The Book of Storms (5 page)

What kind of person had she been? Had she liked computer games and green beans and hated melted cheese? Had she even been old enough to know that she liked or didn't like anything?

“Emma.” He tried it out for size, but it had never sounded like a part of his family, and it didn't now. “Emma O'Neill.”

Why did they never talk about her? Were they worried he'd think he was some kind of replacement? But he was, wasn't he? That's why they'd had him and then stuck her silent photos on the wall, to remind him every time he went into the hallway.

He went back to the book. Tell me about Emma, he urged it. Tell me about my sister.

The entry for January 1 was finished. There wasn't another entry until April 12 of the same year.

Great Butford and surrounding area. Time of storm: 8:20 p.m. until 3:30 a.m.

That was one big storm.

Behavior: Oppressive day. Clouds began to gather in the skies above Great Butford at approximately 5:30 p.m. At 8:20 p.m., the first roll of thunder was heard. We were fortunate to be staying in Great Butford at the time and saw the first flash of lightning at 8:49 p.m. The lightning increased in frequency until roughly four flashes per minute were occurring.

Danny turned the page. The description of the storm continued in minute detail, so he skipped to the end and read what else had been written about Great Butford.

Questioning the local residents of Great Butford revealed that in the previous two weeks they could think of little out of the ordinary that had happened. Mrs. Simmonds, who runs the post office, had broken her arm as she fell over the hairdresser's step when returning from having her highlights done. Some children had killed a duck when they threw a suitcase they had stolen from the railway station into the village pond. The weather had been generally normal. Yet, questioning of residents in villages as close by as Little Butford and Stony Hamlington, both just under three miles away, revealed that there had been no storms in these places. Also that many of the inhabitants of these places were of the opinion that Great Butford was a “funny place” they would have avoided had they not been obliged to send their children to school there.

Well, thought Danny, it was a local storm. There was a last bit about Great Butford.

In conclusion, we cannot rule out the possibility that the storm was responding to something it did not like (a human or nonhuman factor???) in Great Butford. Although nothing immediately puts itself forward to us as a cause, we fully anticipate that in time we will be able to look back at these notes and understand what happened in Great Butford, at which time a postscript will be added.

There was no postscript. More of the same followed. Page after page of tiny detail, storm forecasts, graphs of isobars cut out from the newspaper, pictures of lightning. When had they written all this stuff? Now they were into the year that he'd been born. On his birthday, June 21, his father had scribbled in a frantic scrawl across the page, his words defying the lines meant to keep them neat.

Today our son was born! Daniel Adrian O'Neill. Such a strange thought, that five years ago we thought our family was complete, and three years ago we thought it was destroyed, and now there is this new life, a small boy, entirely himself. We should never compare our children, but he was late and arrived quickly, then just lay there looking around with huge blue eyes. When Emma came she was early, not ready, and she cried as soon as she saw the world, full of strong anger. I think Daniel might be a thoughtful sort of a person, the kind who sees a lot more than he says. And all I wish is that he should live and breathe and be happy, and never have to enter those dark places into which we have followed our beloved daughter.

Danny turned the page quickly. It felt wrong, reading stuff about himself that he wasn't meant to see. But it was okay—they'd gone back to talking about storms, and only storms.

More storms, more years, passed by. Then he came across another entry, dated from the previous summer. They'd gone to a village fete. Actually, he remembered it well: he'd eaten five ice creams, because each time he asked his parents for more money, they'd given it to him without question. They'd been too busy talking to an old man whose beard was long, white, and separated into pointy tufts like hairy icicles.

August 8. Today we met an old Polish man, Abel Korsakof, at the Hopfield village fete. We'd stopped to exchange a few pleasantries about the weather—he was the father of one of Anna's friends from her Women's Institute group. As we chatted, we noticed (and he noticed too, both at the same time, I think!) that we were all referring to last week's storm in terms that you'd use about people (“he,” “they,” etc.). Anna and I tend to do this between ourselves, but we try to avoid it with other people, as it probably makes us sound strange. But because this Abel Korsakof was doing it too, we just didn't think anything of it at first. Anyway, after a while he started to drop in references to something he called “the Book.”

“The Book says that bird populations are a big factor,” he said when we were discussing the path of the storm. “The Book says there are various methods of tracking but you have to watch out for the secondary pieces of storm that join up on the way—they can alter the trajectory a great deal,” was another thing he said.

We asked him, “What book?”

“The Book of Storms,” he said.

Neither of us had ever heard of it. We asked if it was some kind of encyclopedia.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “The Book of Storms is no mere encyclopedia.”

He told us it was a book of so many pages that you couldn't even count them. Each time he read it, he learned something new. It taught him how to watch storms, how to listen to them, how to pull himself into them and start to absorb their knowledge. It taught him, he said, how to “plunge through the maelstrom and seek refuge in the becalmed eye” so he could look at a storm from deep inside its heart.

“The Book of Storms!” he said with a sigh, in the same way that someone might talk about someone they loved. “Had I known of its existence only a few years earlier, what things I might have done.…”

We asked instantly where we could buy a copy.

And then he laughed, a dry, old kind of laugh. He told us no one on earth could buy another copy of the Book of Storms. There was only one copy, and that was his own.

We asked if we might see it.

“Well,
he
gave it to me, of course,” he said. “I'm not at liberty to show it to others. I should not even refer to it, really, but then I think, what more can I lose than I have already lost?”

At this point he wished us good day, very abruptly, and left. We didn't even get his address, though we presume he lives near Hopfield—his daughter said she grew up there.

But what is the Book of Storms? It sounds like a treasure trove of information of a kind undreamed of by scientists. Birds? Other pieces of storm? We must get hold of that book. It will revolutionize the way we think. What could birds have to do with storms? It's nonsensical, but the idea is … right.

They hadn't got hold of the Book of Storms, though. Instead they'd recorded in minute detail the contents of rain gauges, the wind speeds, the number of lightning flashes counted per minute in various storms, and they'd entered every scrap of information that they could find into their blue notebook.

And then, once more, a few months later, again in his dad's handwriting:

We've found his address. He lives (where else?) at Storm Cottage, Puddleton Lane End, Hopfield. He used to write the Weatherwatch column for the Hopfield Parish magazine, but he doesn't do anything now, it seems, apart from study the behavior of storms.

What can we do? He told us he wouldn't show the book to anyone. Perhaps we could steal it? But we've never done anything like that. How would we explain it to the police if we were caught?

We'll have to find a way, though. They tell you that grief lessens with time, but for me it seems to be the other way around. Each day, I realize a little more what we lost when Emma was taken. Each day, I wake up and see her slip away out of the corner of my eye, and no matter how fast I run, I can't catch up with her.

I must do all I can to make sure no one else suffers the same fate.

The Book of Storms wasn't mentioned again. Danny scoured every entry, all the way to the last, which was followed by a handful of blank pages and then the inside cover of the notebook. They were tidy people, and they'd kept a tidy journal. Nothing was stuck to the back or hidden away under glued-on strips of paper.

His parents talked about storms like you'd talk about people. Was that normal? Actually, it clearly wasn't—they'd said so themselves. Danny had never noticed them talking like that, but then all this—the extent of it, the reason for it—had been purposefully hidden from him.

He hated the thought. Of course, there were loads of thing that his parents tried to hide, like when they had an argument or they were sad or there wasn't quite enough money for something and they thought that if they didn't say anything about it, then Danny wouldn't notice they were twitchy and distracted and full of tight little sighs. He never told them that he knew about these things, but they were obvious. Yet somehow they'd managed to keep this notebook entirely secret from him.

His chest felt hollow as he stared at the dark blue cover. Could they have gone to find the Book of Storms? In the middle of the night?

There was only one way to find out. “We're going to see an old guy called Abe … Abel Kors … Korsakof,” he said, taking hold of the stick so that Mitz could hear him. “Some weird name. He's got a book that might help me find them, if he'll let me see it. And if he won't, then … then I don't know, I'll think of something.”

“Something?” asked Mitz, blinking innocently.

“I'll steal it,” said Danny. “I don't care if it's bad. I'll steal it.”

He got up and made for the door, trampling on purpose over the mess still strewn across the floor. Mitz dropped down from the bed and stalked after him, her fluffy britches carrying her lightly over the mountains of chaos.

“Stealing isn't bad,” said Mitz. “Everybody steals. Everybody that I know, anyway. But, then, I suppose we
are
all cats.”

Danny remembered what it had felt like, last night, when he'd woken up and thought the roof was falling in. He remembered the bright gold of the night sky as the lightning set fire to the clouds.

“Not everybody,” he said, “steals the Book of Storms.”

*   *   *

Downstairs, he opened the drawer where his dad kept his wallet and took all the money out of it, then emptied his schoolbag and chucked the single spiral-bound notebook into it. Somehow he doubted that school was going to see him tomorrow, and maybe not even the day after that.

Forgetting even to change out of his school uniform, he let himself out into the late-afternoon sunshine and pulled the door closed after Mitz had trotted briskly through.

This time there was no point in looking back.

CHAPTER 4

A VISIT

The only thing in the garden that didn't feel slightly colder was the sycamore tree, because the sycamore tree was dead. Even the grass shivered, although sunlight still warmed its blades. Roses curled their petals inward, returning half-opened blooms into buds, and bushes tightened their roots in the soil. Birds and mice pulled their heads down into their necks, puffing up feathers and fur. Spiders hung motionless in their webs, and even a trapped fly gave up its struggle against the sticky threads.

Sammael had walked into the garden. His appearance never changed; his dry, sweatless skin stayed cool, his short black curls unruffled. Things didn't stick to him if they could avoid it—there were better ways to travel for even the smallest thorn or burr than stuck to his long black coat. Journeys didn't tire or alter him, no matter how long they took or how fast he traveled.

The lurcher at his side was a wreck. She staggered to the patio outside the house, swayed for a couple of seconds, then toppled sideways and lay flat on her side, her legs stretched out. Her rib cage pushed up through gray matted curls, each bone distinct from the next like the sleepers of a railway line.

Sammael ignored her and went straight to the sycamore tree, resting a hand on it. The dead wood stayed mute under his fingers.

“This is the tree, then,” he said, taking his hand away. “You'd think the lightning could have picked a better specimen.”

The grass under his feet trembled as the blades reached out to each other. He felt it wriggling and kicked at it.