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Lake Beaverfork, Annabelle and Seth were killed in a car accident.

CHAPTER 4
    Seth

    â€œWe only part to meet again.”
    â€”John Gay
    Annabelle was a diabetic and had a low blood sugar attack behind the wheel, causing her to veer off the road and hit a tree. That was what the responding officer on the scene told me, but I knew better. She was exhausted from running our household and taking care of Seth with little or no help from me. Her mild diabetes was never an issue before, and I was sure she had simply fallen asleep at the wheel. This knowledge was like pouring salt in an open wound. I was told by one of the attending EMTs in an attempt to give me some comfort that they died instantly. How can anything comfort you at a time like this? The nightmare had not happened as I had imagined, but it had happened all the same. Except it was worse; I had lost both of them.
    Today when the storm hit I was downstairs in our comfortable four-bedroom home in Conway, Arkansas. “Our” is a possessive pronoun that I will have to learn to get out of the habit of saying, but it still feels right. It feels right even after the stabbing pain of recollection every time it slips out because there is no more “our,” only “my.”
    I don’t even remember what I was watching when the storm arrived, after a while it just became white noise buzzing in the background, droning away as I pondered the living nightmare in which I now found myself.
    After sitting in the kitchen floor, dazedly listening to the radio for what seemed like hours, I think what finally got my attention was the light coming in through the window. It was not sunlight, although it was mid-afternoon and the sun would have been shining through the westward window I was facing. It was not lightning or car lights, although I did think it may be the taillights of a very large truck at first glance. I went to the window and looked out, almost losing all my breath in a large gasp of surprise.
    The scene outside my window was surreal, like looking through a portal into another world. This was my lawn, my vehicle, my street, and my neighborhood, of this there was no doubt. But it was like the sun had been replaced by a gigantic ultraviolet light. The colors of the grass, trees, and plants were magnified tenfold, and all seemed to glow with an eerie luminescence. The blue sky had been replaced with a faint lavender hue and was speckled with yellow clouds. Wonderland has come to Arkansas , I thought to myself. But, I would soon find what a limited statement that was. Wonderland had come to the planet.
    Like most people do when there is breaking news, out of habit I ran back to the TV to see what the alphabet networks had to say. In my distracted state of mind, I had forgotten the signal had gone out. In spite of the news reports, seeing gray static on every channel of my TV, I quickly deduced that it must be a problem with the set. After all, that particular TV was over ten-years-old and the last of the enormous cinder block televisions, so it must have just kicked the bucket.
    I hurried up the stairs to tune in on the newer plasma screen in the bedroom. At the top of the stairs rested a large landing that exited to a full-size bath in front of the stairs, a single bedroom to the right, and two bedrooms to the left. The master bedroom was to the far left. Seth’s bedroom was the single one to the right. The door had been closed for the past two weeks, but today it was open just a crack. I probably wouldn’t even have noticed if not for the strange light outside, shining through the bedroom window and streaming out through the small crack.
    I paused just as I reached the landing and looked at the door. A thin beam of purplish light flickered across the hardwood floor of the landing. I stopped and watched, mesmerized for a few moments, and then something made me jump with surprise. I saw movement in the light, as if someone inside my son’s