“Yeah.”
Chris realized his father’s knuckles were white as he gripped the steering wheel.
They drove back to town in complete silence.
CHAPTER 20
CHIEF | 4:50PM
THE DETERIORATING SITUATION in Decker weighed heavy on Howard’s mind as he retreated, almost defeated, back to the courthouse and police department. When Barnes had told him about the fog on the outskirts of town, he scoffed at the idea, but now he knew. They really were cut off from the rest of the world.
Chris sat beside him, silent and leaning his head against the window. Though he’d cleaned up his mess the best he could, the interior still smelled of vomit, that sour acid stench that wouldn’t go away without a good shampooing. Howard doubted he’d have time for such luxury. All things considered, a little vomit stain was the least of his worries.
He pulled the Tahoe into the parking space on the back side of the courthouse. Where the front façade had been worked over in recent years with new granite, giving the town’s main square a face lift and making it more inviting, the back side of the building was still drab, red brick.
Chris followed him through the back entrance, a steel and glass double-door that led into the long hallway at the bottom level of the courthouse. Chris drudged, quiet and slow. “Pick your feet up, son,” Howard barked over his shoulder. He hated when his son shuffled his feet when he walked.
In his office, the chief threw his keys on the desk as customary. Chris took a seat in a chair by the filing cabinet and rested his head on the cinderblock wall. Officer Brad Barnes stepped in the office. “Did you see it, sir?” the younger officer asked.
Howard grumbled an affirmative and placed his hands on his desk and leaned forward on his knuckles. His forearms beneath the long-sleeve button up shirt stretched the fabric.
“Did you get him?” the chief asked.
“Oliver? Yes sir, I did. I arrested him this afternoon and brought him to the station for questioning. He’s in the board room with Duncan now,” Barnes said.
“Good,” the chief said, curtly.
“Is everything alright, sir? You look live you’ve seen a ghost.”
Howard straightened up and flexed his neck to each side of his shoulders. The tension in his upper back was tighter than ever, and he’d give anything to have one of Penny’s famous shoulder massages right now. “No, I’m not alright. I don’t know what that cloud is outside of town, but it isn’t natural. We haven’t seen a single vehicle on the highway since yesterday. Whatever’s out there, can’t get through to us, and we can’t get out.”
“Perhaps, sir, if we—” Barnes started, though the chief continued.
“We’re going to run low on supplies. Food, fuel, hell, even bullets. And when the citizens left in this town realize that there’s no way out of here, the shit is going to hit the fan. We need to prepare for the worst, Barnes.”
Brad Barnes nodded in agreement.
Detective Duncan shuffled in to the office and rapped his knuckles on the doorframe to announce his arrival. He had a manila folder in his hands. “Chief, I’ve been interrogating the gentleman that Barnes here brought in.” As he stepped into the room, he extended the folder out to Howard.
“So he says he doesn’t remember what happened last night?” Howard said, the folder open as he read the investigator’s notes.
“That’s correct. He was at Mulligan’s last night—where he was seen dancing with Ms. Harlow—and says he left the bar with some of his acquaintances at two in the morning. Mr. Oliver then went to one their houses. Except he didn’t want the party with Ms. Harlow to be over. When Barnes questioned the men he was with, they said he showed up about fifteen minutes later than the rest of them. And get this; the woman was his wife’s sister. Can you believe that?”
“Is that enough time?” Howard asked.
Duncan shrugged his shoulders but nodded. “Five minutes to drive to the vic’s house, five minutes to do the deed and five minutes back? It’d be pushing it, but I think so, sir.” He turned to Barnes who nodded in agreement.
“You can absolutely pin it on him then?” the chief reiterated.
“I’d say, at this point, it’s your call, sir. I’ll tell you, when I really pressed into him for information, he clammed up and asked for a lawyer. With the D.A. gone with the rest of the women, I’d say it’s up to you to charge him or not,” Duncan said.
The chief opened the folder again and browsed the handwritten notes in Duncan’s chicken scratch. “Here’s the deal, gentlemen. In the course of,” he looked up at the clock on the wall, its black hands ticking away across a white face, “twelve hours, we’ve gone from the women in this town vanishing, to discovering a murder. Riots in the streets, men going insane trying to break into the stores. If we don’t put our foot down right now, we’re going to lose all control of this town.” He leaned forward on his desk again, his fists flexing against the wood. “I am not about to let that happen. We are going to show this town who’s in charge.” He looked over to his son. “Chris,” the chief barked.
Chris, still leaning his head against the wall, opened his eyes to the sound of his name. “Take a patrol car out back. Start going through the Southlawn neighborhood. Announce on the loudspeaker that there’s another mandatory meeting tonight at seven o’clock.”
Chris stood up and took a set of keys hanging above his head in a lockbox. “Yes sir,” he said as he left the room.
“You too, Barnes. Go through town, hit every neighborhood you can think of. Seven tonight,” Howard instructed.
“What are you thinking, chief?” Duncan asked. “You’ve already implemented a full curfew.”
“Like I said, we’re going to show this town that we are in charge. We call the shots, we make the rules. So tonight, we’re going to enforce some justice. Tonight, we’re going to have ourselves a hangin’.”
CHAPTER 21
CHRIS | 5:40PM
CHRIS MCMILLAN pulled his belt taut as he walked out of his father’s office, his skinny frame feeling much bulkier in the police uniform. He hadn’t said much since returning to the station from the investigation of the fog.
He was certain that he’d be arrested for the murder of that woman. How fortuitous was it that they pinned the guy he’d seen her dancing with? It couldn’t have worked out any better. Except, the vision he’d seen in the fog ate at the back of his brain.
The child haunted his thoughts. The boy, the demon with red eyes, saw him. Knew what he’d done. There was no child, however, not in the house when he was there. This was simply paranoia, he conceded. The boy wasn’t real, just a dream.
But there was only one way to be sure. He’d take a car and drive back out there, back to the low, rolling cloud that encircled their town and he’d stand at the edge of it, beg it to take him back. He knew that he was different now, and needed to see it again. Chris needed to face it again. The first time, he’d been scared of the vision. This time, he’d go back, ready for it.
With one act of violence, he had shed the old Chris McMillan, the one who couldn’t get a woman to look at him, the one that wallowed in self-pity in the depths of the basement. The one that failed out of college because he couldn’t get his shit together.
But, oh, his shit was definitely together now.
Seeing himself in the reflection of a window into one of the dark offices in the hall, he squared his shoulders and gave himself a once-over, admiring himself. Women love a man in uniform. What irony. There were no women left for him to test the hypothesis.
His mother would have loved to see this, however. How proud she would have been of him, standing in the same uniform that his father put on every single day of his professional life. The cancer took her fast and without mercy, leaving the two men who couldn’t be any different to their own devices. There was still something in him, though, full of anger and rage.
That’s the one thing that didn’t leave. The rage. The disdain for the fairer sex, who held ou
t from him. Even after he’d proven to himself that he could take whatever he wanted, the rage still broiled deep inside his gut.
As Chris walked out of the police station to the parking lot, he didn’t even notice the four year-old boy sleeping on the bench in the brightly-lit hallway outside of the interrogation room.
He walked out to the row of police cruisers, only three left in the parking lot and entered the one that matched the number on the set of keys he’d pulled from his father’s office. His father had given him instructions, but Chris had different things on his mind. As he drove out of the parking lot that housed the police cruisers, his thoughts stayed on the cloud.
Why did it take his mind back to that house? Why did it show him that scene? And the child with the red eyes, burning with that demonic gaze. It was a mystery, but like all mysteries it held something familiar underneath.
From Main Street, he started west toward the Southlawn neighborhood, one of the more affluent communities in their town. Looking down Southlawn Drive itself, lined with large pecan trees, some of which were over fifty years old, Chris could see men in their yards, boarding up windows. Not from weather or storms, but from the threat of looters. It amazed him how quickly the entire town cratered in the wake of the vanishing. Fumbling with the console, he found the switch that turned on the lights on top of the vehicle as well as the emergency siren. Taking the announcement handset beneath the console, he checked it and spoke into it. Even from inside the vehicle, his voice echoed through the neighborhood.
“Attention, citizens. Mandatory meeting tonight. 7pm. Courthouse square.” Chris repeated the message as he crept down the canopied street. Over and over, pausing for a few seconds before resuming, he continued.
“What the hell does McMillan want now?” he heard an angry voice from the porch of one of the houses, but Chris paid it no heed. The words barely registered. Instead, his mind was filled with the vision from the cloud and it ate at his brain, simultaneously frightening and intriguing. He needed to see it again.
After a few moments of hesitation, Chris drove out of the neighborhood and back toward Main Street and toward the highway, speeding through the residential streets. He only hoped the fog would open up to him as it did before.
He was back on the highway, the sun starting to set behind him, glaring through the back window of the patrol car when he crested the hill just after the Decker city limits when he saw it rising up before him—the ominous black cloud, the fog rolling, glowing in the golden light as it folded in on itself. To Chris, it looked like it was breathing, this ring of fog as high and as far as he could see, stretching off in the distance.
The dull headache he’d had all day reared its ugly head as he slowed the vehicle to the hovering cloud. The pain radiated from his temples to his eye sockets and he thought he was going to pass out again. Instead, he willed himself to stay awake through the pain. Pulling the cruiser to the side of the highway, Chris stepped out of the vehicle and walked to the edge of the fog. As he got closer, the pain in his skull raged heavier. Reaching out with his hand, Chris touched the rolling cloud. An electric pain coursed through his body and he let out a scream.
His eyes opened and he took a gulp of air into his lungs. It felt like he’d been under water, able to breech the surface at the last moment. His heart pounded in his chest and his eyes acclimated to the dark. But he knew he was back. A ceiling fan turned lazily above him, the base shaking slightly as the blades revolved. Turning his head to the side, Chris confirmed it. The woman’s dead blank stare, her mouth gaping open in an eternal scream, held inches from his own face. All his senses came back one by one and the stench of sex and death lingered in the room.
“She’s not waking up.” Chris heard the quiet voice and he turned to face the source, the little boy standing in the doorway of the bedroom. He had on a set of Avengers pajamas, Iron Man streaking across his little milk-stained chest.
Chris sat up on the bed. “Who are you?” he asked the little boy. “What do you want?”
The boy looked up at Chris. “You are bad man,” he said. His eyes began to turn red just as they had before, little red circles burning into Chris’s mind.
This time, it was different.
Chris stood up from the bed and approached the boy who continued to scream, “Bad man! Bad man!”
The silhouette of a dark figure appeared behind the boy but hovered just behind the doorway. Chris couldn’t make out the features of the man, but his focus now was entirely on the child. The boy continued to scream at Chris, his high-pitched wail breaking the silence of the rest of the vision.
Reaching out, Chris wrapped his hands around the boy’s neck and squeezed. The child’s eyes continued to burn into Chris’s skull but he held steadfast, forcing more pressure against the neck of the boy.
Finally, the little boy’s eyes went dark and he crumpled to the floor. A sound pounded in Chris’s ears, and at first he thought it was his heartbeat. Looking up at the doorway, the silhouette-man pounded his fists into the darkness, each time making a loud crash against an invisible barrier. Chris stood and pressed against his fingertips against the invisible barrier, standing nearly toe to toe to the dark figure, trying to make out any features of the shadow person. There was nothing though.
Chris then looked down at the boy’s lifeless body at his feet. The pain in his eyes completely vanished. A whooshing sound behind him made him turn and he saw the dark fog snake its way back into the room through the cracks in the bedroom windows. It coalesced into a single stream that floated back into the dead woman’s nostrils and gaping mouth.
In a moment, he knew. The fog, the boy, the woman on the bed, it was all connected. Chris gave one final look at the boy’s lifeless body as the fog disappeared into the woman. He knew what he needed to do now.
Chris needed to find this little boy.
And he needed to kill him.
CHAPTER 22
JEM | 5:15PM
JEM’S HOUSE FINALLY had some sound going through it. He’d hooked up the record player and put on a U2 record that Susan kept in a crate at the bottom of one of their storage closets. Bono’s voice echoed through the otherwise empty home.
After his experience with the fog, he’d come back home to process the vision he’d seen. A part of him was convinced it was some sort of pain-induced hallucination. But what caused the pain? The fog itself? It didn’t make sense. He wanted to go out to investigate, but the police were monitoring every neighborhood, keeping the men in their homes after the scene at the grocery store earlier that afternoon.
He considered telling one of the officers what he’d seen, but given Chief McMillan’s heavy trigger finger, he might find himself a suspect. And the last thing he wanted was the chief’s attention.
Instead, Jem had an idea. He’d try again early tomorrow morning, before sunrise. He’d make another run at the fog and try to get out of the town and alert the county authorities of the degradation of society in Decker.
A knocking sound came from his front door and he turned down the volume of the record player. Jem cautiously went to the door. Looking out the peephole, he saw his neighbors Scott and Jay standing on the front porch with a bottle of wine in hand.
He opened the door. “Hey gentlemen,” Jem said.
Scott held out the bottle. “Figured you could use some company,” he said.
“Of course,” Jem said and let them in. “Were you downtown for the impromptu townhall meeting?”
“Oh, of course,” Jay said as Jem led them to the breakfast nook in the kitchen. He pulled out the chairs and the two neighbors sat down while Jem went to get wine glasses from one of the cabinets above their concrete countertops. Susan had insisted on concrete for an industrial look.
“I am just in shock,” Scott said. He pulled at the cork from the bottle until it finally gave. “I do hope you like Chardonnay, Jem.”
Jem returned to the table and sat three long-stemmed glasses in front of them. “Of course. Pour away.
”
As Scott poured the white wine into their glasses, he said, “And then we heard what went down at the grocery this afternoon, over the police scanner. We are so sorry.”
“Thank you,” Jem said. He sipped from his glass, the chilled white wine tasting light on his palette.
“How do things get so crazy so fast?” Jay said. His voice was softer than his husband’s.
“This is what happens to society,” Jem said. “You don’t realize how fragile civility is.”
“Steve was a good man,” Scott said. “He didn’t deserve what happened.”
“Of course not,” Jem said. “Who knows what else is going to happen.”
“That’s why we’ve decided to hole up at home,” Jay said. “It’s quiet but we’ve got plenty to occupy us.”
“And plenty of wine,” Scott said.
Jem raised his glass to that. “Not too much,” he said. “It’ll make this headache even worse.”
“You too?” Jay said. “I’ve got this—”
Jem cut him off, “Dull ache behind your eyes that radiate into your temples?”
Both Jay and Scott looked at each other in a kind of disbelief. “That’s…” Jay started, “exactly what it is. How did you know?”
“I’ve got it, too. Ever since I woke up this morning. Thought it was my penance for too much bourbon and too little sleep,” Jem said. He decided not to share his experience with the fog, how it made that dull ache explode and radiate through his whole body.
“We’ve both got the same thing,” Scott said. He picked up the bottle and topped off each of their glasses. “But, perhaps with enough wine we’ll forget about it.”
Despite the lightheartedness and kindness his neighbors showed him—and he was thankful for it—a sense of dread permeated his thoughts. More than seeing his friend gunned down in front of the grocery, it ate deep at his core. Jem didn’t understand it, but he knew things were only going to get worse.
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