My older sister Mura hates windy days. Not just windy days, really. She hates any kind of rapid change in weather. It happens at every outdoor event we’ve ever attended together; as soon as a light breeze picks up she’s out of there, and she’ll drag any person in the vicinity with her to escape from whatever unknown threat she sees or senses in the air. She’s a grown woman that’s married with two kids— but the second she notices a pile of leaves getting picked up and twirled around in the air she acts like it’s a portal to hell about to open up.

I used to make fun of her for it, just some light teasing and jokes about how she can see things the rest of us can’t. But last week my brother Tomi pulled me aside at the family cookout and asked me to take it easy on Mura. She’s been through some traumatic stuff, he said. I smirked when he said that, sure that he was just playing one of his usual tricks on me. But the serious look on his face drained any lightness from the conversation.

Naturally, I was curious. Despite Tomi’s urging that I leave the subject alone, I went to ask Mura about it. Mura’s always been protective of me. She’s protective of everyone, to be honest. It’s just the way she is. She was fifteen years old when I was born, so I often find myself thinking of her as more of a mother figure than a sister. Our parents were away a lot during my childhood. They had migrated back to their own parents' home country while they left us with our grandmother, hoping that we’d have a much easier upbringing stateside. I still don’t know if they made the right call.

When I asked Mura what Tomi had meant about her wind-related trauma, I wasn’t sure what I expected her to say. Perhaps something about a tornado or a hurricane, or some other bizarre weather event that managed to turn her into the uptight summer breeze hater that she is now. The story she told me was bizarre at best and straight-up terrifying at worst. I thought it might be better if I let her tell it in her own words. I’ve transcribed our conversation to share it here– with her permission, of course.

[recording begins]

Mura: Of course you wouldn’t remember. You were too young. You have to understand, Lola. There were things happening back then. Horrible things. It was 1992, the summer I graduated from high school. And children were… disappearing. Vanishing without a trace. No evidence, no leads- just… gone. Sure, the police investigated. If you can even call it that. Most of the kids were older, so they chalked it up to unruly teens running away in search of adventure. Things were different then— this was before Amber alerts and people actually giving a fuck about kids. They just assumed they were runaways half the time. Plus, most of the kids were black or brown or dirt poor or from immigrant families— why would anyone kidnap a child whose parents can’t pay a ransom, right?

I remember that day so vividly. Every second of it. It was hot. Burning hot, easily 110 degrees. Granny bought her house in an up-and-coming neighborhood in the late 60s, a down payment from the insurance payout after Grandpa's fatal accident at the sugar refinery. She had a pool. I don’t know if you remember it… Her house was on a small hill that dipped down, green and steep. From the yard, you could see the sugar cane plantation. I’d never seen anyone go in there before. No farmers, no machinery, nobody. The sugar canes were just there like there had never been a time when they hadn’t existed, and beyond them on the other side was a vast forest… a thick grove of beech and sycamore.

Oh, it was hot. So hot. We were outside and I was supposed to be watching you and Tomi while Granny took her afternoon nap. She was an ornery old lady, always cranky if she didn’t get her rest. You were playing down by the grass. You had this new plastic bubble blower that I’d got for your third birthday. You loved that toy. You’d entertain yourself for hours with it; running around and giggling as you chased after your bubbles.

I wanted to go inside. The sun was baking us alive and I just wanted to sit in front of the metal fan in the living room and let it blow air through my hair like I was in a drop-top Cadillac speeding down the highway with my girlfriends. But you wanted to play, and I wasn’t about to risk you throwing a tantrum about your playtime being cut short. That would wake Granny up. So I settled down on the wicker lawn chairs with a magazine… until Tomi decided to splash me.

I dropped my magazine, scowling at the shit-eating grin on that boy’s face. We were always pranking each other like that. Tomi was a lonely kid… and I guess I was one too. I had friends. Hell, I was what you would consider popular in high school. But I still felt like nobody knew me or got me or really understood me the way Tomi did. So I stood up and splashed him back. We play-fought like that until I was so drenched I just dove into the pool fully clothed. I loved being in the water. I’d swim down and press my palms against the cool blue tiles, letting my braids fan around me like the snakes of Medusa. It was calm down there. All the sounds are muted and you get to just hide away for a little while…

[Mura trails off and pauses.]

Lola: That sounds really nice. I don’t remember that pool.

Mura: That doesn’t surprise me. Granny had it filled in and covered with concrete the year after.

Lola: Why?

Mura: [wearily] I don’t know. Should I continue my story?

Lola: Right. Yes. I’m sorry. What happened next?

Mura: We swam for a short while, half-heartedly splashing each other. It can’t have been more than five minutes. Ten minutes tops. We were supposed to be watching you… I don’t know. I thought if anything happened like you fell and hurt yourself you’d cry out and we’d hear you but…

L: But?

M: …I got out of the pool and lay down on one of the lounge chairs. I could feel the sun baking my clothes dry already. I planned to nap out there until we could go back inside, but pretty much the moment I closed my eyes, I jerked back up. I realized it was silent.

Tomi noticed it a split second after I did. “Where’s Lola?” I asked him. He stared back at me, eyes wide. I half ran and half leaped to where you had been. Your bubble blower was lying discarded on the grass. All I could feel was panic. Panic and fear. Tomi was whimpering, muttering about how you had just been there, you couldn’t have just vanished.

That was when the breeze began to pick up. I swayed a little as it blew, scanning the empty yard. The wind was blowing in a single direction, turning my body towards the slope of the hill. Fear. I swear something whispered fear into my ears. The wind was nudging me towards the fence, across the stretch of dirt, through the sugarcane plantation, and into the forest behind it that stretched for miles and miles. It wouldn’t stop until I began to move in the right direction.

I couldn’t even think. My feet carried me towards the fence. I walked backward, unsure of what was taking control of my body. Tomi was shaking, staring at me with his mouth open. His gaze flitted between me and the screen door leading to the kitchen. I was halfway to the fence when he let out a sob and yelled my name.

“Mura- Mura, what are you… we have to get Granny!” he said. I ran back to him, regaining control as soon as I heard the crack in his voice. He was squeaking like a toy rabbit, chest heaving and tears beginning to gather in his eyes. He turned and began to run towards the kitchen, but I was faster than him. I tackled him to the ground. He scooted back, terror in his eyes. He cursed at me.

“Are you fucking insane?” he said. He’d never cursed in front of me before. I don’t think he’d ever said that word out loud in his entire life. But it seemed as good a time as any to graduate to big kid words. "Lola just disappeared. From the yard! She's just a baby, we need t’call the police– "

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I just…” I touched a finger to my temple. I felt a migraine forming behind my eyes as I spoke. “This is all my fault. I was supposed to be watching you both and I let myself get distracted.”

I took him into my arms, pushing him down to the grass as I held him, resting my chin on the top of his head. I whispered empty comforting words to him, inhaling the scent of pool water and soap and the coconut-castor oil blend Granny had massaged into his scalp the night before. Beneath it was the classic scent of a thirteen-year-old boy and the stink of fear.

“Stay here, Tomi. Don’t move. I’ll bring Lola home. I’ll be right back. I’ll be right back.”

I don’t know why I was so sure that you had disappeared into the sugarcane. I just knew. I knew it from the secrets the wind whispered to me. It was blowing violently now, twirling clumps of dead grass and stray leaves in miniature tornadoes around us.

Tomi stared blankly, blinking at me. Then he nodded. He let his body fall limply onto the grass, his gangly legs folding beneath him. I turned and ran before he could change his mind. Once I got to the bottom of the yard I scaled the fence. I had done this a couple of times before. I used to sneak out of my bedroom window to drink cheap beer and smoke pot with some kids from town in the back of somebody’s pickup truck. But it hadn’t been a graceful operation under the cover of darkness, and the bright afternoon sun didn’t lend me any assistance. I landed hard on my hands and knees, shaking the tension out of my limbs with a few rapid movements. There was no way a toddler could get out of that backyard. Not without help.

But I refused to let that thought grow any further. You were just taking a poorly timed adventure, I told myself. The breeze steered me toward the crop line. There was a sign painted on a plank of wood: Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted. I elected to ignore it. I slipped underneath the rope fencing and ducked into the thick foliage.

The plants were tall, much taller than me. The biggest ones were probably nearing 15 or 20 feet. I tried my best to clear a path through the sugar canes, holding my arms out in front of me and calling out for you. “Lola! Lola, baby, where are you?” I’d cry, heart pounding as I paused to wait for a response. But I heard nothing. The wind had stilled by now, and the humid air pressed down on me like a heavy quilt.

After a few minutes of this, I paused by a particularly dense cluster of sugar canes, wiping sweat from my forehead and fanning myself uselessly with one hand. Something compelled me to look down at the earth. An old, dirty metal thing lay abandoned at the base of the crop. I kicked at it with my bare foot, unsure what it was.

The fact that I had forgotten my sandals by the pool didn’t bother me. I had never been one to shy away from nature. But something about that object left me feeling uneasy from the moment that it came into contact with my skin. And yet I bent and picked it up, ignoring every alarm bell going off in my head. It was a compulsion, something far beyond my control.

I turned it over in my hands, examining it as the cool metal sent a shiver through me. It was a firelighter. Lord knows what a lighter was doing laying abandoned in a sugarcane field. There was something engraved into the side of it, but the damn thing was so dirty I couldn’t make out what it said. Somehow, the wheel still functioned so I rolled it and pressed down on the ignition. Nothing happened. I tried it a couple of times. Still nothing. Lola… are you listening?

L: Yes, of course.

M: I lifted it to my ear and shook it. No sound. Do you understand what I’m saying?

L: It was… empty?

M: Yes. It was empty. No fuel in it. The lighter didn’t work. I assumed that was why somebody had dumped it there. So I did the same. I tossed it aside and continued, forcing my feet forward.

I walked for a while, pushing fronds out of my face and calling out for you. I was close to panicking again by then. The plantation seemed to be never-ending. I felt like I must have reached the other side of it by now. Every direction I turned looked the same. The wind was starting up again, I could hear it whistling through the tops of the trees. The sweet, grassy fragrance of the sugarcane had started to make me feel sick.

I crouched down, lowering my head between my knees and breathing deeply to ward off nausea. It didn’t work. I yelled out in frustration, but my voice didn’t travel very far. I let myself fall on my bottom, staring up at the stalks of sugarcane swaying in the breeze. The sweet scent was getting stronger. All I could think about were all the summers I spent as a kid chewing on chopped-up chunks of the very plants closing in on me at that very moment, forming a natural prison. I was suddenly very aware of my own thirst. Every mouthful of air was so sweet— a sickly, smoky, acrid kind of sweet. The sky was darkening, from a gentle blue to an alarmingly dark gray. The longer I looked at it, the more it began to look like smoke. Something was burning.

L: Burning? But… the lighter!

M: The lighter was empty. I told you that.

L: I know, but- what else could have started a fire so quickly?

M: I don’t know. I didn’t know- but whatever it was, it was heading directly for me.

I couldn’t see the flames just yet, but I could hear them. Smell them, too. Crackling heat, sticky sweet. I backed away from the sound, toppling over sugarcanes in my path. I scrambled over them backward like a tarantula until I regained enough balance to stand up.

My senses were working on overdrive. I looked this way and that, foot stance ready for takeoff- but I paused. Three things were going through my mind at that moment. The first was a string of profanities cursing every hand that had weaved the web of fate to land me in this position. The second was instinctual. Adrenaline coursed through my veins. I had to run. I knew I had to get out of there. Fast.

But my strongest thought was of you, Lola. What if you were in there with me? What if you were in there with me, lost between endless rows of vegetation, completely oblivious to the flames closing in on us? I couldn’t leave without knowing you were safe. What kind of person would that make me?

L: I don’t think anybody would have blamed you for trying to save yourself.

[Mura scoffs]

L: I mean it! You must have been terrified. You wouldn’t have been able to keep me safe if you were dead.

M: And how could I have lived with myself if I had run away? How could I live knowing I was so close to saving you but I gave up and selfishly chose to save myself instead? No.

L: I guess it’s a pointless debate. You’re here telling this story to me. Even if I don’t remember any of this, we both survived. I know how this story ends.

M: No, you don’t. The story isn’t over yet. [Mura pauses] I wouldn’t leave without you. So I turned and ran, horizontal to the direction of the fire, praying that it wouldn’t extend along the entire length of the plantation. I screamed your name despite my cracked voice and drying throat as the tendrils of smoke approached. Pretty soon, I had no choice but to slow to a walk, stumbling and coughing, wishing I had a machete or even a goddamn pocket knife- anything to cut the plants down with.

All of a sudden, I heard something new. I nearly tripped at the sound of my name. At first, I thought it was the wind toying with me again. But the voice was unmistakably childlike. I screamed your name again, legs pumping as I ran towards your response. The sound of you calling out to me was coming from my left, away from the fire. I could have cried from relief.

I screamed out our call and response as I ran until my throat was scratched raw and my words came out muted and hoarse. Hope kept me pushing. I tried to tune my ears to pick out any sound that wasn’t the overbearing crackling of flames. I couldn’t even feel the heat anymore. After a few moments, all I could feel and hear were my bare feet hitting the ground and the pounding of my own heart.

I kept running towards where I had last heard you cry my name, faster than I’d ever run before. I swore I could have taken flight. I prayed, silently begging God to forgive me for whatever transgressions I had committed to deserve this, pleading that He spare you and take me instead, bargaining that I would devote my entire life to Him should He grant me this one request.

The wind had picked up once more, roaring loudly around my ears, amidst the sounds of crying in the distance. I just whimpered. I felt no pain, only fear. No heat. Just fear.

I could hear the flames pursuing me, the rush and crackle of the wind and the embers, and smell the charred sugar. But I felt… nothing. Physically, nothing. Nothing but the ground beneath me and the plants surrounding me.

I turned my head to take a peek, hoping to find a fair distance between myself and the fire. But as I did so, my eyes stared into pitch black. Nothing. Behind me was an empty void. No fire, no light, no forest. Nothing.

I fell out of the plantation, landing on my back and gasping for air. I blinked stupidly. I stared up at the clear blue sky, breathing hard and shallow, trying to comprehend what I had just seen. Or rather, not seen. It was quiet apart from a light breeze. No smoke, no flames, no trace of evidence of what I had just experienced apart from the acrid scent of smoke lingering on my clothes. It made no sense. I crawled backward, staring into the menacing gaps between the sugarcane, terrified of what could possibly be in there or what could be controlling it. The dry grass crunched underneath my body but I was shaking too much to stand up. I backed away from the plantation without looking away from it… until my hand touched something cold and wet. I thought it may have been mud or a puddle of water until I moved to wipe my hands on my linen shorts and they left a dark red smear.

The blood was beginning to coagulate. Reams of it coated the grass, and splatters of it decorated the circle of trees up ahead. At the base of the biggest tree was a figure, the size of a small child. It was being held up by something, I don’t know what– but the moment I stood up and moved towards it… I felt ice running along my spine.

It had your face, Lola. Your eyes… they were open, glassy, and staring straight ahead. Blood dripped from it– your head, your hands, your limbs— your dress was soaked with it. It seemed like there was too much blood than could have even fit inside your tiny body, and yet somehow I knew it was yours. That the child hanging from the tree was you.

L: But that– that’s not possible–

M: My legs gave out beneath me. I fell to my knees, unable to scream or cry… I just stared and wrung my hands together. Something behind the tree was approaching. The… I don’t know what to call it. It wasn’t human. It wasn’t a person. It looked like one almost… in a way that I can’t quite describe. Its face was… wrong. Blank. Constantly shifting and changing its features. Its limbs were strong and lithe. It tore through the strings that were attaching you to the tree. I couldn’t move. Even if I could move… I don’t think I would have figured out where to go or what to do. It laid the body down in front of me. And then it whispered something in my ear. After it spoke, it touched a disgusting, bloody finger to my forehead. Pain erupted from the spot it touched me and I think I must have blacked out.

It was dark when I came to. I was back at Granny’s house, lying on the cool concrete tiles next to the pool. A police officer was shining a flashlight in my eyes and I squinted up at him. There were more officers around. They asked how I could be covered in so much blood when the only injuries they could find on me were shallow scratches and cuts and a strange circular burn on my forehead. I took a deep breath and chewed on my lip, unsure how I could rationalize what I had seen… how I would explain what had happened to you.

But before I could say anything, Granny emerged from the house, Tomi in tow. She shouted for the cops to stop crowding me, waving one hand at them and carefully bouncing the toddler on her hip.

There you were, Lola. You were exhausted, eyes barely able to stay open, but you were alive. I was basically babbling, completely incoherent at that point. I was in disbelief– how my sister could be here, completely unharmed when I had held her cold, dead body in my arms what felt like seconds earlier.

L: But I was fine.

M: You were perfectly fine. Not a mark or a single speck of dirt on you. The police explained that they had found both of us near the plantation fence, on the side closest to the house. I was unconscious and you were just sitting next to me, staring into space. Despite my filthy, blood-stained clothes, they shrugged off the incident as lacking evidence of foul play. I didn’t want them to call the men in the white coats to take me away, so I just accepted that you must have run off, and I must have hit my head trying to go after you. But sometimes, I can still hear that voice in the wind and I just…

L: What did the… what did the being say to you? Before you lost consciousness?

M: Does it matter?

L: What did it say, Mura? Tell me.

M: In this horrible, icy voice it said… “Very few come this far to reclaim their young. I am sorry that it is too late. It is only fair that I send you back with one of ours.”