The Storm That Never Became

Brushing off his boots, Tye laced em up and proceeded into another day at the dock. Driving in his beat up Chevy, listening to the same talk radio station, he fell into a daily routine. Wake up at 5AM, get to work at 530AM, lunch at 1030AM, off at 2PM, after work beers at the local tavern and home for the night in bed by 10PM. It's nothing different or new for a dock worker in these parts where most struggle with routines that include boredom that can lead to addictions, Tye never really tapered off into that domain. A husky yet incredibly strong 26yr old who grew up on the other side of the country, he lived life one day at a time. His daughter from a previous failed relationship left him humble and thankful he had something, someone, to live for. If it weren't for her, he constantly thought he may not be on this planet. These are the thoughts that go through his head while he wrangles rope, brings in the boats, unloads goods for the nearby towns and is a replaceable and simple source in the grand machine of everyday life. He looks forward to his weekends. Occasionally getting out with friends, but usually stays in and spends with with Annabelle, his 6yr old daughter.
It was a Friday around 1015AM and they heard panic in one of the boathouses. Tye went inside to listen and all he could make out was they needed a few bodies to go retrieve a boat. The details were fuzzy as the CB radio transmission wasn't coming in too well. Tye grabbed his coat, life jacket and a few other essentials and was the first one to volunteer. The dock manager gathered the men together and told them a ship was lost at sea and the crew is no where to be found. He was radioed in by airplane flying low that called in and said it looked suspicious which alerted authorities. There is very little police force in this small town that is an honest and hard working city, leaving doors unlocked and everyone trusting each other. Tye, Gary, Neal and Pick hopped on a 55ft charter boat and headed out to sea. All of the men but Tye were born and raised in the small town of Lancaster on the East coast. Generation after generation, these men have sea legs and were made for this weather, work and lifestyle. Tye has only been in the town a few years, originally from the desert, he came here on a bus with Annabelle and wanted to start over. But what he was in for on this journey was nothing he could ever imagine.
Tye being the least experienced on the boat needed extra assistance in the basics at first but caught on quickly never needing a second time to complete a project. The men were about 15 miles off shore when they saw a light beaming straight into the sky, they kept chugging closer to this light. Once they got there they realized it was underwater. Pick was an expert diver and had brought his SCUBA gear. He suited up and went down into the water. The rest of the men waited and looked through binoculars to see if they could spot anything. Gary yelled and said he say something, something way off in the distance but couldn't make it out. The men had to wait for Pick to get back up to find out what the light was. After a good 30 minutes of waiting, Pick finally surfaced. His face completely blank and his body virtually motionless he uttered that he needed to lay down, he was feeling sick, he just needed to lay down for a while. Neal, the captain of the boat wanted more answers yet Pick was unable to respond much other than wanting a bed. Neal gave in, sent him down below and the rest of the men stayed atop of the charter heading towards whatever it was Gary saw.
As they got closer to the object, it looked as if it was the boat and the men began to become restless as they felt like the boat wasn't moving fast enough. They finally got in sight of it and there she was, the boat they were looking for. Neal told the men to get ready to jump aboard and find out what was going on. They approached the boat and tied up. Gary and Tye hopped over to investigate the situation. Yelling for the captain or workers, they heard nothing other than the ever so light crackling in the sky. By this time it was past 12 and the weather began to drop, small gusts of wind became and the men knew a storm was coming. Pick was still in downstairs as Neal was at the captains helm while Gary and Tye were on the other boat trying to find something. They got to the radio and it was completely disabled. Everything on the boat worked but the radio. They looked in all other places and saw nothing that would give them a clue unto what happened to the ships crew. Puzzled as can be, Tye thought about some previous experiences he had in the desert while hiking. Finding articles of clothing and what not in the middle of the desert, wondering if people went missing or were killed, maybe eaten by animals, yet nothing was ever printed in the paper about someone missing in the desert. He couldn't figure it out so he went to the starboard edge of the boat and looked into the sky hoping something would click. He looked out into the ocean and saw nothing but gray clouds coming in. He turned to Gary and told him we need to get back to land because it didn't look pretty. They were unsure to drive the boat in or drag it with this storm coming so they asked Neal. He said that if we can get Pick back up on deck we can do two on twos. Gary jumped over to the other boat and went downstairs to ask Pick if he was ready to come back up. Pick was in complete disarray. He didn't know where he was, who Gary was, anything. Gary thought he may have caught pneumonia or something when he was diving so he let him be and went upstairs to tell Neal. Neal said that they had an honor to bring in the boat and that no one was experienced enough to drive it in, so they were going to drag in it. The men got to work, roping it up, securing everything and getting ready for the haul in.
The storm that was brewing became uglier than can be. Pure darkness at this time of the day is unimaginable. The men felt like hell was going to take over. Dark circling clouds, lightening and thunder that shook them to the bone, pure hell, yet no wind or rain had come yet. Neal didn't know what to make of this. He saw how horrid it looked and said this could be a bad one, a real bad one and was waiting for it to hit as they headed toward land. A good 45 minutes had gone by now and nothing had changed other than the darkness filling the sky. Gary went downstairs to check on Pick and when he did, Pick looked worse than before. The charter wasn't equipped with handling many medical needs other than injuries, so Neal gave him as many painkillers as they had and sat with him for a while. Gary was talking to Pick, but all he did was stare into his face, almost as if he wasn't there. Gary asked him questions and Pick just looked at him and then would turn his head away into the pillow and pass out for short periods of time. He felt like he was no help so he went above to see the progress they had made hoping they were close to shore. When he got on deck, he couldn't believe what he saw. The black, death black clouds had a beaming reddish glow in the middle of it. Never seeing anything like this, none of the crew as a matter of fact, they scurried to find their phones to take pictures yet all the phones were dead, zero battery charge left. Neal grabbed his camera and went to take a picture and just as he did the boat rocked and it went out of his hand and into the water. Tye was at the edge of the boat with binoculars trying to make out what was happening in the sky and was completely shocked. All he could see were rays of light, beaming to and from other parts of the red in the sky. This blackness, this darkness, this hell in the sky was being penetrated by some sort of other light that shared the oceans sky, an unexplainable phenomenon. Mesmerized by all of this the men became weary of what could come of it. Was this the sign of the apocalypse, was this the beginning of the greatest storm, was this an alien invasion. The thoughts and random mumbling of the crew kept them too intrigued. They spoke to each other conversing if getting back to land or finding out what this was, was a better idea. Neal wanted to get back to the dock and find out from the others what was happening, yet he had a very strong interest in this storm. Gary was petrified but was also interested and Tye said that they had to stay, that this was something that most men would never experience in a lifetime and he didn't feel like this storm was going to turn into what it looked like it was. The three men decided to slow the boat down and keep watching this, this thing.
It had been a good hour now that the were stopped and watching this happen. It kept going back from blackness to a red light shining through over and over. By this time the men weren't sure what was going to happen, if this was going to continue, get worse or go away. So after more discussion they all decided that they should slowly head back and continue to watch the sky looking for any clues unto what was happening. Tye looked away for a moment thinking about his life in the desert, seeing how that desert sky looked like this at times, but never understanding how the blackness and other lights shining with it could happen. He thought back to when he was on a reservation as a kid, around 8 years old and he spent the night with his friend who was Hopi Indian. He remembered bits and pieces of a night where they went outside after the parents went to bed and they were searching for wildlife. He remembers how dark it was, pitch black in the desert, but he could see lights in the sky. He never knew if that was normal because he never saw it again. Reflecting back on that moment and seeing this moment happen in front of him, he knew he had to remember every detail. The feelings, the smell, the sights and sounds of the ocean, everything so he could tell this story one day. Gary came over to Tye to talk to him, to get his input on everything. The two men talked for a while and couldn't come up with anything other than a total and complete phenomenon was happening. Gary went up to Neal in the captains helm and he said he had never seen nor heard of such a thing. Tye went downstairs to check on Pick who was sleeping. He looked at him and noticed he was sweating, sweating more than ever. He asked Pick if he was OK and Pick just turned and looked at him and put his head back into the pillow. So Tye left him knowing there was nothing that could be done until they got to land. The charter was closing in onto shore when they realized this was about where they saw the light coming from the depths that Pick and dove too. There was no light, nothing of the sort, not even a detection of anything underwater. So they kept moving closer to shore. The men were about 5 miles away when Neal yelled and saw something in the distance. He saw in the darkness a white light coming from the opposite side of the what would be shoreline. Another beaming white light. At this point the men were more interested in getting back to shore and getting Pick to a hospital so they kept heading away from it. But the darkness wouldn't allow them. The charter began to hit extremely rocky waters and almost over-turning the charter and the boat behind. 20 minutes of total chaos and the ropes began to snap. Neal told Gary and Tye to get them roped up again and to make sure they were ready for the storm to hit. Then men did so and began to work. Lassoing ropes back and forth, getting ready, suiting up for this incredibly horrific storm to finally break. The water began to slow down and it became calm again. They were just miles away from shore and the storm, the blackness, the red light, the beaming white light, the cold air, everything slowly faded away. It just stopped. Then men approached the harbor with both boats intact and docked safely. Gary jumped off the charter and went to tell them to call an ambulance now because something went terrible wrong with Pick. Neal started to untie the boats and Tye went downstairs to get Pick. When he got down there, Pick was sitting on the bed. Tye began to talk to him and Pick was now talking. He asked him how he felt, what he remembers and all Pick said was he was asleep and just woke up. Tye asked him about what he saw when he dove and Pick told him he saw nothing because he never dove, he was sleeping the entire time. Tye tried to explain to him what happened and Pick just told him he wasn't sure what he was talking about and he slept. So the men went upstairs and the paramedics were there to check on Pick. They said everything was fine, he wasn't running a fever, no issues with his vitals, and everything seemed normal. Neal told them he needs to go to a hospital to get checked on more so they left. At this point Neal, Gary and Tye were explaining to the dock workers what they saw. None of them could understand what exactly they were describing so they didn't really believe them. The workers asked about pictures, videos, anything other than stories they were telling them and they all told them what happened. Dead batteries and a camera that went overboard. They grabbed their cell phones to show them they were dead, yet all of them were working just fine. Neal, Gary and Tye looked at each other in shock. Not knowing what the hell was happening, they became slightly angry. Their tempers flared and they started shouting what they saw was real. The dock workers just chuckled and walked away. No one believed them, their stories didn't add up to what happened once they hit land. No one but those three men knew what happened out there.
Tye went home after this while Neal and Gary headed to the police station to find out if any nearby towns reported anything at sea. Tye was alone as Annabelle was at a friends house so he went on the Internet searching for some kind of answer. He couldn't find anything at all, nothing that was even remotely close to this, so he gave up after a while and went to pickup his daughter. On his way over he got a call from Pick and asked him for a ride to the dock so he could get his car and head home. Tye drove up to the hospital and Pick jumped in the car. Tye started asking him how everything went and Pick responded that there was nothing wrong with him, blood work came back fine, no problems, even got an MRI scan which showed nothing. So Tye talked to Pick about what happened. He asked him what he remembered and Pick said he was asleep the entire time and remembers nothing at all. Tye asking him about the light in the water, the blackness in the sky, the colors in the sky; Pick could not remember a thing. Tye was not only frustrated but he was slightly angry thinking that he made eye contact with him as he laid in the downstairs area of the charter, but he remembered something. When he looked at Pick and talked to him, he felt like Pick really wasn't there, like he was in a daze not consuming any information. Tye dropped off Pick at the dock and went to pickup Annabelle. He pulled up to the house and she came running out excited and happy to see him. They drove home and went into their small white house near the ocean. When they went inside Tye began making dinner for the two of them. Tye was standing in the kitchen and Annabelle came over and was hugging his leg. He picked her up gave her a kiss and had her stand on a chair so she could help him cook. She looked out the window and started talking about the sky and how beautiful it was outside. She saw a shooting star and got excited and said to him, "Daddy, that's where we came from. We are special to everyone else. Not everyone came from there, but we did. They told me."