The Night Marchers and Other Strange Tales

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Book: Read The Night Marchers and Other Strange Tales for Free Online
Authors: Daniel Braum
Tags: Fiction, Science-Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Short Stories, speculative
her face. 
    Gypsy Woman yelled from the water. “Don’t let Sandrine be free!”  
    Steven picked up the girl and carried her onto the boat. He placed her inside the small cabin, untied the lines from the dock, and started the engine.  
    The wind blew fiercer and rain spilled from the sky as the boat pulled away from the dock into the rocking waves. 
    **** 
    The boat neared the reef when the rain began to come down hard. Steven wasn’t sure what to do, so he stopped.  
    The girl lay on the floor among a length of fishing line and a few empty beer cans rolling from the swell. Her features were Mexican with a bit of the Mayan nose, though she was thin and lanky. Mist continued to pour from her skin, as if from her pores and her cuts. Inscriptions and characters in black marker or grease-stick ran up her arms and around her neck. Steven recognized one, spiral arms around a circle, the icon for a hurricane.  
    Steven watched her for any slight rise and fall of her chest. If she was breathing it was too faint for him to tell. He took a deep breath himself and realized the boat was perfectly still, the wind quiet and the rhythmic lap of the waves gone. 
    The boat’s lights flickered, then blacked out. A faint glow emanated from the girl like moonlight on mist. Steven sensed movement in her, then a gust of wind blew from inside the room, stirring the beer cans. 
    The girl sat up. She turned her bruised body as if to see the room better, then held out her hands and looked at them. A sound like the wind through palm trees escaped her awkwardly moving lips. 
    She rubbed her arms, erasing some of the markings. 
    “Something is very wrong for us to speak this way.” Tendrils of thin, almost transparent mist wafted from her nose. Her hair lifted from the growing wind around her. 
    “I do not mean to hurt, yet I care not if I do,” she said. “I need to blow, to move, to pour. All I know is to storm.”  
    Steven heard Gypsy Woman’s voice in his head, yelling to kill her. Despite the moisture everywhere, his throat was dry and constricted. The mist rolling off her looked natural, almost beautiful, yet he knew he looked upon something not meant for him to see, not meant to even be. 
    The girl shuddered. She looked at her shaking hands. Slowly she curled her fingers, stopping short of a fist. As she did, her neck tensed and the shaking moved to her jaw.  
    “This is so strange,” she said, fluttering her fingers slowly. “It is time to go. Already this experience fades.” 
    Steven pictured rubble and wrecked houses, all the people on the island, the headstones beneath palm trees stripped of leaves. 
    The girl fell back to the bench with a soft thud. The faint glow from her skin faded. Mist rolled off and away from her. Steven put his hand over her mouth. No breath. He searched for a pulse and found nothing.  
    As Steven checked her mouth again, a steady exhalation of moist air left her with a hiss like air leaving a balloon. He put his head to her chest and heard movement in her lungs. The hiss became a whistle, then a roar. 
    Wind rushed from her open mouth, blasting out windows and pushing Steven to the wall. Steven saw the girl thrashing about like an airborne scarecrow as the storm escaped her body. The boat lurched as if cresting a huge wave and Steven slid across the floor and slammed into the other side of the cabin. His ears popped from the building pressure. He felt blood drip from his ear and roll into his hair from the wind.  
    Mist streamed from the girl and whisked out of the windows, then in an instant all was still. The girl dropped to the floor, limbs splayed. The lights flickered and came on. He stuck his head out of the window. Above, moonlight streamed down from the clear sky. A ring of clouds raced away from the boat.  
    The storm was taking form around him. The boat bobbed in the calm, in the gentle eye. He pictured the destructive spiral arms, like the symbol on the girl, moving over

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