Storm - weather and fear won

Seven feet tall. Skin gray and pallid. Eyes of pure black. Breath fetid and rotting. The smell of decay upon its lips. Wings, paper-thin and laced with veins. Blood of putrid green. That's how I've always imagined it. That's how I see it still; that unnamable, unseen presence which pursued us like a tireless shadow. It was real and yet it was not. We had never heard it. We had never touched it. We never so much as glimpsed it. But we felt it. We felt the silent surge of darkness leaping from cloud to cloud. It came with the weather. One moment, clear skies and calm. Peace. And the next, a storm. Fear. Panic. Chaos. In seconds, thick clouds rolled in. No wind. No warning. The skies opened up. Rain poured forth from heaven's underbelly. The wind lilted unnaturally in the treetops, moaning and swaying in all directions. It was cold. Suddenly so very cold. Thunder, deep and menacing, shook the earth and the air. A spark of wicked light, for the briefest of seconds, bathed the sky in an unholy red-orange. The presence winked into existence. I wish I could explain how we felt it. I wish I could understand. Maybe it was never real. It can't have been. And I pray that I'm right. Being right would be so much simpler. I try to reassure myself: At the excitable age of fifteen, trapped in the forest in the midst of a downpour, my imagination had escaped my control and created the nameless specter. It was nothing more than an illusion. I had just wanted some sort of adventure. It wasn't a real entity. It couldn't harm us. After all, I had never seen the thing. I had never heard it. I had just subconsciously craved excitement. Nothing more. And still, I can't escape my fear. As much as I comfort myself, I cannot shed that feeling: the feeling of eyes upon me. My friend had come to visit that day. It was a rare and welcome occasion since, due to distance, we saw very little of each other. And that was what prompted our visit to the forest. It was a place of refuge. An escape. Although it was nearly time for him to depart, we made a journey to the thick swath of trees surrounding my house. It was childish logic: if we could distance ourselves from the house, he would have no need to leave. I know those woods like my own child. I know their aches and pains. I know every curve of every path. And I know when something is wrong. It had started as nothing. We had lit a fire and were chatting casually. And then the rain came. It was nothing odd. It was just rain. We hadn't been expecting the storm, but in the never-ending summer heat it was welcome. It started off as a light shower, an innocent deluge of sustenance for the earth. We were content to let the fire extinguish itself as we lost ourselves in the spellbinding cadence of rain on leaves. The rain was peaceful. And better yet, it was an excuse for my friend to remain in my company for more time. The first roll of thunder. A menacing growl. We joked that the sound had seemed almost...alive, like the voice of some great beast. As far as I'm concerned, it was no joke. After the first throb of thunder, the lilting lullaby of the rain began to accelerate. It began to darken. The rain came harder and faster. Soon the drops were so large that they stung on impact. Concern welled up within me. Shelter. We needed shelter. I went to search for branches to build a canopy out of. As I stood, the sky burst into color. It was that first bolt of lightning. We both felt it immediately. Why us? WHY US?! Still, we needed to keep as dry as we could. I couldn't let some 'hunch' distract me from that fact. Fifty feet from the tree we were huddled against was a fallen tree. It was a perfect place to find what branches I would need. I left my friend behind. Being of the same wiry frame as I was, he had already begun to shiver with the unexpected cold. Though I was shivering too, I knew the forest well enough to fetch everything we needed. I had an armful of branches when something in the woods changed. It's not easy to describe to someone else what I mean by that. It's like explaining the process of thinking