We screamed and ran into the house. The telephone was ringing. I snatched it up and almost cried with relief when I heard the familiar sound Dad always made before he started to talk: a clearing of the throat that was almost a cough but wasn't a cough, if you know what I mean. Then the world went 'snap!!' and my ears were ringing and the line was dead.
We shut the windows against the rain and Sue and I mopped up water as best we could, while Jum used his special magic to comfort Paul.
"Storm," he explained, kissing away a frightened tear. "Say 'storm', Paulie."
"Turm?" Paul asked doubtfully. "Turm?"
"'Storm', Paulie."
"Turm!" Paul hiccuped and opened his arms to be picked up.
So, like I said at the beginning, we were trying to pretend there was no storm, when there was a crash even louder than the others, and all the lights went out. If we had been telling ghost stories with just some candles lit to prove we weren't afraid, then we wouldn't even have known the power was off, but this was like someone pulling the rug out from under us, every light in the house suddenly going out like that, even though we should have expected it.
"No big deal," I said bravely. "There's lotsa candles."
It was true, it was no big deal, at least it shouldn't have been; the power went off at least once a month, even more often in the winter, and we would light candles and sit by the fire, and Mom or Dad would read to us, or Jum or I would read aloud from one of the Hardy Boys books we found in the attic.
"Light the candles, Davie," Sue told me. "You're the oldest."
"I'll get them!" Jum announced. The snap and flash of a match made us jump, although compared to the thunder and lightning it was nothing. We watched him light a candle, then walk toward us with it in his outstretched hand. The light caught his pale skin and fine, blond hair, and made his face glow like a ghost, the ghost of a young boy named Jake who had drowned years before and whose body never was found.
We lit the rest of the candles with the flame from the first, and soon the table was shimmering with light. Jum stared at the candles; a vein in his neck, turned black by the candlelight, writhed and pulsed, alive under his skin.
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