Clouds

Clouds

By: Austin J. Stevens

    It was the third time this week that he heard the sound. The strange “whirring” noise woke him from sleep again and he was finally fed up with it. Jason Andrews, a slacking college student decided that this time, he wouldn’t wake his room mates. “They would just think I was crazy again.” He thought to himself as he threw back the sheets and sprung from his bed. 

    Exiting the small room and heading down the hall he thought of all the possible explanations that had crossed his mind the last two nights. Trains, large passing trucks, planes, even UFOs crossed his mind. All of these would be more satisfying than finding no solution to the noise that, to him, was a blaring annoyance. 

    He grabbed his flashlight and his coat, plunging into the dark night. The sound was there, it hadn’t gone anywhere and seemed just as loud outside the three bedroom home as it was from his small room inside.

“Maybe it is just in my head and I’m going crazy” He thought, downing the stairs and making his way past the parking area.

    Only one puddle of light from the light pole in the yard pierced the darkness. He decided to avoid it as he was almost sure the sound came from above and any interference from the light would distort his vision. 

    He looked up and saw spindling clouds lit by the light of the waxing moon. They were spread far enough apart that some of the sky could be seen and no planes appeared in the sky. Large trucks did in fact pass by the street where Jason lived but they made a different noise entirely and the sound lasted long after they were gone. He took note of the time on his phone. He forgot to do this when he stepped out of the house, which made him want to pull his hair out. He was meticulous about note keeping and documenting his experiences. 

    11:03 Thursday November 11th. He typed it into a note-keeping application on his phone, one that he used regularly. He sat in a lawn chair and listened closely to the noise. It may have been nothing and it didn’t appear to him that the planet was being invaded or anything but he had to be sure about the noise. It was just too annoying to let it go unsolved. He also wanted to prove to his roommates, and more importantly himself, that he wasn’t going crazy or hallucinating. 

    Time passed slowly but he checked his watch once more, 12:03 am Friday. Somehow he managed to check his watch exactly one hour after he started his silly investigation of the mystery noise. Jason deduced that the noise was caused by wind. It was cold out and the small breeze made him chilly, even in the thick coat, but he was determined to stay until the noise stopped. He couldn’t help but go back over the previous explanations in his head for another few minutes until his mind wandered and he began pondering everything from the negative scenarios in the news to his frequent philosophical ideas. 

    The noise permeated these thoughts though, he couldn’t hear himself think due to the noise begging his attention. He looked up once more and caught a glimpse of the clouds moving, the moonlight still beaming and lining them with a white light, he looked back out into the distant darkness and began to think of the time he had spent in the small town of Bliss. Living with his roommates after moving out of his tormenting parent’s house, this small town was his place of solitude. He could think here, work here, and most importantly he could live without catching the screech of a condescending tone belted by the voice of a “loved one”. 

    Bliss wasn’t exactly the place you want to start your life, it was small and there was little to do but his options were limited on places to live. He was incredibly lucky to have friends willing to take him in. He thought briefly about the look he got from Tracy, one of his roommates friends, while she visited briefly the night before. “She’s a dream, but too good for me” he thought as his mind trailed off to something else. 

    Then the noise came around again, but louder. The loud “whirr” began to grow and it almost resembled the sounds he had heard whales make during documentaries. This time it was strange and sounded almost organic. He shined his light into the trees, thinking that the sound came from some kind of animal, or even the trees themselves. “An owl wouldn’t make that sound. Not that loud” he thought as he scanned the tree line and into the deep of the woods.

    He spotted some eyes, shining back at him. Springing from the lawn chair he approached the eyes, having no fear of what would lie in the thicket. Keeping the light focused he proceeded slowly and reached the point where the grass got higher. A wooden fence separated him from the small wooded area and he didn’t want to move any further and cross the land line. Suddenly the eyes moved and he saw the shape in the woods begin to hop freely in the opposite direction of him.

“Just a deer,” He said unenthusiastically. 

    He turned and took another glimpse at the sky, this time catching the clouds in their spindling formation again except something was different. One of the branches of the long thin clouds was recoiling almost like a snake would. It coiled in on itself and then reached back out in the reverse of the previous motion. “What the…” He thought, assuring himself it was some optical deception.

    Watching with anticipation, for some reason he expected it to repeat the action. Jason checked his watch and when he looked back it was doing just as he thought it would, recoiling again and this time some small part of the cloud looked a little more dense than before. It resembled a lump and for a moment he had flashbacks to an old movie where a cow was carried away by a tornado. He was sure the weather didn’t call for that sort of thing but he checked a weather application on his phone just to be sure. No warnings or watches were issued. 

    The sky darkened a little more and the whirring sound became even louder. He looked up to see a dark mass above him, clouds were moving in and now he didn’t trust the weatherman. He checked his surroundings, looking to the trees to describe to him the strength of the winds before realizing there was none. The whirring grew more and his sight trailed back upward. 

    Jason had shined the light at the trees and woods but never thought to train it upward to the sky, so he did. The thin beam of the light measured nothing against the black mass but once he looked on, it seemed dense and reflected a bit of the light back. It wasn’t metallic but looked almost like skin or a hide. He assumed a strange weather condition caused this cloud to be so abnormal but while examining it, he saw a small pulse. “Ugh..” an audible gasp left his mouth and he nearly dropped the light. 

    One of the tendrils of this cloud he was gazing at seemed to uncoil and drop into the neighbors yard. He wiped his eyes, surely this was a hallucination. He retrained his eye on the skies above and saw again the pulse of the cloud, resembling a heartbeat. The now visible thin skin of the cloud hypnotized him and he couldn’t look away, he wanted to drop the light, he wanted to grab his phone from his pocket and take a picture, but he was sure if he took his eyes off of it that it would disappear. 

“What about the neighbors yard?” He thought to himself and immediately gave up on his stare to check the uncoiled tendril of darkness. 

    It was recoiling, again with a heavy mass inside it's grasp, but smaller than before. Another noise broke through the night, the sound of a shriek and a scream. He tried to train his light on the tendril in question but by this time his hands were shaking ferociously, it took both of them to straighten the lamp to show the true image of what he thought he was imagining. A person being dragged into the sky by the tendril and coiled into its grasp just as the shrieking stopped. “Oh, what?” 

    He found it hard to move but the curiosity of seeing the cloud again overcame the fear of what may happen to him. He looked back up and the beam struck the creature and showed another “heartbeat” . The pale skin of some horrible entity in the sky shot fear through his heart and his beam then landed on another pair of tendrils. He followed them down with his electric torch and found they led to the very house he occupied with his two roommates. He gasped and watched as they ethereally pierced the roof of the house. 

    The flashlight hit the ground, falling out of his trembling hands and he forced himself into the house and began calling out to his two friends. What lights were on in the house began flickering into darkness and he came to the locked door of one of his friends, managing to force it open. He stared at an empty bed. “Oh no, no” he crossed the threshold and faced the door on the opposite wall. Banging on it he forced that one open as well. A shriek came from the ceiling, the sound of a woman in distress filled his ears and then was muffled as if it were outside. 

    There were no holes in the ceiling, the whirring was now almost deafening. Jason pulled his phone and tried to call his friends, the phone of Jessica rang from beside the bed he was staring at. Darting down the hall he also made a note of the time. 3:23 a.m. Friday. He glanced past his room and saw a string of smokey clouds leaving the ceiling above his bed and permeating the roof. 

    Rushing outside he leapt over the railing of the stairs and turned backward as he ran, while looking into the air. The flashlight rolled underneath his feet and he nearly fell before reaching down to grab it and point it to the sky. Another heartbeat. He could barely hear the screams as the whirring was now like a resonant vibration coming from the sky, but he could see. Inside the tendrils, being gripped by the creature, were his friends. The screaming stopped as the spirals became dark masses and joined the larger mass. “Ah f.. What the..?!?” Shock and adrenaline came in waves over what he witnessed. 

The mass moved over the home and continued south, he watched it move and watched the tendrils fall and rise continually as it made its way across the small town. It almost drove him mad, he saw it and watched it clearly, but who would know? The whole town, hell most of the country was in bed at this point. Who would ever think that this could happen or much less come outside to see. “I did...surely someone else has…” He thought before his mind trailed off once more. Sitting in the cold, damp grass he thought “No more noise… Do I sleep now?” 

THE END