Every Calm is Followed by a Storm

Thirteen years ago.

Seeing his father's head bloody and body drenched in blood, Joe couldn't help but scream and fall to the ground. For a brief moment, it seemed like he had fallen unconscious. But it took a while to revive him and it was at that moment that his eyes landed on Luke. Standing in a corner and witnessing the horror unleashed on Peter Welch's body, Luke ran towards Joe and held him close. It was rather odd, because it was Adam that Joe was expecting by his side. It was Adam that he wanted to hug. It was Adam that he wanted to break down in front of. Yet it wasn't. It was Luke. The same Luke Joe never liked. The same class overachiever. And, of course, Adam’s best friend that Joe found himself insecure of.

“Where's Adam?” asked Joe.

“I don't think he'll be able to make it. I'm sorry,” responded Luke in a low voice.

Joe could tell what that meant even before Adam revealed his reason for not showing up later on. Fortunately or unfortunately, the given hand was a bigger deal than Adam’s.

Present day.

The night had been unusually calm. As Joe and Adam drifted off to sleep, it was almost like they made peace with the fact that they may never wake up. But they did to a rather calm morning as if, the manor wasn't Sabrina's Locus of Power anymore. As they say, after every storm comes a calm except in this case, it meant the opposite.

Shortly after waking up, they both realized how unkempt they looked. The day before he'd been too exhausting to take advantage of the labor available, and they both got up and eventually started cleaning again. Joe revisited the bedrooms while Adam took on the living room. Seeing his mother's makeup and art accessories lying in a corner brought back a weird sense of nostalgia.

It was only yesterday that Charlene was attempting to create portraits with her watercolors, and today they're rusting away in the corner. It was only yesterday that Joe attempted to try his luck at watercolor painting, but felt too unskilled to achieve anything. It was only yesterday that he would hop into his parents’ bed after a tiring day at school. Now all that was left were remnants of memories.

Adam, on the other hand, was too fixated on how the events may have unfolded in the same living room 13 years ago, how Joe may have felt without his best friend by aside, how the body may have been assemble and removed, and how Sabrina may have watched all of it happen. Still felt unreal as to why the house seemed as calm as it did. It almost felt like all those stories about Sabrina were untrue, and people were too gullible to accept them for more than 13 years. But it also felt unwelcoming at the same time. Like something was waiting to be revealed. Like a storm was almost about to hit.

Soon reality hit, and both Joe and Adam realize that Blenheim Manor was too big to be cleaned alone. This was when an idea struck Adam's mind.

“How about we call Luke to help us out?” Suggested Adam.

“Is he still in town?” responded Joe with a surprised expression.

Luke's name caused a weird sense of discomfort between the two. Joe still remembered how he was the only one who showed up that day, while Adam was reminded more of how he wasn't there. The awkward silence between them broke as soon as Adam started using the phone to call Luke. Disappointed by bad cell reception, they headed out. And meanwhile, Joe decided to explore the rest of the house.

As a child all he had seen were the two bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room. But the house had so much more to it than what appeared apparent. Joe planned to visit the attic, an area that was pretty much forbidden when he was a child and for reasons unknown to him. The wooden floor and rectangular shape of the room what he was welcomed by, however, soon enough, that darkness inside the room started taking over him. For a brief moment, he convinced himself that it was nothing but a construction of his mind. After all, that's how attics were supposed to make you feel, especially if they were part of a property abandoned for over a decade.

This fear started getting more apparent as he proceeded further. But what shook him was a breeze of air he felt right when something touched his shoulder. He turned back to find Adams stunned expressions. They both made their way out and settled down. That's when Adam revealed his conversation with Luke.

“Something happened at the harbor. I don't know any more about it, but Luke wants us to be there.”

Soon made their way out of the house and started walking toward the woods that led to the harbor. During this time, they both couldn't help but think about the last time they were there with the signals getting out of control. What if it had something to do with what the device detected? The closer they got to the harbor, the more uneasy they started feeling. Was it a dead body? Was it a brutal murder? Was it a drowning incident? Was it a rare species of fish? Did it have something to do with Sabrina? There were too many questions and too little space to deal with them. At least in Adam’s mind.

On the other hand, Joe did not seem as bothered because by now he knew how dramatic this little town could get with minor events happening every now and then. Of course, that's not what he thought about his father's death, but no matter what his mind was too rational to buy the rumors or gossip, as he liked to describe them.

The moment they reached the harbor, they saw a huge chunk of people gathered around an area. Something terrible had definitely happened because why else would people gather around like that on the harbor. Adam made his way through the crowd and saw what the hype was all about. Dozens of crows were mysteriously dead. Their lifeless bodies floating in the water. Soon enough, Joe also made his way toward the side of the incident. At this point, you would expect people to make several conclusions, and that was exactly the case.

“It's surely a bad omen. You know what I think, it is Sabrina.”

“That's a sign of the arrival of death.”

“Only God can help this town now.”

Comments from different locals were lurking in the air and you could clearly see the difference between Joe's and Adam’s facial expressions. It was obvious that Adam was buying all of it while Joe wasn't. It was rather strange how Joe thought the way he did after all that he'd been through. How could the son of a murder man be this rational? How could the resident of a haunted Manor be this reasonable? How could his mind not come to supernatural conclusions? The fact that Peter Welch's murderer was never found was another question mark for locals for more than a decade. How could Joe not be curious, or was it an attempt to hide his true feelings and knowledge? Did he already know what was going on? And was trying to remain as hidden as possible? Did he already have the book his father died writing? That he knows something about Sabrina that no one else did?

Joe's reactions to how the events unfolded was surely surprising but no one could tell why. It only made locals more and more uneasy trying to understand why he decided to stay in the same house he left years ago. The house that no human with their sanity intact, had dared passing by. In a way, it bothered Adam more than anyone else.

A flock of birds dead in the water could only mean two things, either the water was poisoned, and they all decided to drink it at the same time, or was a sign that something terrible was soon to be unleashed on the town. It could also be a coincidence. But why in the town of Salem? Why in the woods by the harbor and most of all, why something of this caliber? Why couldn't it be a bunch of dead fish or something else more believable. The only way to put an end to these questions was to speak to the man who called them all the way here. Luke was still dealing with a bunch of individuals before approaching Joe and Adam. He was about to reveal what caused these crows to die. But his words only created more confusion when he said,

“There's a story behind all of this.”