...and an old black woman showed up who I had based a character on when she was younger and she had me drive her to the old farmhouse where she lived growing up.
It was abandoned and falling apart and the structure was twisted. It looked haunted. Weeds everywhere.
She had me sit on the porch and she told me all that had happened since the time in which the book was based.
"Lordy, so much has happened to me. Not all good neither. Seems like all my friends died before I did. I never found the love like I did in your book. I'm so glad you wrote it, because I don't have to remember it. It's all there," she stared off into the branches of dead tree silhouetted against the gray sky.
"That tree sho do look like black lightning, don't it? Shooting up into heaven," she put her old wrinkled arthritic hand on mine. Skin thin as paper. Her veins like the branches of that gnarled tree.
The wind picked up strong and shingles on the old roof slapped and some peeled off as the reflection in a broken window revealed the funnel cloud of a huge dark tornado.
"A storm is coming! We better go," I said, standing up.
"Nah baby, I'm already there. I've been dead for years. I just wanted to see you one last times all," she said smiling as she began to fade away.
The big dead tree uprooted and flew up into the clouds and the roof shattered into pieces that spiraled up into the funnel. I knew I couldn't make it to the car, so I crawled under the porch just as the whole house lifted away from me. On my back, I watched it spin and break apart into boards and splinters high above me in the roaring winds.
I opened my eyes and I was flat on my back in bed snoring. That must have been the loud winds I heard.
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