“No, you’re not. You’re pretending to be a hard-ass. So quit it.”
Jason turned to look at Milo. “I’m scared.”
“So am I,” said Milo.
“I hate this.”
“So do I.”
The two stared into the night for a moment, Jason taking repeated, nervous puffs from a cigarette while doing a sort of junkie shuffle along the side of the road. He looked like he needed a fix, but really his stomach was doing a dance against his bladder and he just wanted to ball up a fist and pound the living shit out of something. Milo tried to distract him.
“What do you think Dad would make of all this?” he asked.
“You want me to ask him?”
Milo shot his brother a shocked glace. “You’ve seen—”
“Of course I’ve fucking seen him, asshole. Ain’t a person who’s died in this town that I haven’t seen floating across the fog, or worse, screaming down in the breach.”
“How is he? I mean, how does he—”
“He’s like the rest of them. Dead. Pissed off. Tortured.”
“I’m sorry,” said Milo. “I didn’t mean—”
“They aren’t people anymore, Milo. Remember that. They’re shades. Shadows of who they were. All that’s left of them is their anger, their fear, their hunger. They’re just fragments broken off from the whole. Everything else that was them died with them. It’s all gone, stripped away, melted off into some ethereal slag, and they’re in agony—feeling nothing but pain, and fear and hate. All they want is to take it out on the living. To find a way back into this world and get back whatever it is they lost of themselves. Yeah, Milo, I’ve seen Dad. And if you saw what he looks like now, you’d piss yourself. He ain’t our dad, anymore. In fact, he’s nothing like us at all. All that bad stuff, that’s all that gets left of us.”
“Maybe we have to leave all that stuff behind to move on. Maybe that’s just all the stuff you can’t take with you to Heaven.”
Jason gave his brother a deeply bitter look. “And maybe all that stuff is really all that was there to begin with.”
Headlights lit up the road as the sheriff’s truck crawled around the sharp turn.
Jason looked out at the swelling fog. He could hear the whispers of the damned creeping up the hill with it. Whimpers. Cries. Growls. Screams. He could feel the pain coming, smell the rot on the wind. There was a breach in the wall of the world out there, swarming with the angry dead who all looked across the divide with jealousy and unquenchable rage. They hated the living world because they missed it and in death felt nothing but longing and pain. There was an afterlife, and it was misery. Nothing but sheer, undeniable misery. And it wanted revenge, not for some past wrong, but for everything that came after.
Jason’s stomach tightened. No one else realized it yet, but tonight wasn’t like most other nights; this wasn’t just a search and rescue followed by another sewing shut of the breach. This was a storm; this was the afterlife coming out swinging. For the first time in a long time, Jason was genuinely worried that they weren’t all going to come back. In fact, he wasn’t sure any of them were coming back at all.
Wilton stepped out of his truck, pinched the cherry off his cigarette, and flung the butt out into the brush. “He sober?” he asked Milo.
“Sober enough,” said his deputy.
“He tell you that?”
“Nah. He’s gettin’ good and pissy, and is approaching downright mean. He’s good.”
Jason shot his brother a wicked stare. “Don’t play your brother’s keeper games with me, asshole.”
“Told ya.”
The sheriff slid a box of shells out of his pocket, pulling a fistful out and presenting them to Father Paddock. “Padre, you mind blessing the ammo?” he asked.
“I’ve already blessed these.”
“Yeah, but you blessed it all last time, and that was about a week ago. So . . .”
“Blessings don’t wear off, Wilt,” said the priest through a nasty bit of side-eye.
“Just say the damn words, Padre. I’d feel an awful lot better about all this if you would.”
The sheriff held out the handful of bullets, each of them with a cross carved onto the front. Father Paddock pulled an ornate aspergillum out of his pocket and sprinkled the shells with a spritz of holy water, waving his two-fingered hand over them, speaking a mouthful of Latin before mumbling out “. . . in the name of the father, and the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.” He looked Wilton square in the eye. “Now try not to kill anyone with those.”
“That’s the idea, Padre. That’s the idea.”
Time and space are different in the fog; they just don’t mesh anymore. It rolls in and the night can last for days. Or an hour. The trees can seem both closer together and farther apart at the same time. The corners of your vision warp and bend like a trick lens on a camera. You can hear your own footsteps and you can hear someone talking to you, but you can’t hear much of anything else. Not a bird, not an insect, not the rustling of leaves in the wind. Sometimes, in the distance, you can hear the dead, screaming. But that’s about it. And you best not wander off alone in it; those that do rarely find their way back or are ever seen again.
The rules of the fog are simple. Tight groups. Always stay in tight groups. Always keep someone else in your line of sight. Always keep your voice low. Never panic. Never run. Just keep moving forward. And if you see one, never, ever let it touch you.
They could be anywhere. Possessing an animal. Possessing a person. Fiddling with a door or window so it bangs angrily over and over again. Sometimes they wander aimlessly; other times they are aggressive with purpose—like they can think, like they have a plan, like they are more than just the disembodied, desperate to feel what it is to be alive again.
Elsewhere, the wall of fog crawled over houses, trickled down hillsides, swallowed mostly abandoned neighborhoods. Houses shook at their foundations; windows clattered open and shut; mirrors fogged up, faces pressing against the glass from the other side, staring out at the world; trees came to life, flailing at the dark; streetlamps flickered on and off; lawn mowers wheeled around yards, engines buzzing, blades tearing to pieces anything they could find; pools of water rippled from footsteps skittering across the surface; shadows crept just outside of the light, dancing madly in the mists. And under beds or in closets or behind couches hid the last few remaining townsfolk of Pine Hall Bluffs, each and every one of them asking themselves why they hadn’t just left, wondering whether they would make it through until morning.
It was pea soup as far as twenty feet out as the four men walked through the woods, flashlights lighting up the whole night, each facing another as to both look behind the person and keep them in sight. Milo also clutched a rifle, Wilton a .38, and Father Paddock a cross. Jason didn’t carry anything; he simply balled his hands into fists—not to fight, but to release the stress bubbling up in his gut. He could hear the voices, the chittering, the singing, the rambling—all just out of earshot. But there was one voice that shrieked the loudest, and he could hear that one as clear as a bell.
There’s no telling how long they walked—even watches and phones lied—but Jason pointed them straight through and they pressed on, never dawdling, never letting themselves get distracted by distant madness. They knew well the woman they were hunting, and they no doubt knew the name of the thing that was inside her—at least the name it’d had when they knew it. But it was best not to think about that. Sometimes they figured out who it was that they were up against; other times their attempts to stay ignorant were rewarded.
All of them had seen friends out here before; none of them liked to see what they’d become. Death was a far crueler thing than they’d ever imagined. They would weep for their friends, and then they would weep for themselves.
Jason heard a dozen different songs out here, the lyrics on repeat, the melodies fractured, the tunes all off-key. He heard one spirit drawing close, rambling the words to “Bombs Over Baghdad,” and
a chill ran up his spine, his mind putting together the terrible things the spirit had shown him in his sleep. He didn’t want to think about it. He shoved all that awfulness to the back of his brain where he kept the hours and hours of bad dreams that didn’t belong to him, and he just pressed forward, dreaming of the tall glass of whiskey waiting for him at the end of the night.
The whiskey would do its work; the whiskey would chase the voices away; the whiskey would make everything quiet again; the whiskey would buy him peace until the next time the fog came, until the next time they had to sew the world shut. The whiskey. The whiskey. The whiskey.
He watched as several spirits passed, recognized their faces, their voices. He didn’t want to remember them. Not like this.
And then he heard two voices at once coming from the same place. Mrs. Gorski, howling hysterically into the night while the spirit of some poor soul chanted and gibbered and hooted deep inside of her, working her like a marionette with the strings all on the inside.
“There,” he said quietly, pointing into the dense fog.
Everyone cast their flashlights ahead of them, beams lighting up a white wall of fog. And there she was, her shadow dancing fifty feet away, through beams, cutting toward them at a frightening clip. The way she moved was unnatural, like her limbs were all on backward, being worked by levers and pulleys.
“Milo,” said Wilton softly. “You know what to do.”
Milo nodded, swallowing hard as he raised the rifle to his eye, bracing the butt on his shoulder. He had to be careful. He couldn’t hit anything vital. At this distance he couldn’t exactly be sure where she was. He needed her to clear the fog, get close enough to see her for real.
Of all the things he’d had to do, this was the part that made him the most nervous. That was a real person out there. If he missed, he would be the one that killed her, not the thing inside of her.
Jason reached under his shirt and pulled out two iron chains that were affixed to a girdle under his clothing—a modified straitjacket without the arms—handing a chain each to Wilton and Father Paddock. The men took the chains, nodding silently, everyone waiting for Milo to fire the first shot.
Jason closed his eyes, thinking, I’m over here. Come to me. Find me. I’m over here.
He held his breath. He knew that the moment he thought aloud every spirit within miles would be racing to take his body for a spin. He was sensitive. And with sensitives, you live again; you could feel again; you could do more than just scream and flail and look at the world through eyes again—you could speak again and tell the world why you hated it and what you wanted to do to it.
Allison Gorski barreled toward them through the fog like a charging rhino.
Milo held his breath to steady the shot.
Wilton and Father Paddock held tight their ends of the iron chains.
The rifle jumped in Milo’s hands, the blessed bullet tearing a mound of flesh off the top of Allison’s shoulder.
Allison Gorski shrieked as the thing leapt out of her, dropping her body limp on the ground.
It rose up in the air, a luminous shade, wailing in agony, screaming toward Jason, claws out-extending from its elongated fingers—desperate for his body. It was a negative of a man, all of the colors backward, almost indiscernible, but clearly dressed head to toe in mining gear. These were the worst, the angriest, the ones whose death tore open the veil between the living and the dead. All that was left of them was a hatred for what had happened to them, the pain and the loneliness of those who had lain broken and buried for days under all that rock and rubble.
Father Paddock held up his cross, praying under his breath, trying to keep the thing from Milo and Wilton.
Milo dropped the rifle and leapt for Jason, grabbing the third and final chain resting beneath his shirt.
The thing entered Jason and his eyes went black. He writhed against the chains, lurched into the air, floating a foot above the ground. Milo, Wilton, and Father Paddock all heaved in unison, wrenching him back down toward the ground. He screamed like he was being flayed alive.
Allison sat upright with a shot, stricken with terror. “What the—”
“You were taken, Mrs. Gorski,” said Milo.
“Get home now,” said Wilton, his voice deep with bass. “Run. Don’t stop for anything. And if you see anything moving, just keep running.”
“Just keep running,” she said.
“Just keep running.”
She jumped to her feet and took off in a full sprint, the adrenaline pumping her legs much faster than she ever imagined they could go. Within seconds she had vanished up the hill into the fog.
“The power of Christ compels you,” said Father Paddock, clutching his cross in his two-fingered hand, the chain gripped tightly in the other.
“Fuck the Christ!” Jason bellowed in a voice that sounded like it was speaking backward. The words were all in the right order, but they all sounded wrong. They were stretched out, clipped in the wrong places.
“I call upon God the almighty to calm this beast, to soothe it in its—”
“God? There is no God! Only pain! Only death!”
“Those are Satan’s words, not yours.”
“There is no Satan. Only lies. Only stories for children. Only this!” Jason yanked at the chains, trying to free himself, but each man held fast, slowly walking him down the hill. “What??? Stop it! Let me go!”
“The Lord is waiting for you on the other side,” said the priest.
“You were always full of shit, Paddock. You never believed! You were right not to. It was the only thing you were ever right about.”
Wilton cast a wary eye at Father Paddock. “Padre, don’t listen to it.”
“This isn’t my first rodeo, Wilt!”
“I know, I’m just—”
“Just walk us down that hill. I really don’t like this fucker, whoever he is. Or was.”
“Let me go! Let me go! Let me go!”
And with that, the whole forest came alive, tree branches clawing at the men, the earth quivering beneath them, the fog whipping around them in dueling gusts of bitterly cold wind.
“What the hell is going on here?” asked Wilton.
“It’s not this thing,” said Father Paddock.
“How can you be so sure?”
“I’ve never seen one do anything like this.”
“One, no,” said Milo. “A couple dozen, yes.”
They all looked at Jason. “He called too many,” muttered Father Paddock.
“There were too many out,” said Wilton. “Why didn’t he tell us there were this many out here?”
Milo tugged on the chain against the fighting spirit. “All due respect, Sheriff, but I fucking hate your good feelings.”
“Duly noted, Deputy.”
There were so many spirits in the forest that wanted life, and yet they couldn’t stand to get close to the priest. His light burned—though you couldn’t see it on this side of the world, on the flip side, the dark side, the dead side of the world, he was a blinding beacon that singed the essence of the souls away. So they took to the next best living things—the trees.
The whole forest screamed at once, limbs almost snapping off trees as they grasped at the men. Each was growing ever more battered and bruised as they inched their way down the hill toward the mine, but each held on to their chain for dear life, knowing that if one of them let his slip, they might all be doomed.
Father Paddock continued to pray under his breath, Milo swore silently to himself, and Wilton just held on, giving the thing in Jason a look that said, “I will not let you go.”
The whole night was angry now, yelling, kicking, and screaming—a storm of animus roiling to a froth.
They just had to hold on a little longer.
A large branch swung down at Milo, missing him but connecting with the chain, knocking it clean out of his grip. Milo lunged to pick it up, but the tree swung back, slamming into his chest, knocking him twenty feet back.
&nb
sp; “Milo!” shouted Wilton, making sure to keep his grip.
He and Father Paddock immediately redoubled their efforts to keep the chains steady. Already the thing was trying to wriggle away as Milo stumbled to his feet, rubbing his sore chest. Another branch swung at Milo, but this time he ducked before stepping out of the way of its backswing.
Milo sprinted back to grab the chain, positioning himself out of reach of any other trees. He picked it up, pulled it taut, and nodded to everyone else.
Wilton looked down the hill, branches swinging to and fro, the entire forest a chaotic din of creaking wood and snapping branches. “There are too many trees down that way,” he said.
“This is a forest. There are nothing but trees,” said Father Paddock.
“Yeah,” said Milo, pointing across the hillside, “but there’s fewer if we go that way and around.”
Father Paddock looked down that way. “You mean down by the road?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that’s gonna double the time, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
Milo and Father Paddock looked over at the sheriff, who nodded begrudgingly. Then the three began tugging Jason and the raging thing within him the long way around, making sure not to step within twenty feet of anything living, moving or no.
Time is funny in the fog. If you asked any of those men how long it took to get down to the mine, each one would give you a different answer. For one it was an instant, another all night. There’s no telling how long it took or how far they dragged Jason’s body through the countryside. But the trees were behind them now, the outraged forest a quarter mile at their backs.
After the collapse that tore a hole in the universe and shat the dead out onto the land, the mine was shut up, chains were laid across all the roads, and equipment was moved away. But Wilton and his men had come back in and set it all right again, moved all the roadblocks, clearing a path through the worksite for the nights when they had to do exactly what they were about to do.
Each man knew this place like the back of his hand. Even now, in the pitch black of a moonless fog-choked night, they knew their way, inching step by step toward the main shack. It was a run-down thing, plywood and corrugated metal consolidating all the wires into one place.
We Are Where the Nightmares Go and Other Stories Page 3
