The Thousand Year Storm

By Judie Gerber

Deployed to a disaster zone off the California coast, a Special Ops veterinarian hopes to find her missing brother, but her assignment is complicated when she finds herself in the bizarre StoryWorld created by their grandfather twenty years earlier.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Judie Gerber
• Release date: Feb 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9780978788162

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Copyright © 2021 by Seachild

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States of America.

ISBN 978-0-9787881-6-2

Dedication

To Casey, Duncan, Ruby, and Rudi.

Chapter One

River Babies

In the attic room, muddy water seeps beneath the closed door, across the polished hardwood floor, and past the old couch, on which a small eight-year-old boy sleeps, huddled in covers. His head is bandaged so that only one eye is exposed on his bruised face. The invading rivulets flow toward the newspaper editor’s desk standing prominently by the large open window.

Outside the window’s shutters, water flows by two feet below the windowsill as a bizarre, unearthly storm unleashes mayhem on the drowning town of Cascade. Building-tops poke above raging floodwaters. There’s a broken dam in the distance. Angry clouds blot the sky’s striking turquoise-purple auroras.

INSIDE THE SHUTTERS, leaning over the window ledge with their arms outstretched, a blue-eyed, thirteen-year-old girl, Charley, in pink raincoat, pants, and boots, and her grandfather, clad in wading boots and a suit with his tie slung over his shoulder, struggle to rescue a big brown-and-white dog.

I’m strong! Charley yells. But he’s heavier than you, Grandpa!

A lion of a man with bushy whiskers and coarse mane of wild hair, Grandpa lifts the drenched front-end of the terrified St. Bernard up and over the windowsill. Give Goliath some help, Charley! the burly man commands.

Charley heaves the exhausted dog’s hind-end over the ledge onto a heap of wet towels. I thought I knew all the dogs in town, she ponders the thankful Goliath. Who’s this?

He’s a gift for Doc’s grandson, Grandpa replies, distracted by the water oozing in from under the door across the room.

Sorry, Goliath, no dry towels, Charley apologizes. You’ll have to shake yourself. She strokes the St. Bernard’s head as an ancient bulldog, a one-eyed goose, and a wobbly baby goat approach the panting dog and sniff his fur.

At his desk, Grandpa resumes collecting items into a box. Smiling at a photo of a young woman and three older men on the Three Pillars Diner front porch, he whispers to them, If we survive this, lunch is on me. He tucks the photo in the box, starts rummaging through the desk drawers, and in the last one, he finds some old newspapers. Narrowing his eyes, he scans the headlines: "WIDOWED DESDEMONA SHREW NOW OWNS CASCADE POWER COMPANY and LAWYERS STALL DAM INSPECTIONS DUE TO SHREW’S CLAIMS OF HYDROPHOBIA! Grandpa throws the newspapers on the wet floor. The water is an inch deep in most places. You haven’t won yet, Shrew," he mutters as he climbs onto the desk and explores the highest shelf—home to calico mama cat and her calico kitten on a pillow, and two calico guinea pigs in a cage.

Charley plops onto the desk chair and picks up pages with a pen-and-sword logo on the top. She reads aloud, "More Roars from the Lion’s Den, by Jeremy L. Thistle, Editor-in-Chief. The End of Uncivilization, she smirks. Catchy title, Grandpa."

As Grandpa inspects the antique grandfather clock beside the desk, more animals emerge from hiding around the room—a humungous pot-bellied pig, seven chickens, a geriatric teacup poodle, and five juvenile raccoons. Hold onto that, Cupcake, he instructs. It’s the only copy besides mine. The Cascade Daily News won’t be running it anytime soon.

As Charley folds the article into her raincoat pocket, she glimpses a parade of porcelain dolls floating past outside the window. She hurries over and reaches out for the eyeless, blonde one wearing a pink rainsuit and boots.

Grandpa opens a drawer below the grandfather clock’s face and discovers a velvet sack. Sighing with relief as he holds it to his heart, he notices Charley teetering over the windowsill.  What-in-tarnation? he roars as he scrambles over to her, grabs her belt loop, and pulls her and the doll inside. They sit on the ledge together. Be careful, Charley, he warns, hiding his fear quite well.

Charley nods with her downcast eyes glued on the doll cradled in her arms.

She looks like she was made just for you, Grandpa says as he removes a pen from his pocket. Another gift for you, he smiles and reads the pen’s engraving aloud, "’Right vision, words, and action create a world where compassion for all beings rules the day.’" He hands the pen to worried Charley.

This is your special pen, she protests. You can’t give it to me for keeps.

Grandpa empties the velvet sack over her hand and a necklace with a gold heart locket tumbles out onto her palm. Grandma wanted you to have this when you became an independent young woman with a mind of her own, he chuckles warmly.

Charley opens the locket to find a photograph of her grandparents on their wedding day. These are wonderful, she frets. But you’re scaring me, Grandpa. I wish—

I wish our new camper was a boat, Grandpa remarks, unable to meet her eyes.

Charley pockets the pen and clasps the necklace around her neck. Eyeballing the water creeping in under the door across the room, her face contorts with growing concern.

Grandpa offers gaily, Your doll brings up a story—

A story? The girl is incredulous. At a time like this?

You always loved my characters, especially Old Timer—

Who lives in every time at once and will live for all time, Charley says sarcastically. But Old Timer can’t stop time here—

"I’ve never told you River Babies, Grandpa insists. It’s about three fisherman fishing on the Chiaroscuro River—"

Chiaro-what?

It’s Italian, Grandpa explains. Means ‘light and shadows.’ Now please, close your pretty eyes and listen.

Charley obeys.

One day, three fishermen were fishing on the Chiaroscuro River, Grandpa begins.

Charley visualizes a rainbow mist above a section of rapids on the River. The path beside the mighty Chiaroscuro disappears upstream into a hillside forest. On the beach, three fishermen cast their lines, nets at the ready.

When one of them saw a baby Ottbelu floating toward him, so he rescued it, Grandpa continues.

Charley smiles as she pictures one of the fishermen wading out to grab a distressed baby Ottbelu—a furred, blubbery, sixty-pound cross between an otter and a beluga whale—and carry it ashore.

They saw another baby Ottbelu, then another, and another, and soon the three fishermen were very busy rescuing baby Ottbelus, but they couldn’t keep up, Grandpa relates. There were too many.

In her mind’s eye, Charley witnesses dozens, then hundreds, of baby Ottbelus with their wailing bulbous heads sailing past the three helpless fishermen.

"Finally, the first fisherman to rescue one stepped back and said, ‘I can’t do this anymore. I’m going upstream to the River’s source and see who’s throwing these babies in,’" Grandpa reveals.

Charley visualizes the first fisherman racing up the path into the woods, far upstream.

The first fisherman ran until he couldn’t take one more step, and he fell down, broken-hearted, Grandpa says sadly.

He didn’t find out who was guilty? Charley asks eagerly, imagining the collapsed fisherman lying on the ground, hopeless and beaten.

No, he did not, Grandpa replies. He was so distraught that he lost a piece of his soul, and from that moment on, he was afraid to go any further.

Clear in Charley’s brain, a ghostly first fisherman steps out of the first fisherman’s fallen body, wades into the River, and swims toward an emerald green glow in the depths.

He finally convinced himself that he couldn’t change the situation whether he got to the River’s source or not, Grandpa relates bitterly.

Charley envisions the first fisherman asleep in the grass, his back to the River, oblivious to all the bawling baby Ottbelus drifting past. Her eyes flutter open. He lost a piece of his soul? she queries.

When a person experiences a trauma, a piece of their soul can break off, Grandpa clarifies. It’s a survival mechanism. Otherwise, the person may not survive. The soul piece flees to a safe place until it can be retrieved.

But what does that mean in real life? Charley persists.

It means that if you see injustice, you go to its source and face it. If you don’t and you give up, an important part of you will be lost, and you’ll never feel truly alive, Grandpa insists. Promise me you’ll do this, Charley.

Charley nods. Unsure.

A boy’s sleepy voice calls out from the couch, Is the rescue boat here yet?

Noah! You’re awake! Charley whoops with delight. She runs over and sits on the coffee table beside the couch. Careful of the shivering ferret and feather-eaten parrot sharing his pillow, Charley helps her brother prop up to a sitting position. The miniature horse curled up by the boy’s rubber-booted feet, stretches out and happily flaps her lips.

Grandpa retrieves a large envelope from a box on the desk and joins the two kids. The boat will be here soon, he assures them as he hands the envelope to Noah and winks. An early Christmas present for you.

Noah eagerly opens the envelope and pulls out a