by Sara Clancy
“Yes.”
“Huh.” He poked at the fog again and drew closer to watch the event unfold once more. “It has to be a reaction. Maybe the bars are holding the warmth from the heaters and it’s somehow interfering with the fog.”
“Really?” she snipped. “That’s the theory you’re working with?”
“It’s possible,” he defended. “We have a pretty excellent heating system.”
“Do those bars feel warm to you?”
He glared at her. “Well, what is your grand theory?”
It was hard to keep her voice even as she answered the only way she could, “They did this.”
“They? As in the kids on the radio?”
“Yes.”
His eyebrows lifted. “The killer children are affecting the weather?”
“Last time, they came during blizzards. I hadn’t thought it was them at the time, but with this …” Ruby let the sentence trail off and waved a hand loosely in the direction of the mist.
“Right,” Tristan said slowly.
The tone was unmistakable, even for her. She had heard it a lot over the last few months. He was questioning her mental health.
“Okay, that’s two viable theories. One about science, the other about murderous children. We might never know the real reason.”
“You’re mocking me?”
“Blatantly,” he said. “But the fact remains that it doesn’t matter how this is happening, we still have to go through it if we’re going to reach the gondola. Are you up for that?”
Her fingers tightened around her concealed weapon. “I’m getting out of here.”
Tristan nodded and turned his attention to finding the latch that was now partially concealed in the weeping cloud. When he was ready, he didn’t open it. In his hesitation, he looked over to her once again. She couldn’t figure out what he wanted. Reassurance? Knowledge that he wasn’t alone? In the end, she figured that he just wanted to know that she was prepared. So she nodded. He yanked open the gate, creating a thunderous crack. The metal rattled and squeaked along the tracks as he folded it back in on itself.
Instantly, the mist poured inside. Yelping in surprise, Ruby stumbled out of the way, allowing the wave of fog to crash down against the floor instead of onto her. It swirled and rolled and added to the fog that clung to the ground. Captured in a shocked stupor, they watched most of it bubble free before they turned to look at each other.
“I’m sure there is some scientific explanation,” Tristan said. Swallowing a few more times, he added. “I’ll Google it while you’re on your way down.”
Ruby watched him, once more trying to discern just what he was trying to accomplish. It was impossible, so she just smiled slightly.
“Yeah, radio me what you find out,” she said with a weak smile.
The slight conversation broke the tension just enough to make them continue. Tristan pulled out his mobile phone and flicked on its flashlight. He scanned it over the fog. It didn’t allow them to see any better. Instead, it just made the airborne particles glow. A few lights were still on in the deeper recesses of the room. Each one was a fuzzy, golden orb suspended in the blanket of white.
By this time, Ruby had crept forward despite herself. She now stood beside Tristan at the slender opening of the gate, the gap too small for both of them to stand without their shoulders pressing together.
He tipped his mobile phone through the gap. “Ladies first.”
“Gee, thanks.”
She aimed for a light tone. It didn’t work. There was no way to keep the tremble of fear from entering her voice. The rapid thundering of her heart filled her ears as she turned to the gap again. A part of her realized that he might have been joking, but she moved forward nonetheless. Carefully, she slipped through the gate, not wanting to draw any more attention than they already had.
Stepping into the fog was like plunging into icy water. The sudden temperature drop instantly robbed her lungs of every particle of air. She gasped and the chill rushed into her mouth, freezing her teeth until they ached. Thick trails of water formed against her exposed skin and dripped down under the neckline of her shirt. She could feel them rolling down her spine, making her shiver. A harsh tremble took control of her hands as she gripped at her hidden weapon.
Behind her, she could hear Tristan following. Quickly, she glanced behind. It startled her to find that she had completely lost sight of him. There was only the little bobbing orb of his flashlight. Judging by its motion and size, he couldn’t have been more than a few feet from her, but all she could see of his actual form was the briefest glimpses of his silhouette. Everything else was a whiteout. She pushed her feet forward, sliding them over the tiles rather than taking a step. Having only the general idea of the layout and robbed of her depth perception, she couldn’t shake the thought that she was about to drop off the edge of the room and topple down the sharp, rocky slope below.
Working by memory, she shuffled across the open space in the general direction she thought the console was. On the far side of the room. Just beyond the arch of the gondola track. Tristan’s footsteps followed every step of the way, but they still sounded distinct. Muffled. It seemed that he too had decided that stealth was in their best interests. Relief flooded through her when her outstretched hand finally found the pillar of smooth metal.
She hadn’t been lying when she asserted that the machine was basically idiot proof. There were only about six buttons set out atop the pedestal, most of which she had never had to hit and had no idea of what they did. The silence of the room pressed down upon her with a crippling weight. But it wasn’t until she wrapped her hand around the side of the machine that the meaning of it struck her. She rocked back as if it were a physical blow and held her breath, waiting for the silence to break. It didn’t. Why is there no noise? she thought wildly.
There was no whirl, or grind, or hiss of the machinery. Pulling out her phone, Ruby clicked it on. The thin light couldn’t break through the mist. She swung her arm back and forth over the console, trying to disperse the fog so her flashlight could work better. But all of it didn’t matter. She could already see what she needed. She just didn’t want to believe that none of the buttons on the console were shining. They were all dull and flat.
“Did you touch this when you were locking up?” she asked Tristan in a harsh whisper.
“Of course not.”
“Are you sure?”
“I figured you would have gotten the gate, so I didn’t go any further than the gift shop. Everything here is how you left it.”
“No, it’s not.” She lifted her eyes. He was still barely more than a shifting blob of light. Training the beam of her flashlight onto him, she was just barely able to make out the shrouded features of his face. “I didn’t turn the gondola off.”
For a moment, he only watched her.
“Well, turn it back on,” he whispered through his teeth.
Ruby pulled the knife free from her pocket, needing to have it at the ready. The fog kept it from Tristan’s view and spared her from having to explain it to him. With a trembling hand, she jabbed at the biggest button on the console, the one that was supposed be emitting a green glare at this moment. A ghastly grind rattled across the walls. A few sharp clunks and the distinct smell of something burning chased after the original sound. Then a sudden blast shook the ground. They both lurched back, their eyes searching the white around them. There was one final hiss that slowly reduced itself and relinquished the room back to its unstable calm.
“No,” Ruby whimpered as she darted back to the console. She jabbed at the start button over and over. Nothing happened. So she hit it again, losing her grip on her stability a little more each time. “No, no, please no.”
“That does not sound right,” Tristan said. With the back of one hand, he tapped on her shoulder. “What’s going on?”
“It’s not turning on.”
“Why not?” Edging closer, he looked over her shoulder. “It’s been workin
g fine all day. What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything,” she snapped as she continued to hit the button with increasing force. The world around them remained as silent as a graveyard. “They broke it.”
“The kids?”
The words had slipped past her lips before her mind had caught up with what that meant. Her heart squeezed.
“Run,” she hissed.
“What?”
Instead of answering, she gripped the first part of him that she could reach. Clutching his jacket, her nails digging into his arm, she bolted back towards the gate. Tristan jerked around but only followed her a few steps before he locked his knees. It didn’t matter how much she pulled at him; they weren’t getting very far.
“Move, damn it!” Not so loud, her mind screamed at her. They might not know where you are yet. Don’t lure them to you.
“Explain what is–”
His words cut off when the sound of footsteps echoed through the room, the concrete walls making it seem to come from everywhere at once. At first, the steps were soft, there one moment but gone too soon for them to believe that they had heard it. But then, the slow, steady pace shifted into a rapid thundering. Growing louder. Drawing closer. The fog consuming the figure even as the running footsteps bore down upon them. Ruby yanked hard on Tristan’s arm. It took barely a second for his shell-shocked feet to move. But once they had, he was pushing at her back, keeping pace with her and urging her on as they bolted back towards the gate.
The footsteps followed as they barreled onwards, almost tripping over each other in their rush. Ruby misread the size of the opening and the metal clipped her shoulder as she passed. The blow forced her to spin. It put her into Tristan’s path and he crashed into her, knocking her down and putting her under his feet. He stomped down on her stomach and lost his balance, having to grip the gate to keep upright.
The mist rose up around her, bellowing out as she struggled to sit up. She couldn’t pull herself back fast enough, and he had to stand on her more than once to force the gate closed. With a rusted squeal, it banged back into place. It was still rattling as Tristan fumbled with the lock. Ruby slid herself across the floor and clutched at the gate, keeping it in place as he forced the lock into place. Images of slender arms snaking through the gaps played through her head, but she forced herself to hold on. The moment she heard the solid clack of the lock sinking into place, she hurled herself back.
Gulping for air, Ruby tried to see through the buzz of her adrenaline, trying to assess her injuries. There was a dull throb in her shoulder and her stomach was on fire. Her ribs ached, but the pain was slowly ebbing away. Luckily, he had missed her sore leg. Controlling her breathing, she wrapped her arms around her waist and pushed back to rest against the brick wall. She managed to pull her legs out of Tristan’s path as he staggered back. His hands were buried deep into his curls as he stared at the gate. Neither of them spoke. They just waited. Expecting to hear the footsteps again, or the gate to rattle as something was thrown against it, trying to force its way in. But nothing came. There was only dead silence.
She had no idea how long they stayed like that, shivering in the cold, clammy with sweat and the residue of the fog that clung to their skin. The knife was still in her hand and she gripped it until her knuckles ached. Eventually, the pain in her gut had subsided enough that she could push herself back up onto her feet. For a boy that looked so lean, Tristan was surprisingly heavy. Placing the knife back into her pocket, she used her other hand to cradle her stomach. The new position pushed her phone against her jacket, smothering the flashlight. While it had seemed so minimal and pathetic before, the loss of the light was staggering, and the hall plummeted deeper into shadows.
The shift snapped Tristan out of his daze, and he whipped his head around to look at her.
“What did you hear?” he asked.
“Someone was chasing us,” she assured. “You didn’t imagine it. Someone is out there.”
“And they broke the machine?”
She nodded. It was then that she remembered the other times they had come for her, and the warning sign that had announced their arrival. Her eyes were drawn to the roof. A moment after her gaze fell upon them, the florescent lights flickered back on. She slumped against the wall again as her relief buckled her knees.
“What did you do to them?”
“Excuse me?” she snapped as she glared at him. “I didn’t do anything!”
“Really? Because this whole situation seems pretty damn elaborate if they’re not personally invested. It would be a lot easier for them to just wait in the back of your car or break into your home while you’re sleeping,” he shot back. “Why would they climb a mountain in the middle of the night to mess with you?”
“I don’t know why they’re hunting me!”
“Hunting?” he said with a flash of his teeth. “Oh, no, they’re not hunting you. Hunting implies that they haven’t found you yet. ‘Messing with you’, would be more appropriate. Or ‘taunting’.”
“Is it possible that you could shut up for a few minutes?”
“They sabotaged the gondola. No one does something like that without some bad intentions.”
She glared at him and balled her hands to keep from taking a swing at him. Tristan’s mouth opened and closed a few times before he flung his hands out wide. With one last look at the gate, he took a step away.
“Let’s just get back upstairs,” he mumbled. “We’re just freaking ourselves out down here. We’ll both feel better, and think better, once we get a bit more light and a lot less fog.”
Reluctantly, she came closer to him. It was uncomfortable at first to let him take her arm and loop it over his shoulders. They started slowly, but it was impossible to keep the steady pace when the gate was to their back. As they broke into a limping run, his free arm clicked at his radio. He called for Nina, but the only reply he ever received was the soft crackle of dead air.
Chapter 7
The light of the restaurant wasn’t as comforting as she had hoped. Tristan hadn’t stopped trying to contact Nina throughout their journey back. By the time they slumped against the bar, he was shouting down the line, barely able to keep his hands from trembling as he waited for a response. He kept blinking rapidly. The habit only grew worse the longer he was forced to wait.
She couldn’t help thinking; is that what I had looked like? Parts of her first encounter with the children were burned into her memory. It didn’t matter if she was awake or not. Or how hard she tried to forget. They still played in a constant loop in the back of her mind. The primal fear. The way her mind cracked apart with panic. Most of all, she remembered the sense of crippling isolation. He hasn’t even seen them yet, she thought. As she rolled it around her mind, she decided that, in some ways, this might be worse for Tristan. She remembered how the children had toyed with her in the beginning. In a lot of ways, it had been the uncertainty that had tormented her the most. Now, she at least knew it wasn’t in her head. She could trust her sanity. Her senses. He couldn’t.
Why didn’t they come in? It was a question Ruby had been trying to keep from her mind, because she was certain she wouldn’t like the answer. That hallway is a public place. They should have been able to break the lock, they have the strength. So why didn’t they follow? What are they planning?
Tristan restlessly licked his lips before snapping again, “Nina! Answer already!”
The line gave a little gasp of static before falling once more into dead air. He still waited. His eyelids fluttered faster with every second that passed. Taking a deep breath, he straightened his shoulders and lifted his chin. Reluctantly, he let his fingers slip from the mic. He placed it on the top of the bar. His fingers continued to twitch as he fought to keep from grabbing for it again.
“Okay, this is getting ridiculous,” he said. “It’s just because it’s dark and the weather is being weird. It’s making everything seem worse than it is. So, what we need to do is take a calming breath
and remember that we’re adults.”
“Whatever you say,” she said as she continued pulling open every cupboard and searching along the shelves.
“I’m just being rational and …” He cut off his sentence with a huff. “What are you looking for?”
“Candles. Flashlights. Maybe a lantern. There has to be something around here they keep for back up.”
“The power is doing just fine,” Tristan said as he leaned harder against his forearms. “Now, I’ve been thinking about this, and it might not have been anything sinister. The gondola probably stopped moving because of the cold.”
She popped her head over the counter to blink up at him. “The cold?”
“Yeah. It must have frozen up the gears or something.”
“The gondola that was designed to climb the side of the mountain during the dead of winter got locked up in the cold?”
“Well, when you say it like that,” he said under his breath.
“I know you’re scared. And right now, your brain is probably working overtime, trying to find some way to twist it around so you’re not in danger. I get that. But I need you to keep your head, okay?” she said. “Now, where are the candles?”
Still blinking rapidly and ignoring her question, he continued, “So, hypothetically, let’s say that you’re right. Homicidal children are running around out there. Why would they sabotage the gondola? Again, they could have just waited at the base of the mountain.”
“Because there are other people down there. Here, we’re on our own. And now we’re trapped,” she said.
She didn’t look back as she headed into the kitchen. You really should talk to him, a voice in her head insisted. He’s starting to freak out. But the need to secure some form of light far outweighed her niggling empathy. Survival first. A new thought followed closely behind. Does the heat run off the same power source? When the lights cut off, will it fail too? How cold does it get up here? Shaking her head, she forced herself to focus on one task at a time. Light first.
“Ruby,” Tristan snapped as he stormed through the kitchen door, leaving it to swing softly behind him.
