Timestorm
by L.H. Phillips
“What’s up with the fence?” Martin scuffed his feet in the direction of the strange little border around the front yard. It was about a foot high and composed of iron spikes. It seemed far too substantial for something too short to do anything practical.
The realty agent laughed. “You’re looking at the top of what was once a six-foot wrought iron fence around the original house. After the 1900 hurricane, the whole island was raised up to ten feet, depending on the location. When the house was rebuilt in 1901, the fence mostly just got buried. Our seawall was built at about the same time. Over 8000, maybe as many as 12,000 people, died in that storm.”
Martin raised his eyebrows. “That wouldn’t happen today.”
The agent looked at him seriously, like a parent imparting important advice. “Of course not, but hurricanes are still a serious business in Galveston. If the authorities tell you to evacuate, you should do just that.”
“Um,” Martin grunted. He had already lost interest in the topic. “Let’s see the inside, okay?”
The house was a narrow two-story Victorian with ornate woodwork adorning its porch and stained glass windows flanking the front door. It was equally charming inside, with gleaming wood floors and high ceilings. A broad window seat had been built under the bank of windows facing the small backyard.
“I’m afraid the back isn’t adequately fenced, and then there are the oleanders which are somewhat toxic―” the agent started off, but Martin cut him short.
“I don’t keep pets.” Martin headed up the staircase to look at the bedrooms.
“What a surprise, that,” the agent muttered, and dutifully followed Martin upstairs.
Martin seemed as unimpressed with the three bedrooms and small bathroom as with the rest of the property, and the agent began to suspect this was an afternoon wasted.
“There are only these window AC units, and you’ll need space heaters in the winter. No one ever installed a central unit in the house. The bathroom and the kitchen have been re-done, though.”
“It’s fine,” Martin said, to the agent’s surprise. “I’ll take it.” Shortly thereafter, the rental contract was signed in the realty office.
In fact, neither the house’s historical flourishes nor its drawbacks featured very prominently in Martin’s decision. The rent was relatively cheap for the generous living space, and the street was quiet. Most importantly, it was only ten minutes away from Martin’s new job. He had accepted a position as a claims reviewer at a large health insurance company, a job similar to his previous employment in Dallas. He had been known there for his impartiality (some might say, detachment) and strict interpretation of company guidelines. Martin felt these things made him excel at his work, because as he liked to say, he had no dogs in the hunt.
***
Several weeks went by and Martin settled in well enough to his new job and surroundings. His job was reassuringly familiar in its scope, and his co-workers were tolerable. They had a tendency to socialize a bit more than he cared for, but after several refusals to join them at after-work happy hours they left him mostly alone. He had no real complaints with his rental house, except that he found the oleanders surrounding the backyard a little too lush and overbearing. He would have preferred a well-trimmed privet hedge. Privet hedges, he thought, clearly understood their function and kept to their boundaries. And if oleanders were so toxic, why were they all over the yard to begin with, why were they in fact all over Galveston Island? They were in the median of the main street into town and in many of the yards, blooming extravagantly in their poisonous pinks and reds and whites. They seemed somehow emblematic of the nature of Galveston as a whole, a little louche, a little off of the straight and narrow.
These were small concerns, however, and Martin had lived in his house for over a month before its character chose to assert itself fully. Martin had dismissed the sound like light footsteps on the stairs that had been present from the day he moved in. It was an old house, and the wood undoubtedly popped and settled with changes in the temperature and humidity. All kinds of little noises were to be expected. Less expected was the series of incidents that commenced one Tuesday morning. Martin had gone out onto his tiny brick patio to enjoy his coffee and the relative cool of the early hour. Something caught his eye off to the right in an adjacent flowerbed. The flowerbed was covered in little white shells as a weed deterrent, through which a few determined zinnias poked their heads. At the edge closest to the patio a dozen of these shells had been stacked into a tower. It was the sort of thing a child might do. Martin was certain it hadn’t been there the previous day. He hadn’t noticed any trespassing children in his yard, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t been there. He spent a few minutes considering if a security camera was a worthwhile expense, decided not, and forgot about it.
A few mornings later, Martin was again drinking his morning coffee, this time in the kitchen. He set his cup down on the breakfast table on the far end from his usual seat. Sitting down, his eyes on his tablet, he had reached across to retrieve the cup, only to get a lapful of coffee as his arm bumped the full mug, now inexplicably at his elbow. Martin cursed his way upstairs to change. He clearly remembered turning from the kitchen counter and putting the cup down at the far end of the table. Martin stood in front of his closet a little blankly, puzzled, but he was now running late for work and so the oddness of the incident was lost in his irritation.
The turning point, after which he could no longer ignore things, occurred in late July. Martin had gone for a run along Stewart Beach one Saturday morning. Despite the stickiness of the heat, a hot shower upon returning home seemed like the remedy to muscles aching from running in the sand. The little bathroom filled with steam. Martin got out of the shower and briskly toweled off. He turned to wipe the condensation from the vanity mirror over the sink. His mouth fell open and he gaped idiotically. Neatly printed on the fogged mirror was the word “HELLO” in big block letters. Martin could have accepted a short “HI” as the accident of random water trails, but “HELLO” was a lot to explain away.
“Especially the E,” Martin said aloud, and then he wiped the mirror violently with his towel. He didn’t like the message. He didn’t like that he was talking to himself. None of it fit his view of the way things should be.
Martin got dressed and had a look around, to see if there was any evidence of an oddly friendly intruder. There wasn’t. The idea that someone would break in to write on his bathroom mirror was absurd on the face of it. All of the strange little incidents suddenly added up to one conclusion: he lived in a haunted house. He lived in a haunted house. It was a lot to take in for someone of Martin’s mercilessly practical turn of mind.
After a while his pragmatism reasserted itself. The thing to do, he thought, was to gather incontrovertible evidence. Then he could appeal to some kind of authority to break his lease. Maybe he could even make some money, selling his proof to one of the horde of paranormal shows that inhabited certain streaming channels. Martin felt better after making this plan, and pushed his unsettled feelings aside. He decided he would leave his phone recorder on all night, to document any potentially ghostly shenanigans. Maybe he would even reconsider getting a camera for the backyard.
Martin went to bed that night with his phone on his bedside table, recorder running, ready to catch the preternatural world in the act. That night the dreams began.
Martin seldom remembered his dreams, and when he did they were usually rather drab re-hashings of the day’s concerns, or else a nonsensical jumble of unrelated impressions. This dream was astonishingly vivid and detailed. It started with him standing in the doorway of a dining room and peering anxiously at the scene within.
A beautiful crystal chandelier illuminated a long table around which a group of people were seated. He seemed to be observing a family dinner in progress. There was a friendly murmur of conversation among the group, which included four grown-ups and two children. They were all dressed quite formally in old-fashioned clothes suited for the end of the 19th century. Martin could hear the gentle clatter of their silverware and even smell the pot roast and fresh bread. A young woman who appeared to be a servant carried dishes in and out of the room. The dream was so realistic he found his mouth watering from the delicious aromas. He was torn between a longing to join them and a deep feeling of awkwardness at his intrusion.
He was thinking it would be best to quietly slip away when one of the children—a girl of perhaps ten years—suddenly took notice of his presence. Her bright blue eyes fixed on him and she said, “But you aren’t intruding at all. When you are in this house, you are family.”
Martin jolted awake at the sound of her clear voice, shocked to be in his dark bedroom rather than in the warm glow of the dream dining room. He sat up in bed, momentarily disoriented. The memory of the dream gave him a surprising pang of loss. In those last few seconds of standing on the dining room threshold he had felt a sense of welcome that he had seldom encountered in the real world. He covered his feelings as he usually did, by becoming busy.
Martin switched on his bedside lamp and picked up his phone. “Well, let’s see what the ghosties have to say!” He frowned at the realization that he was talking to himself again.
He played his recording, and was treated to some twenty minutes of hearing himself turning and sighing, this finally giving way to gentle snoring. At the point he apparently woke up, he heard himself give a rather humorous snort, followed by the clicking sound of the lamp switch and his muttered “ghosties” remark. It didn’t make for compelling Ghostfinders Revealed material.
Martin turned off the lamp and scootched down on his pillows. He felt bemused and comforted, in a way. He fell asleep quickly, and slept dreamlessly till morning.
The next day, the dream stayed in his mind, out of proportion to its brevity. The brightness of the young girl’s eyes, the warmth her words had conveyed to him. He found himself staring distractedly into space and wondering who she was, if she had once lived in this house, and if she was the one leaving messages on his mirror and building seashell towers in the garden. As evening approached, Martin felt a mixture of fear and excitement. He wanted to see the girl and her family again, but was worried the dreams might take an unpleasant turn. They always seemed to in the movies.
At bedtime, he decided against setting up his recorder. Somehow, he didn’t think his particular little spirit cared to communicate in staticky whispers. Martin was so keyed up with anticipation that he didn’t fall asleep until well past one in the morning.
Immediately, it seemed, he found himself in the middle of another domestic scene. This time, three of the people from the dining room were out in the backyard. The girl and the other child, a boy of around five, were throwing a ball for a boisterous, scruffy dog. The dog was so excited by their game that it frequently ran in a circle around the yard, barking, instead of actually fetching the ball. The girl scolded it in an affectionate way for this lack of focus, and the little boy found it all so hilarious he could hardly stand for laughing. One of the adults, a young woman in her twenties, was seated in a wicker chair, knitting and keeping an eye on the youngsters.
The lawn, rather patchy in Martin’s time, was a verdant expanse. The yard was bounded, not by oleanders, but by old-fashioned pink and red rose bushes. Their small, fragrant blooms pressed up against a tall iron fence. The oak at the corner of the house, not yet the grand old patriarch Martin was familiar with, spread a little pool of shade in the yard.
“It’s time to come in and get dressed for dinner,” the young woman said. She stood up from her chair and Martin saw that she was heavily pregnant. Her announcement was met with protests from the children, and more excited barking from the dog.
“Now, Lizzie, Sam, I don’t need any backtalk. Mother expects you two to be cleaned up and ready.”
Lizzie took Sam by the hand and followed the young woman into the house. As she passed by Martin, she turned her startling blue gaze up to him and said, “I hope you’ll be joining us this time. Your first visit was so short.”
Martin was about to make a reply—he did want to join them—when again he found himself jerking suddenly awake.
His disappointment was even sharper this time. At least he had learned a few things—Lizzie’s and Sam’s names. Perhaps the young woman was their older sister? If he went back to sleep, would the dream pick back up? He settled back down, and although he slept deeply till morning, apparently there was only one “visit” per night.
The month of July wore into August, and Martin became increasingly preoccupied with his dream family. He came to know the whole group. The mother was Olivia, the father, Harrison. Harrison worked down on the Strand at a business involving the cotton trade. The young pregnant woman was indeed the elder sister, Helen, expecting her first child in a couple of months. Her husband was gone on an overseas business trip, due back at the end of the summer. The fourth adult in the household was Olivia’s sister, Mattie. The disreputable dog was called Jimmy, and had been gifted as a puppy to Helen some years ago.
Martin’s visits with them increased in length, but only Lizzie seemed aware of his presence. The others never remarked on Lizzie addressing him. Apparently, they didn’t even hear her comments to him. Martin always tried to reply to Lizzie, but he was struck dumb in his dreams, relegated to silently watching the minutiae of the family’s daily lives. He saw them at their evening meals, sitting in their parlor, playing in the backyard, walking down Broadway to church on Sunday mornings. Judging from the flowers and their complaints about the heat, it seemed to be roughly the same time of year in his dreams as in his waking life—late summer.
He realized one day that after the dreams had begun, the manifestations around the house had ceased. It was as though they had been introductory overtures to the main event, his nightly observation of the family. Martin no longer felt any fear about these dream episodes. Indeed, he began to feel that he was haunting them rather than the other way around.
The family shared an easy affection that folded even their small staff of cook, maid and gardener into its warm embrace. This both touched him and left him with an aching void in his heart. He was not very close to his own mother, and his father had died when he was a teenager. In fact, it had been his dad’s unexpected death that had marked his emotional withdrawal from his mom, and from the world in general. He hadn’t known how to respond to her grief at being suddenly widowed. He was overwhelmed at the sight of her devastation, and coped with his own sorrow by shutting his emotions down. His mother had made tentative efforts to talk with him, but he was so unresponsive she soon gave up. Since he was a loner by nature, his few casual friends had no idea how to approach the subject of loss with him, and so ignored the issue almost completely. He became trapped in a terrible feedback loop of feigning indifference to the lack of sympathy and support, while this same indifferent manner made it more and more unlikely for any to be offered. Martin’s isolation evolved from a defense against a specific grief into a general way of living that avoided unhappiness by avoiding any real involvement with others. Nightly now, the wisdom of this behavior was challenged. The family’s closeness was a rebuke to his own detachment. He found himself thinking that perhaps he should make more of an effort with his mother.
This train of thought was uncomfortable and, if he was honest, a little frightening. Martin pushed back against any notion that he should change with well-practiced indignation. Who were these people, anyway, that they provoked longing and regret in him? Just some fantasy his mind had generated due to overly evocative surroundings. He was impressed by his own imagination, but they weren’t real and shouldn’t affect his actual life. Martin became so uneasy, he decided the best way to get back on course was to prove their unreality to himself.
Rather painfully aware that he was fulfilling another haunted house trope, he paid a visit to the Galveston Historical Society one weekend. There he met Mrs. Miller, a lively old lady thrilled to discuss all things Galveston Island. He gave her his address, and asked if there was any record of the people who had lived there at the turn of the century.
“Oh yes! The Parkers, quite a prominent family.” She flipped through a file. “See, here’s a family portrait taken in 1899.”
Martin gazed at the picture, dumbfounded. He should have been prepared, he supposed, but it was still a shock to actually recognize everyone in the photograph. Even the damn dog was in the picture.
“It’s so nice that you’re taking an interest in the house you’re in,” Mrs. Miller continued. “So many people are oblivious to the history all around them here, they just see the beach and the bars. The big storm changed so much here in Galveston, ruined it economically, really. There was so much destruction. The Parkers came through better than some, although they still had their share of tragedy.”
“In what way?” Martin felt his heart clinch painfully.
“Their little daughter, Elizabeth, was killed in the storm. A branch from a tree in the yard hit her. The rest of the family and the servants made it safely to shelter in the Gresham house. This is called the Bishop’s Palace nowadays, and you can see it still standing on Broadway, a big granite mansion. I’m sorry, are you alright?”
Martin looked up. “I think my house is haunted,” he blurted out, although this wasn’t exactly what he wanted to say.
“Oh, my dear,” Mrs. Miller looked at him kindly. “The whole island is.”
***
Martin drove down to Stewart Beach and walked awhile, sad and confused. Knowing the Parkers had really existed made his dreams unbearably poignant, overshadowed as they now were by the impending disaster and Lizzie’s death. All those happy moments, all the tranquility of their household, were going to be quite literally swept away. September 8, 1900 was when the monstrous storm, unnamed in those days, hit Galveston. In last night’s dream, Harrison had mentioned the date. September 5th.
Martin finally went home, although there was no rest to be found there. He paced around his living room, his thoughts racing futilely. What was the point of his visions of the Parkers’ lives? There was nothing he could do to alter the past, was there? He couldn’t even speak in his dreams. The only thing he knew for sure was that he dreaded having to be witness to the inevitable events.
That night, his dream was as pleasant as usual, but the sunlit backyard he found himself in seemed a cruel mockery. Lizzie and Sam were trying to give Jimmy a bath. Jimmy was resisting vigorously, jumping from the tub and racing around the yard. Sam put his hands on his hips and said authoritatively, “Now James, you get in the bath this minute!”
Lizzie laughed. She looked up at Martin and her expression became concerned. “Why, you look worried!” Martin waved his hands and tried ineffectually to voice a warning. Lizzie stood up from the lawn, seeming perplexed—and Martin woke up, alone as usual in his dark bedroom.
Martin went to work on Monday, frazzled and distracted. He was trying unsuccessfully to focus on a batch of insurance claims when he became aware of the conversation between two of his coworkers out in the hall. They were discussing a tropical storm that was due to hit Galveston the next day. Martin got up from his desk in alarm. He hadn’t listened to the news in several days, but apparently he should have. He joined them in the hall and asked, “I’m sorry? There’s a storm? I’ve been a little out of it this week. Do we need to leave?”
The older of the two, Tim, laughed. “No, no. Not for a tropical storm. Most folks won’t even budge for a Cat 1 or 2 hurricane. Just make sure you have groceries and flashlights and a full tank of gas in case there’s flooding. Hopefully, the thing won’t stall over us.”
“So it’s really not dangerous?”
“Not if you have any common sense. You’ll see fools out in the water, surfing the waves and trying to drown. If you’re worried about your windows, you can tape them up or close your storm shutters, if you’ve got ’em.”
“Okay,” Martin said doubtfully. He went back to his desk and his reviewing of claims, where he discovered to his consternation that he was struggling not to sympathize with the claimants.
Martin ran several errands after work, following Tim’s recommendations. He filled up his car’s gas tank, got groceries and extra batteries for his flashlights, and even bought a battery-powered lantern. He received a terse text from his landlord, instructing him to close the house’s storm shutters, or else he would be liable for any window breakage. This took him a considerable amount of time, given the many windows in the house. At last he sat exhausted in his living room, all preparations made. All of this seemed a little too much in synchrony with his dream timeline. Martin dreaded the night’s revelations. His feet dragged upon the stairs on the way to bed.
Martin woke to the sound of rain pounding on his roof. The closed shutters made the house so dim he was unsure of the time. Looking at his phone, he saw it was 6:30 in the morning. He realized with a shock that for the first time in weeks, he could not recall any kind of a dream, not even a run-of-the-mill one. Martin stewed over what this could mean as he made his coffee and listened to the weather report. Apparently this rain was just the outermost edge of the storm, with much more intense rainfall to follow.
Did the lack of dreaming mean that everything was over for Lizzie, that upon her death the replay of the house’s history was done? Martin felt both relieved and ashamed by the anti-climactic end to his visions. He felt he had abandoned Lizzie somehow, but surely that was foolish. She was long dead, long lost to the past.
Martin went in to work, but his manager sent everybody home mid-morning. The heart of the storm was due to hit in the early evening, and everyone wanted to be safely home before it arrived.
Martin sat in his living room, the TV tuned to weather coverage, and tried not to think about the Parkers. They would have received no such minute-by-minute updates. The 1900 storm had taken Galveston pretty much by surprise. There had been warnings out of Cuba of an approaching monster, but these had been disregarded by the authorities. The chaos had descended unexpectedly, the island ultimately drowning beneath a fifteen-foot storm surge.
He finally went up to bed quite early, too depressed to enjoy the distractions of TV or reading. He sent his mother a reassuring text, quoting Tim’s casual assessment liberally. He fell asleep to the sound of the hardest rain he had ever experienced.
Abruptly, he found himself in a dark bedroom, that driving rain still assaulting the roof and windows. Martin was terribly confused. Was this a dream, or was it happening? Surely a dream, because there was Lizzie, standing in the doorway. She was uncharacteristically solemn and pale.
She said to Helen, who was lying on the bed, “Papa thinks we should try to go to the Greshams’ house. He thinks it will stand the storm better. You need to get up, Helen.”
“I don’t feel like walking through this deluge, and I won’t go without Jimmy. I haven’t seen him all morning and I won’t leave him.” Helen’s hand was on her enormous stomach and tears were running down her face.
“I’ll try to find him again. Just try to get up. You have to get up!” Lizzie turned and ran down the hall to the staircase.
Martin ran after her, panic-stricken. “Oh Lizzie, wait, wait! Don’t worry about the dog, you need to be careful!” To his surprise, he could hear himself shouting. Lizzie heard him, too, and turned for a second at the landing to look at him before dashing down the stairs. Martin went after her, his bare feet slapping on the wooden steps. Lizzie reached the first floor and headed through the kitchen to the back door. She paused to unlock it, and Martin stopped short in the middle of the kitchen. There on the table was his tablet. The refrigerator hummed quietly in its corner. Lizzie in her Victorian dress was turning the deadbolt. Dream and reality met seamlessly. “What is happening,” he heard himself say in a calmly interested tone. Lizzie didn’t answer, but shot through the opened door. It banged wildly in the howling wind. Martin hesitated a second, then followed Lizzie out into the raging rain. He lost sight of her in the storm, and was standing bewildered under a torrent of rain with his feet in the mud when he heard a deafening crash. A huge branch from the old oak had broken, and crushed in the corner of the house where Martin’s bedroom was located.
***
Martin stood on the sidewalk across from his house. He had spent the night with his neighbor, Eric, who had rushed over upon hearing the terrific crunch of Martin’s bedroom being obliterated. They had never been particularly friendly, but an emergency was an emergency, and Martin was awkwardly grateful for his help.
Martin had managed to contact his landlord, who was standing with an insurance agent in the front yard of the ravaged house. Little bits of their conversation drifted over to him—“dead wood” and “microburst” and “possible liability”. Every once in a while, one or the other of them would give Martin a wary look.
Martin was uninterested in their evaluations. He thought he understood things a little, now. How arrogant it had been for him to think it had been about him saving Lizzie. Lizzie had worked very hard all summer to make sure he knew and loved her, to make sure he cared enough to follow her out when the time came. So that his life would be saved. He wondered if she would still be in the house, now that her task was done. With sadness, he thought probably not. She had other things to attend to, he imagined.
“—guardian angel.” Eric had appeared at his side.
“What?” said Martin, startled out of his thoughts.
“I said, you sure had a guardian angel. That branch is probably laying right across your bed.”
“Yes, yes, I know,” said Martin. That seemed exactly right, a guardian, not a ghost. She had crossed a gulf of time and death to save him, while he would hardly cross the street to help someone else. And here was Eric, being a good neighbor, when their longest conversation prior to last night had been Martin complaining about Eric not moving his garbage bins off the curb quickly enough. Martin was overcome with humility and contrition, and suddenly tears were streaming down his face.
“I’m sorry,” Martin whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
“Aw, don’t think anything of it. Anyone would be upset after such a close call,” said Eric, misunderstanding. Though previously he could not have imagined doing such a thing, he put his arm around Martin’s shoulders, and the two men stood together in the newly washed morning.
L.H. Phillips is a retired molecular biologist with a life-long love of all types of speculative fiction. Previous stories have appeared in Aphelion, The Nameless Songs of Zadok Allen, and Road Kill vol 9. She lives in San Antonio, TX with her husband and cat.
“Timestorm” by L.H. Phillips. Copyright © 2025 by L.H. Phillips.
“What’s up with the fence?” Martin scuffed his feet in the direction of the strange little border around the front yard. It was about a foot high and composed of iron spikes. It seemed far too substantial for something too short to do anything practical.
The realty agent laughed. “You’re looking at the top of what was once a six-foot wrought iron fence around the original house. After the 1900 hurricane, the whole island was raised up to ten feet, depending on the location. When the house was rebuilt in 1901, the fence mostly just got buried. Our seawall was built at about the same time. Over 8000, maybe as many as 12,000 people, died in that storm.”
Martin raised his eyebrows. “That wouldn’t happen today.”
The agent looked at him seriously, like a parent imparting important advice. “Of course not, but hurricanes are still a serious business in Galveston. If the authorities tell you to evacuate, you should do just that.”
“Um,” Martin grunted. He had already lost interest in the topic. “Let’s see the inside, okay?”
The house was a narrow two-story Victorian with ornate woodwork adorning its porch and stained glass windows flanking the front door. It was equally charming inside, with gleaming wood floors and high ceilings. A broad window seat had been built under the bank of windows facing the small backyard.
“I’m afraid the back isn’t adequately fenced, and then there are the oleanders which are somewhat toxic―” the agent started off, but Martin cut him short.
“I don’t keep pets.” Martin headed up the staircase to look at the bedrooms.
“What a surprise, that,” the agent muttered, and dutifully followed Martin upstairs.
Martin seemed as unimpressed with the three bedrooms and small bathroom as with the rest of the property, and the agent began to suspect this was an afternoon wasted.
“There are only these window AC units, and you’ll need space heaters in the winter. No one ever installed a central unit in the house. The bathroom and the kitchen have been re-done, though.”
“It’s fine,” Martin said, to the agent’s surprise. “I’ll take it.” Shortly thereafter, the rental contract was signed in the realty office.
In fact, neither the house’s historical flourishes nor its drawbacks featured very prominently in Martin’s decision. The rent was relatively cheap for the generous living space, and the street was quiet. Most importantly, it was only ten minutes away from Martin’s new job. He had accepted a position as a claims reviewer at a large health insurance company, a job similar to his previous employment in Dallas. He had been known there for his impartiality (some might say, detachment) and strict interpretation of company guidelines. Martin felt these things made him excel at his work, because as he liked to say, he had no dogs in the hunt.
Several weeks went by and Martin settled in well enough to his new job and surroundings. His job was reassuringly familiar in its scope, and his co-workers were tolerable. They had a tendency to socialize a bit more than he cared for, but after several refusals to join them at after-work happy hours they left him mostly alone. He had no real complaints with his rental house, except that he found the oleanders surrounding the backyard a little too lush and overbearing. He would have preferred a well-trimmed privet hedge. Privet hedges, he thought, clearly understood their function and kept to their boundaries. And if oleanders were so toxic, why were they all over the yard to begin with, why were they in fact all over Galveston Island? They were in the median of the main street into town and in many of the yards, blooming extravagantly in their poisonous pinks and reds and whites. They seemed somehow emblematic of the nature of Galveston as a whole, a little louche, a little off of the straight and narrow.
These were small concerns, however, and Martin had lived in his house for over a month before its character chose to assert itself fully. Martin had dismissed the sound like light footsteps on the stairs that had been present from the day he moved in. It was an old house, and the wood undoubtedly popped and settled with changes in the temperature and humidity. All kinds of little noises were to be expected. Less expected was the series of incidents that commenced one Tuesday morning. Martin had gone out onto his tiny brick patio to enjoy his coffee and the relative cool of the early hour. Something caught his eye off to the right in an adjacent flowerbed. The flowerbed was covered in little white shells as a weed deterrent, through which a few determined zinnias poked their heads. At the edge closest to the patio a dozen of these shells had been stacked into a tower. It was the sort of thing a child might do. Martin was certain it hadn’t been there the previous day. He hadn’t noticed any trespassing children in his yard, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t been there. He spent a few minutes considering if a security camera was a worthwhile expense, decided not, and forgot about it.
A few mornings later, Martin was again drinking his morning coffee, this time in the kitchen. He set his cup down on the breakfast table on the far end from his usual seat. Sitting down, his eyes on his tablet, he had reached across to retrieve the cup, only to get a lapful of coffee as his arm bumped the full mug, now inexplicably at his elbow. Martin cursed his way upstairs to change. He clearly remembered turning from the kitchen counter and putting the cup down at the far end of the table. Martin stood in front of his closet a little blankly, puzzled, but he was now running late for work and so the oddness of the incident was lost in his irritation.
The turning point, after which he could no longer ignore things, occurred in late July. Martin had gone for a run along Stewart Beach one Saturday morning. Despite the stickiness of the heat, a hot shower upon returning home seemed like the remedy to muscles aching from running in the sand. The little bathroom filled with steam. Martin got out of the shower and briskly toweled off. He turned to wipe the condensation from the vanity mirror over the sink. His mouth fell open and he gaped idiotically. Neatly printed on the fogged mirror was the word “HELLO” in big block letters. Martin could have accepted a short “HI” as the accident of random water trails, but “HELLO” was a lot to explain away.
“Especially the E,” Martin said aloud, and then he wiped the mirror violently with his towel. He didn’t like the message. He didn’t like that he was talking to himself. None of it fit his view of the way things should be.
Martin got dressed and had a look around, to see if there was any evidence of an oddly friendly intruder. There wasn’t. The idea that someone would break in to write on his bathroom mirror was absurd on the face of it. All of the strange little incidents suddenly added up to one conclusion: he lived in a haunted house. He lived in a haunted house. It was a lot to take in for someone of Martin’s mercilessly practical turn of mind.
After a while his pragmatism reasserted itself. The thing to do, he thought, was to gather incontrovertible evidence. Then he could appeal to some kind of authority to break his lease. Maybe he could even make some money, selling his proof to one of the horde of paranormal shows that inhabited certain streaming channels. Martin felt better after making this plan, and pushed his unsettled feelings aside. He decided he would leave his phone recorder on all night, to document any potentially ghostly shenanigans. Maybe he would even reconsider getting a camera for the backyard.
Martin went to bed that night with his phone on his bedside table, recorder running, ready to catch the preternatural world in the act. That night the dreams began.
Martin seldom remembered his dreams, and when he did they were usually rather drab re-hashings of the day’s concerns, or else a nonsensical jumble of unrelated impressions. This dream was astonishingly vivid and detailed. It started with him standing in the doorway of a dining room and peering anxiously at the scene within.
A beautiful crystal chandelier illuminated a long table around which a group of people were seated. He seemed to be observing a family dinner in progress. There was a friendly murmur of conversation among the group, which included four grown-ups and two children. They were all dressed quite formally in old-fashioned clothes suited for the end of the 19th century. Martin could hear the gentle clatter of their silverware and even smell the pot roast and fresh bread. A young woman who appeared to be a servant carried dishes in and out of the room. The dream was so realistic he found his mouth watering from the delicious aromas. He was torn between a longing to join them and a deep feeling of awkwardness at his intrusion.
He was thinking it would be best to quietly slip away when one of the children—a girl of perhaps ten years—suddenly took notice of his presence. Her bright blue eyes fixed on him and she said, “But you aren’t intruding at all. When you are in this house, you are family.”
Martin jolted awake at the sound of her clear voice, shocked to be in his dark bedroom rather than in the warm glow of the dream dining room. He sat up in bed, momentarily disoriented. The memory of the dream gave him a surprising pang of loss. In those last few seconds of standing on the dining room threshold he had felt a sense of welcome that he had seldom encountered in the real world. He covered his feelings as he usually did, by becoming busy.
Martin switched on his bedside lamp and picked up his phone. “Well, let’s see what the ghosties have to say!” He frowned at the realization that he was talking to himself again.
He played his recording, and was treated to some twenty minutes of hearing himself turning and sighing, this finally giving way to gentle snoring. At the point he apparently woke up, he heard himself give a rather humorous snort, followed by the clicking sound of the lamp switch and his muttered “ghosties” remark. It didn’t make for compelling Ghostfinders Revealed material.
Martin turned off the lamp and scootched down on his pillows. He felt bemused and comforted, in a way. He fell asleep quickly, and slept dreamlessly till morning.
The next day, the dream stayed in his mind, out of proportion to its brevity. The brightness of the young girl’s eyes, the warmth her words had conveyed to him. He found himself staring distractedly into space and wondering who she was, if she had once lived in this house, and if she was the one leaving messages on his mirror and building seashell towers in the garden. As evening approached, Martin felt a mixture of fear and excitement. He wanted to see the girl and her family again, but was worried the dreams might take an unpleasant turn. They always seemed to in the movies.
At bedtime, he decided against setting up his recorder. Somehow, he didn’t think his particular little spirit cared to communicate in staticky whispers. Martin was so keyed up with anticipation that he didn’t fall asleep until well past one in the morning.
Immediately, it seemed, he found himself in the middle of another domestic scene. This time, three of the people from the dining room were out in the backyard. The girl and the other child, a boy of around five, were throwing a ball for a boisterous, scruffy dog. The dog was so excited by their game that it frequently ran in a circle around the yard, barking, instead of actually fetching the ball. The girl scolded it in an affectionate way for this lack of focus, and the little boy found it all so hilarious he could hardly stand for laughing. One of the adults, a young woman in her twenties, was seated in a wicker chair, knitting and keeping an eye on the youngsters.
The lawn, rather patchy in Martin’s time, was a verdant expanse. The yard was bounded, not by oleanders, but by old-fashioned pink and red rose bushes. Their small, fragrant blooms pressed up against a tall iron fence. The oak at the corner of the house, not yet the grand old patriarch Martin was familiar with, spread a little pool of shade in the yard.
“It’s time to come in and get dressed for dinner,” the young woman said. She stood up from her chair and Martin saw that she was heavily pregnant. Her announcement was met with protests from the children, and more excited barking from the dog.
“Now, Lizzie, Sam, I don’t need any backtalk. Mother expects you two to be cleaned up and ready.”
Lizzie took Sam by the hand and followed the young woman into the house. As she passed by Martin, she turned her startling blue gaze up to him and said, “I hope you’ll be joining us this time. Your first visit was so short.”
Martin was about to make a reply—he did want to join them—when again he found himself jerking suddenly awake.
His disappointment was even sharper this time. At least he had learned a few things—Lizzie’s and Sam’s names. Perhaps the young woman was their older sister? If he went back to sleep, would the dream pick back up? He settled back down, and although he slept deeply till morning, apparently there was only one “visit” per night.
The month of July wore into August, and Martin became increasingly preoccupied with his dream family. He came to know the whole group. The mother was Olivia, the father, Harrison. Harrison worked down on the Strand at a business involving the cotton trade. The young pregnant woman was indeed the elder sister, Helen, expecting her first child in a couple of months. Her husband was gone on an overseas business trip, due back at the end of the summer. The fourth adult in the household was Olivia’s sister, Mattie. The disreputable dog was called Jimmy, and had been gifted as a puppy to Helen some years ago.
Martin’s visits with them increased in length, but only Lizzie seemed aware of his presence. The others never remarked on Lizzie addressing him. Apparently, they didn’t even hear her comments to him. Martin always tried to reply to Lizzie, but he was struck dumb in his dreams, relegated to silently watching the minutiae of the family’s daily lives. He saw them at their evening meals, sitting in their parlor, playing in the backyard, walking down Broadway to church on Sunday mornings. Judging from the flowers and their complaints about the heat, it seemed to be roughly the same time of year in his dreams as in his waking life—late summer.
He realized one day that after the dreams had begun, the manifestations around the house had ceased. It was as though they had been introductory overtures to the main event, his nightly observation of the family. Martin no longer felt any fear about these dream episodes. Indeed, he began to feel that he was haunting them rather than the other way around.
The family shared an easy affection that folded even their small staff of cook, maid and gardener into its warm embrace. This both touched him and left him with an aching void in his heart. He was not very close to his own mother, and his father had died when he was a teenager. In fact, it had been his dad’s unexpected death that had marked his emotional withdrawal from his mom, and from the world in general. He hadn’t known how to respond to her grief at being suddenly widowed. He was overwhelmed at the sight of her devastation, and coped with his own sorrow by shutting his emotions down. His mother had made tentative efforts to talk with him, but he was so unresponsive she soon gave up. Since he was a loner by nature, his few casual friends had no idea how to approach the subject of loss with him, and so ignored the issue almost completely. He became trapped in a terrible feedback loop of feigning indifference to the lack of sympathy and support, while this same indifferent manner made it more and more unlikely for any to be offered. Martin’s isolation evolved from a defense against a specific grief into a general way of living that avoided unhappiness by avoiding any real involvement with others. Nightly now, the wisdom of this behavior was challenged. The family’s closeness was a rebuke to his own detachment. He found himself thinking that perhaps he should make more of an effort with his mother.
This train of thought was uncomfortable and, if he was honest, a little frightening. Martin pushed back against any notion that he should change with well-practiced indignation. Who were these people, anyway, that they provoked longing and regret in him? Just some fantasy his mind had generated due to overly evocative surroundings. He was impressed by his own imagination, but they weren’t real and shouldn’t affect his actual life. Martin became so uneasy, he decided the best way to get back on course was to prove their unreality to himself.
Rather painfully aware that he was fulfilling another haunted house trope, he paid a visit to the Galveston Historical Society one weekend. There he met Mrs. Miller, a lively old lady thrilled to discuss all things Galveston Island. He gave her his address, and asked if there was any record of the people who had lived there at the turn of the century.
“Oh yes! The Parkers, quite a prominent family.” She flipped through a file. “See, here’s a family portrait taken in 1899.”
Martin gazed at the picture, dumbfounded. He should have been prepared, he supposed, but it was still a shock to actually recognize everyone in the photograph. Even the damn dog was in the picture.
“It’s so nice that you’re taking an interest in the house you’re in,” Mrs. Miller continued. “So many people are oblivious to the history all around them here, they just see the beach and the bars. The big storm changed so much here in Galveston, ruined it economically, really. There was so much destruction. The Parkers came through better than some, although they still had their share of tragedy.”
“In what way?” Martin felt his heart clinch painfully.
“Their little daughter, Elizabeth, was killed in the storm. A branch from a tree in the yard hit her. The rest of the family and the servants made it safely to shelter in the Gresham house. This is called the Bishop’s Palace nowadays, and you can see it still standing on Broadway, a big granite mansion. I’m sorry, are you alright?”
Martin looked up. “I think my house is haunted,” he blurted out, although this wasn’t exactly what he wanted to say.
“Oh, my dear,” Mrs. Miller looked at him kindly. “The whole island is.”
Martin drove down to Stewart Beach and walked awhile, sad and confused. Knowing the Parkers had really existed made his dreams unbearably poignant, overshadowed as they now were by the impending disaster and Lizzie’s death. All those happy moments, all the tranquility of their household, were going to be quite literally swept away. September 8, 1900 was when the monstrous storm, unnamed in those days, hit Galveston. In last night’s dream, Harrison had mentioned the date. September 5th.
Martin finally went home, although there was no rest to be found there. He paced around his living room, his thoughts racing futilely. What was the point of his visions of the Parkers’ lives? There was nothing he could do to alter the past, was there? He couldn’t even speak in his dreams. The only thing he knew for sure was that he dreaded having to be witness to the inevitable events.
That night, his dream was as pleasant as usual, but the sunlit backyard he found himself in seemed a cruel mockery. Lizzie and Sam were trying to give Jimmy a bath. Jimmy was resisting vigorously, jumping from the tub and racing around the yard. Sam put his hands on his hips and said authoritatively, “Now James, you get in the bath this minute!”
Lizzie laughed. She looked up at Martin and her expression became concerned. “Why, you look worried!” Martin waved his hands and tried ineffectually to voice a warning. Lizzie stood up from the lawn, seeming perplexed—and Martin woke up, alone as usual in his dark bedroom.
Martin went to work on Monday, frazzled and distracted. He was trying unsuccessfully to focus on a batch of insurance claims when he became aware of the conversation between two of his coworkers out in the hall. They were discussing a tropical storm that was due to hit Galveston the next day. Martin got up from his desk in alarm. He hadn’t listened to the news in several days, but apparently he should have. He joined them in the hall and asked, “I’m sorry? There’s a storm? I’ve been a little out of it this week. Do we need to leave?”
The older of the two, Tim, laughed. “No, no. Not for a tropical storm. Most folks won’t even budge for a Cat 1 or 2 hurricane. Just make sure you have groceries and flashlights and a full tank of gas in case there’s flooding. Hopefully, the thing won’t stall over us.”
“So it’s really not dangerous?”
“Not if you have any common sense. You’ll see fools out in the water, surfing the waves and trying to drown. If you’re worried about your windows, you can tape them up or close your storm shutters, if you’ve got ’em.”
“Okay,” Martin said doubtfully. He went back to his desk and his reviewing of claims, where he discovered to his consternation that he was struggling not to sympathize with the claimants.
Martin ran several errands after work, following Tim’s recommendations. He filled up his car’s gas tank, got groceries and extra batteries for his flashlights, and even bought a battery-powered lantern. He received a terse text from his landlord, instructing him to close the house’s storm shutters, or else he would be liable for any window breakage. This took him a considerable amount of time, given the many windows in the house. At last he sat exhausted in his living room, all preparations made. All of this seemed a little too much in synchrony with his dream timeline. Martin dreaded the night’s revelations. His feet dragged upon the stairs on the way to bed.
Martin woke to the sound of rain pounding on his roof. The closed shutters made the house so dim he was unsure of the time. Looking at his phone, he saw it was 6:30 in the morning. He realized with a shock that for the first time in weeks, he could not recall any kind of a dream, not even a run-of-the-mill one. Martin stewed over what this could mean as he made his coffee and listened to the weather report. Apparently this rain was just the outermost edge of the storm, with much more intense rainfall to follow.
Did the lack of dreaming mean that everything was over for Lizzie, that upon her death the replay of the house’s history was done? Martin felt both relieved and ashamed by the anti-climactic end to his visions. He felt he had abandoned Lizzie somehow, but surely that was foolish. She was long dead, long lost to the past.
Martin went in to work, but his manager sent everybody home mid-morning. The heart of the storm was due to hit in the early evening, and everyone wanted to be safely home before it arrived.
Martin sat in his living room, the TV tuned to weather coverage, and tried not to think about the Parkers. They would have received no such minute-by-minute updates. The 1900 storm had taken Galveston pretty much by surprise. There had been warnings out of Cuba of an approaching monster, but these had been disregarded by the authorities. The chaos had descended unexpectedly, the island ultimately drowning beneath a fifteen-foot storm surge.
He finally went up to bed quite early, too depressed to enjoy the distractions of TV or reading. He sent his mother a reassuring text, quoting Tim’s casual assessment liberally. He fell asleep to the sound of the hardest rain he had ever experienced.
Abruptly, he found himself in a dark bedroom, that driving rain still assaulting the roof and windows. Martin was terribly confused. Was this a dream, or was it happening? Surely a dream, because there was Lizzie, standing in the doorway. She was uncharacteristically solemn and pale.
She said to Helen, who was lying on the bed, “Papa thinks we should try to go to the Greshams’ house. He thinks it will stand the storm better. You need to get up, Helen.”
“I don’t feel like walking through this deluge, and I won’t go without Jimmy. I haven’t seen him all morning and I won’t leave him.” Helen’s hand was on her enormous stomach and tears were running down her face.
“I’ll try to find him again. Just try to get up. You have to get up!” Lizzie turned and ran down the hall to the staircase.
Martin ran after her, panic-stricken. “Oh Lizzie, wait, wait! Don’t worry about the dog, you need to be careful!” To his surprise, he could hear himself shouting. Lizzie heard him, too, and turned for a second at the landing to look at him before dashing down the stairs. Martin went after her, his bare feet slapping on the wooden steps. Lizzie reached the first floor and headed through the kitchen to the back door. She paused to unlock it, and Martin stopped short in the middle of the kitchen. There on the table was his tablet. The refrigerator hummed quietly in its corner. Lizzie in her Victorian dress was turning the deadbolt. Dream and reality met seamlessly. “What is happening,” he heard himself say in a calmly interested tone. Lizzie didn’t answer, but shot through the opened door. It banged wildly in the howling wind. Martin hesitated a second, then followed Lizzie out into the raging rain. He lost sight of her in the storm, and was standing bewildered under a torrent of rain with his feet in the mud when he heard a deafening crash. A huge branch from the old oak had broken, and crushed in the corner of the house where Martin’s bedroom was located.
Martin stood on the sidewalk across from his house. He had spent the night with his neighbor, Eric, who had rushed over upon hearing the terrific crunch of Martin’s bedroom being obliterated. They had never been particularly friendly, but an emergency was an emergency, and Martin was awkwardly grateful for his help.
Martin had managed to contact his landlord, who was standing with an insurance agent in the front yard of the ravaged house. Little bits of their conversation drifted over to him—“dead wood” and “microburst” and “possible liability”. Every once in a while, one or the other of them would give Martin a wary look.
Martin was uninterested in their evaluations. He thought he understood things a little, now. How arrogant it had been for him to think it had been about him saving Lizzie. Lizzie had worked very hard all summer to make sure he knew and loved her, to make sure he cared enough to follow her out when the time came. So that his life would be saved. He wondered if she would still be in the house, now that her task was done. With sadness, he thought probably not. She had other things to attend to, he imagined.
“—guardian angel.” Eric had appeared at his side.
“What?” said Martin, startled out of his thoughts.
“I said, you sure had a guardian angel. That branch is probably laying right across your bed.”
“Yes, yes, I know,” said Martin. That seemed exactly right, a guardian, not a ghost. She had crossed a gulf of time and death to save him, while he would hardly cross the street to help someone else. And here was Eric, being a good neighbor, when their longest conversation prior to last night had been Martin complaining about Eric not moving his garbage bins off the curb quickly enough. Martin was overcome with humility and contrition, and suddenly tears were streaming down his face.
“I’m sorry,” Martin whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
“Aw, don’t think anything of it. Anyone would be upset after such a close call,” said Eric, misunderstanding. Though previously he could not have imagined doing such a thing, he put his arm around Martin’s shoulders, and the two men stood together in the newly washed morning.
L.H. Phillips is a retired molecular biologist with a life-long love of all types of speculative fiction. Previous stories have appeared in Aphelion, The Nameless Songs of Zadok Allen, and Road Kill vol 9. She lives in San Antonio, TX with her husband and cat.
“Timestorm” by L.H. Phillips. Copyright © 2025 by L.H. Phillips.
A lovely story, Ms. Phillips, I enjoyed it throughly, and very much looking forward to the next one, g’day, madam.
ReplyDeleteThank you! It was my valentine to Galveston
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