Fog of Shadows

Part 19

    "A graveyard!" Alisea scurried away from the tombstone that tripped her, only to hit her back on another one; she then jumped up, not wanting another one to touch her. The fog cleared a bit to allow her to see her surrounding and they surrounded her. Some more weathered than others, some overgrown and forgotten, and some seemed to be hardly more than a pile of rocks and plant life. I got myself lost in a graveyard; this is going to haunt me for a long time. She thought as she looked around for the way she got in, but she could not find it. "Oh no, I am lost!" She cried out as she panicked and started running between the graves for a way out, only to meet more graves and fog. The ground was muddy, but thankfully solid and covered in rocks, one of which inflicted a small cut on her cheek when she fell, which did not bleed, but burned terribly. Again, she saw something in her prefill vision move in the fog, causing the fog to swirl in Kraken-like tendrils and immediate the legend she heard from the old women the previous night rang through her mind.

    "...he hides in the fog..." was how she had described the demon that haunts the island. " He is waiting out there; waiting for someone to let his or her guard down. He steals them away to take their skin and grind their bones." The thought that raced through her mind as she remembered the legend: is it coming for me?

    Feeling her heartbeat quicken, she frantically looked around for a sign of life, her heart began to race so fast that she could hear her blood buzzing in her ears, so panicked was she that she almost overlooked the pale face in the fog looking back at her; Alisea almost jumped out of her skin when she noticed it. Thankfully, it was Janet. "Oh thank god I found you. Janet, enough of the games, please come with us; your uncle and aunt really miss you." Janet only smiled back at her but remained in her place. "Please, Janet, enough of this game." She started begging and made her way to the small child, occasionally looking down to make sure she would not trip over another headstone. After making it halfway to the little girl, Alisea looked up once again and noticed that Janet had managed to move a good distance away from her; now she was barely at the edge of her vision. She wondered how that little girl could move so far in such a short time. This would happen a few more times before Alisea's patience wore thin and she began running between the tombstones until she reached the edge of the thick fog bank; this gave her a little clearer vision. Janet now stood several feet away at the edge of a forest line: the forest itself looked dead with its missing leafs, cracking bark, and water soaked wood trees. "How did she do this? I only had my eyes off of her for a few seconds." She asked herself as she slowed her pace and kept her eyes fixed on the little girl. Just as she got within touching distance, Janet gave off a little giggle and ran off into the distance, faster than Alisea could reach out to grab her. "Janet, come back I have enough of this game!" she shouted after her and chased after her, trying to catch up to the little girl's fast strides. Alisea tried her best to keep up with the little girl, determined to catch her and end this haunting mission, but sadly, the little girl bested her and vanished within the dead and rotting trees. Panting heavily and close to tears from frustration, Alisea stopped and cursed her fate to be on this horrible island. Only after catching her breath and surveying the area did she realize that Janet might have planned to lead her somewhere because, only a few feet away, stood a rundown cabin. Covered in moss, its roof had collapsed, its windows were broken, and its door missing; all suggesting that no one had been there in a while. "Janet is this where you wanted me to follow you too?" her question received nothing but silence and she slowly approached the rundown building; the three steps leading up to the cabin creaked and groaned and threatened to break under her light weight with each step she took. The small porch was not much better with the missing planks and holes in those that remained, leaving her only the bare structure as a safe path to walk on. As she approached the open doorway, the smell hit her; the cabin smelled like mold, moss, decay, and copper; all mixed together to create a sign to send her away.

    Yet she kept going.

    The inside of the horrid looking cabin was not any better than the outside; on the inside the smell was deafening and Alisea felt her nose going numb, though that might have come from the cold, and sight-wise the cabin was just as bad as the smell. Most of the bare and molding walls what were not covered in dust were covered in thick, dusty, curtain-like cobwebs. "Janet, what is it you are trying to tell me?" she asked aloud as she looked around. Clearly, the cabin had been abandoned for a long time and whoever lived here left suddenly and in a hurry by the way those seemingly high-priced valuables like candle operas, crystal glasses, and watches were left behind. As she looked around and explored the cabin from the entrance hall to the three bedrooms, she managed to conclude that the cabin once belonged to Janet when she found a small painting of her in the master bedroom. Why would she lead me here, surely she must live somewhere else if her home is in this poor condition? Thought Alisea as she made her way out, relieved to have solved the issue of the cabin, but now confronted with the next: how was she going to get out of the woods? Chasing after Janet had occupied her mind so much that she had not paid any attention to where she was going and she had, therefore, not made any mental notes of her surroundings. "First, the graveyard, and now the woods, am I ever going to get off this island?" She cried to herself as she headed towards the direction she thought she had come from. Not knowing the time of day or how long she had walked, Alisea leaned against the trunk of a tree to a minutes rest; the air was so thick that it had become difficult to breath; it was as though the island was trying to suffocate her with a blanket of fog. In the distance, she heard the snapping of a twig and at first, she wrote it off as an animal stepping on it, but then it hit her: she had not seen a single living creature the entire time she had wandered into the woods. Staying completely still, she shifted only her eyes to urban the area. The cracking of the twig had been far away and the fog was thick enough to that she felt some form of coverage, but just like before in the graveyard, she felt eyes on her. She listened to the deafening silence around her, hoping the silence would not leave. Her senses intensified, she felt the cold of the air on her skin, the uneven ground below her feel, the damp and decaying trunk of the tree. She heard the silence of her surrounding and the blood rushing through her body; she smelled the dead woods and fog surrounding her; it was as though she had become part of the tree she was leaning against, silent, still, and conservative.

    An ice-cold hand touching her shoulder broke this.

    Turning around with a single jump, ready to fight for her life with whatever had approached her, she found herself looking into the familiar green eyes of her friend Willow. "Willow, what are you doing her? I thought you said you wanted to stay at the Inn?" She felt angry with her for scaring her half to death instead of approaching her like a normal person but quickly forgave her when she noticed the worried look on her friend's face. "I did not want to come along with you guy, but I was worried about you. I had a feeling you would split from your group and I didn't want you to be alone on this island."

    "Wait, if you knew I was going to split from the group, then how did you find me? If so, for how long?"

    "I have followed you ever since you left the inn."

    "If you have been following me all this time, then why have you never called out to me? You could have scared me to death just then."

    "I was going to, but by the time I had caught up to you, you were already in the boneyard and I felt that if I called out to you there, you would have certainly died of fright. It is a good thing I didn't too, a few times as you ran around you got really close to the cliff edge, if I had called out then and you would have reacted like you just did, you would have fallen to your death."

    "Wait, the graveyard is located by a cliff?" Now Alisea was counting her blessings that she had come out of there practically unscathed. "It didn't use to be like that, but over the years the ocean just ate away at it, there is a newer one a bit further down the hill, but some of the old families still get buried there, that is why it looks so shabby. Anyway, let's get you back to the Inn; if you stay out here in the cold much longer death will catch you." Willow took hold of Alisea by the hand and began leading her out of the woods; Alisea clung to her friend as a frightened child did to its mother. "Have you seen a little girl by any chance?" Asked Alisea as they reached the edge of the woods and made their way through the rundown boneyard, "Nope, my attention was solely on you, sorry."

    "It is alright." With that, they made their way back to the town in silence.