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They were not here for me, though once they had been. I had nothing to fear from them now, but fear them I did.
The Shoals were their abode. If I meant to visit that dreadful place I would have to conquer that fear.
The wraiths closed on a cursing, screaming Nicolet.
The plane had no identifying logos. There were no flight attendants. I saw no other passenger than Nicolet, belted into seat 12A, a window seat.
I saw bright blue sky through the oval window, and clouds beneath us. The hum of engines was familiar. The fasten seat belts sign was on. And no smoking was allowed.
“Okay, okay, no,” Nicolet babbled. “No no nononono!”
The engines began to whine more insistently, as if they were straining. A sudden sharp bump, and Nicolet was thrown upward against her seat belt, though Messenger and I were not affected.
“You gotta . . . Okay, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry! I’ll give her credit! I swear to God!”
Sweat poured into her eyes. Every muscle and fiber in her body strained. Blood oozed from her palms as her long nails cut into the flesh.
“Let me out! Let me out!”
The next bump of turbulence was stronger. A voice, professionally controlled but clearly worried, came over the public address system and warned that we were encountering severe turbulence.
“Severe” barely covered the reality I witnessed. The plane was lurching around the sky as if it was a ball being kicked around a playground by a giant child.
Everything shook. Nicolet’s body was a blur dominated by a wide, shrieking mouth. The turbulence was so violent that sewage came seeping out beneath the bathroom doors. Some terrible god was raining hammer blows on the fuselage.
Then the floor tilted sharply downward. Nicolet pushed her feet against the legs of the seat in front of her and the shaking was so violent I heard the sickening crack of breaking bone.
We punched through the clouds and out the window I saw the ground, a patchwork quilt of fields crisscrossed by snaking roads and a shimmering river.
Nicolet no longer used words, only grunts and cries and screams came from her. She had in some ways ceased to be human, ceased to be a thinking, reasoning creature. She was nothing but terror. Terror made flesh.
The engines suddenly fell silent.
I heard the harsh atonal song of metal tearing, of rivets popping, and the shaky sound of the pilot yelling, “Brace! Brace! Brace for impact!”
The fields and roads and river were nearer, nearer, leaping up toward us to smash us, to kill us, and the wing that partly obstructed my view began to disintegrate and shed aluminum panels. Hydraulic fluid sprayed. An engine detached and was sucked away in the slipstream.
No hope now. None.
I could see individual cars.
I could see the shadows cast by telephone poles.
I could see the plowed rows of dirt.
And what happened next, though I knew in some part of my mind that it was not real, not really real, would never leave me.
Everything slowed.
The nose of the jet hit the ground and threw shards of metal and glass past the window.
Down the aisle the cockpit door burst outward. The doors of the bathrooms exploded. And inch by inch, foot by foot, the plane plowed into the dirt as it was turned to splinters.
The last seconds, as the destruction reached Nicolet, seemed to drag on for an eternity.
And Nicolet lay on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry.
The sounds that came from her were nothing like her beautiful singing voice.
