The Spots of the First Drops of Rain

Dark angry rainclouds roiled above like a stirring witch’s brew in a cauldron and the thunder rumbled like Zeus’s empty stomach. Sharp flashes of lightning exploded, illuminating the sky like camera flashes at the red carpet, followed shortly by the gentle pitter-patter of the first rain of the season. Samuel Ihle stood in front of the living room bay window of his San Francisco Victorian and watched as the droplets of rain raced down from the top of the window pane to the bottom. It amused him then as a child, it amused him now as a fully grown man working as a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle.

“There goes Enriquez, running past Hall, and overtaking Diaz!” Sam announced like a sportscaster. “Diaz catches up to Enriquez and now they’re neck and neck! What an incredible show of speed and agility! But wait! What’s this? It looks like we have a new challenger! McKean is catching up and on the move, bounding like a gazelle in the Serengeti! McKean runs past Hall, past Enriquez, and now he’s running side by side with Diaz! Diaz isn’t about to give up, however…”

His Jack Russell Tristan and his beagle Isolde looked on in curious wonderment, confused as to just what their human was doing and why he was doing it. His Persian cat Duchess could care less and dozed off on her cat bed in a corner of the living room.

After narrating the imaginary race at Window Pane Stadium, Sam closed his eyes, sighed, and a childlike smile spread across his face. As a child, there were four things that excited him—going trick or treating on Halloween, Thanksgiving dinner, opening gifts on Christmas morning, and the first rain of the season. There was always something so calming about it but he couldn’t explain. On a whim, he opened the door and rushed outside, nearly slipping down the wet steps of his condo’s stoop. Once he was on the sidewalk in front of the Victorian, he looked up to the inky heavens, spread his arms wide open, and cherished the refreshing sensation of the falling rain on his parched skin. It felt as though he were a plant that hadn’t been watered in a long time and was thirsty for water. He counted fifteen seconds in his head before letting out a loud scream into the stormy void. On a normal day, one of his neighbors would have opened the window and shout at him to stop all that racket. The furious rat-tat-tat of the pouring rain against the pavement, roofs, and window panes greatly helped to mask the sound of his screams, however, so he was thankful for that. The booming thunder also helped. After screaming at the top of his lungs, he let out a laugh and jumped up and down in puddles like a child. He crossed the street and lay down on the ground of the empty lot across his condo unit and flapped his arms and legs, making mud angels. He was ten again.

Before he could catch a cold—or worse—pneumonia, Sam crossed the street to go back inside. Once in the warmth and comfort of his Victorian, he lit the fireplace, toweled off, and changed into drier, warmer clothes. After lighting the fireplace and doing all that, he went to the kitchen to make something to drink—preferably something hot. He rummaged through the cabinets, deliberating on what to drink. He could make some tea or coffee. Maybe some apple cider, perfect for fall. He could also make some mulled wine. Ultimately, he settled on hot chocolate. He reached for the can of John Wayne Bacon Hot Chocolate and scooped four tablespoons into his mug, poured some water into it, then heated it in the microwave.

The microwave beeped, announcing it was done, and Sam carried the mug gingerly to the living room, where he sat on the window seat to admire the falling rain, the booming thunder, and the flashing lightning. Isolde lay snuggled between Sam’s thighs under the thick fleece blanket, safe and secure from the threatening thunder and lightning as her mate dozed, unfazed, at Sam’s feet. As the thunder roared and the lightning flashed, Sam closed his eyes once more and a memory floated before him like a ghost.

* * * * *

October, 1997

Sam threw his blanket off despite the October chill and swung his feet over his bed and quietly padded over to the other side of the room, where his older brother Stephen lay sound asleep. He shook him gently to wake him up.

“Psst! Pssssst! Stephen! Wake up,” Sam hissed. “The coast is clear. Mom and Dad have gone to bed for the night.”

“Are you sure?” his brother asked groggily. “What time is it?”

“11:40,” Sam said, consulting his glow-in-the-dark watch.

“Alright, let’s go,” Stephen said, more awake now than seconds earlier. “You wanna wake Scarlett and Esther up or should I?”

“I’ll do it,” Sam said, leading the way to their sisters’ shared bedroom down the hall. He rapped on the door three times until Scarlett opened the door.

“What?” she asked, annoyed and sleepy.

“It’s time,” Stephen announced. “Is Esther up?”

“I am now,” Esther said, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

With that, all four of them made their way down the hall and into the living room where the radio awaited them. Lightning flashed and thunder boomed, making Sam and Esther jump. The Ihle siblings listened to a radio program at midnight called Night of Terror, but they only listened to it when it was raining. On any other night, they would leave the radio alone. They all loved how it added to the eerie feel of the stories being dramatized. It was special. It was something they shared together. Something that strengthened their bonds as siblings. Stephen shined his flashlight on the wall until he found the socket and plugged the device in. He turned the dial until he found WGPR 106.4 on the FM channel. Eerie music filled the dark living room and the voice of the creepy host sailed through the airwaves.

“Much horror literature plays on our fear and fascination with the person we see in the mirror: a fear of what we’re hiding or don’t know about ourselves, a fear of who we’ve been and who we could become. But no subgenre of horror literature illustrates the two-sided coin of self-hatred and narcissism better than stories about doubles. Doppelgängers, split personalities and evil twins only begin to touch on the ways authors have explored the horrors we can find in ourselves,” the host began. “What would you do if your peaceful, quiet, ordinary life was shattered by the discovery of another you from a dimension closely linked to ours? Tonight’s tale is only one among many such encounters. I am your host, and this...is Night of Terror!”

The girls screamed and jumped as the radio host announced the name of the program, which was followed by a flash of lightning and an earsplitting boom of thunder.

“Sssshhh!” Sam whispered, covering Esther’s mouth. “You guys are going to wake the whole house up. Be quiet!”

“Relax,” Scarlett said. “Mom and Dad are sound sleepers. Don’t worry.”

And so it was that for an hour, the Ihle children sat or lay around the radio, listening to a dramatized ghost story complete with scary music and sound effects while an angry storm raged outside.

* * * * *

The memory ended and Sam opened his eyes. He had an idea—a spark of genius as sharp as the first lightning flash of the season. It was raining outside. What better way to pass the time than to read or listen to a ghost story? Getting up from the window seat, he retrieved his laptop from his bedroom and searched for websites featuring dramatized ghost stories. He found one that piqued his interest. Something called Frightening Tales. The format was reminiscent of Night of Terror and a glowing warmth filled his heart. It was as though his brother and two sisters were right there with him again at that very moment. He pressed play and proceeded to listen to the stories while he sipped his hot cocoa and snuggled with his dogs Tristan and Isolde. He loved every single minute of it. Three of the episodes that made his heart jump into his throat were Pride, The Night Job, and Peace & Quiet—especially Peace & Quiet. Carlton’s Drive by Algernon Blackwood and Basement Has Mold also scared the living daylights out of him but those were his top three.

After listening to every story on the Frightening Tales playlist and getting his heart to race like a cavalry charging into battle, Sam shut down his laptop, scanned his bookshelf for poetry to read, and pulled down some books. He selected ten books in total—Collected Poems of C.P. Cavafy, The Completed Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Selected Poems & Prose of John Clare, The Oxford Shakespeare Complete Sonnets & Poems, The Complete Poems by Walt Whitman, Collected Poems by James Joyce, The Complete Poetry of Edgar Allan Poe, The Complete Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and finally, his number one favorite, The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley—and arranged them on the coffee table. A rainy day was the perfect excuse to immerse oneself in poetry and drown in the works of bards and wordsmiths that have gone on before. Before he could read all these poems by his favorite poets, however, Sam had to go to the kitchen to get a refill of hot cocoa. His mug had run dry.

Once that was taken care of, Sam lay down on the couch, draped the blanket over himself, and read poetry—sometimes silently, sometimes out loud. One such poem was C.P. Cavafy’s Ithaka.

“As you set out for Ithaca hope that your journey is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery. Laestrygonians and Cyclops, angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them: you’ll never find things like that on your way as long as you keep your thoughts raised high, as long as a rare sensation touches your spirit and your body,” Sam read, nodding and smiling fondly at Cavafy’s words of wisdom from time to time. “Keep Ithaca always in your mind. Arriving there is what you’re destined for. But don’t hurry the journey at all. Better if it lasts for years, so that you’re old by the time you reach the island…”

He spent the entire afternoon reading poetry while the world outside cycled sporadically between rain and shine, sometimes stopping, sometimes starting, with the sun playing peekaboo behind the smoke colored clouds still heavily pregnant with rainwater.

When evening came, Sam decided to watch a movie—a German movie called Der Himmel Über Berlin, or as it was known in English, Wings of Desire. It starred the late Bruno Ganz as Damiel, an angel who falls in love with a human trapeze artist and wishes to become mortal himself. In all honesty, Sam thought, Wings of Desire was better than the City of Angels knockoff that starred Meg Ryan and Nicolas Cage. He played the movie without any subtitles. He always found his grandfather’s native German to be familiar and comforting. Besides, he was very fluent at it that he needed no subtitles to distract him. As he watched, his four-legged housemates climbed onto the couch to watch with him. Isolde, as usual, curled herself up on Sam’s lap while Tristan stretched out and yawned at his left side. Duchess lay on his right. When he got to the scene where Damiel comforts a dying vehicular accident victim on the side of the road, he started reciting the German lines in English, softly whispering the words.

“As I came up the mountain, out of the misty valley into the sun. The fire on the cattle range, the potatoes in the ashes, the boathouse floating in the lake. The Southern Cross,” Sam quoted. “The Far East. The Great North. The Wild West. The Great Bear Lake. Tristan da Cunha. The Mississippi Delta. Stromboli. The old houses of Charlottenburg. Albert Camus. The morning light. The child's eyes. The swim in the waterfall. The spots of the first drops of rain. The sun…”

The bread and wine. Hopping. Easter. The veins of leaves. The blowing grass. The color of stones. The pebbles on the stream's bed. The white tablecloth outdoors. The dream of the house in the house. The dear one asleep in the next room. The peaceful Sundays. The horizon. The light from the room in the garden. The night flight. Riding a bicycle with no hands. The beautiful stranger. My father. My mother. My wife. My child…

Sam slowly fell asleep on the couch as the hours dragged on, while Tristan and Isolde slept on the floor. Duchess, as usual, had to be on her cat bed fit for royalty. And so it was that when Sam fell asleep, she jumped off the couch and trotted over to her bed in the corner and slept soundly for the rest of the night.

When morning came, Sam awoke to a fresh clean world that sparkled with dew and rainwater, a breathtaking rainbow in the morning sky. He stepped outside in his bathrobe and stood on his stoop, inhaling the crisp, cool, invigorating air of San Francisco after the first rain of the season.