Thinking back to his time at St. Michael's would always dampen Adam's mood and now there was a dour feel to the previously pleasing evening. The light seemed to be failing more quickly than expected, and there was a chill in the air. He stood up from the radishes to go back inside and fetch a sweater, not wanting to leave the job unfinished. As he crossed the tiny yard, he glanced up at the sky and found it thoroughly transformed from how it had been when he had stepped outside a few minutes ago.

The sky overhead was abruptly and heavily covered with what seemed to be very low clouds that had turned the early evening twilight into equally sudden darkness. The wind stirred through the trees and the garden in short gusts that seemed to be building in intensity. The mass of clouds roiled and squirmed across the sky restlessly. Aside from the wind the street was silent, and Adam stood under the patio light and watched the sky for a few minutes, expecting to see lightning soon and anticipating the spectacle of a thunderstorm at night.

The wind continued to increase in strength and Adam heard the sound of something blowing around on the street, or in a yard a few houses down, perhaps patio furniture or lawn toys from the sound of it. He also began to hear a few excited and alarmed voices, briefly carried by the wind and then suddenly cut off as it changed direction.

There was still not a speck of rain falling, just the darkening bank of clouds rolling in and the wind that began to lash down from the night sky. There was a sharp tearing noise and then a somewhat more muted crash; Adam supposed that a tree branch had come down and he began to feel a little unsafe out in the storm.

He flipped his patio chairs over, thinking that they might be less likely to catch the wind like that, and then went back inside. The glass shuddered in the window frames as another gust tried its strength against the house. The sound of the wind was steady, now, still no rain or thunder added to it, just a constant rushing noise that continued to build in intensity. Adam tried to go back to kitchen chores, wiping down the counter top and cleaning one of the burners on the stove, but found his attention drawn back to the wind, and his increasing impression that he could hear something in it.

It was another silly notion, he knew, and he was far past the point where he would have believed that he would be unnerved by a storm, but he was sure he could hear a whispering, a harsh-edged low voice, along with the sound of the wind in the trees and against the house and through the bushes. He stopped pretending to wipe down the backsplash and concentrated on the sound, and before long it seemed as though he could hear almost nothing other than the sibilant voice, although he could not make out any specific words, just a general sense that the whisper carried an edge of anger, or of scorn and loathing.

Adam stood in his kitchen debating with himself. He was certain that if he went back outside he would discover, right away, that the voice in the wind was an illusion created by some interaction between the air and the structure of the house, but couldn't quite convince himself to do it. That feeling of not being safe, even a few steps out his back door, was still there, and somehow the thought of even opening the back door seemed like a truly bad idea.