MARIAM ALAMEDDINE
A weak high-pressure ridge
is holding over the county,
with clear skies expected until approximately noon.
The barometer has risen steadily since Monday,
though pressure remains unusually low around St Agnes’.
A shallow inversion is trapping smoke above the church,
where the steeple disappears each morning at first light.
Visibility is reduced to two kilometres;
drivers are advised to proceed with caution, particularly along Calvary Road,
where Clara Bell was last seen
carrying a paper plate
and wearing a yellow cardigan.
The record for 4 June 1998 shows forty-seven millimetres of rain
before the picnic was called off.
By 4:15, the children had been counted twice.
Clara was fourteen; Reverend Hale said she had gone home
because she was upset. Frightened, her mother said.
The police report recorded no witness who saw her leave—
only heavy rain, poor visibility, and the familiar volatility of girls that age.
Her photograph appeared beneath the word MISSING,
beside a column predicting clear skies by morning.
For twenty-eight years the town has maintained
a peculiar microclimate around the church:
morning fog, afternoon cloud, arms of the cross nightly lost to vapour.
Meteorologists call this an inversion,
formed when cool air is held beneath a warmer layer.
The parish calls it God’s will. The newspaper calls it seasonal.
Mrs Bell calls it Clara.
She knows every cloud by shape:
mare's tails, anvils, the low grey shelf
that settles over St Agnes’
when that old date comes around.
Tonight, precipitation will begin as light drizzle,
becoming moderate after midnight, then heavy.
Saturated clay may shift beneath the eastern wall,
where roots have lifted the paving stones, and exposed a thread of yellow fabric.
At 3:14 a.m., the first shoe is recovered.
At 3:19, the second.
At 3:26, a blue ribbon.
By dawn, the creek is carrying mud downstream,
and Mrs Bell is standing barefoot in the rain,
holding the ribbon so dearly
her knuckles have gone white.
A deep low is developing offshore; pressure is falling
twelve hectopascals in six hours, winds backing east.
Multicell thunderstorms will form along the old creek bed.
Residents should remain indoors and secure loose objects.
At St Agnes’, Reverend Hale locks the basement.
He tells police there is nothing beneath the floor except plumbing, rotting wood,
and the room where the girls changed after swimming—
wringing their hair,
knowing to leave in groups or pairs.
On radar, the storm resembles a hooked line,
a dark crescent tightening over the county.
At 7:03, the eastern wall collapses.
At 7:11, water enters the basement.
At 7:18, police lift the carpet beneath the furnace.
The soil is black and soft. There are bones in it.
A silver bracelet. A plastic saint. A yellow button.
And in the Reverend’s desk, beneath a stack of old sermons,
a page from Clara’s diary:
I told him I would tell.
By afternoon the rain has moved east,
leaving the church bright beneath a haint-blue sky.
The Reverend is taken away through the side door.
He says Clara was troubled. He says she came after dark.
He says she asked him to keep a secret.
He does not say why the girls stopped attending youth group,
why mothers began waiting outside after Sunday service,
why Clara came home with bruises
she would not explain,
or why every unsavoury rumour seemed to die at the parish door.
St. Agnes has known the shape of this storm for years.
Tonight the cloud base will lift above the county.
Relative humidity will fall; dew points will decrease.
By September, a new Reverend will occupy the pulpit,
welcomed by a congregation eager for a new beginning.
Come the first Sunday of the month,
their children will peer through the newly-glazed windows of St. Agnes,
at the polished pews, at the fresh plaster, and the eastern wall made whole again,
and they will be told not to look too closely.
They will learn, eventually, not to ask.
Mariam grew up between Australia and Lebanon and has been chasing the high of being her English teacher’s favourite for years. She enjoys strange and miserable fiction, spends most of her time thinking about writing, and remains optimistic she'll eventually get around to it.
