Crash

A strange phenomenon puts time and space in the opposing hands of a young girl resurrected and a mysterious old man.

Part 1

The Persistence of Memory

 

The moment Raleigh Corrigan died in her high school cafeteria she was thinking of a summer afternoon about two months ago, which she spent laying in the grass in her backyard watching the clouds pass her by. For as long as she could remember there were some days in her life wherein she felt a strange sense of unease. The only thing that seemed to comfort her those days was the feeling of grass between her fingers, the nebulous shades of white drifting through the sky.

            Raleigh’s friend sitting next to her asked her a question, but she couldn’t hear it. In the afternoon sun she slept and dreamt she was still watching the sky when a passing cloud revealed not one sun but two. One of them was rapidly growing in size. Now sitting up and squinting, Raleigh saw that the coming light was not one star but millions of stars clustered together, which in moments came forward and overtook the sky. Streaks of light wondrously illuminated the Earth.

            When she tried to remember what happened next on that afternoon, she suddenly felt like she had been hit in the head. Raleigh’s mouth slowly hung open, as if she was about to say something, and a drop of blood trailed down from her nose to the corner of her mouth. She was already dead by the time her body fell forward and her head made a soft thunk against the cafeteria table.

            The cause of Raleigh’s death could not be determined. She had no diseases or wounds, save for the bloody nose. There were no drugs in her system either. Yet she had passed nonetheless, and it seemed that was all there was to it.

            The next four years Raleigh spent in a dream, completely oblivious to the past and present, outside the passage of time. All that existed to her was a serene summer afternoon in her backyard, watching the clouds inch around the world and back again.

 

Dr. Isaac Hagenthorpe was an ugly old man, much older than he should have been. He went by “Doctor” although he had not attended any college. Half of his head was bald; the other had only small patches of snow-white hair. His laboratory was a cheap little storage space full of strange and obviously homemade equipment.

            A tall man in a dark grey suit, known simply to Hagenthorpe as “Les” stood at the entrance of the lab. He eyed the Doctor, who was unaware of the man’s presence, then took a cursory glance at each end of the long, empty hallway before speaking.

            “Dr. Hagenthorpe, I presume?”

            Isaac swung around. “You’re here! Good, good. I was afraid you wouldn’t come. Have a seat, there’s much to discuss.” He picked a suitcase from the ground next to him and dropped it on a small wooden table that stood in between two folding chairs. Les had his seat across from Hagenthorpe and took the suitcase. As he popped open the locks, the Doctor asked, “Ever been to Ohio?”

            Les opened the suitcase and, at the sight of the disheveled stacks of hundred dollar bills held together with rubber bands, replied, “A few times, yes.”

            “Have you ever killed a teenager? Or a child, even?”

            Les closed the suitcase, looking coldly into Isaac’s decrepit eyes. “If you want me to kill a kid, I’ll have to ask why.”

            Isaac laughed. “It probably won’t make any sense to you. Do you really want to know?”

            “I require it. Personal reasons.”

            Hagenthorpe revealed a faint, disturbed smile. “Let me get a pen and paper.” He leapt up and began rooting through desks, calling from across the lab. “What do you know about time as a vector?” He gave no time to answer before saying, “You don’t know anything about time as a vector.” Triumphantly holding his notebook in the air, Isaac continued as he began his walk back to Les. “Scientific thinkers, they look at the vastness of space and think our existence to be insignificant in comparison. Life, however, is unlike any of that giant mess of unintelligent junk.

            “What do you know about the afterlife? Forget it. There’s only a one in a million chance you’ll get one, and it’s not that great. You don’t even know you’re there. It’s like a dream.” Hagenthorpe uncapped his black marker and drew a straight line. “I’m gonna have to dumb this down a lot…the universe is like a plant that grows in four dimensions. A simpler version of this would be the timeline.

            “And memories, those are more or less portals to areas on the four-dimensional plane. Generally they’re just viewing portals, and they’re not perfect, obviously. They’re only small areas of time with details missing. However, if someone dies with a particularly strong memory on his or her mind, that area of the timeline can warp, catching the person in a time loop.” He drew a little circle hanging from the timeline. “What do you know about time loops?”

            He gave no time to reply. “That there’s your dreamy afterlife. Now like I said before, they don’t know they’re dead. But there is a chance " one in a billion " that a person could realize that they’ve died, and when that happens, we have a problem.” Isaac began to draw a second line. “When that happens, the person will come back to present day. But their existence, which is tethered to its rightful place in the past, will effectively pull the present " us " back to that person’s memory, and then,” the end of the line curved upward and back around to the center, where Hagenthorpe began scribbling madly. “Crash.”

            Les looked as though he had been told a joke that was not funny.

            “I knew it wouldn’t make any sense to you,” Isaac said. “But either way someone is coming back from the dead, or maybe they’re already back. I’m not sure…” Les eyed the three marks on the paper. His expression had not changed.

            “…And in order to prevent this uh,” Les and Isaac said, “Crash” at the same time. Les continued, “You need me to kill a child?”

            “Well I don’t know that it’s a child, but it could be. I don’t know who is coming back, and the location’s still fuzzy, but I know they’re somewhere in Columbus, Ohio. Another thing I’m not sure of is how much time we have. So in the case that it is a child, I need someone who can do the job no matter what. Can you do that, Les?”

            “I can.” Les’s eyes travelled to the suitcase before him, then back to Hagenthorpe’s notebook. “How did you come to discover these phenomena anyway, Dr. Hagenthorpe? And why does no one else know of them?”

            “They’ll know,” Isaac replied. “I’m supposed to be twenty-five, you know. I’ve been exploring other timelines, timelines that move faster than ours…what do you know about inter-universal travel?” He gave no time to answer. “You don’t know anything about inter-universal travel. This thing,” He pointed to the notebook, “It happened to some people I once knew. I’ve been a lot of places in a few years. I’ll have all the time in the world to walk the scientific community through my findings when the world isn’t going to run into itself. But until then, I’ll see you in Columbus.”

 

It’s always just when you’re beginning to forget everything that your past comes back to bite you in the a*s.

            Marnie Corrigan was having a good day, which had slowly become more and more of a common occurrence. After losing her husband William to breast cancer when their child was only seven, the death of her only daughter was almost too much. The cause of death, though, was the icing on the cake. The half of a family she had was now taken from her and for no reason, so far as anyone could tell.

            She had taken up smoking again " something she hadn’t done since she was Raleigh’s age. She maintained a certain vigor whenever she was teaching, as she always did when she was talking about literature. But most days when class was over the passion was gone and she was alone in the building where here daughter died.

            On this particular day, however, that was not on Marnie’s mind. She was part way through weaning herself off cigarettes until a week and a half ago she quit cold turkey. She seemed to be handling withdrawal pretty well, and today she felt better than ever. From the moment she woke to the moment she fell asleep, Marnie had not a thought about any of the monsters that held her down. And it was great. The moment after she fell asleep is a different story entirely.

            It’s always just when you’re beginning to forget everything that your past comes back to bite you in the a*s.

            In her dreams she was holding Raleigh close, stroking the young girl’s beautiful brown hair. The two of them were alone in a passenger train above the ocean. Marnie did not have to try and look to know that there were no tracks under them, but the train was falling in slow motion so they had some time to hold each other in loving silence.

            It was one-thirty a.m. when Marnie awoke, long before the train completed its descent, and for a moment she had forgotten that Raleigh was dead. She burst into tears as soon as the moment passed. There was no chance of going back to sleep, she knew, and even if she could she might not have wanted to.

            For the next half hour she lay crying in her bed. Once she felt like she may be able to move again, she got up and headed to the back porch with a glass of water and a pack of cigarettes. The cool, placid summer night was comforting, but Marnie could still feel the phantom warmth of Raleigh’s head against her chest.

            She smoked one cigarette after the other, and towards the end of cigarette number four she felt calm enough that she may go back to sleep after all. After the last glowing tip fell from the filter onto the round wooden table, Marnie closed her eyes and felt nothing but the calm wind drifting past her in a moment of tranquility. When she opened her eyes she saw Raleigh lying in the grass, absent-mindedly staring into the night sky.

            “No.” Marnie did not mean to speak; yet she could hear herself saying, “No, no, no,” over and over. Why was this happening to her? She tried to walk to her daughter but the grief collapsed her after only a few steps. On the porch where she laid watching the ghost of her daughter, Marnie cried herself to sleep thinking of Raleigh, padded cells, and a train hovering over the ocean.

 

At seven-forty a.m. Marnie awoke from dreamless sleep. Or perhaps it was the beginning of a dream; she was unsure. As she got to her feet she felt light, placid, almost intoxicated. When she walked toward the wooden steps it was like she was levitating, only slightly. It must have been a dream because she only ever felt this at peace when she was dreaming, and Raleigh was still lying there in the grass.

Raleigh was still lying there in the grass.

            Maybe it wasn’t a dream and she had simply gone mad. Either way Marnie found herself walking toward her late daughter, whether she wanted to or not. When she stood over Raleigh a tear welled up in her eye. The girl had not aged at all. She did not look dead, but she was still as a painting. Looking closely Marnie did not even see the slight movement of her breathing.

            She kneeled down and the tear in her eye finally departed down the curve of her face. She felt the urge to caress her daughter’s cheek, out of love but also just to see if she could even be touched. When she did, she felt the warmth of Raleigh’s skin for only a split second before the girl startled to life. In an instant Raleigh became confused and scared. Once she recognized her mother crying over her, Raleigh’s eyes watered as well.

            “Mom,” she said weakly, and they embraced.

Part 2

Assault on Corrigan House

 

 They held each other for hours on Raleigh’s bed in complete silence. Her bedroom was more or less the same as it was the day she died. A thin layer of dust had settled over everything, which they had left undisturbed save for the bedcovers. The scene reminded Marnie of the dream she had the night before. She still wasn’t sure if she was dreaming or insane but with her daughter in her arms she didn’t care.

            There were so many questions to ask. Now was not the time for them. They both stayed silent, together, until the doorbell rang.

            “I’ll be right back,” Marnie said before kissing Raleigh’s forehead and leaving the room.

 

Hagenthorpe parked in front of a two-story brick house that was slightly smaller than most of the houses in the neighborhood.

            “Here we are,” he announced. “Public enemy number one is in that house.”

            Les was putting a suppressor on his pistol. He said nothing.

            “You ready, big guy? This is your finest moment, buddy. How does it feel to know the fate of the world rests on your shoulders?”

            Les looked solemn. “Just keep the engine running. We’ll want to leave immediately,” he said before tucking the pistol in his jacket and stepping out of the car.

            “Yeah, no s**t.”

            Shortly after he rang the doorbell an almost middle-aged woman answered the door. Before she could even say “Hello,” Les charged, driving his elbow into her diaphragm and knocking her back. The air was knocked out of her lungs, and the woman took in a gasp of air when she fell on the floor. She was about to scream when Les fired two shots into her chest.

            “I’m sorry, darling,” he muttered to the wide-eyed corpse splayed before him. He placed his gun back inside his jacket and turned to leave when he heard a shriek from the top of the stairs.

 

He had heard her, no doubt. The man known to Dr. Isaac Hagenthorpe as “Les,” known to Raleigh Corrigan as the stranger who had just killed her mother, was about to come up the stairs and kill her as well.

            Next to Raleigh’s room was her mother’s, which was where she ran. Marnie used to keep a twelve-gauge shotgun in her bedroom closet. Raleigh hoped to god it was still there, and it was. Of course, Marnie always kept a lock on it too. Four years ago she kept it under the bed, and Raleigh was as good as dead if it wasn’t in the same place. Luckily enough she found the dusty little box, but she could hear footsteps.

            Raleigh grabbed the tiny key box and darted into the closet. The man would find her eventually, she knew, but in here she might have time to unlock the shotgun. Her hands shaking, she removed the lock and began to load the gun. She could hear the footsteps cautiously wandering around the bedroom.

            When she had three shells loaded, the footsteps had stopped in front of the closet door. Fighting fear, she pumped the shotgun. Immediately the man started putting bullets through the door in rapid succession. Before she could even react a burning pain grazed across Raleigh’s cheek. She screamed and fired off all three shells in response, closing her eyes after the first shot.

            When she stopped screaming and opened her eyes a sizable chunk was missing from the center of the closet door, which consumed the doorknob and some of the doorframe. The door lazily creaked open to reveal the man known to Dr. Isaac Hagenthorpe as “Les,” known to Raleigh Corrigan as the stranger who killed her mother, leaning against the bedpost with half of his torso strewn across the floor.

 

The gadget sitting on the dashboard that resembled a tiny radar screen still detected a strong pull. The suppressed pops of Les’s weapon were almost inaudible from outside, so when Hagenthorpe heard a much louder banging from the house, he knew things had gone south.

            “S**t,” he said to himself, and repeated profusely while he reached for one of Les’s black duffels. Isaac was not cut out for this, not at all. But he had brought so much more weaponry than they would have ever needed. Hopefully that would help turn the tables.

            He approached the house with an M14 rifle slung across his back and an Uzi in his hand, though he didn’t know the names of either of them. The front door was still hanging open, ready to show the fresh corpse of the woman who answered the door to anyone who got close enough. The neighbors likely already knew something was going on, but Isaac shut the door behind him anyway.

            There was a clunk upstairs. Hagenthorpe chased the sound with the shaky Uzi pointed ahead. On the second floor he found Les and his mess, and next to him a puddle of greenish-yellow vomit. No one else. At the end of the hall Isaac eyed an open window and thought of all the movies and TV shows he’d seen as a kid with the same open window and a man like Hagenthorpe with the same idea in his head.

            “No way,” he said aloud. And as though circumstance had said, “Yes way,” in response, he heard a tiny yelp followed by a loud metallic thunk. Less than a foot below the window was the garage roof, and while Isaac was climbing out he saw the dented hood of a Jeep in the driveway. Then he saw the teenage girl opening the driver-side door. There was a large gash on her left cheek. When she spotted him getting to his feet on the roof, she cursed and lifted her shotgun.

               Isaac pointed his Uzi but she was ready before he was. He instinctively jumped away from the window and the shot missed. When he landed on his side the submachine gun was knocked out of his hand. Both Isaac and the girl watched it slide down and bounce off the gutter into the driveway. Hagenthorpe was scrambling for the M14 on his back when the girl closed the door.

            Isaac aimed straight for the girl and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. The sound of the car starting was like a light bulb going off in his head. He never checked to see that it was loaded. He was really not cut out for this, not at all. In that frenzied moment, Isaac did not know what else to do but run and jump.

            He landed on the hood of the car feet-first. The girl was wide-eyed and frozen. The look on her face gave Isaac a strange and sudden burst of confidence, and he barked, “YOU CAN NEVER RUN FAR ENOUGH!”

            The words horrified her, he saw, but they did not stop her from putting the car in reverse and hitting the gas as hard as she could, leaving Dr. Isaac Hagenthorpe alone and defeated on the cement.
Part 3

Running Blind

 

Raleigh took I-70 west to 75 and drove for another forty-five minutes before pulling over on the side of the highway. That crazed old man’s words were echoing in her head. You can never run far enough. With the car off the words felt even louder.

            She considered going to the police. Surely there were a few officers at her house by now, but they didn’t know to look for a dead girl. And how would she explain that to the police? How could she tell them anything? There were so many questions to ask, but no one to answer.

            Raleigh just wanted to go back home and be with her mother, but such was now impossible. She stayed alone on the highway until the sun was almost down and another car came down the shoulder and parked behind her. From the rear-view mirror she could not tell if it was perhaps some stranger offering assistance or that dreadful old man.

 

It was easy enough for Isaac to track the girl down once she stopped moving. Except he wasn’t sure what to do once he caught up with her. A steady flow of cars moved down the highway; someone would see. Did she do this on purpose? Or was she out of gas?

            Maybe if he approached the car slowly, peacefully, he could talk to her. Dr. Hagenthorpe often felt that most of his problems he could solve by explaining them away. He left the car unarmed, hands raised. He began running when he heard the roar of the engine start and his fingers barely touched her rear bumper before she was gone once again.

 

Raleigh made her reappearance of sorts to the world later in the night at a small-town gas station. The lone attendant was too old to be working at such a place, with grey streaks in his hair and a placid expression on his face. He seemed to enjoy the solitude of the one a.m. gas station. His face quickly twisted into a look of horror when she came running in with her mother’s shotgun in her hands, screaming and yelling.

            “Please, I don’t want to hurt you. Just give me the money!”

            The man held one hand in the air and used the other to place the contents of the cash register in a plastic grocery bag. Raleigh was trying to keep control of the situation, but her face must have shown that she was just as scared as he was. When she reached for the bag, the attendant raised a short little revolver from under the counter and in a moment of mutual panic they both fired.

            The attendant shot to kill, but missed. Raleigh meant to miss, but ended up vomiting for the second time since her resurrection at the sight of the man’s hand, still clutching the pistol, resting on the counter while the rest of him screamed and writhed on the floor.

            “F*****g s**t.” The words came out of her not unlike the contents of her stomach. She stumbled away from the scene a victor of sorts, her blue dress stained with tiny dots of red.

            When police arrived the attendant’s wound had bled out and Raleigh was long gone.

 

Four days later Raleigh found herself on the side of the highway once again, somewhere in Wyoming. She was watching the flashes of red and blue swinging around each other in her rear-view mirror, trying to remain calm. She hadn’t been speeding, so it was most likely somebody saw her siphoning gas from cars in a parking lot earlier in the evening. Such was what she resorted to, since the idea of robbing another store for gas money made her physically sick.

            The officer seemed nice enough when he approached the window. “Hello, ma’am,” he greeted her with a neighborly smile. “Mind if I see your license and registration?” Raleigh reached in the glove box and produced the insurance information.

            “I don’t have my ID,” she said meekly.

            “Oh.” The officer looked somewhat less neighborly now. “Well I’m gonna have to ask you to wait here for a minute, if you don’t mind.” He began to walk back towards his cruiser, but Raleigh jumped out the car quickly and before he could react her arm was swinging for him. His head knocked against the window hard and the officer let out a quick, “Oof!” before he fell to the ground unconscious.

            Raleigh felt pity for the man as she stood over him. He didn’t deserve to be roped into this crazy mess. No one did. But he was in it nonetheless, and if he had made it back to his car he would have only made things worse.

            There were no other cars approaching, but there was no telling how long she would enjoy that luxury. In the backseat under a blanket was her mother’s shotgun and a box of shells, and next to it a paper bag full of clothes and a little money. Raleigh took everything and hurried for the policeman’s car. She left his shotgun but tossed the shells into her bag. Then she noticed headlights in the rear-view mirror.

            The tiny headlights were a long way away, but there was no telling who it was. More police? A Good Samaritan?

 

Him?

 

            Raleigh would not waste any time finding out. She ran to the unconscious policeman and took his pistol. After taking one more look at the growing headlights, she ran into the forest.

 

Isaac was driving somewhat aimlessly through the forested backwoods of which state? He didn’t know. He didn’t watch road signs, only his crudely built detector resting on the dashboard. It was hard to say exactly where the girl was when she was moving. Hagenthorpe tried to stay inside the large fuzzy dot that she produced on the radar screen, but beyond that he could only guess where she might be.

            The blip began to decrease in size. She’s stopped! Hagenthorpe accelerated as he watched the dot shrink down to a single point. By the time he was on the highway pushing ninety miles per hour, the tiny dot had grown slightly larger. She was moving again, but slowly.

            Further down the road were the flashing lights of police and Isaac slowed dramatically. Looming past the scene he eyed two civilian vehicles surrounding the police cruiser. The officer was on the ground and the woman calling the police didn’t take a second look at Hagenthorpe. He looked back to the radar. He was close, just a mile or two east. The girl must have escaped into the woods.

            Hagenthorpe parked further down the road, out of sight, and continued after her with a rifle in one hand and his tracker in the other, heavy black duffel bag slung over his shoulder. At his pace the dot on his tracker was slowly getting away from him, but she would have to stop eventually.

 

Raleigh had no intention of stopping. Her feet were heavy and her eyelids were heavier, but still she wouldn’t stop. She couldn’t stop. Of course she had slept in her days on the run. However she only slept for two or three hours at a time. She could not risk letting that crazed old man catch up to her, and there were only nightmares awaiting in the dark, anyway.

            Now with the old man possibly close behind, she couldn’t even risk a minute of sleep though she needed it terribly. Sleep didn’t exist anymore. The prospect of rest, the blacks and greys of night, the rustling of the trees, it was all just white noise. All that existed to Raleigh were her aching legs and the ethereal threat of death looming behind her like a darkening storm cloud.

            She was pulled from her walking trance hours later, when the rising sun gave color to the surrounding forest. Still she continued on, but the task was much harder now that she was fully conscious of it. Soon the strain overcame Raleigh and she fell to her knees. Her eyes unfocused, showing two unsteady suns before she completed her fall to the ground and into sleep.
Part 4

Headfirst into the Light

 

Finally he had found her. Dr. Isaac Hagenthorpe was more exhausted than he had ever been in his entire life, but his efforts finally paid off. The girl had fallen asleep and he hadn’t, and now he stood triumphantly over her.

            He took the rifle from his shoulder, pointed at the girl’s head, and paused. Something wasn’t right. Hagenthorpe wasn’t the type to pay much attention to hunches, but in that instance, a finger’s pull away from putting his troubles to rest, it all felt too easy. After everything the tenacious little girl had put him through, there was no way fate had simply presented her to Isaac like this. Not that he really believed in fate.

            Then he remembered the police car he had seen the night before. The girl most likely " no, definitely had something to do with that. Which meant the police were likely searching for the girl as well, and not far behind him. The noise from the shot would alert them immediately.

            He slung the rifle back over his shoulder in favor of the silenced pistol in his duffel. Isaac’s right foot was planted on a particularly mossy rock, which he didn’t take note of until he shifted his weight and his foot slipped out from under him, sending him tumbling. Rolling behind him was the black duffel, from which a small contraption of Isaac’s. A small grey chunk of metal, about the size of a brick. Before he knocked his head on a particularly large root and fell unconscious, Hagenthorpe’s last thought was that fate definitively could not exist because no fate could be so cruel as to make him fall like this mere seconds away from putting a bullet in her head. Knocking against the same root moments later, the little grey prism hit a button and began to transform into something else entirely.

 

Raleigh awoke in a spasm of fear and alarm. For once she did not dream, but that fact was of no comfort to her. How could she have fallen asleep? How long was she out? She could feel her heart beating frantically in her chest. A few moments passed, and she was beginning to calm.

            To fall asleep was to die, or so she thought. Yet Raleigh was alive. She was beginning to think the man was not after her anymore, until she saw him sprawled out below her. Death had indeed come for her, and failed.

            Surrounding the man’s body was an assortment of guns and a duffel bag. When Raleigh gathered the courage to approach him, she noticed he was still breathing. It seemed that he had tripped or something, and hit his head.

            Further down was an invention of Hagenthorpe’s, which looked to Raleigh like a prop from some old science-fiction movie. A pair of handlebars jutted slightly crooked out of a column on the front of a square metal platform. She paid it no mind. There was something she had to do before any more questions could be asked.

            In truth, Raleigh didn’t want to kill the stranger who lay unconscious before her. Soon as he woke, though, there was no doubt in her mind he would keep after her. She took her pistol and shot him once in the head. She didn’t throw up this time. Instead she cried a single tear and walked on.

            In the distance echoed the soft crunching of footsteps. The police, maybe. Or maybe the He had friends. Either way Raleigh would not be present upon their arrival. Though it looked strange, once turned on the machine lifted easily into the air. Some invisible force planted her feet firmly on the platform and held the rest of her body relatively steady.

            The controls were simple enough, being just a pair of handlebars. Raleigh found that if she pulled up on the handlebars, the craft would ascend. She assumed the opposite would happen if she pushed down, but she did not want to go down just yet. At this speed all things below her were just blurs, streaks of colors. She didn’t know where she was going, nor did it matter. All that mattered was that she was far away from Him and everything related to him.

            As wonderful as it would be to watch the world pass by like this, Raleigh knew that sooner or later she would have to come back down to Earth. When she finally decided to land she reduced her speed greatly as she came down. It proved still too fast when a beeping noise caused her to look down at the handlebars, distracting her from the tree that stood in her flight path.

            The top of the tree snapped off with the simultaneous crack and crunch of wood and machinery, which sent Raleigh off as well. For a moment she was still flying, floating freely through thin air. The next moment she was skidding and rolling against the hard ground, bashing through fences. The next several moments were nothing but the fierce, dull pains of laying still.

            Her body was bruised and broken all over, though she had the strength to turn her head and look around. It even hurt to think of how small the odds were that she would have ended up in her own backyard of all places. Yet there she was, staring up at the bright sky.

            She was lost in the endless blue, so much so that she felt as if she might fall from the Earth into it. Then something appeared. A light, what was a pinprick, was a dot, was like a moon or sun, and growing. Raleigh felt she had seen something like this, but she wasn’t sure where. In an instant the light engulfed the world and the sky was not a solid color but frantically shifting streaks and flashes of yellow, orange, and white.

            The air itself seemed to glow, and somehow Raleigh found the strength to sit up. There was a shadow in the sky, straight above. What was a pinprick, was a dot, was an Earth, flying or floating down on a crushing wave of fear and awe. For a moment the sky was overtaken yet again. In that moment Raleigh was caught staring into her own big, scared eyes, and then - 

Crash.