Bridget Barnhill stood on the front porch of her family's old Nebraska home, watching the greenish-gray clouds swirl together in the darkening sky.
Behind her the screen door opened at Bridget's mother, Elizabeth, walked out next to her daughter. "Come on now, dear," she said, taking Bridget's hand. "There's a big storm coming and we need to get down to the cellar. Come help your sisters and I get ready."
Bridget took one last look at the clouds, then quickly followed her mother into the house, just as the sky started to rumble angrily.
Inside, Bridget's two sisters, Peggy and Martha, were rushing around, gathering all the supplies they would need in the cellar.
Just then, with a loud crackle of thunder, the sky let loose and it started to downpour. The rain pounded on the tin roof of the little house, making a lot of racket. The backdoor opened a few minutes later and the father, James Barnhill- who had been outback rounding up the animals and getting them into the barn-rushed inside. He was soaked from head to toe. The rain must've been coming down fast.
"Here, dear," Elizabeth said as she handed her husband a towel from the kitchen.
James tried himself off, then assisted his wife and daughters in getting down to the cellar just as the giant hail balls started to fall out of the sky.
Once they were down in the storm cellar, Elizabeth lit a few candles and placed them on the floor in the center of the room. The family all gathered closely around the candles, as they were the only source of light in the dark basement.
The sky let loose all at once. Hail fell, thunder rumbled, rain pounded and lightning crackled, making a huge racket. Peggy moved in closer to her father, who would do anything to protect his daughters from harm.
After what seemed like hours, but was really only about ten minutes, the outside quieted down to an eerie silence.
Martha stood up and walked around, feeling the only safety she had felt in a while. But she stopped in her tracks and froze when a loud, ear-piercing sound that sounded like the world was being ripped in two, came from directly above them.
The girls screamed in horror as a whirling cloud of green and purple broke through the ceiling and came into the cellar.
James rushed over to his daughters and put his arms around them as Elizabeth walked closer to the cloud.
"Mom, no!" Martha shrieked. "What are you doing?"
Elizabeth reached out, touched the cloud, then started drinking it.
With a loud cackle, her outward appearance melted away to reveal a hideous old woman
"Who are you?" James demanded to know. "I know you are not my wife!'
"Of course I'm not your wife, you fool!" The woman who was not Elizabeth laughed. "I have hidden your dear Elizabeth. I have hidden her in a place where you will never find her!"
"No!' Peggy cried, hiding her face in James's dirty shirt.
The old woman cackled again and sent a bolt of electricity towards James and the three girls, knocking them backwards against the hard, stone wall.
Then, everything went black. And silent.
******
Bridget opened her eyes. She was lying in a huge meadow of flowers. Sunlight poured from the sky and birds chirped around her.
She sat up, rubbed her eyes and took in her surroundings. "Where am I?" she wondered out loud. "Am I dead?"
She tried to figure out if it was possible that she was dead and in heaven, but her thoughts were interrupted by a familiar voice shouting, "BRIDGET! PEGGY! WHERE ARE YOU?" In the woods on the left side of the meadow.
Bridget jumped up and ran towards the voice. She recognized it. It was Martha, her older sister.
As Bridget ran through the woods, she crashed into someone and they both fell to the ground. Bridget rubbed her head and said, "Oh my gosh I am so sorry-"
"Bridget!" Peggy cried when she realized that she had bumped into her older sister.
"Peggy! Oh Peggy!" Bridget hugged her little sister then said, "Come on! We need to find Martha!" The two sisters walked through the woods, calling, "Martha! It's Peggy and Bridget! Where are you?"
They both stopped and turned around when leaves rustled from behind them. "Bridget! Peggy!" Martha ran up to her sisters and embraced them both into a big hug.
"What happened?" Peggy asked.
"I don't know," Martha replied. "One minute we were all in the cellar and the next, well..." she trailed off, as it was painful for her to remember the horrified events that had just taken place in their cellar, who knows how long ago.
"But where are we?" Bridget asked as she looked around.
"I don't know," Martha said again. "Let's look around and see if we find anyone or anything that could tell us where we are."
Martha and Bridget slowly made their way through the forest. and Peggy excitedly ran ahead.
"Guys! Come here! I found something!" Peggy called from up ahead.
The two older sisters ran to the edge of the forest where Peggy was pointing over the bank.
"What is it, Peggy?" Martha asked.
Bridget looked to where Peggy was pointing. "It's a town, Martha! A town!"
Martha grabbed her sisters' hands. "Come on, let's go down and see if we can find anyone who will help us!" Together, the three sisters ran down over the bank to the town. For help.
******
The old woman stood in a dark cellar behind a crystal ball, which she ran her hands over a few times, then said, "Show me Martha."
The crystal glowed then revealed three girls running through a field and into a small town out in the middle of nowhere.
She watched as Martha tapped a woman on the shoulder and asked where they were at.
"Oh, you're in Hazelwood," she said. The woman smiled at the girls, then hurried off.
"Hazelwood?" Peggy repeated. "I've never heard of Hazelwood!"
"Neither have I," Martha, a genius in geography, agreed.
They continued on through the town, looking for someone who may be able to help them explain what had happened and help them find their father and possibly mother. Their REAL mother, that is, not the creepy old woman who was disguised as their mother in some sort of dark magic.
"Hey, this family seems pretty nice!" Peggy pointed over the fence at a family who was sitting in the backyard of a big, white house. There was a mother with a kind face, a father with loving eyes, and three kids, an older girl with curly light-brown hair who was sitting and reading on a swing, and a younger boy and girl, who were kicking a soccer ball back and forth under a shady willow tree.
The mother looked up and saw the Barnhill sisters watching them. She smiled and waved. "Hello, dears! Can I help you?"
Bridget and Peggy looked at Martha, the oldest and most responsible one, but when she didn't say anything, Bridget kicked her in the ankle.
Martha kicked Bridget back and said, "Um, well it's a pretty weird story, but we're lost and was hoping you could help us find our parents."
The Mother smiled and made her way over to the gate, which she opened, allowing for Martha, Peggy and Bridget to walk inside. "Come on in, girls. I'll get you some lemonade and cookies then you can tell us all about it."
The sister sat in a circle on the front porch with Joann, the mother at the big house. They sipped lemonade out of fancy glasses while they bit into soft, gooey, chocolate chip cookies.
"So, girls, what is it that you need to tell me?" Joann asked, patting her knees and smiling.
Martha took a sip of lemonade from the glass to wash down the last of her cookie. She took a deep breath and started from the very beginning.
Joann nodded a lot while Martha told the story, Peggy and Bridget added things occasionally, but for the most part it was silent.
"And that's about it," Martha said when she was done.
"I'm so sorry that happened to you," Joann told her. "I promise that we will do anything we have to do to help you girls out."
"Can we start by finding our father?" Bridget asked. "I'm sure he couldn't be far..."
Joann reached out and held Bridget's hand. "Yes, honey, of course."
******
The old woman watched intently as Martha, Bridget, Peggy and their new friends, Joann, Louise, Frannie, Henry and Lucas (the Martins), walked through the town towards the woods where they would start looking for James.
"I can't let them do this!" The old woman cried. She whispered something into her hands, gently caressed the globe and sat back to wait.
"Just up the bank and then-" Martha stopped mid-sentence as the ground underneath her started to shake.
"What's going on?" Peggy cried.
Before anyone could say anything else, the ground opened up and swallowed Martha. Peggy, Bridget and the Martins screamed and tried to run back, but the ground swallowed them up along with Martha.
A familiar cackle echoed through the pit as everyone was falling. It seemed like it was bottomless, but then they hit a hard, cement floor.
