In the Fog

by Andrew J Brandt

  Brandon clicked on the video thumbnail and both men watched as the clip loaded. The camera placement was above the front porch, looking down at the front door. The clip was short, and in that night-vision green hue that made the image grainy. On the screen, Jem and Brandon watched as the short clip showed the front door open and a figure run out into the night.

  “Could you tell if that was him?” Brandon asked. He dragged the video’s slider back to the beginning and started the slow-motion play, but again all they saw was the door opening and a dark figure leaving.

  “Check one of the clips before this one,” Jem said.

  Brandon exited from the play screen and went back to the recordings menu. “There’s one from twelve minutes previous,” he said and he clicked on it. The screen loaded.

  Jem couldn’t believe it, but there he was, clear as day. The chief’s son, forcing the door open and going inside. From the angle, the image was a perfect capture of the entry. Brandon rewound the clip over and over.

  “I don’t believe it,” Brandon said. “You were right.”

  “Can we put this on a USB drive?” Jem asked.

  “Yeah we can,” Brandon answered, his jaw still slack as he watched the clip over and over. Finally, he scrounged around on the workbench until he found a thumb drive and shoved it into the port on his laptop. He hit the download button and saved the clip to the drive. Once it finished saving to the device, he pulled it out and held it up to Jem. “What now?” he asked.

  Jem pursed his lips. “I’m going to pay the chief a visit.”

  CHAPTER 28

  CHRIS | 9:20PM

  CHRIS STOOD FROZEN, the heat of the lights above him beating down on him and he felt the thumping of his pulse in his brain. The little boy in front of him was screaming, “Bad man! Bad man hurt Aunt Catherine!”

  Officer Barnes turned to Chris, confused, but Chris was frozen. This wasn’t possible. The boy, standing in the doorway of the bedroom in his vision was nothing more than a nightmare, something his brain had conjured up. Vanished as soon as he came out of unconsciousness. A pain-induced hallucination and nothing more, he’d woken up and the boy was just part of his imagination

  The boy wasn’t real then, as he and his father had driven out to the fog that boiled just beyond the city limits, and he wasn’t real now.

  “It’s not real,” Chris finally said, though Barnes furrowed his brows.

  “Daddy!” the little boy cried, terrified, tears beginning to stream down his face as he screamed, a high-pitched wail that echoed through the hallway. “Bad man!”

  Barnes approached the child slowly, his hands out. Chris, however, stood frozen. “It’s not real,” he kept repeating.

  As Barnes kneeled down, the boy quieted his screaming. “He’s bad man,” he said. “He hurt Aunt Catherine. She’s not waking up.”

  Barnes looked back at Chris, his face contorted with bewilderment. “What’s this kid talking about, Chris?” he asked.

  “It’s not real!” Chris finally shouted. This was just another hallucination. In fact, he may still be on the ground outside of the writer’s house. Maybe he’d been knocked unconscious when Taylor had tackled him to the ground. Or, perhaps he’d fallen into this dream when he’d gone home after he’d visited the woman on Lynn Drive. After he’d followed her home from Mulligans, after he’d proven to her and to himself and to the entire world that he was a man.

  All of it was a nightmare. The woman, the boy, the fog, and now. All of it. He was trapped in some nightmare world.

  Barnes stood up and unclasped the holster of his cuffs. “Chris, let’s go talk,” he said.

  Looking at the little boy, waiting for his eyes to turn again, to glow red and burn into his body, Chris knew what he needed to do. He was resolute. He slowly reached for his belt, the weapon hanging from his right hip.

  Barnes lunged at him as he pulled the weapon from its holster and tackled Chris to the ground. The little boy began wailing again as the men wrestled, Barnes pulling Chris’s arms from the weapon.

  Chris fought against Barnes, screaming obscenities and thrashing about. Finally, he lifted his knee and crushed it into Barnes’s groin, just as Taylor had done to him, causing the man to go limp and fall over to the side, both hands instinctively clutched between his legs.

  Chris rolled over and lifted himself to a crouch, his eyes on the little boy, who now sat full-eyed and fearful on the bench. “You’re a demon,” Chris said. “You caused all of this. The fog, the disappearance.” He pulled his gun from the holster, and as the boy continued crying and screaming, aimed it.

  As he pulled the trigger, Barnes jumped up and swatted at Chris’s hand. The shot went errant and struck Barnes in the hip at point-blank, the man’s bones shattering and a spray of blood painting the floor and wall. Barnes collapsed, blood continuing to pour from the wound.

  “Chris!” a voice behind him shouted. Chris turned and saw his father running down the hall, weapon drawn. Looking down at the gun in his hand, he felt the power of the thing course through him. Years of insufficiency, feelings of inadequacy, all of it boiled to the surface. Every woman who had shunned him, every time he’d let the world in, only to be discarded by it. Every time he was cast aside by his father, or the victim of his wrath, it all came to a point in his brain.

  He had been wrong. This wasn’t a nightmare. This was vengeance. For a life of never being good enough, of being looked down upon and cast aside, for being cursed with undesirability, this was his reckoning. A smile crept on his face and he lifted the weapon at his father and pulled the trigger.

  The shot rang through the hallway, his ears went deaf and ringing. He missed his target wide, and he heard an unintelligible anger from his father, rushing toward him, now with his weapon drawn. Chris looked at the boy, who was now shielded by Barnes, still bleeding from the wound. The officer had his entire body wrapped around the boy and huddled on the floor. Chris reached down and grabbed the crying child from Barnes’s clutch. The little boy kicked and screamed, trying to resist. Turning, Chris sprinted down the hall to the exit, crashing into the metal door and running out into the night.

  He knew what he needed to do now. He needed to go back to the house, to let it show him what to do next. He needed to sacrifice the child to the fog.

  CHAPTER 29

  CHIEF | 9:39PM

  HOWARD RAN OUT the hallway and scanned the immediate area. His ears rang from the gunshot in the hallway but he heard the sound of tires squealing on the asphalt in the parking lot. One of his police cruisers tore out of the lot behind the courthouse and headed south.

  He ran toward his Tahoe, his breath heavy, making clouds that trailed him in the cold dark air. In the vehicle, he turned the ignition and slammed his foot on the accelerator, following the taillights of the car Chris took.

  A few blocks ahead, he saw the cruiser fishtail around a corner, taking the intersection at a dangerous speed. Nonetheless, Howard kept his foot heavy on the gas pedal, the engine revving hard. He pulled out the radio handset from the dashboard and held it to his mouth. “Chris!” he yelled into the microphone. “Stop!”

  There was no answer as the chief took the same corner his son had moments earlier. He clipped the curb and his vehicle bounced against the concrete though he was able to right the steering wheel and continue into the residential neighborhood.

  The speedometer rose to over sixty as he sped after the taillights ahead of him, keeping them in his sight. A few blocks ahead, he saw Chris turn again and he took the same turn.

  After a heartbeat on this new road, the police cruiser ahead slowed down and jumped the curb into the yard of one of the houses. The chief saw police tape around the yard of the house and realized where they were. This was the house on Lynn Drive that they’d been to earlier that afternoon. The one where they’d found that woman.

  Why was Chris coming back here?

  Howard slammed on his breaks. The vehicle fishtailed and he lost control, jumping the curb and smas
hing into one of the elderly pecan trees that lined the street. His head ringing but full of adrenaline, the chief pushed his door open and, his hand on his weapon attached to his hip, got out.

  Chris got out of the car parked in the lawn with his hands held high.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Howard asked his son.

  “I can’t explain it to you, dad, but I need to come back here. The boy, he caused all this. The disappearance, the fog, everything,” Chris said as he walked toward his father, his hands still held up over his head.

  Howard relaxed, but he knew that his son was unstable. “Look, let’s just go back to the station and settle down.”

  “No, dad!” Chris screamed. “You don’t get it! You never have! I’ve always been less than what you wanted. But today, I have learned what I need to do.”

  “Look, son, I don’t understand what you’re saying, but let’s just get back to the station.” He took his hand off his holster and held his arms out to his son.

  Chris approached his father and the man embraced him as his son began sobbing on the older man’s shoulder.

  Finally, Howard spoke. “I know what you did. The woman in there. I know it was you.” He felt his son’s body tense up, though he held on and continued. “Nobody else has to know. We’ve arrested the other man and he can take the fall for it.”

  He’d known since they had driven out to the city limits sign to see the fog. His son, grabbing his head in a convulsion, began speaking words as his eyes rolled in the back of his head. Howard had watched in horror as his son’s body seized and the words spilled from his mouth.

  Flashes of the murder scene had sprung up in Howard’s mind though he tried to shake them off. But he saw it. He saw his son, on the bed with the woman. She’d been strangled, her body flaccid under him. Then he knew. The fog showed him the truth. As his son convulsed, he began spouting numbers. “One, One, Two, Three, Five, Eight,” he had repeated, over and over. With each word, another image from the murder scene. Finally, Howard shook his son awake, unable to bear witness to it any further.

  Howard was prepared to arrest his own son for the murder when they returned to the station, but Barnes had come in with the name Oliver and it changed everything. He’d be able to arrest and convict Oliver and wash his hands of the entire ordeal.

  Holding on to Chris, he never felt his son’s arms behind him reach up and, pulling his pistol out of his sleeve, point the muzzle of the weapon to the back of his skull.

  CHAPTER 30

  JEM | 9:50PM

  JEM PULLED IN to the police station’s parking lot, illuminated by street lamps that glowed in a yellow hue, giving the cold night air an eerie hue. Clutching the USB drive in his hand, he walked up to the plate glass doors that had DECKER POLICE DEPARTMENT emblazoned on them in large block letters. He pulled at the doors and they opened into an empty foyer. Unlike the soft light from the street lamps outside, the fluorescents in here were harsh and bright.

  “Hello?” Jem said to the empty room, his voice echoing off the walls. “Anybody here?”

  Near a door that Jem assumed led to the offices of the station, Jem heard muffled voices from the hallway just beyond. He opened the door and his eyes went wide.

  No more than a few yards down the stretch of hallway, a police officer lay on the ground, bleeding from a wound on his hip. “What happened here?” Jem asked as he knelt down beside the man. Taking off his flannel button-up, he wadded up the shirt and pressed it to the wound. The officer grimaced from the pain.

  “The chief’s kid,” he said in short spurts. “Gone crazy. This little boy,” he paused. “Little boy started screaming. I think he knows something about the murder of that woman.”

  “Little boy?” Jem asked. He’d seen a little boy, in the hallucination in the fog. “Where is he now?”

  “I tried to apprehend him,” the officer said. “He tried to shoot the kid. I took the bullet. And now he’s taken off with the kid.”

  Jem held the USB drive in his hand. “He’s going to kill that boy. I’ve got proof right here that the chief’s son killed that woman,” he said. “Can you walk?”

  “No,” the officer said. “The chief, he chased after them.”

  “Why was a little boy here?” Jem asked.

  “His father is in the holding cell at the end of the hall. I arrested him for the murder,” the officer said. He pointed, “Down there. Room 107. Door code 0161. Get him, go get the boy before something even worse happens." From a keyring clipped to his belt, the officer produced a small silver key.

  Jem nodded and exchanged the with the USB drive in the officer’s hand. “Make sure the chief gets this. He needs to see the truth. Let me help you up.”

  “No, no time. Go. That boy is in danger. This whole town is.”

  Jem got to his feet, and ran down the hall to the room 107, a placard that read “Interrogation” on the door. He punched in the code on the door’s keypad and he heard the audible clack of the bolt loosening. Opening the door, he saw a man in his early-thirties, with hair receding too soon in life, with his head down on the table surface. He looked up.

  “Are you my lawyer?” the man asked.

  “No, my name is Jem Taylor. We need to get you out of here,” Jem said as he crossed the room and released the man’s shackles. “What’s your name?”

  “Grant,” the man said. “Grant Oliver.” He stood up and massaged his wrists in his hands where the cuffs had rubbed them almost raw.

  “Grant, there’s been a problem. The chief’s son killed a woman over on Lynn Drive, and now he’s taken your son.”

  “What?!” Grant screamed incredulously.

  “I think I know where he may have taken him, and I need you to come with me,” Jem said, but Grant had already started out the door.

  In the hallway, Grant stopped when he saw the bleeding officer Barnes on the ground. Running over to him, Grant knelt, but Barnes waved him off. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But go. Go get your son.”

  Without a word, Grant bolted for the door, with Jem trailing behind him. “Here,” Jem called out, pointing to his Cherokee. “This one’s mine. Get in.”

  Grant threw himself into the passenger seat while Jem started the engine and, throwing the shifter into drive, Jem tore out of the parking lot, his tires squealing on the asphalt.

  “Okay, what the hell is going on?” Grant asked. “Where is my son?”

  “The chief’s son took your boy,” Jem said. “Long story short, a woman was murdered sometime last night.”

  Grant cut him off, “I know. She was my wife’s sister.”

  Jem’s head snapped, “And they arrested you for it?”

  Grant nodded. “Guess they thought I was an easy one to pin it on. I was with her last night, at the bar. How do you know he did it?”

  “A friend, who’s really good with technology, helped me. We were able to pull her security camera data from her front porch. We saw McMillan’s son go into her house late last night.”

  “That son of a bitch,” Grant said, his teeth clenched and his fists balled. “Where are we going?”

  “Back to the scene of the crime. On the outside of town, just beyond the hill, there’s this—”

  “Fog?” Grant cut him off again.

  “You’ve seen it?” Jem asked.

  “This morning. I was going to take my son to Houston. We were stopped by it. My son started talking about a bad man and that he hurt Catherine—that was her name. I think my son saw something in the fog.”

  “That cloud, it has some kind of psychic telepathic power,” Jem said. “I had a vision, when I approached it. I saw the chief’s son in bed with her. With Catherine. And I saw your boy.”

  “But my son wasn’t there,” Grant said. “He was with me.”

  “We were connected, somehow. By the cloud. In this vision,” Jem said. “McMillan’s son is taking your boy back to her house. That’s where all of this coalesces. Our visions, our connection, it all goes back there.”<
br />
  “I hope you’re right,” Grant said.

  Jem turned the Jeep onto Lynn Drive, the same neighborhood he and Brandon had visited earlier to steal the data recorder from the murdered woman’s house. Ahead of them, flashing blue lights rotated on the top of the chief’s police Tahoe on the side of the road.

  Jem slowed down and, in his headlights, could see that the car had crashed into one of the large pecan trees that lined Lynn Drive, the front of the SUV folded like an accordion against the trunk of the tree. He pulled the Jeep up behind it.

  “Hand me that bag, at your feet,” he said to Grant.

  Grant reached down and grabbed the duffel. Jem took it, unzipped the top and took out a handgun, a black nine-millimeter. “Keep an eye out,” he instructed.

  Jem approached the police cruiser slowly, finger on the trigger of his weapon. Growing up, his father was an avid hunter and took his boys shooting at the gun range or out on a hunting lease down south. That felt like a lifetime ago now, however. Jem’s grip on the weapon felt familiar, yet foreign. He hadn’t touched a gun since his father passed while he was finishing his degree at Saint Mary’s. It came back to him now as he advanced on the Tahoe, the gun held down at his waist.

  As he came to the vehicle, Jem saw a figure lying in the grass in the headlights of the Tahoe. Chief McMillan’s body was still and lifeless, a bullet hole in the back of his head as blood oozed from the wound. The lurching feeling of vomit began to swell in his throat, but he held it at bay. Jem slowly approached the body and held two fingers to the man’s bulbous neck, but even before he confirmed the absence of a pulse, Jem knew the man was gone. Stepping back, he went to his vehicle.

  “It’s the chief. He’s dead,” Jem said.

  “This is her house,” Grant said. “We need to stop him before he…” he trailed off.

  “I know,’ Jem said, pulling the shifter. “We’ll stop him.”