“On a night like tonight? We’re in the middle of the woods, Lee. There are no monks here. It’s just one of your visions or whatever. The only people stupid enough to be out on a night like this are us. Now come on. It can’t be much farther.”

But in my heart I knew we weren’t alone out there. I felt eyes all over me, hidden creatures waiting in the dark, watching.

“We’re almost there, I know it,” hollered Murphy over the wind and rain.

We stumbled out of the woods into something like a clearing, where the trees were sparser, more spread out, but still thick enough for secrets, a hiding place. About fifty feet away I saw a dirt path that led out of the woods. We were standing in a bend not far from the main road, in a little enclave.

Something was hidden there, something big. In the rain and lightning I made out a car, mud-slathered, with brush and tree limbs covering most of it. This was deliberate, I knew. Someone had brought the car here to hide it. Murphy yanked off some of the camouflage.

Lightning struck, a web of fire strung across the heavens. I could see the thunderclouds up there flashing, beating like a heart, a living being with eyes and a brain and a consciousness, not God but something like God, glowering down at us.

“Holy shit,” said Murphy.

It was a police cruiser under the leaves. It was Horace’s sheriff car.

“I told you I saw somebody in the woods,” I said.

“He’s here,” she said. “Oh my god, he’s here in the woods with us.”

“We have to go,” I said. “We have to go now.”

We turned back toward the house as lightning crashed above us. Did you know lightning strikes downward and upward as well? It’s the way the earth and the clouds speak to each other, the touch between them, heaven reaching down to earth and earth reaching back. It’s a communication, lightning is, the flash and boom of vision, of light and energy transferred.

That’s what it’s like, I thought. That’s what happens to me when I see.

Wind ripped limbs from trees and dashed them to the ground, crashing around us. This was no ordinary storm. Hail began to fall, chunks of ice flung from the sky, pelting us, smashing through the trees. When I passed Jeremiah’s grave, red fire was strewn all about, moving like plasma, a burning aura around the whole thing that was so bright I had to shield my eyes.

“Come on!” said Murphy, yanking me past it.