A decade ago, my little brother, Sam, was eaten by the rain. My therapist said that I was traumatized by losing my brother, that I must have hallucinated it or made it up. But I know what happened.
Ten years ago, my brother burst in through the door talking a mile a minute, as was typical for him. “Hey, did you hear about the hurricane?”
I slouched further down in my chair and ignored him. Sam was fourteen and obsessed with meteorology, to a degree that was honestly concerning. He stood outside with his face upturned whenever it snowed, binged Storm Chasers at least once a week, and when his homemade weather balloon had failed to get off the ground, he had been inconsolable for weeks.
“Maria, get off your phone and listen to me.” He pitched his voice way down as he said it, copying the way our father would talk whenever he was disappointed.
I boobed his nose with my middle finger and went back to the pictures of rabbits in top hats that I was browsing through.
Sam stomped his foot and glared at me, his expression reminiscent of a disgruntled cat. “My readings say that there’s going to be a hurricane!”
Our parents had gotten Sam about a dozen pieces of equipment last week, as an apology for having to leave. They worked at the same company and often went on long trips, leaving our uncle to take care of us. Our uncle didn’t want anything to do with us, really, but our parents paid him two hundred dollars per week, and he was a raging alcoholic who was constantly bumming off people, so he made sure that we at least had food. But most of the time, he disappeared off to wherever he went when he wasn’t with us, and we were glad to see him go.
The stuff that Sam got was pretty nice, all shiny metal and sturdy structures. I had no idea what any of it was. He had tried to explain it to me once, but I had stopped paying attention when he started talking about barometers. He had set it all up on a hill about a mile from our house, and he called it his laboratory.
“I was at my laboratory, and I double-checked everything, and it was still right! There’s going to be a hurricane, or at least a really big storm, in twenty minutes, we’ve gotta tell people. I’ve got to measure it, so that everyone knows.” He was practically vibrating with tension, his arms crossed tightly over his chest.
I glanced out the window, where it was sunny and cloudless. “Sure. Just come sit down, Sam.”
He gave me the most betrayed look I had ever seen, but he did eventually plop down next to me, grumbling the whole way. “Just wait a little bit, and then you’ll see.” The frantic confidence of before was gone. He seemed unsure.
I’ve lived in a small coastal town in the Southeast United States for most of my life, so I’m no stranger to hurricanes. There’s always frantic activity right before the storm hits. Boards or at the very least tape go over the windows, county-provided sandbags pile outside the door and are strewn haphazardly along the outside walls, three days worth of water and battery-powered flashlights are acquired. Everything was calm outside, the neighborhood and the weather, so I didn’t listen to Sam.
I should have. We were there for barely ten minutes before it started. It was just a soft wind, at first; a whisper of air against the side of the house, a couple raindrops flung softly against the window.
“See?” Sam said, triumphant. “I told you.”
I got up to look out the window, discomforted. “Yeah. I guess you did.”
He leaped up with a twinkle in his eye. “I’ve got to go record this! I’ll be right back, I promise.”
Without another word, he left before I could stop him, no doubt heading for his laboratory.
“Sam! Wait a second,” I called after him, but he didn’t look back. I sighed and turned away, figuring that he would come back eventually.
Half an hour later, Sam wasn’t back and the hurricane had hit with full force. The house was shaking with the force of it, and I couldn’t shake the worry that Sam had tripped on a rock and was lying unconscious somewhere. I sat there, chewing on my nails with anxiety, for far too long before I got up to follow him.
If you’ve never been outside during a real storm, then you’re lucky. It’s not something I would wish on anyone.
The wind battered me with every movement, making me lose my balance again and again. Every single door was open, and every window too, in every direction I looked. There were no cars in the driveways, and the only lights on were the streetlamps, bathing everything in a buzzing, sickly yellow. I spun in a circle, searching desperately for any sign of Sam. There was nothing, and I’m not proud of it, but I gave up. I couldn’t take the constant drumming of the rain anymore. I told myself that Sam was probably fine, that I’d look for him later, and then I ran for the nearest house. The open door loomed over me, more oppressive than a simple slab of wood should be, but still shoved my way through, too glad to get inside. I rationalized it to myself. Everyone else had probably evacuated. The doors had probably been blown open by the wind.
I stepped over the threshold, breathing a preemptive sigh of relief—and the rain didn’t stop. It didn’t make sense, I was inside, with a roof over my head, but I still felt every drop hit me. They phased through the ceiling like it wasn’t even there, leaving me with no shelter.
There’s this great short story by Ray Bradbry called The Long Rain. It tells the story of four men, trapped on a planet that never stops raining. I had to read it in school, an eternity ago, and at the time I thought it was stupid. It was just rain, that’s what I thought, there’s no way it could have been that bad. I know better now. There’s an exhaustion that comes with your mind being battered to pieces in your skull by the constant, constant rain. The pounding of it becomes a metronome that is almost impossible to think around. The rhythm of my steps started lining up with each new sheet of rain crashing into me, a brainless march that could have led me over a cliff without me noticing. The only thing inside me was the rain.
I walked, and walked, and walked, and walked and walked and didn’t stop for what felt like days. I was alone the entire time, nothing but me and the pounding of my feet as I kept walking.
I don’t know how I escaped; I don’t remember it. Luck, probably. Or maybe the hurricane got bored of me. My first memory, after, is of waking up in the hospital with my parents clutching my hands.
I didn’t talk for a week except to say one phrase.
“Were you in the rain?” I asked them, over and over. “Were you in the rain? Were you in the rain?”
My parents told me that there was no rain. The last time it rained had been weeks ago, and today had been sunny and temperate. I searched for a sign that the rain had happened, scouring news sites for a single mention of the violent storm that I had almost been lost in. The only sign that anything had gone wrong at all was in Sam’s laboratory. I went up the hill as soon as I got back from the hospital, desperate for some sort of proof, and I found the equipment broken on the ground. Every single thing was smashed to pieces, pulverized and scattered haphazardly around. My parents were distraught, but they thought it was an act of petty vandalism, and they never believed me when I told them that the storm had done it. They held out hope for Sam for years, but eventually they accepted that he wasn’t coming back. They even stopped blaming me for his death eventually. I have never given up hope, and I have never stopped blaming myself.
People go missing during every hurricane, every flood. The search is always given up, eventually, once it’s obvious that anyone still lost must be dead. They’re not, though. They’re trapped in the storm, like I almost was, like Sam still is, wandering ceaselessly through an endless landscape of rain and wind. Bad weather seems to happen around me more often than before, and I refuse to go out in it. It feels like there’s something waiting for me, lurking on the periphery until it can capture me again.