Everyone seemed to hold their breath, hushed in anticipation, as the atmosphere crackled with an electric tension. People’s hairs, on their necks and arms, stood on end. Distant dogs barked pointlessly and pigeons settled on branches, puffing out their feathers and hunching in their necks. Fat little pillows plumped in apple tree branches. A distant rumble, low and menacing, suddenly trembled through the stillness, a warning not to ignore.

The air thickened, heavy with a foretaste of impending rain. The trees' leaves shimmered, their vibrant green hues in stark contrast to the dark shadow of encroaching darkness. A gust of wind swept through the land, stirring dust devils and causing the witches' knickers in the trees by the roadsides to flick and fly once more. The wind, carrying with it the scent of petrichor, the earthy perfume of impending rain, mingled with an underlying sense of expectation.

In the distance, the horizon blurred, suddenly swallowed by an advancing wall of darkness. A veil, in Paynes grey and charcoal black, sheeting down to the ground, obscuring the path ahead in a shroud of deepest purples. Shadows danced, elongating and contorting as if fleeing from an unseen terror.

A flash of light rent the sky, jagged tendrils reaching down from the heavens like the pointing, spindle, bony fingers of some vengeful, blazing necromancer. The earth shuddered in response, and then a resounding and sudden crashing, smashing, booming clap created a tremor that reverberated through every fibre. Shaking the windows in their casements, rattling doors and gates and batting off dustbin lids to clatter noisily in alleys and back streets.

And then, silence. A pregnant pause, as if the world and everything on it held its collective breath, waiting for the inevitable. And in that moment, the heavens burst open, unleashing vast flapping, folding, furling, soaking sheets of cold, clear, drenching rain.