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Dry lightning cracked across the sky, illuminating the town of Purgatory in a bright white flashing light, lasting only a second. Dark gray, heavy clouds blustered across the skyline and covered the horizon.
The wind rattled the windows of the Purgatory Police Department, disturbing officers huddled around the television as the meteorologist predicted the disaster growing outside.
“Haught,” The Sherriff called.
Nicole picked up her pen and scribbled on her notepad as her eyes flashed back and forth from the television.
“Sir, they estimate the storm will hit at approximately-”
“Nicole, someone drove by the old Earp Homestead and reported a car outside.”
“No,” she argued. She dropped the notebook on her desk. “That can’t be possible. Everyone’s at the tornado shelter.”
“I hope so Haught,” he agreed as frustration blew across his features. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but can you go check this out?”
“Of course, sir,” Without a second thought she clasped on the keys to her cruiser and lurched toward the door.
“Officer Haught,” He adjusted his hat on his crown. “Be safe.”
“Yes sir.”
The overcast sky was getting gloomier with each passing moment. Dense clouds hovered above the ground, as if their weight was too heavy for gravity to sustain. Heavy fog rolled across the Ghost River Triangle, blocking the sun from emitting its beautiful rays.
Wind ripped through Waverly’s hair as she jetted from the car and into the impending violent storm. She grabbed her flapping outercoat and wrapped her arms against her chest to keep it from blowing away.
Her feet sunk into the dry dirt as her body traversed around the familiar territory; one that, at a specific point in her life, she called her home. But not at the moment, and never again.
Her mind wandered as she traveled further into the homestead, memories flashing as lightning flickered across the sky. Thunder roared to life above her, the world feeling as though it was cracking under her feet.
Another flare of lighting lit the pitch black sky in the nick of time, as she was about to splash her dirty boot into a wide lake of discolored water. She squatted at the water’s edge, wetness soaking the bottom hem of her jeans. She stuck her fingertip into the freezing cold liquid, and then another as she absorbed the cold temperature, her mind drifting to a different time.
Snow crunched beneath her feet as she stepped into the crisp winter. Cold nipped at her fingertips and spread across her cheeks. She tugged on her fur hat with the pom-pom , covering her ears from the frigid air.
She dragged Mr. Rabbit by his ear through the wet fluffy piles of snow all over the homestead.
“Let’s go find Wynonna, Mr. Rabbit,” She spoke to her stuffed toy. “Maybe she can help us-”
She felt Mr. Rabbit slip through her frozen fingers. Turning in her heavy winter boots, she kneeled down to pick him up, but instead her eldest sister pushed her to the ground. Snow covered her face and filled her mouth, as she lay stranded watching as her sister flung her stuffed animal to the middle of the ice-covered pond.
“Willa no!” She screeched. Rising to her feet, she wiped off the snow from her leopard print jacket, but she could not help but shiver. Her sister chuckled sinisterly beside her as she walked away.
“Why is she so mean?” She questioned to no one, she wished her sister could hear her.
She tapped her heavy foot on the ice, once, twice, and then a third time. She bent down and investigated the clear surface. No cracks. She surmised it must be safe.
She shuffled her feet across the slippery surface, moving slow and steady. She held her arms to her side, balancing herself as her body swayed. She took a deep breath as she reached Mr. Rabbit, bent down, and pulled the stuffed animal up by his leg. A quiet but audible crack rang through her ears. Her heart pounded out of her chest. Hanging on tightly to the doll, she rushed in toward land. She felt one-foot slide underneath her; the other quickly following. Her back slammed against the thin layer and the surface around her shattered. Freezing cold water soaked into her jacket and pants. Her boots pooled beneath her and she was dragged underneath.
Her mouth bobbed inches above the water; she screamed at the top of her lungs for someone, anyone to hear her. As her body sunk and the horizon faded away, she swore she saw her sister watching from a far.
Wind violently ripped across the town at unheard of speeds. Flags ripped off their poles, chairs tossed into the road, and trashcans flew up into the sky.
“Sheriff, this is Haught,” Nicole spoke clearly and confidently into her police radio. “ETA 6 minutes. I should be back before the storm even starts.”
Her hands gripped the steering wheel as the wind threw the car around as if it was made of paper. Her fingers turned red and her knuckles turned white as she focused all of her energy on driving straight.
“10-4, Haught. Keep me posted.”
As she continued down the street, large pelts of rainwater splashed onto her windshield. It was impossible to see a even few feet in front of her. She kicked her wipers onto the highest setting and squinted as she followed the flickering street lamps to her destination.
One drop of rain hit the top of her head and then another. She looked toward the sky and within an instant, the clouds started to cry an unbelievable amount of tears. The once dried dirt quickly became soggy as it absorbed the rain, the ground thirsty from its dehydration.
Ducking her head under her coat, she raced to the closest shelter she could find. She stepped inside the large barn. Her senses were overwhelmed as the smell of musty hay burned her eyes. The rain pounded against the roof above her, the wind rattled the paper-thin windows, and a glare of lightning penetrated the darkness of the abode. She collapsed to the ground, the prickly substance poking through her clothes and irritating her sensitive skin.
The homestead was silent, so quiet the only noise she could hear was the shuffling of her feet as she walked across the second floor. The boards creaked as she snuck into her father’s room. Light splayed from the shade-less windows and illuminated the bedroom. Crouching down on all fours, she crawled to her daddy’s dresser. She clenched two small fists and pushed on the floor, using her strength to raise herself up.
She stood on her tiptoes, desperate to reach and open the top drawer of his cabinet. He always warned her not to, but he was not in sight now, so how would ever know? She reached her small arms over her head as if she was reaching for the sky. Her digits were just able to wrap around the metal knob, and with all the strength in her four-year-old body, she pulled, and she pulled, and she pulled. Finally, with one last ho, the drawer dropped from the dresser and fell onto the floor with a loud clang, barely missing her baby toes. Papers scattered all around her, and footsteps sounding like elephants climbed the stairs outside the door. She hurried to pick up the mess, but to no avail.
“Waverly, what are you doing?” Her eldest sister questioned, her pupils rock hard in their sockets. “Didn’t Daddy tell you never to touch that drawer?”
“Uh huh,” The toddler agreed, her eyes welling up from the fear bursting within.
“Then why did you open it?”
“I don’t know,” Her voice cracked as she watched her sister transform from loving family member to a violent stranger right before her eyes...
She grabbed the younger girl’s arm and she could swear she felt a pop from within. She yanked her closer and her words impaled the other girl’s ear. “What do you mean you don’t know?”
Tears snaked down her checks and slithered down her body, pooling against her sister. “I don’t-”
She hauled the little girl down the stairs, her fingers still encircled around her wrist. Willa ignored every whimper, every wail, and every whine that fell from her sisters lips.
Willa heaved the barn door open and released her sister’s hand. With a slight shove, Waverly plummeted to the hay, the scratchy straw filling her senses and itching through her clothes.
“You see that beam?” Willa questioned. The younger girl watched as her sister paced around the barn frantically, an unsettling feeling seeping within her bones.
“Yeah,” she responded. Her opposite hand magnetically wrapped around her wrist, cradling it with warmth.
From the corner of her eye, she surveyed her sister as she uncovered a large ladder from under the dried grass and increased its length until it hit the thin rafter overhead.
“You’re going to climb up there,” She outstretched her hand and pointed above. “And walk across it, without falling. And if you don’t, I’ll tell Daddy.”
“Willa, no.” Her volume shifted an octave. “Why?”
Her sister’s hands found her armpits and though she struggled against her, soon Waverly was at full height. Taking a step back, she felt the wall bang against her back and a splinter cut into her skin.
“Because I said so.” She took a step back, her head nodding in the direction of her obstacle course.
“But what if I fall, Willa?” She interrogated, her body quivering with fear at the thought of her demise. Blood pumped quickly through her veins and adrenaline spread quickly throughout her nerves.
“Well, I guess there will be one less Earp now, won’t there be?” She snickered as a feral grin knifed across her face.
Lightning broke through the low hanging clouds with quick succession. Thunder bellowed louder and louder, the whole earth vibrating with Mother Nature’s growls. A funnel formed beneath the once fluffy, peaceful clouds, threatening to destroy the entire population.
A bright incandescence burned into Nicole’s corneas as she pulled into what she hoped was the Earp Homestead. Her windshield wipers worked overtime, threatening to break off her car at the high speeds they were on. Sure enough, Nicole rolled her eyes and groaned in frustration as she spotted the orange jeep parked outside the home.
The millisecond she shoved the car in park, she opened her door and sprinted outside. She adjusted her Stenson, the rim of the cap protecting her eyes from the rain whipping at her face. She observed her location, her only source of light being the crack of the lightning. Across the way, she spotted the barn door, slightly ajar. She raced toward the building, her feet rolling on the uneven ground below her.
“Hello,” She called to the empty barn. “I’m with the-”
“Show me your hands!” A figure across shouted, holding a rifle directly in the officer’s direction.
Nicole grabbed her own gun and pointed, though it was half the size of the one in the shadows. “Do you have a license for that thing, ma’am?”
“I could ask you the same question, ma’am.”
“I am a Sheriff Deputy with the Purgatory Police Department. I have a right to-”
“Why didn’t you say that when you entered?” Waverly dropped her hands to her side, the rifle slipping from her grip and falling to the hay below.
“I tried, but you didn’t give me a chance.” Nicole explained.
The barn briefly illuminated in a blinding light, as if someone had switched on and off a bright LED flashlight.
“Waverly Earp.” The officer muttered to herself as her eyes devoured the other women’s features in the jet-black night. She had seen the girl only two other times since moving to the Purgatory, but never this close.
The shorter women rubbed her hand up and down her arm, her nerves quaking from within her. “How do you know my name?”
“I… um…” Nicole opened her mouth to speak, praying that the words escaping her lips would be coherent.
Before she was able to sputter a response, her eardrums filled with a deafening ripping noise. She glanced around the room, her eyes wild with terror. The noise continued over and over, like sharp metal ripped away from-
“We need to get out of here!” The officer commanded. Another gust of wind blew through the barn, the door slamming open and rain hammering inside. “Do you- did you have a basement?”
“Yeah,” She agreed as her voice trembled with fright. Another whirlwind circled, the wind finally gaining the upper hand and yanking the shingles off the roof. Waverly froze as the pieces of asphalt were sucked into a vortex only a few dozen feet away.
“Come on!” Nicole screamed as the gardening tools whipped around them, soon to be lapped away too, like a vacuum desperate to eliminate everything in its path. She grabbed the younger women’s hand, her skin feeling soft and smooth in hers. Their eyes locked as she inhaled a sharp breath. A cold raindrop hit her neck and shimmied down her back, pulling her back to the present.
“Stay low,” She commanded as the two stepped out of the shelter. The home was not too far, they could make it. They had to.
Their clothes thrashed around their bodies in a feeling they had never felt before. Rain drenched their clothes and stung their skin as it stabbed their bodies with such force. The evil, unseen demon body slammed into the two women, taking Nicole’s hat in its wake.
“Your hat!” Waverly shrieked as the twister gulped the cap in one swallow.
“I can get another one,” Nicole yelled as her volume battled against the wind. She gripped the shorter women’s hand tighter, nightmares playing in her mind of her being sucked up as well.
“Do you have a key?” The officer questioned as she dragged them up the few stairs and onto the porch.
“No. I haven’t lived here in years. Just break through the window.”
Nicole dropped her hand, clenched it in a fist, and thrust it against the small glass window on the thick wooden door.
The sound of the glass breaking pulverized all of Waverly’s senses, as she stood right outside her childhood home, frozen in time.
Bright lights flashed and flickered on the walls of the darkened homestead. If she hadn’t known any better, she would have assumed its morning and the burning was from the hot rays of the early dawn sunrise. But it wasn’t. Dark shadows brawled outside the window curtain. Ferocious banging emitted from the frame as claws scored the length of the glass panes, leaving lacerations in their wake.
“There’s so many of them,” Her eldest sister Willa stumbled. “You said they can’t attack the house!”
He trudged behind and shifted the white silk as he surveyed the terror feet away.
“They figured out how to get around the bedrock.” He exasperated and shepherded Willa away from the danger.
“What is happening?” She screamed, holding her hands up against her ears to block the awful noise.
“I’ve got the gun Daddy.” The eldest continued, gripping the icy metal in her warm hands, her fingers clutching around the shaft as if it was made for her. “There’s so many of them.”
“Let’s close our eyes and sing mama’s lullaby. Just until the bad guys go away.” Her middle sister spoke to her as she cowered in the corner. She swiped the tears away from her stinging cheeks, but the flames still flared and shadows still licked the paneled walls, fear piercing within her.
“There’s seven of them.” He distinguished as the creatures rapped at the windows for an opening.
She snapped her vision toward the aperture as a loud crack incinerated her eardrums. Glass seared into the family room. She shrieked in fright as monstrous hands tore into the home.
Strong, hairy arms singed inside and within a blink of an eye, her eldest sister was seized by the immortal and heaved through the hole. Glass punctured her skin and blood dripped down her appendages as she was dragged away.
Screams escalated from around the home, echoing against the bare woods. Groans erupted from the others mouths, as if replying to their terror.
“Willa!” Her middle sister roared as she raced to the window in bravery.
“No” Her father interjected at the same moment, pain, and anger scorching across his features. He raised the machine gun to his sightline and shifted his finger against the trigger.
“You can’t help. You aren’t the heir.” She reminded Wynonna as revenge dilated her eyes.
“Shot gun won’t work.” The middle child reminded their father in his haste. She turned to her sister, her pupils laced with fear. “He needs Wyatt’s gun!
Ducking low, Wynonna raced to the gun her sister had emitted upon her exit. She hailed the gun towards her father, but he was no longer in sight. She ignited towards the door, her little sister on her heels. As he fought with all his power to be freed, two revenants dragged him away from the Earp homestead and toward the edge of the Ghost River Triangle.
Wynonna raised the family heirloom higher in the air, the once cool metal now burning her epidermis. Closing her eyes, she flicked the safety and squeezed the trigger with all her might. A bullet ejected from the large gun and the pressure shoved her back. She tripped on the stairs and stumbled to the ground.
“Daddy!” she screamed at the top of her lungs as the bullet entered between his shoulder blades. His body fell to the ground, lifeless in the unworldly men’s arms.
Another flash of lightening and another boom of thunder resounded through the sky. The dark, thick clouds funneled in the dreary distance and collided against the damp, murky ground.
“Waverly, Waverly,” Nicole shook her gingerly. She sat by her side on the cold, cement floor of the basement. If she had a pulse, a strong one nonetheless, why wasn’t she awake?
She could hear the windows rattling over her head as the tornado continued its path through the Earp homestead. A loud noise burned through her ears, like a train speeding over two hundred miles per hour just inches away from her head. She wrapped her arms around her head and covered her ears as tears swelled into her eyes.
“I feel like I’ve been run over semi,” She stirred beside the officer and proceeded to sit up as blood rushed to her brain. “And what is that noise!”
“Stay down, Waves!” Nicole heaved her flat to the foundation. The twister banged outside the door to the home, less than twenty feet over their heads. The sound of sheet rock being shredded, bricks being thrown, and boards being stripped speared her bones. She clenched her eyes as visions of the disaster gusted in her mind.
Silence swept the streets of Purgatory, across the fields of rye and through the desolate storefronts. The citizens shuffled from the shelter as the moonlight danced across their faces.
Her fingers drummed on her torn pant legs. The lights rebounded off the waxed floor under her steel-toed shoes. Her eyes drooped from exhaustion, but she fought every nerve ending to stay awake.
“You look like shit.”
Blood seeped through the once pristine white gauze wrapped around her arm and dried musty brown. She needed to replace her bandages, but she did not want to leave the women’s bedside.
“Thanks, I could say the same for you.” She recoiled as she glanced toward the stranger. “I just survived a tornado. What’s your excuse?”
“Wow, feisty.” She replied as she plopped in the other empty chair beside the bed. “I was on a 6 hour bus ride, so…”
“Who the hell are you, anyways?” Nicole ran a frustrated hair through her red hair. She was not on enough pain medication for this.
“Wynonna… Earp… This one’s older sister.” She nodded her head until the direction of the bed.
“How the hell did you even find out about her, anyways? I thought you hadn’t been in Purgatory since-”
“You know, my Gus? Yeah, she called me. Some people in the family actually think I deserve to know about my sister …” She recanted, anger spewing from her words. “Why are you still here anyways? I’m pretty sure your job does not consist of sitting by her bedside.”
“Would you two shut up? Some people are trying to sleep!”
“Waverly!” Nicole gasped. She hobbled to the bedside and sat gently on the edge of the bed.
“Holy shit, what the hell happened to your hand?”
“You’re in a hospital bed and you are worried about me?” She hid her hand beside her back, embarrassed by her injury. “You know your idea to break through the glass on the door? Wasn’t the greatest. I had to have stitches.”
“Oh god, I’m sorry.” She raised the sheet over her head as if she was hiding from humiliation.
“No worries.” Nicole placed her hand on Waverly’s kneecap. The heat quickly radiated underneath the blanket. “I would do it again in a heartbeat for y-us. How are you feeling?”
Wynonna pretended to cough from beside them. Her sister’s tired, red eyes found hers and her face turned pale.
“Wynonna? What are you doing here?”
“Gus told me you were in the hospital.” She explained. She stepped forward and held tightly on the metal bed rail. “I got on the first bus I could. You were hurt. I had to make sure you were okay, baby girl.”
“You never cared before.”
Nicole started to shiver away but Waverly grabbed her hand before she could disappear.
“I never… I’m starting to realize what’s important to me. And that’s you, baby girl.”
Waverly stared into her sisters eyes, anxious to find the truth hidden in them. But there was no lie to be found.
“And it looks like we have a lot to catch up on.” Wynonna continued. She glanced from Waverly to the officer, her eyebrows etched in confusion. “And does someone want to tell me how you ended up in the hospital?”
“She passed out.” Nicole explained to both women. “The doctor’s think it was a mix of stress and dehydration.”
“And the tornado?” Wynonna asked. “I didn’t think Purgatory got tornados?”
“First one in 27 years,” she recalled. She had been studying the weather patterns for several days in preparation. “It ripped right through the Ghost River Triangle. The homestead was demolished.”
“Good,” Wynonna commented. “There wasn’t enough rain in all of Purgatory to wash the sins out of that house.”
Waverly smiled at her sister, who slipped her rough hand into hers. “There wasn’t enough wind in Purgatory, either, to rip the nails out of the past. At least I won’t have the reminder of my childhood, anymore.”
“You’ll never have to worry about seeing it again.” Nicole agreed. “The whole house was leveled to nothing but broken boards, shattered bricks, and dirt. With insurance money, you should be able to build a new Earp Homestead. One where you can make new happy memories and forget those haunting your past.”
Humid rays spread across the sky, warming the town of Purgatory in a cheerful, yellowish hue. One soft, snowy white cloud wandered across the skyline, the horizon off in the distance, untouched. The tornado may have left destruction in its wake, but its vigor was now just a memory.
Inside the hospital room, the three talked for hours; the Earp sisters bonding over the terrors of their past, while Nicole learned the family’s history. They made plans for the future, too: plans to become a family, to erect a new house on their soon to be empty land and, as Nicole made them promise, to follow all safety precautions enacted by the Purgatory Police Department.