Children of the Storm

Rudolph. But he couldn't surprise and overpower the two of us.”
        Sonya shook her head, amazed, and she said, wonderingly, “Half of the people in this house are as courageous as a dozen mountain climbers rolled into one.”
        “I'm not courageous,” he said.
        “Sure,” she said.
        “Not really. All I do is what has to be done, by someone, sooner or later. I learned that lesson from my brother: a man must do what is clearly needing done; if you run away from something unpleasant, it only runs after you.”
        “I didn't know you had a brother,” she said.
        “A very dear one,” he said.
        “You never mentioned him before.”
        He smiled strangely, as she had never seen him smile before, and he said, his voice rapid now, as if anxious to finish the conversation and get upstairs, to help Rudolph with the kids, “Oh, yes. My brother Jeremy is one of the best men that I've ever known. He's not afraid of anything at all.” He squeezed her hands and ran across the kitchen, toward the main hall. “Go to the cellar! Now!” he shouted, over his shoulder, competing with the booming voice of the storm.
        Then he was gone.
        Sonya stood in the same spot where he had left her, as if she had been rooted to the spot.
        The uprooted palm tree slammed against the back of the house a second time, leaving a hollow echo in the kitchen.
        Finally, she took a step toward the safety of the storm cellar, but stopped long before she reached it. She knew, without being able to say how she knew, that the crisis was upon them and that, in a very short time, perhaps within the next few seconds, the long-awaited disaster would have come to pass…

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    TWENTY-ONE
        
        As she watched the kitchen clock, Sonya felt as if someone had managed to interfere with the proper flow of time, and that a minute was passing only a fraction as swiftly as it was meant to, as it always had before. Indeed, each second was more like a minute, and the long red sweep hand on the clock face appeared to crawl forward about as fast as a child might be able to move a stirring stick through a bucket of New England molasses.
        Finally, a minute had passed.
        And another.
        The wind screeched and wailed, trying to tear the sides of the house open and get into the creatures hiding in its depths; she could almost convince herself that the wind had become, through some evil magic, a sentient creature.
        A third minute passed.
        She went to the entrance of the hallway and looked toward the stairs, was disappointed not to see Bill, Saine and the children. What if Blenwell were in the house? And what if, despite what he'd told Bill, he had a gun? Would she have heard two gunshots-one for Rudolph, one for Bill-above the roar of the wind and rain? She doubted it.
        A fourth minute passed.
        Molasses…
        Five minutes since Bill had gone up there, eight or nine minutes since the bodyguard had taken the children to their room to get their stuffed animals and games. It seemed, to Sonya, that that was plenty of time to complete a simple errand.
        She walked the length of the main hall, constantly hoping to hear the four of them tramping down the steps, but by the time she had reached the bottom of the staircase, she knew her hope was going to remain nothing more than an insubstantial wish.
        “Hey!” she called from the first step.
        The wind overwhelmed her call.
        She looked back toward the kitchen, the storm cellar entrance she could no longer see, thought of the safety there and, unaccountably, all alone, went quickly up the steps to see what was detaining the others.
        The second floor corridor was especially dark now that all the windows were shuttered, the drapes drawn, and no lights left on. It was so gloomy, in fact, that she almost tripped over the body before she saw it. It was lying in the middle of the corridor , outside of the children's room, still, deathly still.
        She stooped and touched it.
        It was quite bloody.
        “Rudolph?” she asked.
        He didn't answer, couldn't answer, would never speak again.
        She stood up, gagging, but she did not pass out. Later, she would wonder what kept her moving, what special strength she had never known she had.
        Stepping carefully, as if she thought the rest of the corridor might be littered with countless