An early morning mist clung to Chris as he stepped out onto the porch, shutting the door behind him. It cooled the air just a bit, gave it a pleasant, mildly damp smell that he breathed in slowly, calming himself down. He was still riled up. Still on edge. She had put him on edge.
He needed this.
As he hopped down to the drive, he pulled out his phone and started tracking his progress on his running app. First a walk to warm up.
Chris discovered the mist was thicker than he’d realized when he reached the sidewalk. He briefly considered changing into his reflective shirt to make himself more visible to drivers, but even the thought of seeing Amy again made his anger rise.
He’d be fine. Once he got to the lake trail, there’d be no one to worry about. Chris started walking.
Everything was quiet at this hour — that was nothing new — but this morning it was particularly dead. No birds softly chittering, waiting for the sun to burst into song. No rustling from the bunnies that plagued everyone’s yards. Not even the almost-silent padding of the neighborhood’s stray cats. Combined with the still air and his paltry visible range of maybe twenty or thirty feet, it made Chris feel a little like the lone living thing on an alien planet.
The experience was unnerving, but also kind of peaceful. At least out here there was no one to piss him off. To do things they knew made him lose control even though he warned them over and over—
SCREEEEEE.
Chris jumped at the suddenness of the sound in the silence, like something sharp scraping against metal. He spun in every direction to pinpoint it, but the mist seemed to both dampen and reflect the noise — he didn’t even have a clear idea how far away the sound had come from. It could have been something reaching him from several streets over… or mere feet.
He shook those thoughts fears away and increased his speed. Could be a neighbor using power tools — even a garage door in need of some oil. Besides, he was almost at the lake.
The path that led to the lake trail passed between two houses at the edge of the neighborhood. He’d barely ever paid attention to them before, but now that they were made practically invisible by the ever-thickening mist, their presence loomed. Threatened. It probably didn’t help that the path itself was completely shrouded. Chris was hit with the sudden, suffocating fear that the walls were squeezing in. That he would be crushed if he kept going.
Again he shook it off. What was wrong with him today? The walls weren’t moving. He wasn’t going to get squished between them. He’d gone this way hundreds of times.
So why wasn’t he moving?
SCREEEEE. SCRITCH-SCRITCH.
This time the sound had clearly come from behind him. That was all that he could tell, but it was enough to propel him forward. Before he’d really thought it through, Chris found himself diving between the houses on the invisible path.
What was it? He thought of nails on a chalkboard. Of too-long claws dragging over concrete.
THUMP-SCRITCH. SCRITCH-SCRITCH.
Holy— It was above him now. The roof on the left. Whatever it was had jumped onto the roof and was scrambling across it.
Chris found himself sweating, heart pounding. Just a squirrel. Had to be. But that thump was way bigger than a squirrel. Raccoon? Bigger.
THUMP-SCRITCH. SCRITCH-SCRITCH-SCRITCH.
Other roof now. Whatever it was, it had leaped from one to the next. Maybe a bobcat? He was pretty sure there were bobcats in the area. Were you supposed to run or stay still if you encountered a bobcat?
Then quiet laughter rolled down from above and a spear of icy cold shot through Chris’s body. His legs stopped moving. Stuck in place. Not an animal.
“You’re making me do this, you know.” The voice was a guttural rasp, the words barely decipherable, as if the act of speaking was unfamiliar. “I don’t want to, but you’re driving me crazy.”
The words sounded so familiar to Chris, so surreal, that at first he forgot everything else. “What? What did you—?” Then he realized. It was what he’d been yelling at Amy earlier. When she’d made him so angry. When he’d—
Chris looked up, peering through the swirling mist in the direction of the roof. Nothing. This had to be in his head, right? He was hearing voices? Imagining things? Of course he was, because this wasn’t possible.
Two yellow slits suddenly appeared above, as if burning through the mist. They disappeared — just for a millisecond — then returned. Was that a… blink?
Chris bolted without waiting to find out. The lake itself was next to the main road, and even this early there would be a few drivers. People who could help. Or at least maybe scare the thing away.
It wasn’t far, either. He just had to figure out where the hell it was when he couldn’t see anything. Chris knew the general direction was left, though, so he sprinted that way through a field, coming dangerously close to falling several times as he flew over the uneven terrain.
Huge, loping steps bounded behind him, sometimes to the left, sometimes the right, along with rasping breaths that seemed to come from everywhere at once. And it wouldn’t stop talking.
“Why do you do this to me? Why won’t you listen? Do you think I enjoy this?”
Something solid slammed hard into Chris’s midsection and he went flying over and past it, right hand bending in an impossible direction as he tried to break his fall before scraping across the cement.
His body felt like it was on fire in a dozen places where his skin had been shredded, but he forced himself to push the pain down. To think.
Fence. Must’ve flipped right over the beams of the wood fence separating the field from the parking lot. Which was next to the road. Chris almost laughed. He’d made it. He just had to flag someone down.
Chris tried to push himself up and immediately fell back in screaming agony, clutching his hand. At least it momentarily made him forget about the rest of his injuries.
Rasping laughter from somewhere in the distance caused him to forget the rest. He used his elbows to get back on his feet and looked around.
The road was there. Somewhere. But the mist — the godforsaken mist. “Help! Somebody!” He stumbled around in a circle, straining to see headlights. There had to be someone. There had to.
But it wasn’t headlights he found as he turned. It was those horrible yellow slits. One pair. Three. Five. They were closing in. Low, dark, rasping laughter surrounding him on all sides.
No. Not all sides. There was a gap, and Chris dragged himself toward it as fast as he could. He had no plan, no goal beyond a desire to stay alive as long as possible.
Even that was taken from him, though, as another pair of eyes appeared directly in his path, coming fast. He folded to his knees as they approached, defeated. The creature — creatures? — had caught him, nothing left to do but wait for the claws to slash, the teeth to rend.
But then the eye slits grew to wide beams as they closed in, horn honking, air brakes hissing. Not the creature at all.
He’d found the road.
And then the semi plowed through him, his body broken beyond repair before he even hit the ground. But not quite dead. Not yet. He was facing the way he’d come, unable to look away from the row of yellow eye slits that lined the road, coldly watching him from inside the mist.
“The things,” the voice rasped from everywhere, “you make me do.”
Then one by one they winked out, leaving nothing but darkness.
