Michelle Lappin
A train.
A freight train to be precise.
One of the phatic phrases I heard countless times as a kid to describe a tornado heading your way. During Every Single thunderstorm. Do you know how many thunderstorms there are during a Southern Illinois summer? A LOT.
First we’d “keep an eye on the weather.” Eyes glued to the WSIL tv broadcast, the indecipherable radar map, my mom on the edge of her seat hanging on the weatherman’s every word. When she decided there was a “bad one” getting too close, we’d gather supplies and head to the basement. Flashlights, batteries, candles, blankets, and I would always grab a stuffed animal or book, hoping to bring some bit of comfort along with me for the interminable wait ahead. Once everything was ready, we rushed to the basement door. The constant undercurrent of anxiety always present in our house growing increasingly more potent. Now down into the bowels of hell itself.
Well, that’s what the basement felt like to me, even if I didn’t have the necessary vocabulary at the time.
I had a profound animal instinct to stay upstairs. I did not want to go down those stairs, into the dark, damp, unfinished basement. It was pitch black. There was no light switch, you had to go halfway down a flight of rickety wooden stairs before you could reach up to grab the thin string dangling from the bare bulb overhead and pull.
Pull like my life depended on it.
The pitiful bulb would barely emit enough light to illuminate the hand pulling the string, but it was enough to no longer be in complete darkness. The stairs were even more frightening than the aphotic zone of a basement itself. Open tread with only a slimy, ice cold hand rail nearly too far away for little arms to reach out to for support. That animal instinct, anxiety, sense of self preservation, or whatever you want to call it would kick in again. With each step, with each breath, I was nearly overwhelmed with fear. While it was usually only a vague feeling and no specific thing I was afraid of, other than the dark, unbidden extremely vivid images of a hand, a claw, or maybe even a tentacle would, at any moment reach through the gap between the steps, grab me by the ankle and pull me down into oblivion.
“Let there be light,” my mom would say, cracking open the dark shell of shadows encasing me. I’d quickly let out the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. The familiar shadows of panic would ease from the tight knot in the middle of my chest. It wouldn’t be gone, it was never gone completely, but it would shrink away, hovering at the fringes of my body and mind. Mom would reach for my hand, we’d
carefully pick our way to the bottom of the stairs and then find a spot to try and make comfortable for our long vigil through the night.
With everyone settled, this is when the inevitable “train” conversation would come up. “It’ll sound like a freight train coming and then when it gets right on top of ya, it’ll go quiet and then it’s all over.”
Part of me always wondered how they knew this.
I never had the presence of mind to ask, honestly that was never an option. A lowly girl-child questioning a MAN?!
Obviously they hadn’t experienced it first hand, and if the quiet is the end, how would anyone be able to share that information with anyone else who wasn’t there? Maybe the end wasn’t the end, maybe they were a little bit full of it, repeating what they’d heard all their lives to pass the “tradition” of not being able to think for yourself or have an intelligent, real, present conversation. No, that would require too much
admitting, too much contemplation of big scary things like emotions… and thoughts.
ANYWAY.
Once we reached this point, probably only ten minutes in but it felt like hours to me, in the way of a lone child surrounded by grown-ups and their ignorant conversation, I’d slip into my imagination.
Because at this point, I’d kind of rather take my chances with the storm.
I’d imagine a different me. Brave, fearless, strong. Maybe I was a knight about to take on a dragon, or an adventurer headed into the woods, towards who knew what that lay ahead. Or maybe just a grown up me, able to make my own decisions and be in control. I could just hop in my car and leave.
Well, now I am grown up me, but I feel like I’m back on those stairs, desperate for the light to turn on. Sure any number of creepy appendages were seconds away from grasping my ankle and yanking me down, through the portal behind the stairs into the awaiting nightmare. But this is so much worse than a nightmare. It’s real and it’s really happening. Right now. To me. I’m wide awake, no longer a child, and on my own. I have no idea what to do.
It doesn’t sound like a train rushing by, it sounds like dozens of demonic locomotives are headed toward me from every direction at full speed.
I am completely engulfed by panic, it’s not at the fringes now. Now it consumes me. I try to regain control of at least some cognitive function, to focus and remember my training. To remember how the Professor told me to use the intensity of my emotions to my advantage.
Yeah, that made sense back in the tunnels.
All I can focus on is how I do NOT want to hear that silence. Maybe it’ll pass me by. I can figure out the damage in the light of day and be more thankful to be alive than I thought I was capable of.
I’ve never been that much of a fan before.
Wishful thinking. All at once the tumult ceases. After a moment that lasts a heartbeat but feels like a lifetime, I swear I hear a whistle blow. There are no claws or tentacles reaching for my ankle. It’s so much worse than my little kid brain could have panic-nightmared about. A shadowy figure with glowing red eyes stretches out a hand, invisible under his dark cloak. They’ve come to drag me down after all. It reaches out further still until its shadowy grasp encloses my very being. It’s all over.