Jon Fore - Black Water

Kayla had begun to warm to Shannon, even with the distorted swelling along her jaw and eye. The little girl was surprisingly unharmed, and Ethan found it difficult to imagine this little girl had hidden so well or ran so fast as to escape the nightmares of the night before. She was an innocent, not a creation or influenced, mindless thing, but clearly resourceful and determined.

The bum suddenly leapt in front of Ethan, grabbed a hand full of bulbs hanging from a light pole, and squeezed them until the liquid ran freely from his hands. His face split in a wicked grin, teeth gapped and pointing in many directions at once as he began to run his slime-coated hands along his body in a mock sexual way. Ethan looked towards the ground as his imaginary friend began to pleasure himself through his stained and torn trousers. This time Ethan finally gagged.

“What’s wrong with you?” Stan asked with crinkled eyebrows.

“Nothing, I’m fine,” Ethan replied, unwilling to let this stranger know of his difficulties. Ethan knew that the bum was not real, that his existence was the product of his slightly deranged thoughts, the parts of his mind not under his control. Once the doctor had convinced him of this, the bum had vanished…well, that is, until now.

“She’s coming… Your first murder did not go well… She is coming…” the bum hissed at him as he jerked savagely at himself.

Ethan wanted to ask the bum who was coming; he knew somehow it was important, but he had not murdered anyone.

“She comes as the Lady of Mist, and fuck is she hot…” This brought on a more savage grip and a greater violence to his self-manipulations.

Ethan had slowed his pace somewhat, not wanting to make contact with the filthy man tormenting him, so Stan skirted around him and moved ahead at a quicker pace.

“I don’t know about you, but I want to get out of…” Stan suddenly stopped, as if he had struck a soft wall. “What the…?” he hissed under his breath.

“What is it?” Ethan asked as he caught up with Stan, Shannon and Kayla close behind him.”

Ethan could see that somehow the fog had congealed, clotted here into a wall of solid, roiling smog.

Stan reached up and touched it, running his hands along the misty solidity. “You can actually feel the fog—it’s like it has a skin on it or something.”

Ethan touched the wall. It felt much like the plants: a thin pliable skin and a snotty membrane with some thick something just beyond. What was most disturbing was the sensation of motion just underneath the cold moist skin, as if the smoky fog was alive and could feel their touch. Ethan withdrew his hand and wiped it absently on his leg.

“What is it?” Shannon asked, her face further contorted with disgust and wonder.

“I bet we could get through it, though,” Stan said absently.

“I don’t know what it is, but I don’t think we should try to get through it. It’s wrong, vile.”

Stan pushed a little harder on the membrane, and it gave under the pressure. A chill wetness coated his hand as it passed through the skin, but it was nothing but fog beyond. “It’s like a skin on a cold bowl of soup, you know? Just beyond feels like fog. I bet we could force our way through.” Stan reached deeper into the toiling mass of gray wetness.

“I think we should try to go around it, find another way,” Shannon added as Kayla began to whimper. The girl was clutching Shannon’s leg tightly as if she were about to fall from a cliff, her face twisted with fright.

“You guys can go whichever way you want; I’m going down Route 79,” Stan scolded as he withdrew his arm and began tearing the foggy flesh open with his hands. The internal roiling smog began to seep from the wound and spill across the ground in a semblance of fluid.

“But you can’t even see in that!” Shannon spit at him. “We should stay together!” she pleaded.

“Hey, I don’t know any of you people, the world’s gone fucking insane, and Stan is out for Stan, got me? Now you people can tag along if you like, but I am going this way.” With that, Stan stepped through the tear and into the undulating, seeping fog.

“I’m not going in there, Ethan; I don’t care where he goes, but I am not going in there,” Shannon said sternly.

“Me neither!” Kayla added.

Ethan stared back into the fog for a moment, looking deep into the rolling waves of ashen gray. He could still hear the faint foot falls of Stan working his way deeper into the fog.

“Please don’t make me go in there,” Kayla sobbed.

“We won’t, sweetie; I think I’m with you on this,” Ethan said as he stroked the girl’s back. “Stan, are you alright?” Ethan shouted into the fog. He did not particularly like Stan and his out-for-himself attitude, but they were less than a mile from 79, less than a mile until they were free.

“The smog is pretty thick—smells bad, too—but I’m fine!” Stan voice wafted through the stagnant smog. “Is that you?” Stan added.

Ethan thought for a second, “No! We are still out here!”

“You didn’t just bump into me?” Stan shouted, his voice gripped by fear.

“No, Stan. Come back out here!”

“Yeah, ah, I can’t see where I am going…”

“Just follow my voice!” Ethan shouted a bit louder.

“Keep shouting! There is something in… Oh fuck!” Stan screamed and began firing.

“Stan!” Ethan shouted, his voice almost as high as Stan’s, and then began to step through the opening into the fog, his handgun leading the way.

“Ethan! No! Stay with us!” Shannon cried.

Kayla had given herself over to outright bawling.

The smog fell over Ethan’s hands and forearms like a cold ocean spray from a dead and decaying ocean. The feeling of it made him shudder. The bum began to chuckle somewhere behind him in that maniacal, high-pitched squeal, and then Stan screamed—not the frightful scream of one simply afraid, but the scream of one fearing for the sanctity of their very soul.

“Stan! Run!” Shannon screamed which pushed Kayla into a screaming fit of her own.

Something grabbed Ethan’s cuff and pulled hard, almost yanking him into the sightless swirling. Instinctively, Ethan fired into the nothing. His shirt, suddenly released, caused him to stumble backwards and out of the fog.

A train whistle of a scream came from everywhere at once. It pierced their minds, painfully jabbing inside their ears. Kayla screamed in pain, and Shannon moved her hands from her ears to Kayla.

“Stan!” Ethan yelled. His heart raged against the confines of his ribs and his stomach clenched into an icy ball. “Stan!” His voice broke through the boundaries of multiple octaves.

A thin twig of a thing shot from the tear in the membrane and landed between Ethan and the clutching girls. It looked like an impossibly long stick, still sheathed in bark, but with a claw-like hand with too many fingers. The length of the thing segmented like some insanely long insect, and it twitched spasmodically. Shannon screamed again as it landed and she jerked Kayla away as it began to drag white lines in the cement of the sidewalk.

“Stan!” Ethan screamed, backing away from the wound in the smog wall. There was no answer.

“He’s gone, Ethan. Come on!” Shannon yelled at him as she lifted the young girl into her arms and rushing back towards the drugstore.

“Stan!” Ethan screamed once more, his throat a rasping harp of fear, before catching up with Shannon. He withdrew backwards, holding the gun before him.

Kayla continued to sob as they reached the end of the block. They stopped for a moment for the girls to cry and for Ethan to bring his breathing back under his control. He looked into Shannon’s eyes. They were wild, not the wild of being frightened, but the wild of an animal whose young were threatened, who strived against overwhelming odds to survive. Ethan wondered if perhaps she was beginning to slide into that comfortable insanity he had longed for as a child.