A Storm Over Tannersburg

By Ross Thrash

Alice Moore I

“I didn’t have much to be worried about at that time three years ago. Every day was the same

routine. Wake up, dress, get the kids ready for school, clear out the driveway, make that god awful

commute into town, shop, clean the house, pick the kids up from school, karate practice, come home,

rinse and repeat. If I was lucky there would be a few kisses or compliments thrown in there from my

husband Mark, but those had become increasingly rare that year. Life for me back then was a cycle that

seemed inescapable no matter how many hobbies I tried to pick up or how many vacations Mark took me

and the kids on. The weather wasn’t helping either, I swear to God there was a blizzard every other day

that winter! It got so bad that the Pemberton big wigs decided to close down the mountain for most of the

season, a choice they struggled with until it became clear the storms weren’t going to stop.”

Were you familiar with the Pembertons up until this point?

“Who wasn’t? They owned one of the most popular ski resorts in the whole state, the number one

thing that kept people coming in and spending money in our town. The mayor was one of them, for

Christ’s sake! If you lived in Tannersburg you knew about the Pembertons, end of discussion. And you

probably despised them!”

Did you know the family personally?

“Not really. Lacey and Michael used to have karate with Kiara Pemberton’s sons Tobias and

Mark, so her and I would get to chat every once and a while while the kids were practicing their forms.

Our conversations never really moved past the usual non-topics like the weather or how the children had

been doing in their classes. She was always very pleasant and reserved, the renowned bad temper of her

father had not passed on to her as far as I could tell. But most of what I knew about Kiara and her family

came from gossip.”

 Please elaborate.

“Never lived in a suburb before, have you? I don’t know about other places but in Tannersburg

gossip was king! Us stay-at-home moms lived for that shit, it was like the one thing that would distract us

from the grind, from the endless diaper changing and dish washing and drunken Netflix binges. It was

almost always about something petty, who had been wearing what to the homeowners association

meeting or who had been spreading rumors about someone else’s kid. Stupid, for sure, but that kind of

talk felt dangerous to us! Always the chance of secrets getting out or friendships ending, real high stakes

shit. When it wasn’t about the other moms or our kids the gossip usually revolved around the Pembertons.

The thought of that family living it up in those mansions of theirs never failed to get us riled up, but it was

just harmless complaining for the most part.”

We’re any of the Bullock family involved in this talk?

“Ha! That’s a good one. The Bullocks lived out near the highway, on the edge of town. They

mostly kept to themselves, like the Pembertons did. But every once in a while I’d see Marianne and her

husband at a high school basketball game, their son was a star player. Harry, I think that was his name.

But talk about either the Bullocks or Pembertons would inevitably end up on the feud between them. Both

families had been around since Tannersburg was established in the 1800s, apparently there had been bad

blood between them since the very start. Nobody really knew why, at least nobody that I knew. It was like

the town’s private mystery, everybody had their own ideas about what went on between the two families,

what kind of secrets they held. Inbreeding, a drug operation, I remember Sofia Mendez coming up with a

convoluted theory that the Bullocks were aliens or something along those lines. Stupid stuff, really, but it

was fun to talk about.”

But that changed.

“Yes, it did. When Tobias Pemberton was found.”

Jeffery Hoffman I

“The week before then had been quiet, as usual. While the rest of the town was cursing the

weather us at the station were having the time of our lives. Less tourists meant less drunk idiots starting

fights in bars and less wannabe thieves swiping t shirts from souvenir shops. When the call came in I was

actually taking a nap in my patrol car, something I never would have expected to do during the winter

season. Some hiker had found one of the Pemberton boys up near one of the resort’s unused chairlifts,

when he hiked back to town he said that the boy had looked “deader than dead” but refused to say much

more. Hadn’t seen a guy look that terrified in a long time, his face looked whiter than the snow outside!

Can’t really blame him, though, I probably looked the same way once I saw the scene myself.”

Please elaborate.

“The kid wasn’t just dead, he was torn apart! Our first thought was wolves or some other wild

animal, but that was ruled out as soon as we got a better look at the scene. Whatever or whoever had done

it had taken the time to string the victim across the treetops like a goddamn Christmas decoration. It was

hell for the recovery team to gather up. Whatever did it had also, uh….”

We can take a break if you’d like, Officer Hoffman.

“No, Jesus, no. If we stop now then I’ll have to talk about it some other time, I just want to be

done with this shit.”

Understandable. Please continue.

“Well, for one the blood splatter was all wrong. With an animal attack there is usually signs of a

struggle and no real pattern. If it was a homicide then there was often a pattern that could traced back to a

specific type of weapon used. This was something else entirely, there were these symbols drawn all over

the damn place. On the trees, the snow, the victim’s skin. Not a single drop of blood had been spilled

elsewhere, not a single drop!”

Can you describe the symbols?

“Most of them were these weird stick figures. We thought they were supposed to be men, but the

proportions were off. Long arms, long legs, long fingers, a growth of some kind on its head. I drew a copy
of one of them in my notebook before the cleanup crew was done with the scene. For safekeeping. There

are nights where I still think about that moment, holding that pen in my hand. The point of no return, for

me anyways. I should have just walked away.”

Cooper Pemberton I

“I hated it, all of it. The homeschooling, the lack of friends, having the eyes of the family looking

over my shoulder at nearly every moment of the day. My mom used to tell my brother and I that we were

being prepared, that the world would chew us up otherwise. 19 years old and she was still telling us these

things! We couldn’t wait to go off to college, even if it was one picked out for us it would still get us

away from the black hole we all called Tannersburg. Then less than a month before spring semester was

supposed to start Tobias was dead and I was unable to leave the house.”

Did your family believe they were being targeted?

“No. Well, not any more than usual, I guess. We knew that we weren’t very popular among the

general population of Tannersburg, that had been true as long as I could remember, but we never thought

someone would try to kill any of us. What happened to my brother was a tragedy but we were assured it

would never happen again as long as none of us wandered away from our security details. Tobias was

known as a wanderer, and when the police called it an animal attack it didn’t come as much of surprise, to

the the older members of our family at least. We mourned, the status quo seemed to go on, further police

investigation went nowhere. Our family was shaken, sure, but we had to uphold the “Pemberton standard”

as Grandfather Milton used to say. We couldn’t let the common folk see us in a vulnerable light, if that

makes sense.”

Of course. And how was this standard upheld after your aunt died?

“I think you already know the answer to that one, sir.”

Alice Moore II

“It was like a wave of fear that swept over the town. Tobias’s death was terrible but explainable,

we all just assumed that the guy had been hiking and ran into a pack of wolves or something. When

Marianne Pemberton died it was different, suddenly everyone was taking the situation very seriously,

suddenly nobody was trusting what the police were telling us.”

And what had they been saying?

“Another animal attack! We probably wouldn’t have had such an intense reaction if it had just

been Marianne who died, like I had said earlier most of the people in town had only negative feelings

towards the family, but there were two others that were with her! A bodyguard and some schoolteacher

friend of Marianne’s. Whatever or whoever had done it caught them as they walked back to their car after

a late night out at the bars downtown, some skateboarding kids found what was left of them early the next

morning in a nearby ditch. Suddenly nobody was safe anymore, that’s when everyone started freaking

out. All the parents in our community started to enforce curfews on their kids and made it clear that

nobody was to go out alone regardless of the time. Hell, I didn’t let my own kids out of my sight when it

wasn’t absolutely necessary! The mayor had the police out in force, sure, Mark and I could hear patrol

cars out on our street every night. But it didn’t help as much as that old jerk probably thought it would.

Then the Bullocks disappeared….”

And that stirred suspicion.

“Hell yes it did! At that point the rumors went off the deep end. Were the Bullocks behind the

killings? Did they get out of town before things got too hot? There were talks that the Pembertons had

men going around asking questions about the killings, were they planning revenge? What if they had

already gotten revenge and the Bullocks were all buried in an unmarked grave on the side of the

highway? Maybe they had just gotten out of town before the storm rolled in and were staying elsewhere?

All kinds of wild theories! But one thing was for sure, the Pembertons were up to something. They were

always scheming up a plan to fuck the rest of us over.”

But they were being targeted. How could they be behind the killings?
 “We didn’t know, but you have to understand there wasn’t a whole lot of rational thinking going

on at the time. The biggest storm of the past few years was rolling in, which certainly wasn’t helping.

There was a tension building, I could feel it every time I went grocery shopping, every time I sat in the

long line of nervous parents waiting to pick their kids up from high school. People were starting to get

scared and they needed someone to point the finger at. The Pembertons had always been that scapegoat

and it’s what they would continue to be, not that they didn’t deserve it.”

Excuse my bluntness, but that is absolutely ridiculous.

“Like I said, not a lot of rational thinking going on.”

And what about the reports of a strange figure being seen around Tannersburg?

“Oh, sure, we all heard about those. But what were we supposed to do, grab pitchforks and march

into the woods for a good old-fashioned monster hunt? No, I didn’t care if Sofia Chavez’s son said he saw

a tall man with antlers standing in their backyard. There were more important things to worry about than

the nightmare visions of some kids.”

Not even after your son Michael said he saw the same creature? He told his friends that there

was a figure in the woods behind your home the night before the storm arrived. Tall as the trees, he said.

Apparently it had stood and watched him until the morning.

“……………”

“He never told me anything about that.”

Jeffrey Hoffman II

“A goddamn mess is what it was! Not only did we have to deal with the fallout of three more

deaths but that storm had cut off all roads out of town! It was a good thing that the homicide detectives

had made it into Tannersburg before the blizzard hit, they investigated the killings and freed up time for

the rest of us officers to keep the peace. Or try to, at least. The weather made it a hell of a lot harder for us

to do our jobs, we were risking our lives driving around in that crap. Zero visibility!”

You had mentioned tensions between the townspeople and the Pemberton family.
 “Yeah, even though that family was getting hunted down the good folks of our town still found

an excuse to wail on them. The day before the blizzards started one of our deputies had to break up a fight

in the supermarket between Kiara Pemberton and some crazed father. Apparently he had been screaming

accusations blaming her for the fact that he couldn’t send his daughter to school without being scared for

her life. The prick! I never understood the immense hatred everyone there seemed to have towards that

family, to be honest. Yes they had made some business decisions in the past at the expense of local

shopowners and yes they were reclusive, but they didn’t deserve to be treated like that.”

Were you aware of the creature sightings?

“We were always the first ones to find out, and those calls started coming in hot after the storm

began. Always the same, a tall man in the woods, antlers, shining eyes. One woman swore that it had

tapped on her bedroom window and looked inside while she and her son cowered in the corner. She told

us that it had sniffed the air, like it was looking for something. She told us over the phone that she could

show us the marks where its claws had scratched the window. I remember being really freaked out by that

one.”

But the police did nothing.

“What were we supposed to do? We had the storm to worry about, to us the lives of the citizenry

were threatened more by opportunistic criminals and the cold than some monster. And the actual killer, of

course, if he was still around then the storm would be a perfect cover up for a murder. We chalked it up to

mass hysteria brought on by the storm and the recent deaths.”

Was that a good enough explanation for you?

“At first it was, but there was a voice in the back of my head that kept telling me there was more

to be discovered. Those symbols in my notebook, I found myself coming back to them again and again,

sometimes even in the middle of the night. They had been at the second murder site as well, painted all

over the drain the bodies had been placed next to. Our homicide detective friends had told us that they

would handle the case from then on out, but after a few sleepless nights I knew that I was going to have to

do a bit of my own research. Either that or go mad from curiosity, I guess. Halfway through that week I
took the day off, said I was too exhausted to perform my duty effectively, and went downtown to the

Tannersburg Library. I was friends with one of the head librarians there, nicest old lady you’d ever meet.

She braved the storm to get me into Public Records.”

What were you looking for?

“I really didn’t know, anything and everything that could connect to the symbols I suppose. Some

of those drawers hadn’t been cleaned out since the 70’s so it took me almost all damn day before I found

anything worthwhile. The big find ended up being an old leather book, one that hadn’t seen the light in a

very long time from the looks of it. It was full of pictures, ledgers, newspaper clippings, journal entries.

All from the first months after Tannersburg was first established. This book told a much different story of

the town’s creation than I had been told up to that point, evidently there had been a third family that had

founded the town with the Bullocks and Pembertons. They were called the Cromwells, and it seemed they

were the wealthiest and smallest of the three families. This family had actually owned the land from the

very beginning and brought on the other two to help establish what would become Tannersburg. At the

time I skimmed over most of this information seeing as it didn’t really seem to connect to the task at

hand, but one picture made me stop dead in my tracks. It was a group picture, the three families gathered

together in front of a massive, gnarled tree. The thing was covered in the same symbols from the crime

scenes, from its roots all the way to its branches. A date was written below the photo, along with the

location. Bullock Farm, it read. I was on my way out of the library when I got the call about the third

attack.”

Cooper Pemberton II

“If anyone in my family wasn’t scared up to that point, they were now. My cousin Harry and his

kids had been in their home when the attack happened, in a place we all thought was safe! The bodyguard

on the bottom floor slept through the whole thing, apparently whoever or whatever had done it crawled

through the bedroom window without setting off any alarms. The detectives my grandfather hired were

just as confused as the rest of us, and at this point it was clear that whatever was coming after our family
was not going to stop anytime soon. The evening after the third killing we received an order from the rest

of the family to meet up at the Lodge.”

You have mentioned this “Lodge” before, could you elaborate?

“Sure. It had been around since Tannersburg’s earliest days, located halfway up the mountainside

and built by both the Pembertons and the Bullocks. The building had been remodeled and renovated more

times than I could remember but it had always been the place where we would meet up as a family.

General meetings, weddings, game night, all kinds of stuff. But that night it was a different kind of get

together, one that we were told was for our own safety. Together we would figure out a way to fix

everything, together we were supposed to be strong! I remember feeling weird on the drive out to the

Lodge, like something was watching from the treeline. I guess we now know that’s exactly what was

happening, right?”

Please continue.

“So anyways, we get to the Lodge and it’s a madhouse. Some are still mourning, some are angrily

demanding we do something about it, everyone is confused on some level. Everybody except

Grandfather, who got up in the front of the dining room and began to speak. He ranted on about the

distrust that had been sown over the years between our family and the people of Tannersburg, barely

managing to hide his disgust. He claimed that despite our best efforts to help the town we had been

backstabbed every step of the way, especially by the Bullocks. We had built Tannersburg together, had

our disagreements over the years, and now they had committed the greatest evil possible towards us.”

What did he mean by this?

“I had next to no idea at the time, but I knew it had something to do with the murders.

Grandfather told us that we would be safe in the Lodge from the evil roaming the town. It was a sacred

place, he told us, a place where the creature could not touch us. Now, this was a lot to take in for a 19

year old, and I remember just sitting with my mom at one of the long tables and trying my best to accept

the situation. Two of my uncles sat nearby and spoke in hushed voices just loud enough for me to hear,

something about us being punished for past sins. I held on to my mother’s arm for the rest of the night,
wishing Tobias was still with us. He could’ve explained it all in a way that made sense, he was always

good at that.”

Alice Moore III

“Yeah, I remember the last night of the storm. Me, Mark and the kids were inside the house,

huddled under blankets and playing Scrabble. This was after the power had gone out, mind you, so we

had candles set up everywhere. It was a good night, a chance to bond with the family a little bit without

the TV involved.”

It wasn’t a good night for the Pembertons.

“Well, obviously, but we didn’t find out about what happened at the lodge until the next morning.

A terrible tragedy, it was. But the killings stopped after that night, so things eventually went back to being

relatively normal. Until that Cooper Pemberton did what he did last year, but that’s a whole other

conversation.”

Wasn’t Cooper left the Pemberton estate after that night?

“Yes, to him and a set of close family friends in the industry. But they couldn’t handle the strain

of running a business like that themselves so they started selling it away, piece by piece. Slowly but

surely ownership of Tannersburg and the ski resort were divided among local business owners. What

happened to the Pembertons was horrible but it would be a lie to say that it didn’t come with a few silver

linings. And besides, the Pemberton’s company would have not lasted long after what Cooper did. I hope

he rots in hell, wherever he is now!”

Jeffrey Hoffman III

“It was cold that night, the coldest it had been since the snow started falling a week prior. I had

staked out the front of the Bullock house for nearly two hours to make sure that nobody was home, and it

seemed to be the case.”

Were you suspicious of the Bullock family at all?

 “Well the whole lot of them had vanished right after the first murder, I’m pretty sure everybody

in Tannersburg was suspicious. Especially those detectives that had joined us afterwards, they had asked a

lot of questions about the Bullocks. But the family was long gone now and we had no way to track them

down in that weather, I just needed entrance to their property.”

Did you break into their home?

“Jesus, what kind of person do I look like to you? No, of course not! I was still a cop after all, and

what I was looking for was located in the property surrounding the house.”

What did you find there?

“Well, it took me a lot of stumbling around in the cold but I eventually got there. The tree from

the photo, set apart in a clearing from the rest of the woods. It was horrific, a mess of tangled grey

branches and roots thick as a man’s body. I had never seen anything like it in my whole life, something

about the thing made me feel uneasy. I felt like it was watching me.”

Did it have the symbols you were searching for?

“Anything that had been painted on the wood had long ago faded away, but there was something

else. Around the back side of the tree there was a huge hole that went deep into the earth, something that

looked like an animal den of sorts. The wood around the pit was torn up, covered with these nasty claw

marks. At that point it became too much for me, there was a malice in the air that was indescribable. I

turned to leave and realized that I was not the tree’s only visitor. It was a young woman, early twenties by

the look of it, dressed in an overcoat far too large for her. She introduced herself as Nancy Bullock, said

that she had returned to the house to gather a few heirlooms that her family left behind. Though I knew

that I shouldn’t have been out there in the first place I had come too far to back down, I asked her about

the tree and the symbols. At first I was a bit worried that I would come across as a lunatic, there had

always been that part of me that thought what I was doing was ridiculous and that I was shirking my real

duty as an officer of the law. To my surprise she didn’t laugh in my face, instead she offered me a seat on

a nearby root. We spoke for a while then, underneath the shade of that dead tree.”

I will offer that break again, Hoffman. If this is too much-

 “No! Just be quiet and listen, I’ll be fine. She told me that the tree had been there when the three

families had established Tannersburg all those years ago, that it was some kind of holy site to the native

population that used to live in the area. There was something inside the tree when they got there,

something very old, she called it a weapon. The Cromwells, that third family I told you about, Nancy said

they had been extraordinarily cruel to the other two families and never pulled their weight. So the

Bullocks and the Pembertons used this weapon they found to wipe the Cromwells out completely and

seize the land for themselves.”

And they had done it again, hadn’t they? They had summoned that creature to repay the

Pembertons back for past injustices.

“Exactly what I thought! I was angry, confused. I accused Nancy and her entire family of

repeating the sin they had committed long ago. If what she was saying was true, of coursework . But it

wasn’t that simple. The girl broke down then and started to cry. It hadn’t been her family, she told me, it

was others who lived further into town. Somehow they had found out about the tree and its occupant, they

had wanted to use it for themselves. These people threatened the Bullocks until they were forced to reveal

the weapon, then forced them to leave town under threat of death or worse.”

Who?

“Nancy pulled a half burned ledger from the bag she carried, its cover bearing the tree’s symbol.

It was supposed to be burned after the ritual was completed, she said, but they had done a shoddy job of

it. It was full of names, each written adjacent to small stains of blood. By God, it was all people I knew!

People I had lunch with weekly, people who wave at me every time they drove by, people who always

had a smile on their faces when I saw them. There was my barber Antonio, a deputy I was close with

named Mulligan, a lady with the last name Moore who lived just down the street from my house! It was

the Pemberton family’s death warrant, signed by half the damn town!”
Cooper Pemberton III

“I woke up in the middle of the last night from a terrible dream, still can’t remember exactly what

it was about. Everyone had already fallen asleep and were packed into the Lodge’s main assembly room

lying on blow up mattresses. I tiptoed my way to the bathroom so I wouldn’t wake anybody else up.”

So you were in the bathroom when the attack occurred?

“Lucky me, right? Uncle Bo was the first to see it, I think, his insomnia made sure he was awake

at the moment the thing came for us. I heard him yell in surprise, then start screaming once the creature

was upon him. The next few minutes is a blur in my memory, but I remember huddling in the corner of

that bathroom with my hands over my ears. It didn’t help block out the noises though. Screams, shots

fired by our security detail, the popping sound of the inflatable beds being destroyed, the labored

breathing and movement of the thing. What an idiotic decision it was to put us all in one space like that,

with nowhere to go!”

How did you escape?

“Once the noises finally stopped I sat in the bathroom for a while, trying to gather the courage to

step outside. I eventually did and made my way to the assembly room. It was a massacre. I’ll spare both

of us the details, but they were all dead, every other member of my family. Not one of my relatives had

even managed to make it to the front door, most were killed where they had slept. The weapon was

efficient if nothing else.”

Was it still there? The creature?

“It was still there. It stood in the center of the room, tall and caked with blood. One arm was

stretched over its head and was drawing these symbols on the rafters above. Suddenly it turned to face

me, and at that moment I was sure that I was as good as dead. The face of the thing, it wasn’t right. It

shifted like a liquid, switching between different faces. And they were faces I recognized! Bankers,

grocery store clerks, the owner of my grandfather’s favorite local brewery, the mother of some friends I

had back when I took karate lessons. They were all smiling. Or maybe it was just the low lighting, like the

cops said, making me see things. Those red and blue lights were what saved me in the end, as soon as the
creature saw them flashing in the window it turned tail and ran. The cops busted in soon after, saying that

they had received a tip from one of their own that something was going to happen at the Lodge.”

Officer Hoffman, he was the one who made the call.

“Was that his name? Well, without him I’d be dead, so I should probably track him down one day

and buy him a drink. The cops couldn’t find any substantial evidence that I had committed any of the

murders so I was set free soon after. As the last Pemberton I was entitled to a huge inheritance, most of

which I entrusted to friends of the family. I used what I kept to keep myself on the move, knowing that

thing was still out there with it’s mission unfinished. I managed to stay ahead of it for those two years as I

searched for the Bullocks. They were the ones who could tell me what I needed to know, they could tell

me who was responsible!”

Alice Moore IV

“If you’ll excuse me, I have some work to do around the house. I don’t want to force you out,

but…”

Alice stood up from her chair and moved over towards the nearby kitchen sink, grabbing a plastic

watering can from a cupboard and starting to fill it. I began to pack up my things.

It’s no problem, I should be heading back to the motel about now anyways.

The woman brought the full can and a pair of clippers as she followed me out of the house. She

stopped at a bush of brilliantly red flowers near the front door. As I walked to my car I could hear her

muttering to herself in between the snips of the clipper.

“There, there. I know it hurts. Sometimes a little grooming is necessary if we are to be beautiful!”

Jeffrey Hoffman IV

Hoffman finished his coffee with a steady final gulp, his third cup since arriving at the diner. I

closed my notebook and placed it back into my bag as he checked his watch. The man looked exhausted

beyond all measure, as if the act of telling his story had caused him physical pain.
 “Well it’s been fun taking this stroll down memory lane with you, but I have to be going now.

The wife will be wondering where I am around this time.”

As he stood up I caught a glimpse inside the shopping bag he had carried in. A pile of books sat

within, the cover on top gleamed in the dim light. It was a guide to Native American legends and myths.

Bedside reading material, Officer?

“You need to quit calling me that, I’m retired. And no, this is for some personal research of

mine.”

The ex-cop donned his hat and shook my hand. His eyes met mine.

“It’s still out there, kid. The hunt isn’t over yet, and it won’t be for any of us until I end it myself.

I can’t let those people, or anyone for that matter, use it again. It’s not meant for us. Oh, and one more

thing…”

He opens the front door, letting the sounds of heavy rainfall enter the diner.

“Don’t ever put too much faith in your neighbors, they might end up disappointing you one day.”

Cooper Pemberton IV

A loud knock on the door startles Cooper out of his reminiscence. Our time is officially about to

be up. As I’m gathering my things the last remaining Pemberton reaches across the table and grabs my

forearm, the chains around his wrists rattle against one another.

“I’m sure you think I’m a monster for what I did, am I right? But I swear to you, that couple

deserved it! I tracked down the Bullocks last year, finally, got them to tell me the names of everyone who

were there the night they summoned the creature. I would’ve gotten to the rest of them too, if I hadn’t

gotten caught. They took everything from me! My family weren’t the best people but they didn’t deserve

what happened to them.”

Two guards entered the room then, tearing the prisoner away from me and dragging him towards

the door. He laughed and struggled against them.

 “But it’s not over for me, not yet! That thing is still out there, looking for me! It won’t stop until

the job is done, not until the last Pemberton is dead! And if it finds me here, I won’t have anywhere to

run!”

Cooper disappeared around the corner, his cries echoing down the corridor.

It was cold outside the prison, colder than usual for this time of year. As I walked to the parking

lot a few drifting flakes of white caught my eye, tossing and turning in the wind. And in the direction of

Tannersburg, curling around the mountaintops, a storm was coming.