The Coming Storm

"May God have mercy on our souls"

 Were the last written words of Jeremiah Watts.

"There is an approaching storm!" The ethereal voiced preacher said over the static filled radio. "Something the likes the world has ever known! You all that can hear my voice, you better repent!" His voice crackled with intensity as the rain outside the car continued to beat against the car, as if were trying to get at the occupant inside. The man did his best to stay on the road. He hadn't seen another car in miles, and he wasn't concerned with seeing one. He had other, more pressing matters on his mind.

"Please God, forgive me." The man in the driver's seat whispered softly. He drove for a few moments before deciding to stop the car. He closed his eyes and said a quiet prayer to himself in an attempt to calm his wrecked nerves. When the prayer didn't work he opened his eyes turned his attention to his bible laying in the passenger seat. As he reached for it he took care not to pay attention to the barrel of a shotgun sticking out from the passenger's side well. Or the vague smell of sulfur that emanated from it. As he grabbed his bible he opened it and began reading, until the sound of thunder made him jump and drop the bible at his feet. He began to weep at that moment.

"God, why?" He sobbed, "Why? Why have you made me carry this burden?" He cried into his hands. "They weren't, right, Lord. I just..."

The preacher's hollow, forlorn voice crackled through the car radio again, causing the man to pause momentarily in his suffering.

"You know you have sinned. You all have!" The preacher said before pausing. The rain outside coming down so hard that the man could not see out any of the car windows. "When the almighty makes his return, he will wipe all the filth from the land! But before he comes, before he comes, a wicked evil will appear, In fact, I would say it has already appeared. Which is why, the storm is approaching."

The man looked up from his hands and stared into his own bloodshot eyes. The man he saw before him was not the man he saw just 48 hours ago in a laboratory bathroom. That man was a confident man, a man who thought he knew the world and everything in it. But after last night. He became the broken, hollow shell of a man he is now. Part of him believed he was still sane, so much so that he decided to park the car in this downfall. But the greater part of him knew, that something, fundamentally deep down on a base level, he was no longer sane. 

The rain and thunder outside the car picked up, so much so that the man turned up the volume on the car radio to hear the preacher. The man quickly jerked his hand back from the radio as if it were a viper when he began to hear the preacher's gravely voice laughing.

"But you know what you have done. I'm not talking to those in my flow before me. No, I'm talking to the ones out there. The ones out in the godforsaken world. They know not what will befall you! Repent! Or your damned souls will forever burn in the lake of fire!"

Even over the preacher and the rain, the man sitting in the driver's seat, began to hear the sound of scratching coming his backseat. When he slowly turned to look, he saw nothing, but he knew there was nothing in the backseat. Tiny sobs began to leak from the man, like a rusted pipe. He knew the scratching sounds were coming from "behind" the backseat. He knew something was in the trunk.

"Why." The man sobbed. "Why have you placed this...this, curse upon me lord? Why?" the man said as he began to beat the steering wheel in frustration. The static of the radio and the intense sound of the rain began to drown out his own thoughts. He took a glance over at the shotgun, took a deep breath and grabbed it by the barrel. He felt the warm metal against his palm as he pulled it out. He opened his car door to the pouring rain, and slowly walked toward the trunk, not caring that he was getting soaked to the bone.

As he reached the trunk, he could hear the sound of scratching even over the sound of rain all around him. As he reached for the handle of the trunk, he mentally prepared himself for what he knew he was going to see. As he opened the trunk, the man sobbed again as the body of a woman in a lab coat with a gunshot wound to her stomach laid there. Next to the woman was a silver case the size of a small shipping box. On the box and on the woman's lab coat were the letters A.R.C. The woman's lifeless eyes stared upward at the man in confused agony.

"It made me do it!" The man screamed as he raised his shotgun "It got into my head and it made me do it! It got into you too!" He pointed the shotgun at the woman in the trunk and stood there for a few moments, letting the rain completely soak his body. His finger hovered inches away from the trigger. His mind flashed back to the moment he used this gun before. He remembers the flash, the recoil of the gun, and the being in front of him being hit But when he ran over to whatever it was to finish it off, to his horror, the was woman lying there, looking up at him with those sorrowful eyes.

"I don't even know, what I am seeing anymore." The man said in a shaky voice. "I know, what I saw, and it wasn't....it wasn't you. It wasn't you! That thing got into my head, you knew it got in yours too!" The man lowered the shotgun, as his will began to drain from him. "Lord forgive me" He said in a pitiful voice, as he closed the trunk on the rain soaked woman.

The man slowly headed back to the drivers seat and he sat back down, completely soaking the seat. The radio just continued to spew static the entire time as he reached over and opened the glove department box. Many papers spewed out and covered the seat and the floor, but he picked up a single sheet, grabbed a pen, and began to write:

"My name, is Jeremiah Watts, this note is for anyone that find it. The woman in the trunk of the car was a colleague of mine. If the police find this first, and I pray you do, you will be able to piece together the scene. Yes, I shot the woman, Helena Goe, in a fit of insanity. I cannot tell you what I saw when I pulled the trigger, killing her. I know I didn't see a woman, it was something beyond the horrors. Something truly and utterly so imposturous, that you would dismiss this entire, note, as the ramblings of a mad man. So I will live on with what I have seen, and I will live with what I have done. The container next to the woman should be put into a highly secured vault. It is with the utmost importance that this is achieved and once this happens, call this number 418-267-0978."

As he continued to write, he began to feel the dread he felt a few moments ago began to melt away. With each word, he felt the weight of the world gradually lessen from his soul, as he felt as if this were penance for killing his co-worker. When he was finished writing, he placed the note right in the seat next to him and laid the shotgun across the backseat. He started up the car again and began to drive, this time in silence.

While on the road, a passerby noticed a car was involved in a car accident. The car crashed sideways into a pole and was completely wrapped around it. Knowing that if anyone was in that crash they would surely be dead, the citizen called the police and they arrived on the scene. The two officers that arrived accessed the scene as the fire department began to use the jaws of life on the car in an attempt to unwrap it from around the pole and help tow it away. One officer was already on the scene as the other pulled up.

"This is a rough one." One officer said joining the other officer watching the scene.

"Yeah, a real rough one, How fast do you think he was going?" The other officer asked

"Hmm. Probably 75, or more." He replied.

"Yeah, I was thinkin the same." He said, he took a look over at the officer before continuing, "You know they found a body in the trunk, she was completely mangled. As well as a damaged shotgun."

"The two related?"

"More than likely since she had a hole the size of a cantaloupe where her midsection should have been."

"Where's the driver?"

"That poor guy." The officer said taking off his hat and brushing his short hair before replacing it. The sun overhead began to hide behind a few incoming clouds casting an ominous shadow over the scene as the two officers watched as the firefighters continued to work. "He was found a few feet away. Clearly he died on the spot due to his landing. It wasn't a particularly good one."

"Ah." The officer replied

"That's not even the crazy part. There was this note found in this bible not too far from here." The officer pulled out the note and handed it to the officer. "The bible was soaking wet along with the guy, but as you can see, there ain't a reason why he would be wet." 

"He was wet?"

"Like soaked to the bone. Even the car showed signs of water damage."

"What? How?" The officer asked

"Don't know. Read the note."

His eyes scanned the entire thing as he mouthed the last words: "May God have mercy on our souls."

"Spooky ain't it?" The other officer said "You really want to raise some hairs, turn it over."

As the officer did, he noticed there was a second note on the back, this one was written in a state of madness. Words were scrawled in a writing that the officer struggled to read. When he did, he looked confused. The note read as follows:

P.S: The container in the trunk of the car must be thrown in the nearest incinerator, preferably at its highest setting. I was going to do it myself, but it prevents me. Since it has, been inside and it knows me, but its sleeping now. And im doing this. Throw the container into the hottest fires you can find. If you come across this container, and it is damaged in, even the slightest way, then I truly pray for us, You will know when you are near it, the weather patterns around will be completely erratic like extreme rai

The letter stops abruptly.

"What in the world? What container is he talking about?" The officer asked

"That's the thing. We don't know what he is talking about. We are still looking for the thing and-

"Hey! I think I found it!" One of the firefighters called out. He was in the field a few feet from the crash. He reached down and picked up what appeared to be a shiny object. As he approached the officers he held it out to the officer that was already on the scene. "Here you go sir. We found it."

As the officer held the damaged container in his hands, the one thing he took note of was the damaged letters A and R. Where the C would have been was a long, jagged gash, exposing the inside of the container, which was empty.

"What do you think was inside it?" The officer holding the note asked

"I don't know." The officer said turning over the container in his hands. "But for some reason I have this feeling of..I don't know...dread? Like something being wrong, but you cant figure it out? I get that feeling when I hold this thing. Here wanna hold it?" The officer said, holding it out to the other officer

"Nah, I'll pass on that one. Uh, look. I'll go and check out the two bodies so i can make a better report, and uh, you okay there?" The officer noticed his colleague wasn't paying attention to him, but was staring intently at the container in his hands. "You should put that thing in the car or something.

"Yeah, I'll do that." The officer said as they both separated. As the officer put the container in the backseat of his car, he took notice of the city skyline in the distance. He noticed a great storm was rolling in. And something deep inside him felt something he had never felt before. A simple, but primal fear of the coming storm.