’d forgotten how to listen. They found the car this morning, half submerged in a bog off the I-90. No body yet, just a yellow raincoat caught in the window.