That dark red light vanished very quickly.
So quickly that Allen wasn't even sure he'd really seen it. It had risen from deep within the clouds like the half-open eyelid of some enormous creature, dark red, blurred at the edges, pulsing slowly in a way that made his skin crawl. Just that once, and then it sank back into the grayish-purple cloud. As if it had never been there at all.
But every hair on Allen's body was standing on end.
He stared fixedly out the window, fingers pressed against the plastic panel beside it, his knuckles going a little white. The clouds outside were growing darker and darker. What had been a fluffy gray-white layer looked as if dirty water had been poured into it, a purple-black stain spreading outward from within. The light in the cabin dimmed along with it. The reading lamp overhead was still on, but against that sky its glow looked thin, like paper stuck to glass.
"Hey... did you just see anything outside?" Allen turned to ask the people next to him.
The old woman was clutching the armrest, and there was no smile left on her face. When she heard him, she only shook her head, her lips pressed pale. The old man had sat up straight too, eyes half open, looking out the window on the other side with his brows knotted together. Clearly neither of them had seen the light. But they had seen the sky go dark.
"What kind of weather is this? It's like we're about to fall into the night..." the old man grumbled.
Allen said nothing.
He turned his face to the window again, his forehead almost touching the glass. The plane was still bumping, not violently, but without letup, as if countless invisible hands were slapping at its belly from below. Then he saw that light again... Clearer this time. It wasn't lightning. Lightning should be a line, instantaneous, white, forked. This light was a mass, glowing outward from inside the cloud, dark red at the edges and purplish in the middle, as though someone had wrapped a giant red-hot coal in cotton wool. It couldn't burn its way through, but it kept on smoldering.
It was moving. Very slowly, as if rising up from deep within the clouds.
Allen felt his stomach go cold.
"Sir, please close your window shade." At some point a flight attendant had come up to his row, her voice pitched low, as if she were afraid the other passengers might hear. Her face was still smiling and her makeup hadn't smudged, but her eyes were drifting, as if something had drained the strength out of her.
Allen looked up at her. "Has something happened out there?"
The flight attendant paused, then answered without really answering. "For safety, please lower your window shade for now. The area we're passing through has fairly strong turbulence, so please make sure your seatbelt is fastened."
With that she moved on, repeating the same words to the other passengers. When someone stopped her to ask how much longer until they arrived, she only said vaguely, "Soon." Allen watched her back, and the chill inside him deepened. Soon... This clearly didn't look like "soon."
"Young man, what did you say you saw just now?" the old woman asked in a small voice with a slight tremble in it.
Allen thought about it and said, "There's something in the clouds."
"Something like what?"
"I can't really say," he said. "Maybe it was just light."
The old man clicked his tongue and reached over to pat the back of his wife's hand. "Don't go imagining things... We're on a plane, after all. Light inside a thundercloud is perfectly normal. Back when I used to go out to sea, I saw whole stretches of sky go red along the horizon. That's just moisture and light playing tricks. Nothing strange about it."
Allen didn't argue any further, but he knew full well it was anything but normal. He'd lived twenty-odd years and had never once seen that color seep out of a cloud. It reminded him of running a fever as a child, lying with his eyes shut in the dead of night while reddish-purple shapes kept drifting in front of them. They weren't real, yet they could jolt you awake out of a dream.
The plane suddenly tilted to the left, and not by a little. A few passengers who hadn't buckled up screamed, and something in an overhead bin slammed against its side with a bang. A flight attendant staggered and only kept from falling by grabbing a seatback. The cabin went silent for an instant, and then a child's wailing burst out.
"Mommy, are we going to fall?"
"No, no, we're not, don't say things like that. Keep your seatbelt on, and don't look outside."
But the more people said that, the more everyone wanted to look. Most of the window shades had already been pulled down, yet someone was always sneaking a corner up. Allen quietly slid his own shade open a crack. The sight outside froze him where he sat.
The clouds had parted...
Or rather, the plane was passing through an immensely thick wall of cloud of unknown depth, and the inside of that wall was purple-black, as if lit from within by some kind of light. He could see the wing trembling, the lights at its tip flashing desperately, red and blue by turns, glaring against the churning black cloud. And farther out past the wing, within that purple-black cloud, more than one light was flickering.
This time, it was lightning.
But not the kind of lightning he knew, either. These bolts struck upward from deep in the clouds like trees hung upside down, forking from the bottom up, fine and sharp, their color jumping between dark purple and blood red. Each time they flared, the whole cloud was lit straight through, as if its innards had been turned inside out for everyone to see.
Allen saw it.
Within the clouds, there was a silhouette.
He couldn't be sure. It was too far away. The thing was too huge. It lurked inside the clouds like a mountain, like a colossal beast, like a breathing shadow hanging down from the sky. Whenever lightning flared around it, the silhouette surfaced a little more, like a face not yet awake. Allen looked for less than two seconds before it felt as if something had pressed down hard on his head, and his vision went black.
He yanked the shade down with a snap and flattened his back against the seat, his chest heaving. His forehead was slick with cold sweat.
"Young man? Why do you look so awful?" The old woman reached over to steady him.
Allen waved her off, his voice a little hoarse. "I'm fine. I might just be... a bit airsick."
The old man glanced at him without saying anything, took a mint from his pocket and held it out. Allen took it, his fingers still shaking, and put it in his mouth. The mint was sharp, shooting straight up into his nose, and it cleared his head a little. He didn't dare look out the window again. He was afraid that if he took one more look, it would stop being something as simple as airsickness.
"Everyone back to your seats! Fasten your seatbelts!" The flight attendant's voice came from up front, all of its earlier gentle restraint gone, turned rushed and shrill. She practically ran back to her seat, and even after sitting down she was still saying something to the colleague beside her... Then the cabin lights suddenly went out.
Not total darkness. The emergency lights came on, a bluish-white glow seeping up from both edges of the floor and lighting the passengers' faces so they looked like a crowd of people sunk underwater. The speakers crackled on, cutting in and out, as if a hand were choking the microphone. Allen strained to listen and caught only a few broken words: "...abnormal... please remain... do not panic..."
Then the announcements died too...
Now the only sound in the whole cabin was the wind. A tremendous roar of wind. It tore past the outside of the fuselage like countless whips lashing sheet metal. The plane shook even harder, as though it might fall apart at any moment. The old woman seized Allen's hand, her palm dry and cold, gripping it like something that could save her life. He looked down and saw her lips moving, as though she were reciting Buddhist prayers. The old man said nothing, only closed his hand over hers as well. The three of them held their hands stacked together, and Allen could even feel the shape of the two old people's bones.
"It'll be okay." Allen heard himself say it, not loudly, but as steadily as he could manage.
He didn't really believe it. But somebody had to say it.
A thunderclap exploded outside the window... The whole plane jolted violently upward, as if someone had given it a savage kick from underneath. Allen clenched his teeth; the back of his head smacked into the seat, and stars filled his eyes. Children crying, adults screaming, luggage crashing together, everything slammed into one great tangle in that instant. He felt the plane tilting, veering in some direction as if trying to get around something, but the wind was too strong. There was no way it could get around.
"My God, what is that up in the sky—" A man up front suddenly stood up, pointing out the window.
"Sit down! Sit down right now!" a flight attendant screeched.
But it was too late. More and more people were looking outside. People started shouting, started praying, started crying. Allen didn't look again. He only stared at the safety card tucked into the seatback in front of him. It showed two little figures, white lines on a blue background, sitting there quietly... How nice. Allen thought how nice it would be to sit safely, just like the figures in that picture, and not have to worry about anything else.
But the seatbelt around his waist was already pulled as tight as it would go, and his shoulders were still being thrown this way and that. The old man beside him had his eyes shut, his lips opening and closing too. The old woman was no longer holding Allen's hand; hers just lay limply on his wrist. Allen looked down. She seemed to have been frightened past the point of having any strength left, her face frighteningly white.
"Granny, it's okay... Breathe in. Slowly." Allen leaned close to her ear, doing his best not to sound like he was shaking.
She gave a faint nod.
The plane was still trapped in those clouds, as if something were holding it in its mouth, and no matter what, it couldn't fly free...